A Likely Case of Misattribution in the Who's Who of Freedom Fighters: Reassessing the Entry on Sundarathammal and Venkatraman

The Who's Who of Freedom Fighters, compiled by the Government of Tamil Nadu between 1964 and 1972 and published in 1973, was a landmark initiative aimed at documenting the contributions of individuals who participated in India’s freedom struggle. However, despite the committee’s sincere efforts, the nature of its information-gathering process introduced a number of opportunities for errors and misattributions—particularly where accounts were based on second-hand or family-reported data, often years after the events occurred.

According to the official preface, the committee relied on a diverse set of sources, including:

Structured questionnaires issued to surviving participants or their families,
District-level representatives and local volunteers tasked with collecting and verifying data,
Archived newspapers and press clippings,
Jail and prison records,
Directors of rural development and archival documents.

Despite these wide-ranging sources, the committee explicitly acknowledged the challenges in securing accurate information, citing the scarcity of historical records, the loss of first-hand witnesses, and the time gap between the freedom struggle and the documentation process. These factors increased the likelihood of mistakes, particularly in cases involving deceased individuals whose legacies had to be recalled and reported posthumously.

The Sundarathammal Entry: A Likely Misattribution

One such probable misattribution appears in the entry for Sundarathammal, listed with the initial V., credited with participation in the boycott of foreign cloth and sentenced to one year of imprisonment in Trichy in 1933. Her husband is listed as “late T. T. Venkatrama Mudaliar,” with an address in Kayalpattinam.

Upon closer analysis, it becomes clear that the details listed in this entry more closely match the life and activities of R. Venkatrama Mudaliar, a known freedom fighter from Kayalpattinam, and not those of Sundarathammal herself. The available evidence suggests that this entry likely mistakenly attributed her husband’s credentials to her, either during the data collection phase or in the process of compiling final entries.

The First and Foremost Indicator: Geographic and Social Specificity

Given the relatively small size and demographic makeup of Kayalpattinam, the likelihood of two distinct individuals bearing the exact combination of names—Sundarathammal and Venkatrama Mudaliar—along with the caste surname "Mudaliar," is extremely low. In such a setting, names carried significant identifiers tied closely to familial and social identity. Therefore, the Sundarathammal mentioned in the Who's Who entry was almost certainly not an independent individual, but rather the wife of R. Venkatraman, the well-known freedom fighter from Kayalpattinam. This foundational overlap in personal and caste identifiers strongly supports the conclusion that the record, while bearing her name, is in fact referencing her husband's political life and contributions.

With this foundational point in mind, we may now turn to additional factors that further substantiate the assumption that the entry in question refers not to an independent individual named Sundarathammal, but to the wife of R. Venkatrama Mudaliar.

Initial and Naming Confusion

It is possible that the individual who filled out the questionnaire—whether Sundarathammal herself or a district-level volunteer—supplied her father’s name, Thailam Thirumalai, in response to a prompt likely seeking her husband’s father’s name. This misunderstanding might have led compilers to assign the initials T. T. to her husband, Venkatrama Mudaliar.

Furthermore, since it was customary in Tamil Nadu for a woman’s initial to reflect her husband’s name, the compilers may have assumed her initial to be V., leading to the construction of the name V. Sundarathammal—even though, by strict convention, her initials would have reflected her father’s name, i.e., T. T.. This double confusion—regarding both her and her husband's initials—likely contributed to the misattribution.

Freedom Fighters’ Family Pension

Since 1967, Sundarathammal had been receiving the Freedom Fighters’ Family Pension as the widow of R. Venkatrama Mudaliar, who died in 1952. Her official recognition as a freedom fighter’s widow might have influenced the assumptions made by data collectors or compilers. In an era when women’s individual participation was often under-documented, and family-based testimony was commonly used, this pension status could have prompted the inference—whether by a local volunteer or a compiler—that she herself had also been an active participant.

Jail Records and Historical Match

We have strong evidence that R. Venkatrama Mudaliar was imprisoned in Trichy in 1933 for his role in the Civil Disobedience Movement, particularly for picketing toddy shops. This date and prison location align precisely with the imprisonment cited in the Who's Who entry. While the entry credits the subject with the boycott of foreign cloth, an activity we cannot specifically link to R. Venkatrama Mudaliar, the alignment of prison year, location, and movement suggests that the act itself may have been generalized or mistakenly substituted by the compilers during the entry's preparation.

Level of Detail in Who's Who Entries

Another important distinction arises when we compare the level of detail in the entries. The Who's Who entry for R. Venkatrama Mudaliar includes the specific act under which he was arrested, strongly suggesting that the data was drawn from prison or archival records. In contrast, the entry for Sundarathammal mentions only her involvement in the boycott of foreign cloth, with no citation of legal provisions or arrest documentation, and vaguely states that she was imprisoned for “one year in Trichy during 1933.” This absence of legislative detail implies that her record likely originated not from jail records but from questionnaires or local-level data collection—where misattribution could easily occur, especially if information about the widow of a known freedom fighter was misunderstood or conflated. Furthermore, several other notable women freedom fighters from the same locality were known to have participated in the boycott of foreign cloth during that period, increasing the possibility that their involvement may have been confused or inadvertently attributed to Sundarathammal.

Contemporary Records from the Tiruchendur Freedom Fighters’ Association

The Tiruchendur Freedom Fighters’ Association, a body formed by local participants in the movement, compiled its own set of verified records. These include R. Venkatrama Mudaliar by name, but make no mention of Sundarathammal, despite the fact that other women from the region are named individually. This strongly suggests that she was not independently recognized as a participant in the freedom struggle, bolstering the case for misattribution.

Public Inscriptions and Memorial Records

Two major inscriptions in Tiruchendur, created to commemorate local freedom fighters, include the name of R. Venkatrama Mudaliar alongside that of recognized female activists. Yet Sundarathammal’s name is absent from both, again suggesting that she was not acknowledged as a separate activist by her contemporaries. This absence reinforces the interpretation that the entry in Who's Who is a mistaken conflation.

The "Late" Reference and Source of Confusion

The entry lists her husband as “late T. T. Venkatrama Mudaliar”, which aligns chronologically with R. Venkatrama Mudaliar’s death in 1952. If the questionnaire (or interview) responses lacked clear subject identification or pronouns—such as specifying whether the described actions referred to the respondent or her deceased husband—it could have led the compilers to misinterpret who the actual freedom fighter was. This type of confusion, arising from ambiguities in indirect or oral reporting, is precisely the kind of issue the committee noted in its own introduction.

Reinforcement in Subsequent Writings

This version of the narrative was later reproduced in respected sources. Freedom fighter S. N. Somayajulu, in his 1976 publication, repeated details from the Who's Who, particularly in the chapter directly derived from the 1973 compilation.

Subsequently, writer Ganapathiraman, who drew on both Somayajulu and the Who's Who, maintained the same narrative. His version includes additional claims that the subject was tortured in prison, and that her husband resigned from government service for the freedom cause. However, oral accounts from the children of R. Venkatrama Mudaliar confirm that it was he who experienced torture during imprisonment, and independent written sources validate that he resigned from his government position to join the Civil Disobedience Movement. These facts suggest that the biographical details refer accurately to R. Venkatrama Mudaliar, but were mistakenly carried forward under his wife’s name in the source material.

Conclusion: A Reasoned Interpretation Based on Available Evidence

Taking into account the cumulative factors—confusion of initials, address and social identity match, alignment with known imprisonment details, lack of independent references to Sundarathammal, disparities in documentation precision, and confirmation of related facts in both oral and written sources—the Who's Who entry for V. Sundarathammal most likely refers, albeit inadvertently, to R. Venkatrama Mudaliar.

While direct proof is limited by the absence of the original questionnaire or compiler notes, the broader pattern of internal inconsistencies, corroborated local records, and archival disparities strongly supports this conclusion.