Though the British Government arrested him along with other leaders on charges of conspiring to wage war against the Crown, he was set free, soon after, on account of his failing health.

Singaravelar was also a path-breaking social reformer who in his early life took to Buddhism, seeing it as a weapon against the evil of untouchability, which was particularly severe in the 19th-century India.

Though in his advanced years, he withdrew from active politics, Singaravelar remained a staunch advocate of the causes he had pioneered till his death at the age of 85.

Singaravelar was born into a pattanavar chettiar family, the third son of Venkatachalam and Valliammai in Madras (now called Chennai).

Singaravelar was successful as a lawyer; within a short period, he earned enough wealth to acquire estates in Madras town and suburbs.

He was born into a fisherman family (most backward caste) and had concluded that rationalist ideas of Buddhism could be used as a weapon against untouchability.

Anagarika Dharmapala, the Ceylonese Buddhist missionary founded the Maha Bodhi society for revival of Buddhism in 1891.

Singaravelar attracted the attention of the émigré Communist Party of India, which was founded by M. N. Roy, Shaukat Usmani and others in Tashkent on 17 October 1920.

Roy, smuggled himself to India from Moscow via Berlin in December 1922 and surreptitiously met local communist leaders.

When they came to Madras, Singaravelar organised the boycott of the delegation through an unprecedented hartal or complete shutdown of shops and establishments of the town.

Gandhi in an article in Young India, dated 9 February 1922 criticized the hartal and Singaravelar for not imbibing the true spirit of non-cooperation movement.

M. N. Roy praised him for calling himself a communist, in Vanguard dated 1 March 1923: That Singaravelu participated in the Gaya Congress Meeting in which people with different ideas took part will be considered a historic event.

Following his speech, the Gaya meeting adopted the Labor Resolution that said: It is the opinion of this conference that all Indian Labourers should be united.

The Hindu newspaper, published from Madras reported: The Labour Kisan party has introduced May Day celebrations in Chennai.

[16]Labour Kishan Party of Hindusthan was a part of a larger, but not inter-connected, moves by various Indian communist groups to find a mass-based political platform.

Same year Dange wrote in his journal Socialist that all his activities were now a part of the Labour Kishan Party of Hindusthan and he asked for opening up of its branches everywhere.

[17] Singaravelar announced that it would join the Indian National Congress and would strive to function as the labour and farmer wing of that party.

In the manifesto of the party Singaravelar described Congress 'our chief political organ, appear to define "nation" by referring to propertied class.

M. N. Roy wrote: It has been proved at Gaya, if proof were still needed, that the National struggle can be led, neither by the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie acting through the orthodox "No-Changers" under the divine guidance of St. Rajagopal, nor by the radical intellectuals desirous of harking back to the folds of Constitutionalism, under the guise of loyalty to the memory of Tilak.

[19]Early communists like Dange, Singaravelar, M. N. Roy's associate, Abani Mukherji, a deportee from Fiji and a lawyer Manilal Doctor were present at the Gaya session and saw Gandhi's support to the 'no-changers.'

On 29 January 1923, Dange wrote to Singaravelar that: You perhaps know that Roy wants to hold a conference of Indian Communists in Berlin.

The Government Counsel recommended prosecution against the first eight in the list, namely, M. N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmed, Shaukat Usmani Gulam Hussain, S. A. Dange, Singaravelu, Ramcharan Lal Sharma, and Nalini Gupta.

Ramcharan Lal Sharma was not arrested because he had migrated to the French territory of Pondicherry due to police harassment.

[24] Satyabhakta then announced a communist conference in DeMarxistcember 1925, at Kanpur, to be concurrently held with Indian National Congress convention.

N. N. Roy was skeptical when he wrote in the October 1925 issue of his magazine,Masses of India that: It is premature to say that what shape this 'Communist Party' will ultimately assume and how far it is going to be Communist in Programme and actions.

According to the Constitution, the object of the Party was, to quote: establishment of workers' and peasants' republic based on socialisation of means of production and distribution, by the liberation of India from British imperialist domination.

In 1927, the workers of the South Indian Railways were resisting measures by the management to retrench them through a fresh assessment of their skills.

the brahmins) and the communist movement should work together to save the Tamil labour forces from the clutches of both religious and economic exploiters.

Periyar had taken a decision to support pro-British Justice Party and to oppose the Indian National Congress in the elections that followed.

Unlike Congress, the Justice Party had agreed to implement a policy of appointments to government jobs in proportion to caste ratios, as demanded by the leaders of the self-respect movement.