We were talking the other day about honorary doctorates being conferred by universities these days with little rhyme or reason. And we wondered as to how many such doctorates had been conferred on women. That’s when a Queen Marian in our midst pointed out that perhaps the first woman to be awarded the D.Sc. by the University of Madras was Dr. Rajammal P. Devadas (in 1978) and to prove that it was more than deserved, she later received four more Honoris causa D.Sc-s, including two from well-known American universities and one from the University of Ulster. I wonder how many of the D.Sc-s in India — and women at that — can claim five D. Sc-s.
Dr. Rajammal spent most of her life outside Madras — but those in the know will tell you about her significant contribution to the successful Tamil Nadu Nutritious Noon-meal Scheme and how she walked through the corridors of power to ensure the meal was indeed “nutritious”. But before that there was quite a career.
When the University of Madras started the first Home Science course in 1942, it was Queen Mary’s that introduced the course and Rajammal was one of the five students to join it. After getting her B.Sc. (Home Science) she taught at her alma mater for a short while before receiving a Government of India scholarship to go to the U.S. for higher studies. A M.A., M.S. and a Ph.D resulted from her years with Ohio State University, besides selection to many American honour societies.
Back in India, her long link with nutrition — and an international reputation in it — started with her appointment in 1951 as Dietician and Professor at the Government College of Nursing, New Delhi. Several prestigious appointments followed in Government of India posts. Besides these were other distinguished posts she held with honour: President, Home Science Association of India for five terms, a record ten years from 1961 to 1971; President, Nutrition Society of India (1986-90); and Convener of the Home Science Panel of the University Grants Commission (1981-94).
Meanwhile, in Coimbatore, T.S. Avinashalingam Chettiar was planning to establish a college there for women, with its focus on higher education, particularly in Home Science. Who should he turn to for guidance but Dr. Rajammal. Guidance received, he persuaded her to remain as Principal and Postgraduate Professor of the Sri Avinashalingam Home Science College in 1960. It was an institution that under Dr. Rajammal’s leadership was to become one of the leading colleges in South Asia in the fields of home science and nutrition.
With that kind of record, it is no wonder she was invited to serve on committees of such leading international organisations as FAO, WHO, and UNICEF and in India with ICAR, NCERT, UGC, and State Planning Commissions among a host of such bodies that had Nutrition and Home Science components.
‘Rediscovering’ India
One of the pictures accompanying this item recently appeared in a national journal. The subject rather than the costume, instantly reminded me of three persons, including a Colin Mackenzie, all from Madras, who went on to ‘explore’ much of India and in their ‘rediscovery’ of the country gave us what we know of India today. The other two were William Lambton and Francis Hamilton-Buchanan.
This unusual painting — ‘unusual’ because the subject I presumed it to be was not known for flamboyance or cross-dressing (Westerner dressing as Indian). Making me wonder whether he even ‘stood’ for it — it being not unusual for British painters of the 18th and 19th Century to paint Indian subjects without ever being nearer to India than to a India-returned story-teller. This painting of Colin Mackenzie is part of a huge Artist & Empire exhibition being held in London’s well-known Tate art gallery. Most pictures of Mackenzie I had hitherto seen show him dressed in simple fashion, reflecting his scholarship more than even his military background. And wondering about this curiosity and trying to solve the mystery, I discovered there were two Colin Mackenzies. The picture in the Tate is of Capt. ‘Emir’ Colin Mackenzie of Kabul; my other picture today is of the scholar-soldier Mackenzie of Madras with his three munshis. The identical names had confused me.
Mackenzie of Madras, who marched with Arthur Wellesley, once had to find and put on the right track his Colonel who lost his way to Mysore while marching thence to take part in the Fourth Mysore War. Whether it was gratitude or not, Wellesley assigned him the task of doing the land survey of Mysore, he having already surveyed the Deccan. Mackenzie went on to become the first Surveyor-General of India. But for all his contribution to the surveying of India, Mackenzie was better known as a scholar, a pioneering Indologist whose huge collection of South Indian manuscripts is the heart of the Government of Tamil Nadu’s Oriental Manuscripts Library.
Mackenzie, Lambton and Buchanan, all starting their Indian careers in Madras, have figured in this column before, but the name of the Tate painting reminded me of them again. William Lambton was the person who planned and got the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India going and Francis Hamilton-Buchanan sowed the seeds of the Agricultural, Botanical and Zoological Surveys of India. All three are little remembered in Madras today, a plaque near St. Thomas’ Mount recalling Lambton starting out from there on the Great Trigonometrical Survey, the only marker recalling one of the three.
That Eldam’s Road property
P.S. Ramachandran, mentioned in connection with the Soundarya property, 35 Eldam’s Road, I wrote about on January 4, was a name that struck a chord. Recalling him as a cricketer who had lived on Eldam’s Road and who had warranted mention in V. Ramanarayanan’s memoir, Third Man , I referred to the book and found myself facing a pretty mystery.
According to Ramnarayanan, his father’s uncle, P.S. Ramachandran, lived “in a gracious old bungalow in a sprawling compound on Eldam’s Road”. His elder brother lived next door. Ramachandran’s house was called Sundar and Venkatraman’s Parvati . To the rear of the houses, facing Murray’s Gate Road, was Suprabha , a two-storeyed house shared by Ramnarayanan’s father, P.N. Venkataraman, and his elder brother, P.N. Sundaresan, who became a well-known sports journalist with The Hindu . No compound wall separated the three houses and the cricket-crazy family had plenty of space to develop their talent. Better still, opposite Suprabha was a vast open field where the families played “more organised cricket every day after school”. That open space became what is known as Venus Colony today, several streets of houses.
Was this then the property, or a part of it, that Ramachandran sold to Seshadri Iyengar the timber merchant? Or was there a property Ramachandra owned that adjoined it and was closer to Mowbray’s Road? A pretty mystery that I hope Radha Padmanabhan and Ramnarayanan will solve.
As for P.S. Ramachandran, a tall fast bowler, I’ve had occasion to mention him in the past; he took all 10 Triplicane wickets for 18, representing Mylapore Recreation Club in the local ‘Battle of the Roses’. But it did not win him a place in the Indian team for that year’s Indians vs. Europeans Presidency match — that once ever-so-popular annual Pongal fixture. What I had not mentioned before was that he was picked to play for Madras against Jardine’s England (MCC) team in 1934. According to Ramnarayanan, “he bowled well in both innings and picked up a couple of wickets.” Ramachandran later claimed that at the end of the match, Jardine had patted him on the shoulder and said “Well bowled!”
