Attended talk by Mr. S. Muthiah on "Madras and its American connections" at the Dr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation. The lecture was very informative. Mr. Muthiah started with a brief biography of Elihu Yale before moving on to Cornwallis, Madras handkerchiefs, cotton, the ice house, American Jaffna missionaries, Samuel Green's Tamil translations of medical books, Winslow's Tamil-English dictionary, the Scudder family's contributions and Ida Scudder, the story of how the Americans tried to introduce the cotton gin into South India, J.S. Chandler the American who edited Madras University's Tamil lexicon, Henry Steel Olcott, the Women's Christian College, YMCA, the TB sanatorium at Madanapalle founded in 1915 by American missionaries which was the largest for its time, Pond's and the Tamil translation project sponsored by the Ford foundation. The lecture ended appropriately with a reference to the celebrated film-maker Ellis R. Dungan. Was utterly surprised to learn that United States of America in its fledgling days tried to start a sort-of East India Company along the Coromandel coast in the 1780s with a factory at Porto Novo. But the British in India appeared too strong for them and well entrenched, too. Also, I got to know that Kovilpatti in Tirunelveli dt. (then known as Tinnevely) was one of the biggest cotton producing centres in India back then. Another interesting fact was that Kodaikanal was discovered by American missionaries. But Mr. Muthiah (perhaps deliberately) left out any reference to the widespread belief that the first Indian to sail to the US in the 1790s was a native of Madras. Yeah, I know it is a baseless rumour not worth commenting upon. Also, the colourless life of Nathaniel Higginson, the first mayor of Madras and later a President of Fort St George wasn't worthy of consideration.
