“Online research, visiting places connected to the stories, reading for hours and days at libraries, helped me put stories together,” said Nivedita Louis, in her lecture. “Someone in their blog had mentioned the Indian Ladies Magazine , the first of its kind in India. The issues from 1929 to 1934 were kept bound at Connemara. Mr. Singaravelu, the librarian called me when he spotted them.”
Nivedita wants to talk to everyday people about these women. During her heritage walks, she invites passers-by to learn about their neighbourhood, its historicity. “People are heritage too. Shouldn’t their stories be told and retold?”
Reforms in Hinduism
Ammu Swaminathan or Ammukutty, as she was fondly called, was born in the Anakkara Vadakkath family in Palghat, Kerala in 1894. One of the oft-repeated incidents in her life is about her marriage at the age of 13 to Subbarama Swaminathan, 20 years her senior. When he proposed, she counter-proposed: they should move to Madras, she would be taught English by an Englishwoman and she should never be questioned on when she would return home, because “nobody asked my brothers that question”. Shunning the matri-lineal “sambandam” system, they registered their marriage in England.
As co-founder of the Women’s India Association, she demanded adult franchise, constitutional rights for women, and the removal of untouchability. Ammu became part of the Constituent Assembly from the Madras Constituency in 1946, and fought for the Sarda Act or Child Marriage Restraint Act, the Age of Consent Act and the various Hindu Code Bills that pushed for reform in Hindu religious laws. She was elected to the Lok Sabha (1952) and Rajya Sabha (1954).
Across the ocean
In actor Thavamani Devi’s life lies a script for a multi-lingual blockbuster. Born in 1925 to Justice Kathiresa Subramaniam in Jaffna, she came to Madras as a teenager after she was offered a movie role. The movie Ahalya bombed. Thavamani caught the boat home.
When director Bhagawan Dada went scouting for an actor to play the role of a freedom-loving girl living in a forest, Thavamani’s name came up. Thavamani came on board and, back in Madras, made history by distributing a photograph of herself in a bikini to a gaggle of reporters at a press meet. The movie Vanamohini , in which she wore a sarong, was censored for excessive show of skin. But it was a super hit: Thavamani became Singalathu Kuyil.
In a change of avatar, she played Sita to MGR’s Indrajit in Vedavathi and an ethereal Menaka in the MS Subbalakshmi-starrer Sakunthalai . Rajakumari (1947), in which she was the “bold” vamp, made MGR a star and her a superstar: a run unmatched for a decade.
What women write
Kamala Sathianathan, born Hannah Rathnam Krishnamma in 1879, was the first woman graduate in South India. When she completed her MA in 1901, she was already an established writer and the first woman English novelist of the south. She married Samuel Sathianathan, 20 years her senior, and took over the Indian Ladies Magazine as editor/publisher. In 1906, even as she lost her husband and savings, and moved with her two children to Pithapuram as tutor to the maharani, she continued to publish ILM.
She wrote the Editor’s Column, Friendly Chat, Drumstickers Cartoon, fashion/needlework snippets, a detective series, skits, and profiles of woman achievers. She got Sarojini Naidu and Margarret Cousins to write columns. The London Times labelled it “one of the best Indian women’s magazines.”
The Hindu published her ‘My Impressions of England’ in 1925.
Mightier than the sword
Born 1901, Vaithamanidhi Mudumbai Kothainayaki was married when five-and-a-half years old to Vai.Mu. Parthasarathy, who was nine. By 1925, her talent for storytelling had been discovered. Scripts and plays flowed from her prolific pen and her novel Vaidehi was published that year.
Her husband bought the loss-making magazine Jaganmohini , and Kothainayaki found her calling. The first woman to edit and publish a Tamil magazine, she gathered 1,000 subscribers in four months,writing boldly on subjects like widow remarriage.
Her stories became movies — remember Chitti , Anaathai Penn , Dhayanithi ? Among her 115, was the first detective novel in Tamil. A talented singer, she cut gramophone records.
Beyond the reel
Cinema Rani TP Rajalakshmi was Tamil cinema’s first heroine. She was married off at seven, but Sankardas Swamigal noticed her passion for acting and recommended her to a theatre group. Divorced at 11, she migrated to Madras from Thiruvaiyaru.
The songwriter and playwright was jailed for being critical of British rule. At 14, she became the first woman to act in Tamil films, like Parandhu Pongada Vellai Kokkugala ... Her talkie Kalidas was released in 1931, and her home-production Miss Kamala was the first Indian film to be directed, acted and produced by a woman.
She supported widow remarriage and opposed sati and the custom of draping widows in white. Why not widowers do it too, she asked.
(This is the concluding part of a two-part series on women pioneers of Chennai.)
