How Tamil theatre raised funds for the Ramakrishna Mission Students Home in Chennai

Thanks to the large patronage it loved, Tamil theatre was actively concerned in elevating funds for varied charitable and public causes. Many theatre teams staged dramas whose proceeds had been used for instructional establishments, hospitals, profit funds and calamity reliefs. During World War II, the Madras Governor’s War Fund enormously benefitted by the staging of a number of Tamil performs. For occasion, M.Ok. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar’s efficiency of Pavalakkodi in 1941 at the Sun Theatre in T. Nagar raised a sum of Rs 7,000 which was donated to the trigger. One of the outstanding establishments to have been immensely supported by Tamil theatre was the Ramakrishna Mission Students Home in Mylapore — due to the efforts of C. Ramanujachariar.

Born in 1875, Ramanujachariar graduated with a BA from the Presidency College and joined the Madras Secretariat as a clerk. While nonetheless in faculty, he grew to become a part of the group of followers who gathered round Swami Vivekananda throughout the latter’s keep in Madras in early 1893, earlier than he left for Chicago to take part in the Parliament of World Religions. When Vivekananda was given a grand reception in the metropolis in February 1897 upon his return from the West, Ramanujachariar acquired a possibility to intently work together with him and was drawn into the Ramakrishna motion.

One of the outstanding establishments to have been immensely supported by Tamil theatre was the Ramakrishna Mission Students Home in Mylapore — due to the efforts of C. Ramanujachariar.
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives

When Swami Ramakrishnananda, who was despatched by Swami Vivekananda to unfold the message of Sri Ramakrishna in South India, got here to Madras in March 1897, Ramanujachariar grew to become one among his ardent supporters. In 1905, Ramanujachariar’s cousin C. Ramaswamy Iyengar was moved by the plight of 4 boys from Guntur who had come to the metropolis in search of assist for their research however discovered none. This gave the impetus for the founding of a house to offer free boarding and lodging for indigent college students coming to the metropolis for their research, and thus was born the Ramakrishna Mission Students Home, with the blessings and steering of Swami Ramakrishnananda. Ramanujachariar grew to become intently concerned with the actions of the Home since its inception and after Ramaswamy Iyengar’s demise in 1932 grew to become its secretary.

In 1917, Ramanujachariar based a drama troupe known as the Madras Secretariat Party, comprising his colleagues, to make use of theatre to help charitable causes, significantly the Students’ Home and the Ramakrishna Math. Ramanujachariar was the director, lead actor and composer…all rolled into one. When Swami Brahmananda, the first president of the Ramakrishna Order, got here to Madras on three events, Ramanujachariar used the proceeds of a profit drama to buy the land on which the previous shrine of the Mylapore Math stands in the present day. During his 1921 go to, Swami Brahmananda watched a efficiency of Mira Bai staged by the Madras Secretariat Party at the Victoria Public Hall, in which Ramanujachariar performed the a part of Rana. Later, on Swami’s suggestion, Ramanujachariar translated and carried out the Bengali drama Bilvamangal in Tamil.

Besides Ramanujachariar’s colleagues, the Madras Secretariat Party comprised members corresponding to famend violinist Parur Anantharaman and several other residents of the Students Home corresponding to Mannargudi Sambasiva Bhagavathar, who would later grew to become a famous harikatha exponent, and Anna N Subramanian, who went to grow to be a famend creator of spiritual books. In his reminiscences, famous thinker TMP Mahadevan, who was additionally a resident of the Home in the Nineteen Twenties, states that rehearsals was once held in the campus on Sunday mornings and had been a lot awaited events.

In December 1936, Ramanujachariar acquired collectively a gaggle of actors from the Madras Secretariat Party, the Suguna Vilasa Sabha and some different newbie drama troupes below the banner of The Madras Premier Amateurs and went on a tour of the Malay states to stage a collection of performances to boost funds for the Students Home. The preparations had been made by an advance get together led by Rao Bahadur M R Ramaswamy Sivan, who had retired as the first Indian Principal of the Agricultural College at Coimbatore. It was not Ramanujachariar’s first fundraising enterprise in the area although. Besides theatre, he was a well known determine in the world of Carnatic music (his contributions to the subject have been well-documented) and counted a number of legends of the artwork kind amongst his mates, one among them being Musiri Subramania Iyer. In February 1935, he had organised a tour of Subramania Iyer to Malaya.

Over the course of three weeks in January 1937, the troupe staged 15 performances throughout all vital centres of the Malay states corresponding to Malacca, Seremban, Kuala Lumpur, Klang, Penang, Ipoh and Singapore. The performs carried out included Nandanar, Leela Sukhar, Raja Bhakti and Rama, the Ideal Son. The tour was a grand success. In 1940, the Madras Secretariat Party launched into Bombay tour, staging 4 performances to boost funds. A curtain-raiser for the tour, which appeared in the Bombay Chronicle said that the troupe had staged 198 performances as much as that time since its inception, out of which 172 had been for the good thing about the Students Home, and relaxation being for causes corresponding to flood aid, anti-tuberculosis fund and women schooling. According to the guide Palace for the Poor, which profiles the historical past of the Students Home, the complete funds collected by means of dramas staged by the Secretariat Party exceeded Rs 5 Lakhs, which went in the direction of the corpus of the establishment. In the Nineteen Forties, Ramanujachariar based and mentored the Ramakrishna Kripa Amateurs, by means of which he continued his journey of fund-raising by means of theatre. Ramanujachariar handed away in November 1956.