If you think poetry and mathematics don’t get along, you are wrong. An interesting feature of Indian mathematics is that it is composed in verse, said K, noted mathematician and a professor at IIT Bombay. “Mathematicians successfully managed to couch a variety of formulae in beautiful verses. Among the Indian mathematicians, Bhaskaracarya is held very high,” he said.
Ramasubramanian said Bhaskaracarya, whose main treatise on mathematics is ‘Lilavati’ written in 1150AD, systematically developed a topic – whether it is arithmetic, geometry, algebra or astronomy. He would build on what had been already introduced.
“Lucid exposition of the subject was his hallmark. The examples presented by him are quite appealing, rich and varied. It involved characters from mythology and nature. He also drew a number of incidents from day-to-day life to solve problems in maths,” he said. was speaking at a two-day workshop on Bhaskaracarya’s contributions to mathematics and astronomy on the eve of his 900th birth anniversary.
Talking on ‘The Lila of Lilavati’, said when he started learning mathematics, the teacher would simply ‘teach’ a solution and present a set of formulae. “We were expected to learn the technique, memorise the formulae, and then work out those problems given at the end of the chapter, repeatedly.
I do not recall a single problem that could be related to practical life – as given in ‘Lilavati’. Texts on Indian mathematics, soon after enunciating a rule or principle, present plenty of examples from day-to-day life – all in the form of beautiful verses. Making students aware of the major achievements of their own civilization is the need of the hour,” he said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> City> Chennai / TNN / January 30th, 2015
The long wait to read rare palm leaves and paper manuscripts at the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library and Research Centre will soon be over. In a rare initiative, the state archaeology department on Tuesday launched e-publishing of manuscripts, beginning with Saptarishi Nadi, an astrology-based palm leaf manuscript in its portal, www.tnarch.gov.in
The 145-year-old treasure house was a result of laborious efforts of British linguists and historians, Col Colin Mackenzie, C P Brown, Rev T Foulkes and Prof Pickford and later conserved by the state. The priceless manuscripts give deep insight into literature, astronomy, siddha, Ayurveda, unani, veda, agama, architecture and fine arts, written in Sanskrit, South Indian and Oriental languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Persian, Sinhalese, and Burmese and Kaifiyats (historical accounts) of various periods. The bundles of manuscripts stocked in the library have been great resource material for scholars pursing research on ancient works.
While the manuscripts are 300 to 400 years old, many are in a state of decay. “We have taken 23 lakh pages of these manuscripts for digitization and completed 10% of the work so far. In another 18 months, the entire process will come to an end benefitting global researchers,” Archeology commissioner D Karthikeyan told TOI. The library has some rare manuscripts of classical literature, Tholkappiyam, a work on Tamil grammar, with Nachinarkiniyar commentary, Nakkeerar’s Tirumurukatrupadai, the Sangam literature in praise of Lord Subramaniya and the two-century-old Kari-Naal, a smallest palm-leaf manuscript about inauspicious days. “It’s a treasure house that needs to be preserved and disseminated. Digitization is a welcome move,” said Roja Muthiah Research Library director G Sundar. The library has chipped in with expertise to digitize the leaves with clarity.
“The manuscripts are digitized 300 to 600 dpi or pixel resolution and converted to pdf or tiff format. Before the manuscripts are taken up for scanning, the old leaves are cleaned with brush followed by a rectified spirit,” Library curator S Vasanthi said. The 5% of solution of citronella oil or lemon grass oil in rectified spirit is applied and allowed to dry. This not only gives flexibility to the leaves, but also provides insecticidal and fungicidal property to the palm-leaf manuscripts.
The manuscripts are digitized 300 to 600 dpi or pixel resolution and converted to portable document format or tiff format.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / by Julie Mariappan, TNN / January 14th, 2014
A PROFOUND ENGAGEMENT: “Perumal Murugan is a scholar with a rich sense of history.” A file photo of the novelist. / by Special Arrangement
It would be tragic if Perumal Murugan is silenced in his prime
In 1983, a 17-year-old student of Chikkaiah Naicker College, Erode, inspired by a dictionary of the Karisal (black cotton soil) region of southern Tamil Nadu, resolved to prepare a similar lexicon for the Kongu region. He collected dialect words from friends and relatives, and from oral traditions. The historical Kongu region, covering the districts of Coimbatore, Erode, Tiruppur, Salem and Karur, with its hostile agricultural environment and hardy peasants, would hold an undying fascination for this young man.
The Kongu region’s achievements in modern literature are about as low as its water table. But for R. Shanmugasundaram, the author of the classic novel, “Nagammal” (1942), few had fathomed the rich life in the Kongu region. From 1991, a stream of novels and short stories would flow from his pen. Almost single-handedly he would put the Kongu region on to the literary map of Tamil Nadu.
Modern Tamil fiction had for long been obsessed with village life in Thanjavur and Tirunelveli, and urban middle class life in Chennai. In the fiction of this young man, the hardy peasants of the Kongu region came into their own. Who can forget the Marimutthu of “Kanganam” or Muthu of “Alandapatchi”? Literarily rich ethnographic portraits of non-sedentary and lower caste life would animate his work.
A scholar with a rich sense of history, he unearthed writings on the region by earlier authors and published two volumes of their writings. The early attempt at lexicography would come to fruition 17 years later, in 2000. He would retrieve and republish a long-lost book on the history of the Kongu region (by T.A. Muthusamy Konar). In sum, his over 35 books provide a veritable cultural map of the Kongu region.
Threats and protests
It is this great literary chronicler who is now virtually banished from his beloved Kongu region. On the night of January 8, on the pointed advice of the police, Perumal Murugan fled his hometown with his family. A day later, Tiruchengode town observed a total shutdown protesting his novel, “Mathorubhagan.” This came after weeks of abusive and threatening phone calls. Earlier, on December 26, an illegal assembly of people burnt copies of his book, demanded a ban on the book and the arrest of its author and its publisher.
“Mathorubhagan” was published four years ago. The novel marks the second phase of Mr. Murugan’s fictional explorations. It poignantly tells the story of a childless peasant couple set in a time about a century ago. Ponna and Kali rejoice in their conjugal love but their pain of being childless is accentuated by the taunts of neighbours and insults on religious functions. Tiruchengode, the abode of Siva in the form of half-woman half-man, is the sacred temple to which childless couple flock to this day hoping to extend their lineage. Over 125 years ago, Chinnathayammal and Venkata Naicker of Erode circumambulated the “varadi kal” at Tiruchengode resulting in the birth of the great rationalist, Periyar.
After exhausting all means, childless couples seek what is, from a modern perspective, an exotic, even ‘immoral,’ solution. Every year, at the Vaikasi Visakam car festival, childless women indulge in consensual sex in a carnivalesque atmosphere. The lucky are able to conceive. Children born of this socially sanctioned ritual are referred to as sami kodutha pillai (god-given children). Any anthropologist would attest to similar practices existing in many pre-modern societies with no access to assisted conceptions. Classical Hindu traditions refer to this practice as niyoga or niyoga dharma — an indication of its religious sanction. It is this section of the novel that has provoked the ire of Hindu fundamentalists and caste purists. Portrayed as a slur on Hindu women, Mr. Murugan is being pilloried for denigrating the whole town. The Sangh Parivar, seeking a toehold in Tamil Nadu, sensed an opportunity. A local Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary was in the forefront of the assembly that burnt the book. After the state leadership disowned responsibility, Hindu outfits are now working from behind the scenes. Over the last few weeks, thousands of the supposedly offending pages, ripped out of context, have been reprinted and distributed to devotees. One would have thought revering books rather than burning them was Hindu tradition.
Provocative posters have been plastered all over the town. Reports indicate that violent views have been expressed in unauthorised meetings. In a desperate bid to avert disturbance to everyday life, Mr. Murugan issued a pained clarification, even offering to delete all references to the town in subsequent editions. But to no avail. A complete bandh was enforced.
For four years nobody was offended. In fact, discerning readers identified themselves with Ponna and Kali. The novel has a fuzzy end and readers badgered Mr. Murugan with questions on Kali’s fate. He responded creatively — with one, no, two sequels following different trajectories — “Alavayan” and “Ardhanari.”
Evidently the advocates of burning books do not understand literature. And in a worrying scenario they have been joined by other sinister interests. Mr. Murugan is not only a novelist; he has been teaching in government colleges for two decades now. Over the years he has written scathing essays on the business of education. Namakkal specialises in two forms of poultry farming: hatcheries produce chicken and eggs while schools churn out high-scoring students. Mr. Murugan has pulled no punches in exposing the many unethical, even illegal, practices of such factory-schools. He has written in support of U. Sahayam, the crusading bureaucrat, who brought many environmental culprits to book during his term as Salem collector. The whole gamut of local vested interests has joined hands and, at least temporarily, succeeded in making him a fugitive.
Expressing solidarity
But all is not bleak. In a notoriously fractious Tamil literary, culture writers and intellectuals have joined hands in solidarity. In a context where publishers are buckling under pressure, Mr. Murugan’s publisher, Kannan Sundaram, is unconditionally backing the author and is ready to battle it out in the courts.
Perumal Murugan is at the height of his creative powers; his name was tipped for this year’s Sahitya Akademi award; “One Part Woman,” the English translation of “Mathorubhagan,” was published to rave reviews last year. Ironically, this author who shuns the limelight is now in public glare. It would be tragic if this chronicler of Kongu is silenced in his prime.
(A.R. Venkatachalapathy is a historian and Tamil writer. E-mail: chalapathy@mids.ac.in)
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Comment / by A.R. Venkatachalapathy / January 12th, 2014
Walking through the grand portals of the Madras Club to relive its history
The mention of Madras Club will evoke pictures of the magnificent Moubray’s cupola after which it is named, its grand columns and chandeliered interiors, excellent cuisine and the sound of music and dances that has wafted across the Adyar River for nearly two centuries. But waiting for my appointment, I wander towards the great banyan tree in front, recalling a story in Col. Love’s history of the Club (1832-1900). Describing the banyan opposite his bedroom a “standing nuisance”, a sleep-deprived resident of the Club wrote in the complaints book that the “infernal tree” was home to half the crows of Madras, and when the fruit ripened, had the other half joining them in chorus. Screeching flying-foxes that let out war-cries and chirping small birds added to the overall racket, he recorded bitterly, and left the premises in haste in spite of the appointment of “an intimidator/crowman” to shoo the birds away.
Madras Club
That is only one of the many vignettes that swirl through the grand portals of the “Ace of Clubs”. The second oldest surviving club in India after Calcutta’s Bengal Club, it has grown in three homes including the present one. The Club met for the first time in 1832 with Chief Justice Sir Robert Comyn in the Chair and facilitated the purchase of a Club House before the opening date of 15/05/1832. Sir Henry Chamier, the Chief Secretary, was its first president. When a swelling membership necessitated larger space, a four-acre property was bought in 1852 and a five-acre one was leased from Col. Patullo in 1898. Thanks to its illustrious presidents and members, by its golden jubilee year, the Club’s stature rose to be considered equal to that of the legendary Melbourne Club, Australia. The Club became famous for the grand balls it hosted in honour of British royalty.
After it moved into its second home at Branson Bagh opposite Church Park School, its shaky financial position necessitated increase in subscription, and to reduce the burden of members who were also members of the Adyar Club (1890), after a seven-year discussion, Madras Club merged with Adyar Club in 1963 and stands surrounded by Mowbrays Garden, comprising 12.7 acres. The Cupola, built by George Mowbrays, a businessman-turned-Sheriff/Mayor of Madras, dates before 1792. It is now a business-cum-family club with a parking area for 150 cars, 14 residential rooms, the oldest private library in the city, two restaurants, a bakery, five tennis courts, swimming pool (being cleaned by a robot now), gym, a jogging track — all located on the Adyar River.
Madras Club
“You’ll find this club culture in British colonies alone,” says a senior member of the Club, as we sip tea at the popular poolside café. “All the prominent clubs in Chennai are modelled on British clubs. British officers, Indian officers and clerks followed hierarchy strictly in office, but socialised informally at their club.” Catering is very formal in the main dining area where there is a dress-code (“jacket is mandatory”), but for a spot of informality along with grilled sandwiches, walk into the poolside hall.
Sharing stories of his 20-year association with the Club, he asks, “Did you know the “mulligatawny soup” had its origin here?” referring to the anglicised version of milagu thanni. “We met Prince Charles here,” says his wife. “And later in the evening he saw me at the Rajaji Hall and remarked: You are wearing a different sari!”
We walk up the original steps to the grand vestibule and after a brief look at the crest featuring St. George and the motto Concordia Vires, step into the lounge to admire the octagon (the underside of the cupola) with stars painted on it. We walk through the ancient bar, the century-old ballroom now decorated for Christmas. Spread everywhere are pieces of graceful furniture. The Club is a place to relax, recuperate and meet people, says the senior member. Name any corporate honcho/captain of industry/ diplomat; you’ll bump into him/her at the playground, cafe or bar. “The Madras Club has a village atmosphere that has stood the test of time. People take refuge here from the chaos outside. It is the tranquillity that members seek.” The Club is still an exclusive organisation, but the informality outside has found inevitable reflection in the running of the grand old place. It has also acquired a health aspect to its social ambience, another nod to the changing clime.
Historian S. Muthiah concludes in his book on the Club with these words: “And that’s what makes the Club, not its bricks and mortar and trees, but a membership that recognises that it is a privilege to belong to the institution… and is committed to keeping it ‘The Ace of Clubs’.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Friday Review> History & Culture / by Geeta Padmanabhan / December 23rd, 2014
Lt. Gen. Malcolm Nicolson / by Special Arrangement / The Hindu
When Virginia Jealous speaks to members of the Madras Book Club this evening she might report that midst all the tall grass in the unkempt St. Mary’s Cemetery on The Island she found the tombstones of Adele Florence Nicolson and Lieutenant General Malcolm Nicolson.
John Jealous, her father, had found them side by side during his first visit to Madras in 1989, soon after he had started on the trail of a woman who was to become the obsession of his life as he pieced together her life during several subsequent visits to Madras and other parts of India for a book that didn’t get written; he passed away before he got to it. Now his daughter Virginia, a poet and a travel writer, who has been following his trail, hopes to write a book on that journey as well as on the woman who was the second great love of his life, Laurence Hope.
Adela Florence Nicolson / by Special Arrangement
What he — and Virginia — didn’t get to see was the mansion where she committed suicide a few months after her husband died. Dunmore House, in Alwarpet, was where Florence Nicolson, whom few knew as the famed poet of the 19th Century, Laurence Hope, and her husband, who called her Violet, lived for some months after they returned to India in 1904.
Murray’s Gate Road, named after the Hon. Leveson Granville Keith Murray, Collector of Madras between 1822 and 1831, led to Dunmore House, so named by him because he was the son of the fourth Earl of Dunmore. Whether he built the great garden house he lived in during those years is not known, but the house no longer exists.
What happened to the house in the 50 years immediately after Murray retired in 1831 after 38 years in the Madras Civil Service is not known but in 1888 it was bought by Eardley Norton, the well-known lawyer, for Rs. 47,800 in a Court sale.
The house was next bought from Norton’s estate in 1910 by the Maharaja of Pithapuram. A tragedy in the Pithapuram family led to them moving out to Cenotaph Road and, no doubt, Dunmore House remained rented out till businessman K. Gopalakrishnan bought it in 1941. Over the years that followed, the acreage of Dunmore House was sold off in substantial plots and its northern half became Venus Studios, home to Venus Pictures. After the studio closed down, the property was developed as today’s Venus Colony. In the southern half, a couple of roads close to Dunmore House take their names from members of the Pithapuram family, and some members of Gopalakrishnan’s family have homes on these roads. But none in the area seems to know of Laurence Hope.
Laurence Hope wrote impassioned poetry that as the ‘Indian Love Lyrics’ scandalised Victorian England. Her ‘Pale Hands I loved By The Shalimar’, her best remembered poem, had many tattlers nattering about a love affair with a young Kashmiri after her identity got known.
But her only known love affair was with the then Col. Nicolson, 46 at the time, whom she married in 1889 when she was 23. She was the daughter of Arthur Cory, who was the Editor of North India’s leading newspaper, the Civil and Military Gazette, published from Lahore. The Corys had arrived in India in 1881. The General, an Indophile like her, was ADC to Queen Victoria for a few years before his retirement in 1893. On his retiring, the Nicolsons returned to India and settled in Calicut for a few months before illness brought them to Madras for their last year. They died in 1904.
Laurence Hope’s poetry was read in closed rooms in the late 19th-early 20th Century but by the 1920s it had been set to music and was sung at tea soirees in the world’s leading hotels. She was certainly a woman ahead of her times, most people of the time resenting her intellectuality and her passion.
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Back almost to roots
The House of Binny, in its 225th year, appears to be going back to one of its first, and most successful, businesses, liquor. For years now there has been little talk of Binny’s in business circles, if you except all the speculation about what it plans to do with its considerable holding of land in Perambur. The latest news, however, is that Binny’s is back in business again, with Mohan Breweries and Distilleries being merged with it. With Binny’s at present having no business operations, the merger will make liquor its business again.
From its earliest days as Binny & Dennison in the first years of the 19th Century, wines, spirits and beer was one of its largest imports, either for sale or ordered by individuals and institutions. Madeira was one of its major wines, but it provided it an export opportunity too. It was found that Madeira was a wine that matured particularly well in Madras and casks of it were imported, matured locally and re-exported to Britain.
A wine story retailed over generations in Binny’s Liquor Department concerned a veteran employee in the Department, Alex Rodrigues, who in 1873 blotted his copybook. When seven casks of Madeira, each of different quality, were found to be short through leakage or evaporation, he topped them up with loose Madeira they had around, quality be damned. He followed this up by washing empty claret bottles with the best brandy in stock. He got away with it all with a 15 per cent (Rs.15) pay cut.
Binny Mills gate just before the mills were closed / by Special Arrangement
But for all the liquor business Binny’s did up to the 1940s, it publicly expressed concern over the ‘Drink Evil’, particularly as it affected production in its mills. In 1924, it persuaded Government to allow the six toddy shops and two arrack shops in the vicinity of the mills to be open only during mill working hours; frustrated workers, thus, found it difficult to get a drink after work, their usual drinking hours. And as for Sundays, it got Government to allow the liquor shops to be open only from 12 to 3 in the afternoon, siesta time. All this, however, did not completely solve the problem the mills — and the families of workers — faced. Binny’s as late as 1935 had temperance workers doing the round of workers’ colonies lecturing on the ills of drink, and its dramatic society often staged plays on the same theme in those areas.
All this is unlikely to be seen when the new township in 70 acres of Binny Mills property is developed over the next few years in partnership with the SPR Group. This is promised to be an integrated, self-contained residential township with every facility, from healthcare to education, from hotels to entertainment, provided for. But will it be named Binnyville or Binnypuram in memory of a once grand old institution that helped considerably in the growth of Madras?
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Does a rose need a name?
Dharmalingam Venugopal, that dedicated documenter of the Nilgiris, tells me that he recently received a letter from a Colin Sullivan, a descendant of John Sullivan, who opened up the Nilgiris and is considered the progenitor of Ooty, wondering whether the Government of Tamil Nadu would name a rose in the Ooty Rose Garden after John Sullivan.
Ooty’s Rose Garden / by Special Arrangement
Rose plants, it is stated, first came into the Presidency in 1831 from England when Governor Stephen Lushington of Madras placed an order for them. A reference to the Ooty Botanical Gardens in 1832 speaks of the “fragrance of roses” filling the air. Did these roses come to the Gardens from John Sullivan?
Sir Frederick Price, who wrote one of the most definitive records of Ooty and its history (1908), said, “I consider that the introduction of European vegetables and of the apple, peach and strawberry may safely be attributed to Mr. Sullivan.” So why not roses? After all, John Sullivan was associated with the Nilgiris and Ooty from 1817 till the 1840s.
John Sullivan, the Madras Civilian, would certainly warrant a bit of Nature’s bounty being named after him.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Society / by S. Muthiah / December 14th, 2014
Time was when tea was the drink of the working class in the state and coffee was considered a sophisticated brew for the uppermiddle class and the elite. The introduction of coffee into Tamil Nadu caused a certain cultural anxiety initially but the beverage was ultimately appropriated by Tamil society.
These and other fascinating insights about the history of plantations, coffee and tea were revealed at a seminar titled ‘Tea For David’, a felicitation of historian and professor David Washbrook, who retired from Trinity College, Cambridge University after teaching at the famous institution for 40 years. This wasn’t surprising, because Washbrook is an academic who specialises in the history of south India.
“The appropriation of coffee was mediated both by caste and class and coffee became the marker of the brahmin middle-class,” said A R Venkatachalapathy, professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, speaking at the seminar organised by the department of humanities and social sciences of IIT-Madras
Quoting a court case from Kolar Gold Fields in which a Buddhist dalit was refused coffee, Venkatachalapathy explored the question of coffee and caste in colonial TN. “On July 13, 1927, Ramaswamy and two friends, one a brahmin, walked into a restaurant. He ordered three coffees. When the proprietor saw Ramaswamy, he told the waiter not to give coffee to a lower caste. Upset over the incident, he walked out. His brahmin friend, however, didn’t accept the coffee served to him as a mark of protest,” said Venkatachalapathy, the author of ‘In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History’.
“Ramaswamy filed a case and hired barrister E L Iyer, a renowned labour activist in Madras,” he said. “But today, there is no record of the proceedings, barring three reports in a Tamil newspaper. It shows that drinking coffee was no ordinary matter those days. With a separate place for Brahmins, caste was very much part of the ‘coffee hotels’ of those days, and leaders like Periyar E V Ramasamy had to fight against this.”
Speaking on ‘Planters, Power and the Colonial Law’, Ravi Raman, of Council for Social Development, New Delhi, said the British subjected dalits in plantations to various forms of institutional and coercive repression.
“The contrasting dimensions of colonial law have been explored by historians, but it appears that plantation owners too developed their own laws. They ultimately minimised abuse of workers but, by and large, they wielded coercive power,” he said.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / TNN / December 09th, 2014
A total of ancient 30 pottery pieces dating back to 3 century BC have been unearthed at Madhagam village on the Pudukottai-Avudaiyarkovil road near Embal, a coastal village, recently.
A salient feature of these pieces is that eight of them contained strokes testifying to the ancient practice of denoting figures.
While one of the pottery pieces had the strokes of wings of a bird, another contained Swasthik symbol.
Interestingly, one piece contained a couple of alphabet-like markings, said S.Neelavathy, Assistant Professor in History, Government Arts College for Women, here on Thursday.
Chance discovery
She said the digging of an irrigation tank in the village for maintenance led to the chance discovery of these pieces.
She, along with Karu.Rajendran, an epigraphist, went to the spot to study the pieces following a tip-off from the students hailing from the nearby villages about the finding.
The pieces testify to the fact that the coastal district accounted for human habitation in the hoary past.
She has planned to take up further research in the area with the cooperation of the local villagers.
She has appealed to the villagers to immediately contact her if they come across any piece of pot with strokes, by dialling 9788205562.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Tiruchirapalli / by Special Correspondent / Pudukottai – December 12th, 2014
They look nothing like Harrison Ford. One is a professional archaeologist who is more than 70 years old and the other a shippie-cum-blogger who is more comfortable doing painstaking background work than with the limelight.But, in terms of real life impact their work is as thrilling as and probably more productive than Indiana Jones ever was in the movies. Through their websites, plunderedpast.in and poetryinstone.in, they have tried to create a record of artefact thefts and done their bit in tracking them down in museums and private collections across the world. Kirit Mankodi and Vijaykumar Sundaresan have also come up with crucia information that has helped to beef up the case against art thief Subhash Kapoor lodged in jail and undergoing trial.
Mankodi’s passion for retrieving stolen treasures started in the late 1990s when he accompanied a team of archaeologists who went on an excavation in Rajasthan. The team found three ancient sculptures dating back to 9th century .
The site was cleared and the sculptures were displayed with a signboard. But a couple of years later they disappeared from the site. “The big sculpture among the three was the first to be stolen. A year later another one went missing and soon after the last one too vanished. I wrote to the concerned authorities but that was of no use. Then I decided to do some thing of my own to prevent illicit smug gling of antiques from our country and that’s why it all began,” said Mankodi, who is a senior archaeologist. Vijay who grew up in awe of the thousands of grand temples across Tamil Nadu was also concerned about antique idols being stolen from unguarded tem ples. By reading books, visiting temples and connecting with a larger group of heritage enthusiasts over the internet, he started to piece together information.He started feeding this information from the background to investigative agencies for two years but he found that did not help. “It was then I decided to come out and go to the press. I had to open up because there was no point being a silent informer,” he says.
By working through a network of heritage enthusiasts including among the global Indian diaspora, Vijay has been able to unearth crucial information in the Subhash Kapoor case. One such was a print catalogue belonging to Subhash Kapoor’s Art of the Past gallery in New York that helped him to connect the statue of Uma in Singapore’s Asian Civilizations Museum he had seen many years back with the one in grainy photographs published by the Tamil Nadu police’s Idol Wing as having been stolen from Ariyalur.
Poetryinstone.in documents missing artefacts and explains to the otherwise flitting online reader the value of Indian heritage. Reach Foundation’s citation lauds Vijay for his efforts not just in educating people about missing temple icons but also for explaining to the layman in simple terms the complex craft of iconography and temple art.
The recent return of a Nataraja idol from Australia is only the beginning and many , many more stolen statues are in museums across the world including in Australia, say Kirit and Vijay . Among the work of Mankodi is the sourcing of the sandstone Bharhut Yakshi – at $15 million the most expensive item in Kapoor’s loot catalogue – still with US authorities. Mankodi was able to trace it to a shrine in Madhya Pradesh (South Pole, April 29) following which Indian officials in the US got in touch with him asking for supporting evidence. Mankodi says indications from US and Indian officials are that the Yakshi would return, sooner or later.
Email us your with full name and address to southpole.toi@timesgroup.com
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / by Debayan Tewari & M T Saju, TNN / December 08th, 2014
H.B. Ari Gowder, a well-known leader of the Badaga community, the largest indigenous social group in the Blue Mountains, was remembered on his 121st birth anniversary on December 4.
Some members of the community gathered at the Nilgiris Cooperative Marketing Society (NCMS) here and garlanded a bust of the leader installed near the threshold of the Society’s multi-purpose hall. Among them were the president of the Society Kannabiran and T.M. Kullan of Tribal Solidarity. Participants pointed out that Gowder has for long been considered as the uncrowned king of the Badagas.
A widely respected philanthropist, he was instrumental in the NCMS coming into being in the 1930s to protect farmers from middlemen and unscrupulous members of the mercantile community.
Members of the Academy for Badaga Culture (ABC) Trust led by its president Manjai V. Mohan also paid floral tributes to the leader.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Coimbatore/ by D. Radhakrishnan / Udhagamandalam – December 09th, 2014
A freedom fighter, who turned 100 on Sunday, has said he was not happy with the way the country has been progressing and painted a bleak future for the nation. He also rued that even another movement like the freedom struggle has had have no impact.
The freedom fighter B Ramasamy, a resident of Ayan Reddiapatti village near Kariapatti Taluk in Virudhunagar district, had fought for independence, along with Congress leader Kamaraj.
“Even if we launch another freedom struggle, it will be difficult to set right the course,” he said.
B Ramasamy
He recalled he had taken part in several freedom movement-related activities since the age of 15. “We fought for the freedom, but the country is not where we expect it to be. The youngsters should imbibe only good things from society, leave out the bad, and should work to steer the country to the right path,” he said.
On Sunday, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, his family and people from his village celebrated his birthday as if it were a village festival. They arranged for folk music and dance shows. In one spot near the dais,where the programmes were on, the villagers cooked food in huge vessels.
Ramasamy was born on December 7, 1916. He worked as a teacher in a primary school. In 1939, he was booked for giving shelter to a freedom fighter, Nedunkadu Ramachandran of Kerala in the Nellai conspiracy case, against the British and was sent to Alipuri jail. He worked also as the editor of a journal called Veerapandian. From 1966, Ramasamy was given a freedom fighter’s pension of `150.
“Ramasamy, who followed the footsteps of the father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi, struggled for freedom of the country. He was given five acres of land by the government but he donated the land to the Bhoodan Movement. Ramasamy is a selfless person, he still doesn’t have a house he could call his own,” a villager said. There are many youngsters who have been inspired by him, they added.
Former Education Minister and Thiruchuli MLA Thangam Thennarasu attended the celebrations.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by Kaushik Kannan / December 08th, 2014
