The First Polygar War (1752-1767): How Puli Thevar and His Rebel Coalition Held the British East India Company at Bay for Fifteen Years

The War That History Forgot

When we speak of early Indian resistance to British rule, the names that come to mind are usually from the nineteenth century. The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Kittur Chennamma. Pazhassi Raja. But long before any of them, in the parched, palm-fringed landscape of southern Tamil Nadu, a different kind of war was being fought. It began in 1752, more than a century before the mutiny, and it lasted fifteen years. It was a war of guerrilla ambushes, jungle hideouts, shifting alliances, and brutal reprisals. It was the First Polygar War.

The protagonist of this forgotten war was Puli Thevar, the Polygar or Palaiyakkarar of Nerkattumseval, a small fort town in what was then the Tirunelveli region, now part of Tenkasi district in Tamil Nadu. The word “Puli” means tiger in Tamil, and the man lived up to his name. For fifteen years, from 1752 to 1767, Puli Thevar led a coalition of Polygars and Marava chieftains against the combined forces of the British East India Company and their ally, the Nawab of Arcot.

This is the story of that war. It is a story of courage, betrayal, jungle warfare, and the tragic end of a man who is now recognized as one of India’s earliest freedom fighters.

Who Were the Polygars?

To understand the First Polygar War, we must first understand who the Polygars were. The term “Polygar” is the British corruption of the Tamil word “Palaiyakkarar.” These were the regional military and revenue officials who served under the great Vijayanagara Empire from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. They controlled fortified territories called “palayams,” each ruled by a Palaiyakkarar who owed nominal allegiance to a higher sovereign but exercised near-absolute authority over his own domain.

When the Vijayanagara Empire crumbled in the mid-sixteenth century after the disastrous Battle of Talikota in 1565, the Polygars did not disappear. They adapted. They became independent or semi-independent chieftains, ruling their palayams from fortified strongholds scattered across the Tamil countryside. By the eighteenth century, there were approximately seventy-two such palayams in the Madurai and Tirunelveli regions alone.

The Polygars were not mere landlords. They were warriors. Each palayam maintained its own army of cavalry, infantry, and elephant troops. They lived in forts built of granite, often on hilltops or surrounded by moats. Their power rested on three pillars: land, military force, and the loyalty of the Maravar and Kallar communities, traditional warrior castes of the Tamil country.

The British, who arrived in India as traders but soon became territorial powers, found the Polygar system deeply frustrating. They could not understand why a chieftain who owed theoretical allegiance to the Nawab of Arcot would refuse to pay taxes or acknowledge British authority. The Polygars, for their part, saw the British and the Nawab as foreign interlopers trying to strip them of centuries-old rights.

This clash of worldviews made war inevitable.

The Political Landscape: A Powder Keg in the Carnatic

The mid-eighteenth century was a time of chaos in the Carnatic, the coastal region of southeastern India. The Mughal Empire, which had once exercised loose suzerainty over the region, was in terminal decline. The Nizam of Hyderabad, the Mughal viceroy for the Deccan, was fighting to maintain control over his fractious subordinates. And the Nawabs of Arcot, who were supposed to rule the Carnatic on behalf of the Nizam, were themselves caught in a web of European intrigue.

The British and the French, locked in their global struggle known as the Carnatic Wars from 1746 to 1763, were intervening aggressively in local succession disputes. They backed rival claimants to the Nawabship of Arcot, extracted territorial concessions in exchange for military support, and gradually transformed themselves from merchants into kingmakers.

By 1752, the British had firmly established Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah as the Nawab of Arcot. Muhammad Ali was deeply indebted to the British East India Company, having borrowed enormous sums to fight his rivals. In return, he granted the British extensive revenue-collection rights over large parts of the Carnatic, including the Polygar territories of Tirunelveli and Madurai.

This was the trigger. When the British began demanding taxes and revenues from the Polygars, taxes that the Polygars considered rightfully theirs and not the Nawab’s, resistance flared. And at the head of that resistance stood a man named Puli Thevar.

Puli Thevar: The Tiger of Nerkattumseval

Puli Thevar was born in 1715 into a Maravar warrior family that held the hereditary chieftainship of Nerkattumseval, a palayam located in what is now Sankarankoil taluk in Tenkasi district. His father, Chitraputra Thevan, had been a respected Polygar, and the young Puli Thevar inherited both the title and the responsibility of defending his people’s autonomy.

From an early age, Puli Thevar displayed the qualities that would define his life: courage, strategic intelligence, and an absolute refusal to bow to external authority. He maintained good relations with the neighboring Kingdom of Travancore, whose ruler, the legendary Marthanda Varma, had built a formidable modern army with European training. He also cultivated ties with Hyder Ali, the rising power in Mysore, who would later become a fearsome enemy of the British.

But Puli Thevar was not alone. He led a coalition of Marava Polygars from the western blocks of the Tirunelveli region, including the chieftains of Sivagiri, Vadagarai, and several other palayams. His most trusted generals were Ondiveeran and Venni Kaladi, both of whom commanded detachments within the Polygar army. His son-in-law, the king of Vadakarai, also fought alongside him.

The British, who had little patience for any Indian ruler who resisted their demands, dismissed the Polygars as bandits and their Marava warriors as “colleries,” a derogatory term they used for the Kallar and Maravar communities. But they underestimated Puli Thevar at their peril.

The Spark: British Encroachment and Polygar Resistance

In 1754, the British East India Company, acting on behalf of the Nawab Muhammad Ali, appointed a British officer named Alexander Hamilton to lead troops into the Tirunelveli region and bring the Polygars to heel. Many Polygars, facing the prospect of British firepower, grudgingly accepted the Nawab’s suzerainty. But the western Marava Polygars, led by Puli Thevar, refused.

The issue was not merely one of pride or stubbornness. The Polygars had legitimate grievances. Under the traditional system, they owed revenue to the Nawab, but they also enjoyed considerable autonomy and were entitled to keep a substantial portion of the revenue they collected. The British, however, demanded fixed payments, imposed harsh penalties for delays, and sent armed detachments to collect what was owed. To the Polygars, this was not legitimate taxation. It was extortion backed by foreign bayonets.

Puli Thevar decided to fight.

The First Major Battle: Victory at Nerkattumseval

In 1755, the British sent a force against Puli Thevar. The commander was Colonel Alexander Heron, a seasoned officer who had fought in the Carnatic Wars and expected a quick victory against what he considered a band of undisciplined rebels.

He was wrong.

At Nerkattumseval, Puli Thevar’s forces, well-versed in the local terrain and fighting with the desperation of men defending their homes, ambushed and routed the British column. Colonel Heron was killed in the action. It was a stunning defeat for the East India Company, which had grown accustomed to steamrolling Indian opposition with its superior firepower and discipline.

The news of Heron’s death and Puli Thevar’s victory spread like wildfire across the Tamil country. Overnight, Puli Thevar became a folk hero, a symbol of resistance against foreign domination. Other Polygars who had been wavering now joined his coalition. The rebellion swelled.

This victory was not merely symbolic. It demonstrated that a determined Indian force, fighting on its home ground and using guerrilla tactics, could defeat a European-trained army. The British had been humbled, and they would not forget it.

The Alliance with Travancore

Following his victory, Puli Thevar sought to strengthen his position by forging an alliance with the most powerful ruler in the region: Marthanda Varma, the Maharaja of Travancore. Travancore had a formidable army, trained by the Dutch commander Eustachius De Lannoy after Travancore’s stunning victory over the sadras-the-dutch-in-tamil-nadu/" class="sial-auto-link">Dutch East India Company at the Battle of Colachel in 1741. Marthanda Varma was no friend of the British, and he saw the advantage of having a buffer state between his kingdom and the British-controlled Carnatic.

The alliance between Puli Thevar and Travancore was a game-changer. It gave the Polygar coalition access to European-style military training, modern weapons, and a secure southern flank. For a few years, Puli Thevar’s position seemed unassailable.

But alliances in eighteenth-century India were fragile things. Marthanda Varma died in 1758 and was succeeded by his nephew, Dharma Raja, who had a different strategic calculus. Travancore’s primary concern was not the British but the growing power of Hyder Ali of Mysore to the north. As British-Mysore tensions escalated, Travancore began to see the British as a potential ally rather than an enemy.

The foundation of Puli Thevar’s coalition was beginning to crack.

Enter Yusuf Khan: The Man Who Turned the Tide

The British, stung by their defeat and determined to crush the Polygar rebellion once and for all, decided to deploy a secret weapon of their own. His name was Maruthanayagam Pillai, but he is better known to history as Yusuf Khan or Khan Sahib.

Yusuf Khan’s story is as remarkable as it is tragic. Born into a Hindu family of the Vellalar caste, he converted to Islam early in life and adopted the name Yusuf Khan. He was a brilliant military strategist, trained in European tactics, and possessed an almost superhuman ability to navigate the treacherous political waters of eighteenth-century South India.

The British, recognizing his talents, engaged him to lead their campaign against Puli Thevar. What made Yusuf Khan so effective was not just his military skill but his intelligence. He understood the Polygars. He knew their weaknesses, their internal rivalries, and the fault lines in their coalition. He exploited all of them.

Yusuf Khan’s strategy was masterful. First, he persuaded the Travancore court to abandon its alliance with Puli Thevar, offering guarantees that Travancore had nothing to fear from the British. With Travancore neutralized, Puli Thevar lost his most powerful backer.

Second, Yusuf Khan cultivated dissent among the Polygar coalition. He offered favorable terms to chieftains who defected, promising to protect their lands and privileges if they acknowledged the Nawab’s authority. One by one, the allies of Puli Thevar peeled away.

Third, Yusuf Khan used his own troops, trained in European methods, to conduct relentless campaigns against the remaining Polygar strongholds. He did not engage in large set-piece battles, which might have favored the Polygar guerrilla tactics. Instead, he used coordinated sweeps, burning villages, destroying crops, and cutting off supply lines.

By 1761, Puli Thevar was a hunted man. His coalition had dissolved. His allies had surrendered or been killed. His fort at Nerkattumseval had fallen. He fled into the jungles of Madurai, where he continued a desperate guerrilla resistance for a few months.

Finally, betrayed by someone within his own circle, Puli Thevar was captured. The British, who had no patience for rebels, sentenced him to death. In 1761, Puli Thevar was hanged at Kazhukumalai in Tenkasi district.

Or so they thought.

The Rebellion That Refused to Die

The death of Puli Thevar did not end the First Polygar War. In fact, it may only have intensified the resistance.

When news of Puli Thevar’s execution spread, the remaining Polygar chieftains, men like the leaders of Panchalankurichi, Ettaiyapuram, Vaipar, Seithur, Sivagiri, and Vasudevanallur, dug in their heels. They had seen what happened to those who surrendered. They had no reason to trust the British or the Nawab. And they had nothing left to lose.

The years following Puli Thevar’s execution saw a resurgence of Polygar resistance. From 1764 onward, the British found themselves fighting what amounted to a widespread insurgency across the Tirunelveli and Madurai regions. The Polygars used guerrilla tactics, striking British supply columns, ambushing patrols, and melting back into the jungle before reinforcements could arrive.

The British, now facing a full-blown rebellion, decided on a strategy of systematic destruction. They would not merely defeat the Polygars. They would dismantle their entire military infrastructure. Fort by fort, palayam by palayam, the British army would sweep through the region, leveling every stronghold and rendering the Polygars incapable of further resistance.

The Campaign of 1767: The Hammer Falls

By early 1767, the rebellion had reached such proportions that the Madras Government decided to deploy substantial reinforcements. A detachment of one hundred European soldiers was sent from Vellore to Tiruchirappalli, and overall command was given to Major William Flint.

Major Flint’s orders were clear. He was to march on Panchalankurichi, a fort of high strategic value in the Ettaiyapuram region, and seize it at all costs.

On February 11, 1767, Major Flint opened his assault on Panchalankurichi. He brought up artillery and began bombarding the fort walls, seeking to create a breach. By six in the morning, a breach had been made. The attack continued until five in the evening. But the fort did not fall. The Polygar defenders, knowing that surrender meant death or imprisonment, fought with desperate courage.

Unable to capture the fort by direct assault, Flint turned the siege into a blockade, hoping to starve the defenders out. But during the night, the Polygars slipped out of the fort and escaped. When Flint’s men entered the fort the next morning, they found it empty.

The battle had been costly. Eight Europeans were killed and eighteen wounded. On the Polygar side, an estimated ninety-two men were killed or wounded.

The British Reinforcements Arrive

The British realized that Major Flint’s forces were insufficient to crush the rebellion. They decided to bring in heavier firepower. Colonel Donald Campbell, the Commandant of the second regiment at Vellore, was appointed to lead a punitive expedition against the rebel Polygars. Campbell was an experienced campaigner, and the Madras Government gave him a formidable force: four hundred European soldiers, twenty-five hundred sepoys, and six field pieces.

Campbell’s campaign was methodical and brutal. He did not merely want to defeat the Polygars. He wanted to make it impossible for them to ever rebel again.

On April 25, 1767, Campbell left Rajapalayam and marched toward Kollamkondan. His objective was not just to capture forts but to capture the Polygar leaders themselves. He knew from experience that if the leaders escaped, they would simply rebuild their strongholds and resume the fight.

When Campbell reached Kollamkondan, he found the fort abandoned. The Polygars had fled, melting into the countryside. Campbell was disappointed but not deterred. He ordered the fort leveled, a task that would be repeated at every Polygar stronghold he encountered.

The Fall of Seithur

Campbell’s next target was Seithur. On May 3, 1767, he arrived at the fort and found a considerable Polygar force stationed outside its walls. A battle ensued.

The Polygars fought hard, but they were no match for Campbell’s disciplined European troops and sepoys. The British drove them back, inflicting heavy casualties. Eight Polygar men were killed, and more than a hundred were wounded. Two British officers were wounded, and three sepoys were killed.

The surviving Polygars retreated into the fort of Seithur. Campbell surrounded it and opened cannon fire. Fearing they would be trapped and annihilated, the Polygars slipped out of the fort on the night of May 3 and escaped into the hills.

Campbell ordered the fort destroyed. The work of demolition took days. People were employed on the task day and night, relieved every twelve hours. By May 9, 1767, Seithur was rubble.

Sivagiri: The Ghost Fort

Campbell next marched to Sivagiri, a larger and more formidable stronghold. The fort at Sivagiri was capacious, with regular bastions, a parapet five feet thick, and loopholes for firing. A wet ditch surrounded the fort, protected by a bamboo hedge. Campbell’s officers noted that if the Polygars had been allowed a little more time to complete their fortifications, the place would have been rendered impregnable.

But when Campbell arrived, he found the fort abandoned, not just by the Polygar warriors but by the entire civilian population. Sivagiri was inhabited by approximately twenty thousand people, but when the British marched in, there was neither man, woman, nor child to be seen.

The countryside around Sivagiri, Campbell’s officers noted, was the most beautiful and delightful they had seen in the region. But it was also empty. The Polygars and their people had vanished into the hills, where the harvest season made the terrain inaccessible to anyone but them.

Campbell began leveling the fort on the morning of May 11, 1767. The work continued for days.

Vasudevanallur: The Last Stand

The final major engagement of the 1767 campaign came at Vasudevanallur. Unlike the other forts, Vasudevanallur was not abandoned. The Polygars had taken great pains to strengthen its fortifications. A French four-pounder cannon was mounted on one bastion, and a Malabar gun on another. From these positions, the Polygars fired on Campbell’s camp.

Campbell surrounded the fort and opened fire from the bushes at night, using the cover of darkness to conceal his positions. On the night of May 17, the Polygars attempted to break out but were beaten back.On May 18, Captain Harper, one of Campbell’s subordinates, began a cannonade, hoping to breach the walls. But the walls held. Then the rains came. A heavy downpour turned the battlefield into a quagmire.

Taking advantage of the chaos and darkness, the Polygars forced their way out of the fort through three different directions around four in the morning. They retreated to the adjacent hills. On May 19, the British captured the now-empty fort.

The work of demolition was ordered immediately.

The End of the First Polygar War

By June 1767, the British had achieved their objectives. The major Polygar forts in the Tirunelveli region had been leveled. The Polygar leaders, those who had not been captured, had fled into the deep jungles. The countryside was quiet, but it was the quiet of exhaustion and defeat, not of peace.

Colonel Donald Campbell recommended that the fort at Panchalankurichi be demolished, as keeping a garrison there was no longer justified. He also recommended the destruction of the fort at Thirukurangudi. The systematic dismantling of the Polygar military infrastructure continued.

Campbell left a British force at Sankarankoil, consisting of two hundred Europeans, four field pieces, lascars, coolies, ammunition, and bullocks. The cantonment was intended to prevent any future resurgence of Polygar resistance.

By the end of June 1767, Campbell had completed his campaign. The First Polygar War was over.But the British would face the Polygars again. In 1799, a new rebellion would erupt, led by a chieftain named Kattabomman Nayak of Panchalankurichi. That would be the Second Polygar War, and it would end with Kattabomman’s public execution in front of a crowd at Kayatharu.

The First Polygar War, however, had set the template: guerrilla resistance, British overreaction, mass destruction, and the execution of rebel leaders. It was a pattern that would repeat itself across India for the next century and a half.

Puli Thevar’s Legacy: The First Freedom Fighter?

In recent years, there has been a growing movement to recognize Puli Thevar as India’s first freedom fighter. The claim is not without merit. His rebellion began in 1752, more than a century before the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. When he fought, the British East India Company was still a trading company, not yet the imperial power it would become. Puli Thevar was fighting British colonialism before the word “colonialism” had even entered the Indian political vocabulary.

But the term “freedom fighter” is a modern label, and it carries modern assumptions. Puli Thevar was not fighting for Indian independence in the nationalist sense. He was fighting for his own autonomy, for the traditional rights of his palayam, and for the freedom of his people from foreign taxation and interference. He was a regional chieftain, not a national leader.

That said, his courage and his strategic brilliance are undeniable. He held the British at bay for fifteen years. He defeated a British colonel in open battle. He forged alliances with Travancore and Mysore, two of the most powerful states in South India. He came closer than almost any Indian leader of the eighteenth century to creating a unified resistance against British expansion.

And when he lost, he lost everything. His fort was destroyed. His allies were scattered. His people were displaced. He was captured, hanged, and his name was nearly erased from history.

But not quite. Folk memory is a stubborn thing. In the villages around Nerkattumseval, in the ballads of the Maravar people, in the songs sung at festivals, the name of Puli Thevar survived. And in the twenty-first century, his memory has been officially revived. Statues of Puli Thevar have been erected across Tamil Nadu. Government ceremonies honor his memory. The man who was once dismissed as a bandit is now celebrated as a hero.

The Price of Resistance

The First Polygar War was a war of David against Goliath, and like so many such wars, it ended with David crushed under Goliath’s boot. The British East India Company had superior firepower, superior logistics, and the ability to draw on seemingly endless reserves of European and sepoy troops. The Polygars had courage, knowledge of the terrain, and the loyalty of their people.

In 1767, courage was not enough.

But the First Polygar War was not a total defeat. It demonstrated that Indian resistance was possible. It showed that a determined guerrilla force could inflict real damage on the Company’s armies. And it established a tradition of anti-colonial resistance that would inspire future generations.

When Kattabomman Nayak raised the banner of rebellion in 1799, he was walking in the footsteps of Puli Thevar. When the Marudu brothers led their revolt in 1801, they were following a path first blazed by the Tiger of Nerkattumseval. And when the sepoys of 1857 looked for leaders to rally behind, they were part of a lineage of resistance that stretched back more than a century to a fort in the dusty plains of Tirunelveli.

Puli Thevar lost. But he also won. He lost his life, his fort, and his kingdom. But he won something that the British could never take from him: a place in the memory of his people. And that, perhaps, is the only immortality a warrior can ever truly hope for.

The forts are gone now. The cannons are silent. The British are long gone from Indian shores. But on a hilltop near Nerkattumseval, if you listen carefully on a quiet evening, you can still hear the wind carrying the echo of a tiger’s roar.

Puli Thevar’s resistance did not end with his death. Four decades later, a new generation of chieftains picked up the same fight in the Second Polygar War, this time with far wider reach across the Tamil country. Around the same period, another Tamil soldier turned rebel administrator was making his own stand against the Company in Madurai. His story is told in full in Maruthanayagam to Yusuf Khan.

References and Bibliography

1. Outlook India. “Kattabomman, Puli Thevar: How Tamil Nadu Remembers Its Polygar Heroes” (June 2020). Analysis of the historical memory of the Polygar rebellion leaders and their recognition as early freedom fighters. 

2. Al Jamiat. “Unveiling the Bravery of Puli Thevar & Kattabomman: The Rebel Polygars of Tamil Nadu.” Detailed account of the First Polygar War including the roles of Major Flint and Colonel Donald Campbell, and the demolition of forts at Seithur, Sivagiri, and Vasudevanallur in 1767.

3. History Unravelled. “Yusuf Khan: The Commandant Who Humiliated Puli Thevar” (2023). Analysis of Yusuf Khan’s military strategies, his destruction of the Travancore alliance, and his role in suppressing the First Polygar War.  

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