The Face of Resistance: S P Udayakumar Wins 2025 Nuclear Free Future Award

S P Udayakumar, the anti nuclear campaigner who became the face of the nearly three year long massive anti-nuclear struggle at the tiny hamlet of Idinthakarai in tamil nadu, India has been chosen for the 2025 Nuclear Free Future Awards, for “Resistance”.

Udayakumar is the Convenor of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE).The award honours his role in “galvanising and leading a grassroots movement in 2011 that involved thousands of local residents, fisherfolk and farmers, who challenged the construction of the koodankulam nuclear power plant in tamilnadu, india”.

Calling this a recognition of the struggle by thousands of people S P Udayakumar tells tellmystory.in “State and central governments are harassing us and hounding us with 349 cases, filing charge sheets and dragging us to courts. I am happy that the international community recognised the work of our struggle and has honoured this long drawn campaign”.

On what this would mean to the community he added “During our protest struggle against the project and overall Indian nuclear programme at Idinthakarai by fishermen, farmers and merchants we were put down by sections of the state and society that the struggling fisherpeople, farmers and merchants did not know anything about the modern science and technology and that we were all ignorant about the magnificence of the nuclear power project. Now we feel vindicated that the international community recognises our stand, the fisher people who struggled almost for three years in the struggle stand vindicated, honoured , accepted and recognised by the international community. I feel happy for them”.

The struggle that drew international attention did not  however stop the Koodankulam Nuclear project. When asked what did they achieve, Udayakumar says “Yes we haven’t managed to shut down the koodankulam nuclear power plant but we created a great national debate about nuclear power issue”.

He adds “Even when the India – US nuclear deal was signed by the central government there was hardly any debate by the parliament about the uses and abuses of nuclear power. It was our people struggle that created that national debate, and only because of our trouble the safety and security of the Koodankulam power plant was enhanced. Still we have a long way to go and I am sure one day we will be able to prove that not everything is fine at the Koodankulam power plant and at that time the world will come to know what we have been always saying”.

Udayakumar and his family had paid a heavy price through the anti nuclear struggle. Recollecting that, the US returned Gandhian Professor says “My family and I really paid a heavy price because I had to leave my family and stay at Idinthakarai village for nearly 2 1/2 years. My children were harassed at their schools by saying that their father had received so much money from abroad and all of that. My wife had to face a lot of harassment. She had to go to the court and police station and we were hounded by intelligence officials. There were lot of accusations against us that we were not patriotic or nationalistic and that we were acting against the interest of India and all that. We suffered a lot yes.”

For a question if he believes the world and India would one day say no to nuclear power he says “Yes I am very confident that the world will soon begin to say no to nuclear power and nuclear bomb as we all know nuclear power and nuclear bomb are both sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. And nuclear power plants contribute significantly for the weapons programme. What’s going on in Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia plant has been under attack by Russians. There have been fire accidents at these plants. The whole of Ukraine and Russia, the entire region is very concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants in Ukraine. And the same is true in middle-east also.

People are concerned that israel may use nuclear bombs in their war against Palestinians. So the world is becoming less and less safe, more and more dangerous because of the existence of nuclear bomb and that is the reason we want to get rid of them. So I am sure the world will begin to see reason and phase out and eventually abolish all the nuclear bombs”

Many NGOs  who supported the campaign against Koodankulam nuclear plant faced allegations of using foreign funds to fuel protests.Their FCRA accounts were shut. Udayakumar denies these allegations. He  says the entire struggle was funded by local fishermen, farmers and merchants. He asds “the struggle that we led at Idinthakarai against the Koodankulam power plant was never funded by any NGOs either directly or indirectly. I’ve established that quite a few times. And the Indian state itself could not prove any accusations against us. So there was no question of receiving any NGO money or foreign money. It’s all complete false accusations the government came up with. Yes some of the ngos were harassed that they helped us. No they never helped us. We never accepted any help. And i once again want to negate the allegation we did not receive any foreign money or NGO money, it was completely funded by the struggling people and we stand vindicated now”.