The latest upsurge against the Koodankulam nuclear project has thrown a few personalities into the limelight and S P Udayakumar is one of them. Hailing from Nagercoil, which of course is one town that will be hit if there is a nuclear explosion in Koodankulam, Udayakumar has been into social activism since he was an undergraduate student of Mathematics in Pioneer Kumaraswamy College. But in those days, it was the issue of disarmament that caught his fancy.After doing his post graduation in English literature, he went to Ethiopia to work as a schoolteacher from 1981 to 1987. Then he went to the US to do another master’s in Peace Studies and also obtained a PhD from the University of Hawaii. Between 1997 and 2001 he was with the University of Minnesota before coming down to India and plunging himself deep into the anti-Koodankulam protest.Over the years, he has carried on the campaign against nuclear energy with the zeal of an evangelist, holding roadside meetings, distributing pamphlets and also meeting people to convey his ideas. “In those days at many places, when we spoke on the microphone, passersby would look at us as if we were mad,” he recalls. All that is over, he grins.“We do not have the support of any NGOs,” he says and adds that the entire expense for holding the agitation is borne by the people of Idinthakarai. On the people of Koodankulam letting the plant come up to this level, Udayakumar says they were taken for a ride with a promise of 10,000 jobs. In those days, he and his mentor in the movement, Y David, were almost attacked by the people of Koodankulam, who saw them as spoilsports.Fukushima brought about the real awareness, he says.But it was the stupidity of the Department of Atomic Energy to have called for the on-site emergency mock drill that heightened the scare. Back home in Nagercoil, his family is feeling the heat of his involvement in the agitation. He claims that a round-the-clock surveillance was on at his house and even his mother was being questioned by police.
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