Ve. Ramalingam Pillai popularly known as the Namakkal Kavig¬nar (the poet of Namakkal) lived in an age of political turmoil, social unrest and cultural revival in India. Born in the last quar¬ter of the nineteenth century, he came under the influence of social and religious reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Shivananda Saraswathi, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda. He imbibed their ideas and developed a love for Indian culture and especially Tamil culture in which he was nurtured in his younger days. In the prime of his youth he came under the influence of Bankimchandra Chatterjee whose song "Bande Matharam" stirred in him a patriotic fervour. He became an ardent admirer of extre¬mist leaders such as Aurobindo and Balagangadhar Tilak whose writings he avidly read, while pursuing his higher studies. Influ¬enced by their ideas he also believed that Indian independence could be achieved only by a violent revolution. But later on he came under the spell of Mahatma Gandhi and accepted non¬violence as the only creed which could fetch freedom for India. He became an ardent follower of Gandhiji, participating directly and indirectly in the national movements he started. His writings came to be so surcharged with patriotism and Gandhism that the people of Tamil Nadu called him Theseeya Kavignar (patriotic poet) and Gandheeya Kavignar (Gandhian poet). Thus his poli¬tical ideas were influenced by the Moderates of the Indian National Congress, such as Gokhale and Gandhiji.

In the social and cultural fields he came under the influence of the Renaissance movement, which was spreading from Bengal to the other parts of India. He developed a hatred for social evils such as early-marriage, sati, infanticide, untouchability, the dowry system, and earnestly advocated interdining and intermarriage between castes, widow remarriage and temple entry for the untouchables. The constructive program of Gandhiji, such as prohibition, village uplift, promoting khaddar was admired and advocated by him in his speeches and writings. The catholicism in the religious field as preached by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in the North, and Ramalinga Swamigal in Tamil Nadu appealed to him very much. Thus in the social and religious fields he was influenced by the prevailing ideas of reform and revival.

In the literary field he followed the footsteps of the Bengali writers and wrote a number of novels and short stories in simple Tamil, easily understandable to an average Tamilian. His poems and songs were composed in such a lucid style that when sung, even the illiterates could easily understand the spirit behind them. In this he followed the footsteps of the Renaissance poets of Tamil Nadu such as Subramania Bharathi and Desika Vinayakarn Pillai, After the death of Bharathi, the great national poet of Tamil Nadu, it was Ve. Ramalingam Pillai who continued his tradition of simple prose and poetry in Tamil. Modern poets such as Ramalinga Swamigal and Thayumanava Swamigal and medieval poets such as Kamban and Pugalendi have also left an indelible impression on his mind.

The age in which he lived also, witnessed the growth of the spirit of separatism and localism, fostered by the Self-Respect movement and the non-brahmin movement which were growing fast in the soil of Tamil Nadu. The Dravidian movement started by E.V. Ramasamy Naicker was sowing the seeds of dissent between brahmins and non-brahmins. Namakkal Ve. Ramalingam reacted sharply to all these parochial ideas in his speeches and writings. Being a theist to the core he could not stomach the rationalism and atheism preached by EVR. According to him such ideas were utterly foreign to Tamil culture. He also condemned the tirade against brahmins. He said that it was very uncharitable on the part of the non-brahmins who were in a majority to denounce the brahmins, a microscopic minority, as the sole cause of all the evils in the society. His was indeed a solo voice in the midst of an atmosphere surcharged with hatred for brahmins and brahminism in Tamil Nadu. At the same time he was not uninfluenced by the reformist zeal of the Dravidian party and the love for Tamil and Tamil Culture of the D.M.K. party. In fact, he was a great advocate of healthy localism and regionalism. But he was quite opposed to separatism and fanaticism. He was not at all in sympathy with fissiparous tendencies of any kind. A strong and united India was always present in his vision.

Thus Ve. Ramalingam Pillai was a man of his times, influenced by the revolutionary ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries. But at the same time he was a conservative, whose roots ran deep into the ancient past of Indian and Tamil culture.