Mylai Chinna Thambi Pillai Rajah (17 June 1883 – 23 August 1943) was an Indian politician, educationist, social and political activist from the Indian state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil languag ...

. Rajah was born to a Tamil family of

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Tamil Nadu, the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost states and territories of India, Indian state. The largest city ...

. He entered politics after graduation and was a leader in the Justice Party. However, he quit the party in 1923 over the party's treatment of the then Depressed Classes. He was the first leader who organized the Scheduled Classes at the national level in India, and the most prominent Scheduled Classes leader of pre-independent India. In his heyday, Rajah was considered to be a person equal in stature to B. R. Ambedkar. He was the pioneer of mid-day meal scheme in India.

Early life

Rajah was born to Mylai Chinna Thambi Pillai in 1883 at St. Thomas Mount,

. Chinna Thambi Pillai was the manager of Lawrence Asylum. Rajah had his schooling at the Wesley Mission High School,

Royapettah Royapettah is a neighbourhood of Chennai, India. Location Royapettah is located at the central part of the city of Chennai, with an elevation of 9 m (29 ft.) above mean sea level. The neighbourhood comes under Teynampet Zone (numbe ...

and Wesley College. He graduated from

Madras Christian College Madras Christian College (MCC) is a liberal arts and sciences college in Chennai, India. Founded in 1837, MCC is one of Asia's oldest extant colleges. The college is affiliated to the University of Madras but functions as an autonomous institu ...

and worked as a school teacher and later a professor.

Politics

Rajah joined politics at an early age and was elected president of the Chingleput district board. In 1916, he became the Secretary of the Adi-Dravida Mahajana Sabha. He was one of the founder-members of the

South Indian Liberal Federation The Justice Party, officially the South Indian Liberal Federation, was a political party in the Madras Presidency of British India. It was established on 20 November 1916 in Victoria Public Hall in Madras by Dr C. Natesa Mudaliar and co-found ...

. Rajah was elected to the Madras Legislative Council as a Justice Party candidate during the first general elections held in November 1920. He was elected Deputy Leader of the Justice Party in the house. Rajah was the first member of the scheduled caste community to be elected to the Madras Legislative Council. In 1922, Rajah passed a resolution demanding that the terms ''Paraiya'' and ''Panchama'' be dropped from official usage and instead be substituted with '' Adi-Dravida'' and ''Adi-Andhra''. In 1921, the Justice Party government of the Raja of Panagal introduced reservations for non-Brahmins in government jobs. However, this act did not allocate quotas for scheduled castes as demanded by Rajah. Disenchanted, Rajah led a delegation of scheduled castes to protest the act and press their demand for separate quota. But the Justice Party did not respond. Instead, when riots broke out in Puliyanthope the same year, top-ranking Justice Party leaders regarded the Government's policy of appeasement of paraiyars responsible for the strike. Outraged at this, Rajah quit the party in 1923. He remained a member of the Madras Legislative Council till 1926. In 1925, he created and became the president of the All India Depressed Classes Association at Nagpur. From 1927 till 1937, he was a member of the Imperial Legislative Assembly. During April–July 1937 he was the

Madras Presidency The Madras Presidency, or the Presidency of Fort St. George, also known as Madras Province, was an administrative subdivision (presidency) of British India. At its greatest extent, the presidency included most of southern India, including th ...

's Minister for Development in the short lived interim provisional cabinet of Kurma Venkata Reddy Naidu. In 1917, he was nominated by Lord Pentland to the Elementary Education Committee. In 1919, he served on the select committee of the Elementary Education Bill. He was also a member of the Secondary Education Reorganization Committee. In 1924,

Lord Willingdon Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon (12 September 1866 – 12 August 1941), was a British Liberal politician and administrator who served as Governor General of Canada, the 13th since Canadian Confederation, and as Viceroy and Go ...

nominated him to the Senate of Madras University.

Change of views

Originally Rajah stood for the Separate Electorates and Ambedkar for the Joint Electorates with Adult Suffrage and Reservation of seats. But Ambedkar changed his state of mind to the separate electorate, putting forth separate electorates as a united demand of the then Depressed Classes due to the pressure from Rajah and Madras Presidency Organisations in 1931. However, Rajah changed his mind to Joint Electorates with reserved seats on population basis due to lower representation of the Minority Pact in 1932. So he concluded a pact with the All India President of the Hindu Mahasabha

B. S. Moonje Balakrishna Shivram Moonje (B.S.Moonje, also B.S. Munje, 12 December 1872 – 3 March 1948) was a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha in India. Career Moonje was born into a Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin (DRB) family in 1872 at Bilaspur in Centr ...

. This was known as the Rajah–Moonje pact. According to this pact, Moonje offered reserved seats to the Scheduled Castes in return for Rajah's support. The Rajah-Moonje Pact was a precursor for the Poona Pact.

Death

Rajah died on Monday, 23 August 1943 at his house at St. Thomas Mount, today named as "Rajah Street". To honour his works,

Bayya Suryanarayana Murthy Bayya Suryanarayana Murthy, a.k.a. B. S. Murthy (29 October 1906 – 22 May 1979) was a journalist, poet, short story writer, essayist, and a six-term Parliamentarian He was born in 1906 to B. Nagaiah at Nagaram in Razole taluk, in East Godavari ...

founded the M. C. Rajah Memorial Hostel for the college students of the Scheduled Classes in 1944 at Saidapet in Madras.

Publications

* * *Jain Meeanakshi, Rajah-Moonje Pact: Documents On A Forgotten Chapter Of Indian History (with Devendra Svarupa, Low Price Publishers, 2007), .

References

Bibliography

External links

Celebrating the Birth Anniversary of M. C. Rajah
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rajah, M. C. 1883 births 1943 deaths Tamil Nadu politicians Madras Christian College alumni Members of the Central Legislative Assembly of India Politicians from Chennai Activists from Tamil Nadu