by k r a narasiaheightyeight years ago on september 17 1933 a group of young men spurred by nationalistic fervour headed by seasoned journalist k srinivasan started the avant garde journal manikkodiin the early 1930s tamil journalism took firm roots resulting in the emergence of journals feeding populist content to readers however there were journals that were supporting nationalistic movement as well by that time the english reading middle class though minuscule was looking for a tamil journal varadarajulu naidu who launched thamizh nadu introduced simple understandable tamil and printed articles on subjects of national and literary interest taking a cue from it manikkodi was foundedwith his wide experience in english journalism as a correspondent for the sunday observer of london during the 1920s and groomed by s sadanand founder of the free press of india the first nationalist news agency and the free press journal srinivasan came up with a tamil journal with literary content in understandable tamil with nationalist outlookthe group included chokkalingam from salem who had worked with vardarajulu naidu and va ramaswami iyengar a freedom fighter who was good in english and tamil the three were sitting on the sands of marina one evening when they saw the union jack at the fort being lowered the fluttering flag reminded them of the tricolour flying in the mast that was immortalised as thaayin manikkodi by subramania bharati they decided the name of the journal would be manikkodi and began working on itmanikkodi was published as a broadsheet and priced at one anna but after its 13th issue it was halved into tabloid size with 20 pages initially manikodi was edited by srinivasan and patriot and writer v ramaswamy fondly called va ra va raa tried to encourage thinking individuals who could contribute to the journal under his leadership emerged such literary stalwarts like pudumaippiththan ku pa rajagopalan n pichamurthy and later chitti sundararajan and c s chellappa wrote for manikkodiseparate rubrics were devised to further nationalist propaganda such as jana nadai nawab nadai swantra pannai and pazhang kanakku old account an important rubric was ilakkiya cholai a literary section heralding new writing in tamil pazhang kanakku invoked history in an impassioned manner to right the colonial wrongs chaturmugam compiled news from various sources in an interesting manner sarukkumalai put together quotations usually from political rivals and commented on them manikodi also published political cartoons regularlyinternal differences triggered by the restructuring of the ownership proved to be manikodis undoing it did not survive for long published intermittently and folded up in early 1939the writer is a history enthusiast