A satyagrahi who funded the education of countless women in the Kongu region

Selva Priya recounts the inspiring life of T.S. Avinashilingam Chettiar, a philanthropist and freedom fighter in Coimbatore.

“In 1957, my grandmother, one of the first women in Coimbatore to go beyond schooling, was surprised to see the word, ‘paid’, on her semester fee slip when she was planning to drop out owing to financial constraints. Much later, after she had joined the college as a faculty member, she discovered the identity of her anonymous benefactor — T. S. Avinashilingam Chettiar — who funded the education of countless women in the Kongu region,” recalls Selva Priya, a third-generation student at the Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, a deemed-to-be university.

Avinashilingam was born in 1903 into an affluent family in Tiruppur in the composite Coimbatore district. He spent his formative years under his uncle, T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar, an influential figure in the Coimbatore municipality and later a Lok Sabha member.

After gaining a law degree in 1924, Avinashilingam embarked on philanthropy by establishing an orphanage in Coimbatore. It was the first of its kind in the Madras Presidency as it accepted ‘Harijan’ children, overcoming objections from traditional quarters.

However, his advocacy for social equality earned him a peculiar epithet by his mid-20s — the ‘Professional Beggar’. But he wore this title with pride, as Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya did before him, considering the act of soliciting public donations for the uplift of the poor as a noble pursuit.

In 1926, Avinashilingam’s life transformed when he met the Mahatma as he toured Tamil Nadu to gather support for the Civil Disobedience Movement. Avinashilingam asked Gandhi if Khadi could compete with mill goods in the long run. Gandhi’s profound response left a lasting impression: “Just as the great temples of Tamil Nadu prospered not on economic principles but on the faith and devotion of people, so will the Khadi industry, providing millions with employment.” An inspired Avinashilingam decided to relinquish law and join the independence movement. Avinashilingam rose through the ranks quickly, becoming the president of the District Congress Committee. Soon, Avinashilingam, alongside lifelong comrades C.P. Subbiah and K. Subramaniam, spearheaded a procession at Coimbatore’s famous Valankulam tank, a symbolic act of resistance to the British salt law. Avinashilingam found himself incarcerated, and shuttled between the Coimbatore and Vellore prisons for six months.

His prison term was exacerbated by solitary confinement in a cramped chamber. His existence was reduced to a struggle for survival, with only a pot for sanitary needs. “I am surprised I did not turn blind after living in darkness days on end,” the Padma Bhushan awardee wrote later in his autobiography, The Sacred Touch. During his subsequent imprisonment in the Madurai and Cuddalore prisons, Avinashilingam met K. Santhanam, who would later become the Minister for Railways.

In the desolate confines of the Cuddalore jail, Avinashilingam was haunted by the agonising cries of fellow prisoners en route to their execution. Yet, amid the darkness, he and his fellow inmates found solace in the timeless verses of Tamil literature. To drown out the cries, prisoners would sing the evocative verses of Subramania Bharathiar’s song: “Yaam arindha mozhigalile thamizh mozhi pol....Inidhaavadhu engum kaanom.” He translated academic texts into Tamil and religious Tamil verses into English during his time in prison. After his release from prison, during Gandhi’s visit to the Madras Presidency in 1934, Avinashilingam orchestrated a week-long campaign in the State. “Here, amidst conversations with ‘Harijans’ pleading for temple access, Gandhi, with Avinashilingam’s help, conducted several informal meetings to address issues of the locals,” says S. Padmanabhan, a Tiruppur-based historian.