Presidency College is an art, commerce, and science college in the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India. On 16 October 1840, this school was established as the Madras Preparatory School before being repurposed as a high school, and then a graduate college. The Presidency College is one of the oldest government arts colleges in India. It is one of two Presidency Colleges established by the British in India, the other being the Presidency College, Kolkata.
Dewan Bahadur Sachivottama SirChetput Pattabhiraman Ramaswami IyerLL.D. D.Litt., popularly known as Sir C. P., was an Indian lawyer, administrator and statesman, acknowledged as the most powerful man in the Madras Presidency in the decades immediately prior to Indian Independence.
Valangaiman Sankaranarayana Srinivasa Sastri was an Indian politician, administrator, educator, orator and Indian independence activist. He was acclaimed for his oratory and command over the English language. Srinivasa Sastri was born to a poor temple priest in the village of Valangaiman near Kumbakonam, India. He completed his education at Kumbakonam and worked as a school teacher and later, headmaster in Triplicane, Madras. He entered politics in 1905 when he joined the Servants of India Society. Sastri served as a member of the Indian National Congress from 1908 to 1922, but later resigned in protest against the non-cooperation movement. Sastri was one of the founding members of the Indian Liberal Party. In his later days, he was strongly opposed to the partition of India.
Raja Sir Panaganti RamarayaningarKCIE, also known as the Raja of Panagal, was a zamindar of Kalahasti, a Justice Party leader and the First Minister of Madras Presidency from 11 July 1921 to 3 December 1926.
Sir Pusapati Ananda Gajapati RajuGCIE was the 10th Maharaja of Vizianagaram.
Sir Subbier Subramania Iyer was an Indian lawyer, jurist and freedom fighter who, along with Annie Besant, founded the Home Rule Movement. He was popularly known as the "Grand Old Man of South India".
Rai Bahadur SirPanapakkam AnandacharluCIE was an Indian lawyer and freedom fighter who was a founding delegate and later president of the Indian National Congress, founder and president of the Triplicane Literary Society, and founder of the Madras Mahajana Sabha. He additionally aided the Triplicane Six in founding The Hindu, to which he was a frequent contributor.
Sir Thiruvarur Muthuswamy Iyer was an Indian lawyer who, in 1877, became the first native Indian during the British Raj to be appointed as justice of the High Court of Madras, acting as Chief Justice in 1893.
Salem Ramaswami Mudaliar was an Indian lawyer, politician and Indian independence activist who campaigned for India's independence.
The Right Hon. Calamur ViravalliRunganada Sastri was an Indian interpreter, jurist, civil servant, polyglot, and social reformer, who was known for his mastery over Indian and foreign languages alike in both classical and vernacular forms, as well as his general erudition and command of jurisprudence. At his death, he is known to have mastered fourteen languages, and had a conversational command of at least two to four more.
Vembaukum Sadagopacharlu was an Indian lawyer, jurist, banker, and statesman, who was the first native Indian member of the Madras Legislative Council, serving from 1861 to until his 1863 death, and one of the first Indians to achieve wealth and renown in the courts of British India, doing both alongside his brother, religious reformer and minor polymath V. Rajagopalacharlu, in the judicial system of the Madras Presidency, in which they were leading Vakils, he himself being the first Indian to become one. He belonged to the influential Vembaukum family.
Diwan BahadurSir Calamur Viravalli Kumaraswami SastriKt. was an Indian jurist, statesman, and Sanskrit scholar who was leader of the Madras Bar as a Vakil of the High Court, before being appointed as a puisne justice of the Madras High Court in 1914, and, later, Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. He also served on numerous special committees; most notoriously, the Rowlatt Committee - service on which nearly imperiled his later service as Chief Justice. The great-grandson, great-great-grandson, and great-great-great-grandson of celebrated Sanskritists, he himself was noted for achieving "brilliant success, with speed" from his first days practicing law. In his heyday, he was considered "the most brilliant representative of the Madras Judicial Service", and the successor to V. Bhashyam Aiyangar.
Chetput Ramaswami Iyer Pattabhiraman was an Indian lawyer and politician from the Indian National Congress. He was the eldest son of Indian statesman C. P. Ramaswami Iyer. He served as a Member of Indian Parliament from Kumbakonam from 1957 to 1967 and as a Union Minister from 1966 to 1967.
Dewan BahadurCalamur Viravalli Viswanatha Sastri was an Indian jurist and statesman who served as a justice of the High Court of the Madras Presidency, following and alongside his elder brother Dewan Bahadur Sir C. V. Kumaraswami Sastri. He was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal in 1934.
The Mylapore clique or oligarchy was a small coterie, amounting to a "handful" of politically moderate, elite Brahmins, many of them noted lawyers, administrators, academics or educators, or industrialists, in the Madras Presidency, who 'wielded almost exclusive influence and patronage in the service and government appointments', 'controlled the flow of resources out of the institutions of the capital' and 'dominated the professional and political life of [the presidency].' Informal and exclusive, it was historically controlled by two extended families, the Vembaukum Iyengars, and the Calamur Viravalli-Chetpet Iyers, and took its name from the luxurious Madras City neighborhood in which many leading members kept mansions. The clique coalesced and began its dominance in the 1880s and 1890s under the headship of Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer, with R. Raghunatha Rao as a tertiary leader; while some argue that it reached its zenith between 1910 and 1920, others highlight its remarkable successes in ministry and magistracy continuing in the 1920s and 1930s, with Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer as leader.
Chetpet Ramaswamy Pattabhirama Iyer, surname alternately spelt Aiyar, originally surnamed Dikshitar, was an Indian lawyer and jurist, noted for having led the Tanjore Bar and served as the Tanjore public prosecutor, before relocating to the city of Madras, whereupon he ultimately became a Vakil of the High Court of Madras, central member of the Mylapore clique, and a leader of the Madras bar, along with M. O. Parthasarathy Iyengar, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer, P. R. Sundaram Iyer, Sir V. C. Desikachariar, and Sir C. Sankaran Nair, immediately behind Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer, from 1891.
Calamur MahadevanFNAFGMMSI, sometimes known as C. Mahadevan, was an Indian specialist in economic geology, marine geology, and nuclear geology, and 1934 Founding Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, elected for Earth and Planetary Sciences, serving on the Council of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 1948 until his 1962 death. Chosen as a Fulbright scholar, with aid from the United States National Research Council, he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Appointed to the first Professorship of Geology at Andhra University after fourteen years as Superintendent Geologist at the Geological Survey of Hyderabad, he was known as a doyen or foundational figure in the field of Indian geology.
The Calamur Viravalli family, inclusive of closely intermarried "merged" lines was one of the two preeminent Brahmin dynasties in the Madras Presidency who dominated the Mylapore clique, alongside the Vembaukum family. They were originally Vadama Iyers from Kalambur and nearby hamlets in North Arcot, who traced their ancestry to Appayya Dikshita, and before that, Deshastha movements from the North. They were traditionally by hereditary profession renowned Sanskritists, as with Anantharama, father of patriarch C. V. Runganada Sastri, Anantharama's father, and Anantharama's father's father, but rapidly adapted to the practice and administration of law and English-style governance, with many Calamurs coming to rank among India's most celebrated lawyers, jurists, administrators, and statesmen.
Calamur Chandrasekhara Sastri (1854–1887), sometimes Sastry or Sastriyar, was the first Principal and Professor of English and Sanskrit of the Maharajah's College at Vizianagaram from his appointment in 1875, developing it from a secondary school with four teachers into a graduate institution before his death at the age of 32 in 1887, with the support of the contemporaneously reigning Maharajas of Vizianagaram, Pusapati Vijayarama Gajapathi Raju III and Pusapati Ananda Gajapati Raju. He was the first Indian principal of any South Indian college at the time.
Diwan Bahadur Mandayam Osuri Parthasarathi Iyengar, M.A., M.L. (1857–1926) was an Indian lawyer and magistrate who retired to private practice in 1913, from the role of District and Sessions Judge of Rajahmundry in the Madras Presidency, having served prior as Chief Judge and Third Judge of the Court of Small Causes, and as a judge of the Madras City Civil Court. He was born in 1857, and after graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1879 apprenticed with T. Rama Rao, before enrolling as a Vakil of the High Court of Madras. He subsequently graduated to the rank of Advocate, and was recognized as one of the leaders of the Appellate Side, along with C. R. Pattabhirama Iyer, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer, P. R. Sundaram Iyer, Sir V. C. Desikachariar, and Sir C. Sankaran Nair, immediately behind Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar and Sir S. Subramania Iyer, from 1891, prior to embarking on his judicial career in 1896. He was a member of the Madras Law College Council, and reportedly led the Triplicane Clique. He was uncle to M. O. P. Iyengar and M. O. T. Iyengar.
