Srinivasa Ramanujan’s college being restored to its old charm

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s college being restored to its old charm

The historical buildings of Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, situated on the banks of the Cauvery and once known as the Cambridge of South India, are being restored to their original splendour and majestic look.

One of the oldest educational institutions in Tamil Nadu, the college had British men as well as great Indian scholars such as T. Gopal Rao, C. Thiruvengada Naidu, C. Nagoji Rao, S. Sathiyanathan and P.V. Seshu Iyer as principals. Tamil scholars Thiyagaraja Chettiar, U.V. Swaminatha Iyer and C. Thiruvengada Naidu had served as its faculty members. Mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, silver-tongued orator Right Honourable V.S. Srinivasa Sastry, Tamil writers T. Janakiraman and Indira Parthasarathy were some of its alumni.

“The total cost of the restoration is ₹14.5 crore. The restoration committee of the college will decide how to use the buildings after the work is completed,” vice-principal M. Meenakshisundaram said.

It was established as a provincial school in 1854 on a piece of land donated by the Queen of Thanjavur. The school was upgraded as a college in 1880. A bridge was constructed in 1944. Before that boats ferried people.

“The college occupied a site of considerable natural beauty. The river streamed by. Birds chirped. Groves of trees afforded shelter from the high, hot sun. Luxuriant vines crawled everywhere, forever threatening to overrun the college buildings. Even with the new construction since the Maharani’s time, the college did not dominate its site, but rather clung there, at nature’s sufferance. The place was lovely, idyllic, serene,” writes Robert Kanigel, the author of The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan.

Ramanujan joined the college on a scholarship awarded for his high school work in 1905. He was an FA student–First Arts. Maths Professor Seshu Iyer, who later became the principal, encouraged him to tackle problems appearing in mathematics journals like the London Mathematical Gazette. But he ignored subjects such as Physiology, English, and Greek and Roman history. He failed in English composition. “The penalty was inevitable; his scholarship was taken away,” according to the book. He ran away from home in 1905.

Even then, Mr. Kanigel claims, that the best local students had begun to forsake it for larger schools in Madras (Chennai). “Still for its time and place, it was pretty good — good enough, at any rate, to the moniker ‘the Cambridge of South India’.”