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Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar

Publication ,  Journal Article
Ramaswamy, S
Published in: Modern Asian Studies
January 1, 2018

This article explores the ways in which Pachaiyappa Mudaliar (1754?-1794) has been panegyrized as the quintessential benefactor of our times in Tamil prose, poetry, and pictures over the course of the past century and a half. In the bureaucratic and legal documents of the colonial state, he appears as a rapacious moneylender and behind-The-scenes wheeler-dealer, amember of that hated class of 'Madras dubashes', a 'most diabolical race of men'. In contrast, Tamil memory work since at least the 1840s has differently recalled this shadowy eighteenthcentury man as a selfless philanthropist whose vast wealth financed some of the earliest educational institutions in the Madras Presidency. I track the posthumous fate of Pachaiyappa's bequest to argue that even as the founding of the public trust and its educational philanthropy departed radically from his willed intentions, a new complex of living, dying, and giving for the sake of native education was put in place in the Tamil country in the age of colonial capital and pedagogic modernity.

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Published In

Modern Asian Studies

DOI

EISSN

1469-8099

ISSN

0026-749X

Publication Date

January 1, 2018

Volume

52

Issue

1

Start / End Page

35 / 61

Related Subject Headings

  • Cultural Studies
 

Citation

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Ramaswamy, S. (2018). Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar. Modern Asian Studies, 52(1), 35–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000531
Ramaswamy, S. “Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar.” Modern Asian Studies 52, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 35–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000531.
Ramaswamy S. Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar. Modern Asian Studies. 2018 Jan 1;52(1):35–61.
Ramaswamy, S. “Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 35–61. Scopus, doi:10.1017/S0026749X17000531.
Ramaswamy S. Giving becomes him: The posthumous fortune(s) of pachaiyappa mudaliar. Modern Asian Studies. 2018 Jan 1;52(1):35–61.
Journal cover image

Published In

Modern Asian Studies

DOI

EISSN

1469-8099

ISSN

0026-749X

Publication Date

January 1, 2018

Volume

52

Issue

1

Start / End Page

35 / 61

Related Subject Headings

  • Cultural Studies