While serving his term he observed the atrocities, meated out to his fellow men and women alike in the cane farms by the white masters and their stooges, the Indian Sirdars who would stoop to do anything to please their white masters to gain personal favours. He arrived in Fiji as an indentured laborer or girmitiya on 12th April, 1912 in the ship SUTLEJ III and was assigned to serve his 5 year term at Yalandro in Tavua. It is believed that he came from a simple middle-class community of Balija Caste. His father, an Orthodox South Indian, ensured that his son was given the best to develop his knowledge of South -Indian religion, culture, and art in his mother tongue Tamil from a young age. He was born in a small village called Konoor which is near Villupuram some 103 Kilometers South of Madras City. Of course, he was only plain Kuppu Swamy the son of Govind Swamy Naidu. Who was this noble soul? He was none other than our Patron Saint Sevaka Ratnam Sadhu Kuppu Swamy
Perhaps it was fate, destiny or the good fortune of the South Indians who had preceded him that this noble soul should abandon his Police duties and agree to come to this unknown place. It was during this period that a young man aged 22 years was lured by the hiring agents to consent to leave his motherland and venture into the unknown.
The first lot of them arrived around August 1903 in the ship ELBE III, thence forth others followed till 1917. The South Indians are said to be the late arrivals.
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