Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
A family of pioneering vets
S. MUTHIAH
|
As the Madras Veterinary College celebrates its centenary on July 6, it's time to remember some students from its first batch of 1903.
|
THAT NOTE of mine on biography as history has, as I have already mentioned a couple of times since in Miscellany, had several people sending me brief published biographies or old journals and letters with biographical information. One of the latest collections I received was from reader V.Theetharappan and is most timely, coming to hand as it did just a couple of weeks before the Madras Veterinary College (MVC) celebrates its centenary, which, I understand, is scheduled for July 6. One of the references in that material is to Dr. A. Ramalinga Mudaliar, the uncle of my correspondent's father. Ramalinga Mudaliar was one of those in that first batch of 20 to join the college in 1903.
It was Dr.Ramalinga Mudaliar who invited 15 other veterinaries in the Presidency to a meeting in Vellore in 1920 to form the first veterinarians' association in the country. They called it the Association of Veterinary Graduates, later to be renamed the Madras Veterinary Association, and decided to seek support throughout the country for the formation of an All-India Veterinary Association. The efforts of the Ramalinga Mudaliar-led Madras veterinarians resulted in the inauguration of the All-India Veterinary Association (now the Indian Veterinary Association) at its first conference, held in Lahore in 1923. At the Lucknow conference the next year, it was decided to start the Indian Veterinary Journal. Offering to edit the journal was Dr.Panagal Srinivasa Rao, another from that first batch at MVC.
Dr. Srinviasa Rao edited the journal for 31 years and was succeeded by one MVC graduate after another. I learn that throughout the 80 years of its existence, the IVJ has been edited only by graduates of the MVC with much of the assistance successive editors received coming from the same institution. Dr.Vinayaka Mudaliar, who succeeded Dr.Srinivasa Rao, converted the bimonthly into a monthly in 1958 and also arranged for the IVJ to move into its own home in Nandanam in 1987. Dr.V.S.Alwar, who next succeeded the editorship, was a founder member, from 1969, of the Commonwealth Veterinary Association and a member of the Permanent Committee of the World Veterinary Congress.
Reader Theetharappan narrates that it was Dr.Ramalinga Mudaliar who was responsible for S.Vaidyanatha Mudaliyar, his father, switching from the Forestry Department to become a veterinarian. S.V.Mudaliar, as he was officially known from 1948, was appointed Principal of MVC that year and retired in that post in 1950. He later went on to found the Andhra Veterinary College in 1955 and headed it till the following year. During the 1920s and 1930s, S.V.Mudaliar and R.K.Narayan - who many thought resembled each other - were neighbours in Vellala Street, Purasawalkam.
These veterans of Madras Veterinary College and many others will no doubt be remembered during the celebrations this week of the centenary of an institution, which has had a long record of being a centre of excellence.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
|
