Who Owns That Song : The Battle For Subramania Bharati’s Copyright

One of the greatest Tamil poets of all time Subramania Bharati’s works were unrecognized during his lifetime- In 1921 when Bharati died in poverty his widow sold his works to his half-brother- But in the wake of the music boom launched by gramophone records and the rise of the talkies Bharati’s songs became commercially valuable- A powerful movie mogul A-V- Meiyappan bought the rights to Bharati’s works and when someone else used a Bharati song in his film Meiyappan sued him- A controversy followed and there was a popular agitation demanding the nationalization of a writer’s work- After a series of legal wrangles the poet’s writings were nationalized and put into the public domain in 1949- In this book A-R- Venkatachalapathy tells the fascinating story of this unique and dramatic episode tackling its most challenging question: who does an artist belong to?