With a little more attention being paid to North Madras during this past week, I caught up with several parts of it. But in a focus on Perambur, home of Madras’ industrial beginnings, I found only passing mention of a landmark institution there which had once made significant contributions to the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills and the Railway workshops and factories in the area. I refer to the Railway School, which earlier this month celebrated completing 125 years.
The co-ed school was started by the Madras & South Mahratta Railway (M&SM) following on an order dated August 1, 1891. Begun as a primary school for children of European, Anglo-Indian and Indian M&SM employees, it was called the Railway Mixed School. In 1941 it became the Railway Middle School and later the High School. In November 1978, upgrading gave it its present name, the Railway Mixed Higher Secondary School. M&SM opened similar schools in other Madras and Bombay Presidency towns. Those in the former territory, and still running, are in Haffieldspet (Arakkonam), Jolarpet and Bitragunta. The schools in Tamil Nadu are now run by the Southern Railway after being taken over from M&SM in 1951. Bitragunta is run by the South Central Railway from 1966, after having been with Southern Railway.
Specific rules for running the schools were laid down by the M&SM Agent and General Manager in 1941. The administrator of each school was a General Manager appointed by M&SM who appointed a Headmaster/ Headmistress to look after the academic side.
The Perambur school noteworthily pays as much attention to studies as it does to sport, producing good results in both. With Viswanathan Anand being the son of a former Southern Railway General Manager, Chess is now encouraged as much as the two sporting activities the school excels in, Athletics and Hockey. Music was once a part of the curriculum, mandated by the 1941 rules. An old boy tells me that till the 1970s, a grand old piano was used to teach children and provide accompaniment to their training in singing. When music dropped out of the School’s focus, the piano became a disused relic and had disappeared by 1998.
The 1891 school building is a landmark in the area, its bay windows and belfry striking features. Its bells rang till the dawn of the Millennium, when rains damaged the tower and the bells became silent. The building got a facelift recently.
Today’s picture of the old building was taken in 2008. The old boy who sent it to me says that it was taken by a student who won the first prize with it in a photography contest held that year.
The Perambur Railway School’s alumni are now scattered around the world but every year a few, returning to catch up with roots, visit their alma mater, which laid the foundation for their success abroad. They have also formed an alumni association that helps with some of the School’s activities and some of the needy children.
A Bank at 111
Celebrating its 111th year, and announcing plans for the celebration, is the first Indian-owned bank to be established in Madras, the Indian Bank. Its present headquarters, a rather strikingly modernistic building on Lloyd’s (Avvai Shanmugam) Road, is quite a contrast in appearance to its previous headquarters on Rajaji Salai, a rather characterless highrise inaugurated in 1970. The latter was raised on the site of a handsome building built in Classical style. At the time, heritage was a word still to come into the Madras vocabulary.
The building on whose ruins the Indian Bank raised its third headquarters building was the home of Arbuthnot & Co which so devastatingly failed in 1906 as to create a major financial crisis in South India. V Krishnaaswamy Aiyer and 28 leading citizens of the city decided on November 2, 1906, after the Arbuthnot crash, to promote “a Native Bank in Madras” as it was necessary, according to The Hindu , “that a bank which depended on the savings of those in the South had to be incorporated locally and managed by Indians who were locally known and respected.”
The Indian Bank opened its doors on August 15, 1907 in space offered by Parry’s — before Dare House came up on the same site. It then moved into Ramakoti Building, Rattan Bazaar. It was while there that it had bought the Arbuthnot property from the Receiver for ₹1,35,000. The Arbuthnot connection is remembered to this day in the street separating the Indian Bank’s Rajaji Salai property from what was Bentinck’s Building, now a new Collector’s office built in PWD style. But did that connection have to be forgotten by destroying a splendid example of Western Classical architecture, seen in one of my pictures today, for replacement by a tall, featureless block? That’s crying over spilt milk, but it needs to be remembered in the case of so many other buildings in the city.
Addendum
The Bharati cartoons which appeared in this column last week were from the book Bharathiyin Karuthup Padangal — India 1906-1910 published by AR Venkatachalapathy. I am informed by the Roja Muthiah Research Library that he managed to publish this work of his with great difficulty, as copies of India are almost impossible to find nowadays.
The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today
