Indians are very good in creating history but very poor in recording it. And that is the reason why many historical facts about great people like Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi remain uncorroborated, said Justice V. Ramasubramanian of the Madras High Court here on Saturday.
Delivering his special address at the 125 year celebrations of Sethupathi Higher Secondary School, where the national poet had served as a Tamil teacher way back in 1904, he said that Bharathi was a great soul whose standing in the society was considered to have taken birth after his death.
“The poet had no qualms about life despite spending most of his time in acute poverty and without a single penny in his pocket,” the judge said and quoted Sri Aurobindo to have once said: “I hope God does not want me to learn to live on negative quantity of money like Subramania Bharathi.”
Mr. Justice Ramasubramanian also said that there were references in history books of Baskara Sethupathi, the founder of the higher secondary school and the erstwhile ruler of Ramanathapuram, having met Swami Vivekananda in Madurai in 1892 before sponsoring the latter’s trip to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.
“This place (school campus) could have also been the venue where the two great people met each other. But unfortunately we do not have any documentary proof. Bengal might have given birth to Swami Vivekananda but it is Tamil Nadu that adopted him and nurtured him,” the judge said.
He told the gathering that a letter written by Swami Vivekananda to his staunch supporter Alasinga Perumal with a request to thank the presiding deity of the Parthasarathy Swamy Temple at Triplicane in Chennai, for his success in Chicago, was still available in the temple.
K. Parasaran, former Attorney General and present member of the Rajya Sabha, said that it was not an ordinary feat for a school to complete 125 years. He wished that the institution continued to educate thousands of children and reach many more milestones in the years to come.
Collector L. Subramanian and SASTRA University Dean S. Vaidhyasubramaniam were among others who spoke. A souvenir was released to mark the completion of 125 years and children who won district level oratorical competitions conducted by the school were honoured during the occasion.
