"Though Bharathi died so young, he cannot be reckoned with Chatterton and Keats among the inheritors of "unfulfilled renown". His was a name to conjure with, at any rate in South India, while he was still alive. But his fame was not so much as a poet as of a patriot and a writer of patriotic songs. His loudly expressed admiration for Tilak, his fiery denunciations in the Swadesamitran, and the fact that he had to seek refuge in French territory to escape the probing attentions of the Government of Madras, made him a hero and a "freedom fighter". His lilting songs were on numerous lips, and no procession or public meeting in a Tamil district in the days of "non-cooperation" could begin, carry on or end without singing a few of them... Bharathi's love of Tamil, both the language as it was in his own day and the rich literature left as a heritage, was no less than his love of India... When he claims for Valluvan, Ilango and Kamban, Bharathy does so not as an ignorant chauvinist but as one who has savoured both the sweetness of these writers and the strength and richness of others in Sanskrit and English..."