Chennai Chellangal : A.K. Chettiar :Round the world with a camera

(Picture: AK Chettiyar)

It’s not the best of photographs that I use with today’s column, but it is a rare photograph and a unique one that has survived so long.

 It is of A.K. Chettiar (AKC) and his movie camera. 

Together they had travelled around the world in the 1930s, earning for AKC the sobriquet “Ulagam Sutriya Thamizhan” (The Tamil who went around the world).

The picture had been sent by AKC to E.R. Govindan, a fellow journalist, and a good friend of his, in January 1939. Govindan was at the time with the Sunday Times (Madras) and in August that year founded Free India Weekly, a title still with Govindan’s son G. Rangarajan who sent me this picture.

Of both AKC and Free India Weekly I have written in the past — about AKC in Miscellany, July 26, 2004 and about the weekly in Miscellany, May 28, 2007. 

But while of the weekly’s story I had written much, of AKC I had only concentrated on his best known contribution (at the time, but now virtually forgotten), a full-length documentary on Mahatma Gandhi for which he collected material during his journey around the world.

 A few additional words about him would, therefore, not be out of place.

AK Chettiar Signature

He was a well-known Tamil writer in his day, writing in a language appreciated by the purists yet one with which the educated lay reader was comfortable.

 It was in this easy-to-grasp language that he pioneered travel writing in Tamil and found such books selling well. 

The most popular of these books was A Tamil Wanderer in the World, much of which dealt with interviews with well-known people around the world who had interacted with Gandhi.

AKC was also known as the Publisher-Editor of Kumari Malar, the quality of whose Tamil was highly thought of. 

The magazine also benefited from AKC’s research into the work of Subramania Bharati and the considerable unknown work of the poet he unearthed and brought to light in this monthly journal.

The much-travelled journalist was from the small village, Kottaiyur, in Chettinad. A happy coincidence is that two other Nattukottai Chettiars connected with spreading knowledge came from the same village.

 One was Roja Muthiah Chettiar, who founded what is now the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Taramani, the other was Rm. Alagappa Chettiar who founded the institutions that became the nucleus of Alagappa University in Karaikudi and had much to do with the establishment of the A.C. College of Technology in Madras, the Central Electro-chemical Research Institute in Karaikudi and the Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics in Madras.

In another curious coincidence, Kottaiyur is neighboured by Pallathur and Pallathur is neighboured by Kanadukathan and from the first of the latter two villages was A.M.M. Murugappa Chettiar and from the second M. Subbiah Chettiar who together were the first two Chettiars (possibly the first two South Indians) to go around the world.

 Their journey in 1930-31 was centred on the International Chambers of Commerce Convention in Washington, D.C. At a dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Hoover for all the delegates, the Hoovers circulated round the tables.

 When Mrs. Hoover stopped at their table, where theirs were the only two ‘foreign’ faces and in pidgin asked, “You English speak?”, the table burst into laughter and one of the Americans said, “Better than us and you, Mrs. President.” 

Then ensued a brief conversation during which she wanted to know whether they had studied outside India and was told that both had only studied up to high school, one in India and the other in Ceylon.

 A.K. Chettiar who had done a cinematographer’s course in New York spoke English as well as them, but always preferred Tamil.

H :Madras miscellany : S Muthiah :10 Nov 2014