A British journalist & the Tamil poet

On November 23, 1907 on Chennai’s Marina Beach, ‘between the esplanade and the surf’, a huge crowd had gathered around a small platform. A large lamp had been set on the platform to dispel the quickly enveloping monsoon darkness. In the teeming crowd, a lone European stood out. What was a white man doing at an extremist meeting being held at the height of the Swadeshi movement? He was no official or trader or missionary or even a vagrant. He was one of the finest late Victorian war correspondents, Henry Woodd Nevinson (1856–1941) whose work had been commended by writers such as Lawrence of Arabia.