When Marco Polo visited the land of the Tamizhs (Madurai/Thanjavur), he called it the most splendid magnificent city in the world in all his travels. Tamizhs had reached the peak of their civilization with magnificent temples that still inspire awe, philosophical & devotional texts with still unparalleled depths, inventions like Ukku steel for exports & immense prosperity.
Disaster would soon strike. The first Islamic invasions of the South was funded by Alauddin Khilji & led by Malik Kafur & Ulugh Khan (Muhammad bin Thuglaq). A trail of temple destructions & civilian massacres followed, including great Tamizh scholars at Srirangam. The huge army was eventually repelled by the Pandyas near Tirunelveli before Kanyakumari. But at huge costs. Amir Khusrao describes the wonders of the wealth looted, displayed for days, which included the Andhra Kakatiya's famous temple Kohinoor diamond. The Pandya empire never recovered from the losses & would soon collapse.
Khilji's Madurai Sultanate would take root. Moroccan traveler Ibn Batuta described the atrocities of the Sultanate as the worst he had ever witnessed in all his travels. In a few years, what a change from Marco Polo's observations.
Vijayanagara's Kumara Kampana (son of Bukka Raya, a co-founder of the empire with Harihara Raya) would defeat the Madurai Sultanate & restore temple worship, under the advice of his queen, Gangadevi after a dream of Madurai Meenakshi.
After Vijayanagara's collapse, the Tamizhs were slave traded by the Moors & colonial Europeans. This was later checked by Shivaji. The Maratha empire would extend all the way to Thanjavur.
There was even a Rajput prince, Desinghu Raja of SenjiKottai, who rebelled against a Nizam & is still praised for his valor in Tamizh ballads.
After the collapse of the Maratha empire, the Tamizhs were next exploited by the colonial British, such as in the infamous Madras famine. In utter poverty, Tamizhs were exported in slave-like conditions to plantations in Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji & the Caribbean. In spite of all this, Tamizhs managed to hold on to the cultural remnants of simple living & high thinking, at their peak. They contributed immensely to the independence struggle, including Subash Chandra Bose's Jai Hind slogan (by Shenbagaraman Pillai), challenging British trade monopoly (by Chidambaram Pillai), contributing many soldiers & leadership to Bose's INA. The first queen to fight & defeat the British was Velu Nachiar of Sivagangai, a rare ruler to hold on to her territory. The successors, the Marudhu Pandyars, would issue the first known national proclamation of India, exhorting all Indians to unite to fight British colonial rule.
The day Tamizhs learn their own history & get inspired by the cultural unity and those who spoke a different language but rallied to help the Tamizhs, it will sound the death-knell of the separatist forces peddling fake atrocity literature. This will be the first step towards reverting to the glory of the days praised by Marco Polo.
