Subramaniam Paramarthalingam Udayakumar was in Monmouth University in New Jersey, USA, on a teaching assignment when 2011 dawned. Though he had been campaigning against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) as an activist and educator since 2001 when he came down to India after teaching at the University of Minnesota for four years, he hadn’t anticipated a stand off of the kind the country is now facing — between the anti-nuclear protestors and the government — and that he would be spearheading the People’s Movement for Nuclear Energy (PMANE).After visiting Fukushima in July, Udayakumar returned to India on August 9. Two days later, there was a meeting at Koodankulam to protest aga-inst the nuclear facility that was nearing completion and he was invited to speak. That was the turning point.Now camping in the tiny fishing hamlet of Idinthakarai, where the protest has been on for the past three months, he continues to mobilise support from all groups of people across the State and has even addressed crowds that want the KKNPP to go on stream to augment the power needs of Tamil Nadu.“I have started eating fish, which I did not relish earlier,” he says with a smile, looking back at the curious turn of events that pitchforked him into limelight. He rarely visits his home in Nagercoil, which is about 30 km away, leaving his aged parents to answer queries of policemen who are curious to know about his antecedents.After obtaining an MA, Udayakumar went to Ethiopia to be a schoolteacher and then did another master’s in Peace Studies in the US before doing his PhD from University of Hawaii.
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