01Salem, Vedaranyam and Madras
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari was born at Thorapalli near Hosur into a Srivaishnava family and practised law at Salem, where he became chairman of the municipality in 1917. He joined Gandhi in 1919 and became one of his closest colleagues; his daughter married Gandhi’s son Devdas. In April 1930 he led a salt march from Tiruchirappalli to Vedaranyam on the coast and was arrested there. As Premier of Madras Presidency from 1937 to 1939 he brought in prohibition, starting in Salem district, and passed the Temple Entry Authorization and Indemnity Act of 1939; on 8 July that year Harijans entered the Meenakshi temple at Madurai.
02Governor-General and the Itihasas
On 21 June 1948 he succeeded Mountbatten as Governor-General, the only Indian to hold the office, until the Republic began on 26 January 1950. He was later Union Home Minister and Chief Minister of Madras (1952–54), and in 1959 founded the Swatantra Party. In 1954 he was among the first three people given the Bharat Ratna. For Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan he retold the Mahabharata (1951) and the Ramayana (1957) in plain English, and these little books are still in print; his Tamil Ramayana, Chakravarti Thirumagan, won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1958. He wrote the Tamil devotional song ‘Kurai Onrum Illai’, which M. S. Subbulakshmi made known everywhere. He died in Madras on 25 December 1972.
