Ravi the blogger

The Mutiny of 1857 was not the first sepoy mutiny in British India, nor was the older, more spontaneous irruption that took place in Vellore in 1807. Strange though it might seem, the first-ever mutiny in the British Indian army took place more than three hundred years ago   (though the white, European soldiers in the Company’s army of the time were not “sepoys” in the real sense of the word).     The rebellion took place in the nascent British colony of Fort St David near Cuddalore and the leader of the rebellion was a decorated soldier   and former member of the Fort St George council named Robert Raworth who had successfully defended the fort from an invasion of Swaroop Singh the  faujdar of Gingee in 1711-12. Fort St David was, first, obtained by the British East India Company in 1691. Right from its beginnings, the colony had to endure the hostility of the formidable Swaroop Singh whom, the early British authorities were thoughtless enough t...

For years, I’ve been visiting the Raghavendra Temple in Raghavaiah Road, T. Nagar, that I’ve always wondered who this Raghavaiah might be. Like all roads in T. Nagar, this one, too, would have been named after some V. I. P. of the 1920s. (Or was it just another name by which Guru Raghavendra was affectionately called? Very much plausible!) But when my forays into old books helped me piece together Raghavaiah’s life I was truly surprised by the end result. I found it difficult to digest the fact that the Justice Party which was allegedly founded to fight caste-based discrimination had named one of T. Nagar’s roads after someone perceived to be one of the main villains of the Vaikom Satyagraha. Born in a Telugu Brahmin family, Thodla Raghavaiah entered the provincial civil service on completing his studies. After serving in the forest and revenue departments, Raghavaiah was made an official of the Madras Corporation which he headed as President in 1911.   In 1920, Ragh...

The southern suburbs of Chennai have experienced recent development like say, the southern part of America (The direction   of growth is coincidentally southward for a handful of other Indian cities that I can think of, too. Delhi(?) Bengaluru (?) I wonder what is so magical about the south). However, there exists an unbridgeable gulf between what you see and the ground reality . The sight you often come across is that of superficial progress- a boomtown     – a cluster of buildings that propped up over night. But underneath there exists poor planning , poor waste disposal systems and   inefficient and in many cases, corrupt local administrations. And it is when the first disaster strikes, that skeletons tumble out of the cupboard. What I’ve just described especially befits the vast semi-rural landscape of Poonamallee, Kundrathur, Kovur and Thandalam that lie to the west of NH45 where banana fields and luscious green hills are bordered by IT parks and residen...