Economist extraordinaire

A SHINING star in an otherwise bleak social-science firmament of Tamil Nadu, Professor Srinivasa Ambirajan, the well-known economist, passed away on February 4. After a near-miraculous recovery from a malignant cancer in the early 1990s, he had resumed sustained research only in the last few years.

Born in Kodaganallur, from where Sundara Swamigal hailed, the mentor of 'Manonmaniyam' P. Sundaram Pillai, Ambirajan was deeply attached to the little village on the banks of Tamiraparani which he visited annually. The only son of Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, the doyen of Indian English literature, he grew up in an atmosphere of knowledge and education. He had his early schooling in the Tamil medium and later went to Andhra Pradesh to continue his studies. While he is known for his felicity in the English language, few knew that he had a deep interest in the Tamil classics, especially the Nalayira Divya Prabhandam. He once wrote a fine paper on the economic wisdom of the ancient Tamil people.

Ambirajan studied economics and took his Ph.D. from the Andhra University for his dissertation on taxation in India. Later, he began to take a deep interest in history, acquiring another doctoral degree from the Manchester University. Classical Economy and British Policy in India (Cambridge University Press) was the outcome of this research. Later, he moved to Australia and taught for 17 years at the Sydney University. In 1981, he moved to IIT, Madras, where he taught at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences till his retirement in 1996.

Ambirajan was well-versed in classical political economy and the history of economic thought. His thorough grounding in Western intellectual and philosophical traditions is transparent on every page he wrote.

Though he wrote a couple of erudite monographs, like the treatise on monetary policy in colonial India, he spent a lot of time writing columns, occasional pieces and a plethora of book reviews. C. Rangarajan, former Governor of the RBI and now Governor of Andhra Pradesh, encouraged him to write the history of the RBI from 1967 to 1982. Ambirajan was organising the notes for this volume barely hours before he was taken to hospital.

Ambirajan was a fine teacher. Even at IIT, where social sciences were given a short shrift, he groomed some doctoral students to study Tamil Nadu between the two the World Wars, thus furthering our understanding of this crucial interregnum.

The abysmal state of the social sciences education in Tamil Nadu pained him. And he would encourage every little flicker of hope that he encountered.

On my invitation, he spoke to the students at the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, on a few occasions during his annual visits.

He took these talks as seriously as he would a more cosmopolitan audience. When I first met him in the late 1980s as a young student studying B.Com., with an earnest interest in history and literature, he encouraged me to pursue a career in the social sciences. When an young architect approached him with a proposal to help him study the history of Srirangam town, he gladly accepted him as his doctoral student.

Ambirajan was a true liberal, tolerant of various ideologies. My pronounced Dravidian leanings did not come in the way of either his fondness for me or appreciating my work even in print.

The sharp wit and the acerbic comments in his columns and articles ruffled few feathers and once landed him in trouble with the IIT administration.

Ultimately, he got over institutional restrictions on his freedom to write by dropping his professional affiliation. Thankfully, some of these pieces were compiled as a volume titled Good Times, Bad Times.

One image of Ambirajan is etched deeply in my mind. One evening in 1992, after sustained chemotherapy had led to the growth of cataract and dimmed his vision, I happened to visit him at his 'Sydney House' in Alwarpet, Chennai. Pouring over the dim images of a microfilm, he was in visible pain.

It was the back volumes of the Madras Medical Journal, dating back to the 19th Century, a journal that he had been looking for a very long time. By chance, an American friend had it and had loaned it to him. Despite an uncertain future staring at him, he was reading for the pure pleasure of satiating his quest for knowledge.

A. R. VENKATACHALAPATHY

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