Resistance here took three unconnected forms, and running them together would misrepresent all three. The first was the palayakkarar risings of 1799 and 1801 in the southern and western palayams, which were fought over tenure and tribute and were finished by the settlement of 1801–03. The second was the Swadeshi agitation after 1906, which reached Madurai through print and public meetings and produced a short-lived revolutionary current in the southern districts that ended with the Ashe shooting of 1911 and the trials that followed. The third, from the 1920s, is the one that has lasted: two rival reform movements — Gandhian Congress work leading to the Meenakshi temple entry of 1939, and the Self-Respect movement founded at Erode in 1925 — which were both aimed at the region's internal order as much as at colonial rule.
The Swadeshi years in the southern districts1906–1908
After the partition of Bengal, boycott of imported cloth and swadeshi enterprise were argued from public platforms across the south. Subramania Siva and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai spoke through the Vaigai and Tamraparni country, and Subramania Bharati's verse and journalism carried the argument in Tamil. The arrest of Chidambaram Pillai and Siva at Tuticorin on 12 March 1908 was followed by disturbances in Tirunelveli town.
Outcome: Both men were convicted; Siva was imprisoned and contracted the illness that killed him in 1925.
The Ashe shooting and the conspiracy trial17 June 1911
Robert Ashe, Collector of Tirunelveli, was shot dead in his railway carriage at Maniyachi Junction by Vanchinathan of Shencottah, who then shot himself in the station. A conspiracy prosecution followed against members of the Bharata Matha Association, an organisation formed after the disturbances of 1908.
Outcome: The convictions and the surveillance that followed effectively ended the revolutionary current in the southern districts; organised politics in the region afterwards ran through the Congress and the Self-Respect movement instead.
The temple entry movement1939
On 8 July 1939 A. Vaidyanatha Iyer, then president of the Tamil Nadu Harijan Seva Sangh, entered the Meenakshi temple at Madurai with P. Kakkan and other Dalit companions, ending the exclusion of Dalit worshippers from one of the largest temples in the south.
Outcome: The Madras Temple Entry Authorization and Indemnity Act was passed later in 1939, indemnifying the entries and authorising others.