V. O. Chidambaram Pillai

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Context

Prime Minister Modi paid tribute to V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, the legendary freedom fighter on his 150th birth anniversary.

About

He was popularly known as Kappalottiya Tamilan (The Tamil Helmsman).
By 1906, VOC won the support of merchants and industrialists in Tuticorin and Tirunelveli for the idea of establishing a Swadeshi merchant shipping outfit by the name of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (SSNCo).
He established many institutions like Swadeshi Prachar Sabha, Dharmasanga Nesavu Salai, National Godown, Madras Agro-Industrial Society Ltd and Desabimana Sangam.
VOC and Siva formed an organisation called the Swadeshi Sangam, or ‘National Volunteers’.
The nationalist movement acquired a secondary character with the beginning of the Tuticorin Coral Mills strike (1908).
Prior to Gandhiji’s Champaran Satyagraha (1917), VOC took up the cause of the working class in Tamil Nadu, and thus he is a forerunner to Gandhiji in this respect.