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A life full of firsts
S. MUTHIAH
Lodge Cauveri, Tanjore, 27.7.1918
When a reader sent me the photograph that is published above today, he wanted to know whether I could get someone to name those in the picture. The picture, he wrote, was of Lodge Cauveri of Tanjore and was taken on July 27, 1918. A bit of scouting a
round got me the names but also information about a person who was described as having lived “a life full of firsts”. The person so identified was the young man in the middle of the trio seated on the floor; his name, I was told, was R.V. Krishna Ayyar.
Apart from collecting 27 gold medals and standing first in every class from First Class through his M.L., he scored several other far more significant firsts. These included:
Being the youngest District Munsiff ever in the Madras Presidency when he was appointed to the post in Erode in 1910 after he was ruled out of the ICS because of an eye problem. He was only 26 when he was appointed to the post, giving room to be popularly called ‘The Boy Munsiff’. He was only a couple of years older when he was transferred to Eluru in what is now Andhra Pradesh and found that eminent lawyer T. Prakasam, later Prime Minister of Madras and Chief Minister of Andhra, appearing before him.
He was the only official to serve the Madras Legislature in its first three avatars – under the 1919 Government of India Act, the 1935 Government of India Act, and the 1950 Constitution. He was the Special Officer appointed to implement the 1919 Act in Madras, became Assistant Secretary to the Legislative Council in 1921 and served as Secretary in 1924, 1935 and 1952. He was called the ‘Erskine May of India’, the “undisputed authority on the practice, custom and constitution of parliamentary bodies.”
In 1939, when the Rajagopalachari Ministry resigned, he was appointed Secretary of the Education and Public Health Department, the first non-ICS man to be made Secretary of a Government Department in Madras.
He was the first non-Civilian Secretary to deliver a Convocation address. He did so in 1933 at Annamalai University. He also delivered the Convocation Address at the University of Madras in 1955, when he was Secretary of the Legislature, a post he accepted by coming out of retirement at Chief Minister Rajaji’s request. When he finally laid down office, he was the first Secretary of any Legislature in India to be accorded a public reception and felicitated in the House.
Krishna Ayyar, born in Rasipuram, near Salem, studied in Madras Christian College and Law College before he became the legendary Dr. S. Swaminadhan’s junior. He later started his practice in Salem and his contemporaries included C. Rajagopalachari. But when the Civil Service beckoned, his whole life changed.
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