CHENNAI : Walking past the calls of fruit sellers in markets tucked behind statues and pastel posters, bursting through slang, or lingering in revamped buildings, memories are intangible inhabitants of the city. These recollections roam through sprawling settlements, witnessing metropolises pieced together through time. Mutating over decades, they travel through written records, oral histories, juicy rumours, or fade from residents’ minds.
In an attempt to pin down memories and mark time, we rely on statues, portraits, busts, and sculptures. A walk around Chennai reveals human efforts to document prominent figures, that society seems to deem worthy of remembering; look no further than names of buildings and localities, peeling posters pasted on walls of politicians over time, and golden statues of CN Annadurai, MGR, or M Karunanidhi. “Madras has had a rich history of women.
The women in Madras voted in 1921, ahead of 90% of the world. Very few states in the US and UK allowed women to vote at that point,” explains historian Venkatesh Ramakrishnan. Yet women or workers who built this city — with bricks, blood, and words — vanish from traces of textbooks, statues, and buildings.
A friend once remarked: if we were ever invaded by an extraterrestrial race and they had to document our existence through the cityscape statues, they would think our world was inhabited mostly by men. Apart from rage-filled Kannagi, poet Avvaiyar, and activist Annie Besant statues on the sandy stretch of Marina Beach, where are the other women? If one looks at the map, a few other women pop out — like freedom fighter Durgabai Deshmukh, Panditha Narayani Ammal who started Northwick school, botanist Janaki Ammal, or dancer Rukmini Arundale. However, as historian Nivedita Louis adds, women are cloaked in the male-dominated society, and prominent women leaders in the spotlight belong to upper castes and classes.
“Why is nothing tangible left of these women? It is to erase these women or willfully neglect these women. At any intellectual gathering, you will not find names or pictures of women. We don’t have enough records of women from the oppressed segments, especially from the Dalit segments,” says Nivedita.
She adds, “People have a lot of contempt for (politician) Mayawati, saying she kept statues of herself everywhere, but how I see it, it is a reflection of a woman’s thoughts and how she was sidelined.” Searching for flickers of women leaders, CE travels across the city to visit institutions started by them, and localities where their memory is recorded in tangible statues, busts, and portraits. As rumours go, Mahakavi Bharathiar frequented a pavement in south Chennai to hear a woman singing from her kitchen.
This mysterious singer was Kothainayaki. An important figure in the women’s liberation movement, she was a prolific writer of Tamil literature despite having never been formally educated, notes Venkatesh, adding that she had 114 novels to her credit. In the 1930s, the Congress supporter ran Jaganmohini magazine for over three decades and a printing press.
In the male-dominated world of crime novelists, Kothainayaki was the first woman to write a detective story in Tamil. If streets could speak, the roads of Triplicane, where her press was located, could narrate tales of women’s rights activists. In a statement before being imprisoned, Mary Soundhari Amrithanayakam declared that she would protect Tamil culture and not submit to Hindi agitation.
These fiery lines by the first Dalit Christian woman to come up in anti-Hindi agitation were published in the Justice Party’s daily Viduthalai in 1938. The only tangible evidence of this activist, who was also a midwife, that remains is her photograph and the address of a house in the Perambur Barracks, recorded in the faded archives of Viduthalai. The city housed the first cancer hospital in south India, thanks to the efforts of Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy.
After becoming the only woman to enter Maharaja’s College from Pudukkottai, she became a pioneer of women’s rights and abolition of caste system. She established the Avvai Home, a shelter for orphan girls and deserted women. She is credited with many firsts: the first woman from India to graduate in medicine, the first woman house surgeon in the Government Maternity and Ophthalmic Hospital, the first woman legislator in British India, the first chairperson of the State Social Welfare Advisory Board, and the first woman deputy president of the Legislative Council.
The portrait of the doctor is pinned above the hospital’s corridors in Adyar, and a statue stands tall at the facility in Guindy. An unassuming, intricate carving at the front of CSI Zion Church in Chintadripet carries a tale of the first Indian woman author who penned an English novel. The people in the church told CE that despite visiting the church for years, they had never noticed the plaque.
Born in 1862, Krupabai penned the first Indian English autobiography Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life, and a novel Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life. Her work is a peek into the lives of women in the 19th century, detailing their struggles and rich inner worlds. After travelling to Madras and pursuing medicine, Krupabai penned her novel in Chintadripet.
As documented in The Unhurried City: Writings on Chennai, a scene captures her nervous journey to the city, citing Saguna — “the dim light of the morning revealed a new scene. A language not my own fell on my ears.” It seems to be a grave mistake to have been born a woman, yet having been born a woman and a Dalit on top of that, Meenambal shattered barriers and she will stand tall as TN’s icons as an ‘Annai’,” writes Nivedita on Meenambal Sivaraj in ‘Muthal Pengal’.
Born in 1904 at Rangoon, Meenambal lived in Tamil Nadu and worked tirelessly to empower the Dalit communities. She was the first Dalit woman president of the South India Scheduled Castes Federation and presided over its first meeting in Madras. Revolutionary EV Ramasamy received his title ‘Periyar’ from Meenambal here.
She was the first Dalit woman appointed as deputy mayor of Chennai Corporation. Even as the city forgot Meenambal, she remained in her daughter-in-law Sulochana’s mind. As Nivedita recalls, during a conversation with Sulochana, a bust of Meenambal was to be set up in north Chennai.
However, so far it hasn’t materialised. Yet, one may chance upon traces of streets named after Meenambal and her husband Sivaraj at Ambattur, Oragadam, Kodungaiyur, and Egmore. Nivedita notes, “You have to remember that Meenmbal is always remembered along with Sivaraj.
If you take the Sivaraj out of it, people don’t remember who Meenambal is.” BORN in 1912, Lourdammal Simon was the first Dravidian minister who became a central minister, and the first woman minister from the Mukkuva community. If one visits the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, the Tilapia fish or jalebi fish is called ‘lourdu meen’ by fisher communities.
This freshwater scaly variety draws its name from Lourdammal, the minister for local administration and fisheries of Madras in 1957. She introduced the Japanese Tilapia fish, now an invasive species in tanks and ponds so fishing communities could continue to fish during the annual bans and breeding seasons. Located on a quiet corner, off the bustling Casa Major Road, the Madras School of Social Work, established in 1952, has called out to many socially-charged youngsters.
Its founder, Mary Clubwala Jadhav, remains the only leader in the city who has received all three Padma Awards. “No other woman has shaped Madras, so much without being a politician. She started 130 service organisations, made social service a profession, and started teaching it.
She took such great care of hurt soldiers that the British commander gave her a Japanese sword of surrender,” says Venkatesh. And how has the city remembered her? Her tomb lies amid grass at Royapuram with an epitaph: “To my beloved son, I join you. I served all, I am now home with all I love and Phil, the most beloved of all.
” Instrumental in the anti-Hindi agitation and self-respect movement, Annai Sathyavani Muthu was an icon of the Dravidian movement. The Dalit leader left the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to start her party Thazhthapattor Munnetra Kazhagam or Progressive Federation of the Oppressed. While her birth centenary was in 2023, she remains missing from the mainstream, but her name remains printed on the blue board of an area near Park Town.
“Interestingly, you won’t name a street Annai Sathyavani Muthu Nagar where elite people live; it is a large settlement of mud houses. The thing is (there is a perception) that if she is a Dalit leader, she should be remembered only by the Dalits,” says Nivedita. IN the 1800s, Dr Alexandrina MacPhail landed in Madras.
Soon, the missionary doctor of Scottish origin started a hospital in north Chennai, CSI Rainy Hospital, for working-class women who often lost their lives during pregnancy and to other diseases. A special wing was installed for women diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections. Now, all that remains of her, in an abandoned block, is a small bronze bust, adorned with garlands.
Nivedita would often see these flowers withered and attributes the garlands to old nurses or doctors who remember the missionary and carry forward her legacy. A Turkish woman, Khatija Yakub Hassan was the state’s first Muslim honorary magistrate and first Muslim woman MLA. She was also an active part of the Khilafat movement.
No traces of her seem to remain in the city. IN the heyday of beauty contests, Suryakumari, a dancer and singer, won Miss Madras in the 1950s. Born in Rajahmundry, then part of the Madras Presidency, she sang patriotic songs for the salt march at five years old, explains Venkatesh.
In the Madras Musings blog, Bharathi Paul recalls the moment when she won the title by donning a kanakambaram orange georgette sari with a red blouse, immortalised in a photo published by Eve’s Weekly. Later, this actor went on to star in 25 movies, sang the Andhra Pradesh state song, and had the opportunity to work with Alfred Hitchcock. On the grounds of Periyar Thidal, Dravidar Kazhagam, the first Ravana Lila was presided over by leader Maniammai in 1974.
In response to Ram Leela and taking note of Periyar’s words, Maniammai wrote to Indira Gandhi, recorded in the Telangana archives, “Your participation in the Ramlila burning the effigy of the great Dravidian hero Ravanan is against all canons of secularism and highly provoking and insulting to millions of Dravidians hence requesting you to desist from this dastardly act.” Popularly seen as one of the first Indian women political leaders, glimmers of Maniammai remain in the thidal — the names of hostels, a hospital on the premises, and books penned by her in the gift shop. Her statue overlooks the EVR Periyar Salai behind Egmore Station.
Curiously, this statue was inaugurated by VP Singh. As the librarian in the Periyar Library notes, the role of women in the Dravidian movement has been high, yet statues commemorating them are rare. History suggests the first artists in the Neolithic period were women.
Whether or not the makers of statues neglected to sculpt them in roundtanas, corners, buildings, or otherwise, the practice itself rose from women. While missing from the maps of Madras, memories of women leaders have changed the city, and shaped it and their efforts have led to irreversible liberatory changes in civilisation..
