Today marks the beginning of the 100th year of the Madras Exhibition, in its time the biggest trade show of the country. Inaugurated on December 27, 1915, it went on till January 16, 1916. The proceeds were donated to the First World War effort.
This was not the first trade show in the city. The first, and it was a first for the whole country, had been held in 1855 at the Banqueting (Rajaji) Hall. There had been others in the intervening years, but the 1915 exhibition was the first held under the auspices of the newly created Department of Industry, Government of Madras. On display were plenty of finished goods, thanks to the efforts of the department to set up private industries. More significantly, several Indian-run companies were presenting their wares for the first time.
The exhibition was held in a vast space of 20 acres, in People’s Park, just behind the Ripon Building. The layout was done by Montague Thomas, architect to the Madras Government, and his assistant Narasimha Ayyar. A committee headed by SD Pears ICS was in charge of the exhibition overall, with (later Sir) T. Vijayaraghavacharya, after whom a road in T Nagar is named, being the secretary.
The exhibition pavilions were constructed in the Indo-Saracenic style by the leading contractors of Madras — T. Namberumal Chetty, P. Loganatha Mudaliar, A.K. Venkatarama Ayyar, G. Duraiswami Ayyangar, N. Dharmaraja Mudaliar and Khan Bahadur Khuddus Batcha Sahib. The sculptor, M.S. Nagappa, was involved in the finishing touches. When completed, the complex had an entrance gateway 20 ft wide and 25 ft high, with a dome supported by columns. There was a lecture theatre, a Court of Art and Industries, an entire model village, refreshment rooms, a village bazaar, two restaurants and a tea garden. An entire enclosure was devoted to jugglers and snake charmers. There were two major attractions — a gliding tower and a floating bandstand. The former, 50 ft high and built by T. Namberumal Chetty, had a sloping spiral platform in which “visitors might experience the delightful sensation of sliding from the top to the bottom of a tower”. Another major attraction was a miniature model of the hospital ship HMS Madras . There were also demonstrations of electricity and the motor car — two inventions not yet widely used in the city.
The exhibition, inaugurated by Governor Lord Pentland was a success. Over two lakh people visited it and around Rs. 70,000 netted by way of ticket sales. However, such an event was not to be repeated for long. It required the vision of K. Kamaraj to revive the idea in the 1950s. The trade shows of the 1950s and 1960s played a big role in placing our state in the forefront of industrialisation in the country. Today, they are a matter of routine, happening regularly at the Nandambakkam Trade Centre.
