Many congratulations to Dr. Nanditha Krishna on receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Literature on March 3, 2016 from Vidyasagar University, at Midnapore, West Bengal.
This honor was presented to Dr. Nanditha Krishna (right) by Dr. Ranjan Chakrabarti, Vice Chancellor (left) and by His Excellency Sri. K.N. Tripathi, Chancellor and Governor of West Bengal (center).
As well as being the author of over twenty books and hundreds of articles about Indian culture and traditions, Dr. Nanditha Krishna is the President of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, which is active throughout south India, running schools, museums, the C.P.R. Institute of Indological Research, the C.P. Art Centre, and the C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre.
The C. P. R. Foundation carries out a vast array of programs and special projects – from the Kindness Kids Project to the restoration of over fifty sacred groves. Some programs further an awareness of Indian art, culture, history, and archeological discoveries. Some provide assistance and encouragement to those who may be less fortunate – people, especially children and women, of many diverse backgrounds and circumstances.
The work of the Foundation casts a light on many thousands of years of the life of India, from great classical art and history to folk art and folk traditions. At the heart of all these traditions and the work of the Foundation lies a deep appreciation of the natural world, animals, the earth, and the environment.
The C.P.R. Foundation was founded in 1966 to continue the work of one of India’s greatest statesmen, C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar.
To visit the website of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, click here.
The stone steps, narrow and slightly sloping from centuries of use, extend downwards from between the paws of the great lion down into the green waters of the tank where devotees put their hand into the water and sprinkle it on their heads. The largest and oldest of the temples in this area, the Vrinchipuram Margapandeswarar Temple stands near Vellore, in Tamil Nadu, in south India.
Its outer walls tower perhaps forty feet into the air and are massively thick, like those of a fortress. The atmosphere in the courtyard paved with giant stones is peaceful and very ancient — its ancientness being interwoven with its peace and its massive structure. Like eternity, it seems indestructible, permanent, and unmoving, calm like the great stones that dot the nearby granite hillsides.
Two Ganeshas in bas relief stand near the temple entrance – one for the main deity, Shiva, who is called here Margapandeswarar, the other for his consort, Parvati, called Maragadambal. They have two marriage halls in the temple where once a year crowds gather to celebrate anew their divine wedding. Steps lead up to these huge platforms that are adorned with hundreds of columns.
The Vrinchipuram Temple gets its name from Brahma, who is known here as Virinjin, and who worsipped Shiva at this place. In the sixteenth century, the Bomma Nayaka kings added the two wedding halls, for Margabandeswarar and the goddess Maragadambal, filled with beautiful sculptured columns, delicate and intricate, in the Nayaka style.
Nayak rulers assumed power in south India after the defeat of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1564 by Moslems from the north. The Nayaks built many pillared halls in existing temples and tall gopurams.
Before entering the interior space of the temple, one walks along the wide stone pavements, inside the four outward walls. The temple goes back to the eighth century CE, to the time of the Chola kings, with Raja Raja Chola, who constructed the main shrine, being one of the earlier builders. Before Charlemagne held sway over his empire in Europe, people were coming to these halls to worship.
As if to emphasize the expanse of time, a sundial stands in the courtyard, telling with its shadow cast by the sun, the correct time of 10:30 in the morning.
Growing along the walls, are palms which are the temple tree; here they have the unusual property of, on alternating years, producing black, then white flowers. No one knows how or why.
One of the greatest Hindu saints, Adi Shankar, who brought back Hinduism in the eighth century, after it had for some time been eclipsed by Buddhism and Jainism, visited this temple, to sing a sacred song by the waters of the tank at the feet of the lion.
Eight centuries later, in 1520, Sri Appayya Dikshithar (1520-1593), was born here. An enlightened Vedic teacher, philosopher, and writer, he is remembered as one of the greatest intellectual and spiritual lights of Hinduism, after Adi Shankar. A large cross-shaped indentation has been dug out in the courtyard and lined with stones. Once a year, it is filled with water as a memorial to him. His brother was a direct ancestor of the statesman C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, in memory of whom the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation was founded in 1966, in Madras.
Among a row of Shiva icons is a representation of a female Tamil poet and saint, a woman living in the sixth century who spent her life writing poetry to Shiva.
As in most Hindu temples, one may circle the icons of the nine planets, the navagraha. These are the sun; the moon; the five visible planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; Rahu, who is the north lunar node; and Ketu, who is the south lunar node (lunar nodes are points along the moon’s orbit that relate to eclipses).
Unusually, the roof above the main sanctuary is made of strings of rudraksha beads. These are reddish seeds from a particular sacred tree. They are widely used and often worn as garlands for their properties to induce healing and spiritual well-being.
Beautiful and serene, massive and unmovable, the Vrincipuram Temple stands unperturbed by the din of the modern world, a doorway to worlds and levels beyond this one.
M. Amerthalingam with G. Balaji outside the offices of CPREEC
By Sharon St Joan
Amirthalingam, the third child of his parents, came into the world on January 15, 1961. Nakkambadi, in the Ariyalur Taluk district, in south India, was a small hamlet surrounded entirely by water. To this day, there is no ground transportation, and no cars or buses.
The child’s father, A. Murugesan, was the administrative officer of 16 villages. His mother’s name was Pichaiyamml. Owning 100 acres of farmland, the whole family worked in the fields, planting and harvesting rice.
A bright and stabilizing force, his oldest sister, Danush, cared for and guided her four younger siblings like a parent. The boy Ramalingam was the second oldest.
Their little hamlet was 280 kilometers (174 miles) south of Chennai, with Ariyalur being the nearest city. There was a small government arts college there.
To go out of the hamlet to anywhere else meant walking two kilometers (a mile and a half) – to the station to catch the train.
Having already earned a master’s degree in history, in 1977, Danush passed her preliminary exam in administrative service. With big dreams for herself and for her brothers and sisters, she saw herself as an IAS (Indian Administrative Services) Officer, Ramalingam as a police officer, and Amirthalingam as a forest officer – it was clear that he was drawn to trees and plants, and an occupation in the forest would be a good fit for him.
Grand Anicut Kallinai Dam on the nearby Kaveri River.
Most of the other village children attended school only up to the fifth standard (fifth grade) and became agricultural workers like their parents before them. At one point, all five of the children in Amirthalingam’s family were in college.
At city college, Ramalingam earned a Batchelor of Science and a Batchelor of Labor Law degree. But when Danush asked him to go on to get his master’s degree, he expressed no interest and said he didn’t want to. Instead he joined the National Cadet Corps becoming a Senior Under Officer.
As for Amirthalingam, he generally tried to do whatever he was asked to do, and of course, in a traditional family, he would have been expected to obey his elder sister. Fortunately, she always had his best interests at heart, recognizing his keen interest in plants.
In 1980 though, tragedy struck their family. When Danush went to take her main examination in administrative service, she fell ill and passed away suddenly.
The family never recovered from this tremendous blow. The guiding force who had held them all together, Danush, was gone. Without her, everything seemed to fall apart. His uncles started to spend money recklessly. His father and mother fell into despondency. In 1984, Amirthalingam left the village and set off to Madras to work on his master’s degree in botany.
By 1990, he got a job offer to become an assistant professor. In terms of his career, this was a good step, but Amirthalingam was all too aware that it might also be a final step, a point beyond which he could not go. Without any funding from his family to continue his studies, he would never be able to become a full professor.
Meanwhile his father had devised quite different plans for his third son. He had arranged for Amirthalingam, then 25, to marry a young girl, aged 13, who was a close relative. A rural custom, this was commonly done. Not to do so would be considered an affront to both families. This marriage seemed all wrong to Amirthalingam, and he refused to go through with it.
Losing his temper with his son, his father angrily threw him out of the house. Forbidden to ever return, he was given no money, no food, and told not to enter the house again, not even for a drink of water. Surviving on the not-to-clean public water from the common village well, for a year he slept on a cot outside in the open, near his family’s house, buying food with the small amounts of money that his younger sister, Selvi, was able to slip to him from time to time.
Devastated first by the loss of his beloved older sister and then by the rejection of his father, he wandered around the nearby villages, following the inner voices that spoke to him – he spent his days collecting animal fossils, reading ancient inscriptions, and digging up old coins left in the dust many centuries before.
Gradually, he began to acquire a reputation as an unusual person who had some special knowledge. People would approach him to ask him questions and to seek information. He first explored ancient megalithic sites, then neolithic sites, covering half of the district.
During that time, he traveled to Madras and found temporary work as an exhibition guide at the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation.
A year or so later, he received an unexpected phone call one day from Dr. Nanditha Krishna, then Director of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, who remembered the intense interest the young man had shown in exploring the past and his great love of plants. She asked him to come back to Madras to work for her foundation.
M. Amirthalingam standing outside the CPREEC .
In July 3, 1993, he joined the CPR Environmental Education Centre as a Research Fellow. No longer a lost soul wandering the desert, he had found a place where he could pursue his passions, where his interests were valuable and much valued.
He plunged into a study of the trees of Tamil Nadu. Visiting more than 500 temples all over Tamil Nadu, he documented the surrounding trees and plants and wrote his first book, Sacred Trees of Tamil Nadu. Next he wrote the Sacred Groves of Tamil Nadu; both were published by the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation.
It is common for junior writers not to be given credit for the research they do and the books they write. It is all too common, in India and elsewhere, to give credit only to senior, well established authors. The C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation does not follow this practice. Instead they give full credit to those who do the work. M. Amirthalingam has written a number of authoritative books about the plants and trees of Tamil Nadu.
While employed at the CPR Foundation, he spent four or five years at Madras Christian College studying botany, earning a Master of Science degree and a Master of Philosophy.
During that time he researched varieties of rice; recalling his childhood working in the rice paddies, he was able to appreciate the true value of rice, a staple of food in south India. He says that there are 66 varieties of rice in India, though really only a handful in Tamil Nadu. He spent much time researching the physiology and biochemistry of rice, especially the Sativa variety. He studied plant growth regulators which cause the rice to grow. Studying the growth rates, he understood the morphological changes and acquired great scientific expertise in his field.
Amirthalingam’s wife, Geetha, works as a clerk in a law office, and they have a fourteen year old daughter, Priyadarshini. His younger sister, Selvi, the one who gave him money for food, now also lives in Madras.
The young man who wandered through the villages, lost in his study of rice, trees, and old coins, now shines a light for others on to the amazing the world of plants.
Top photo: Sharon St Joan / M. Amirhalingam with G. Balaji at CPREEC.
Second photo: Beckamrajeev / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 unproved license.” / The grand Anicut Dam was built in the second century on the Kaveri River by the Chola King Karikalan.
Third photo: Sharon St Joan / M. Amirthalingam outside the offices of CPREEC.
C.P. showed her the trees of the shola forests. Shola trees are the natural vegetation of the Nilgiris. Shola is a covering of native trees and grassland, found in the higher hill regions of south India. They were ideally suited to the cooler climate of that region, and to the native animals like the elephants, tigers, leopards and gaur who lived there; at least 25 species of trees were part of this eco-system.
When the British came, lacking any understanding of the native vegetation, they destroyed much of the shola forests, planting foreign trees there instead. “The British cut down a lot of shola forest, and put up tea estates; they planted silver oak, wattle, eucalyptus, pine, cedar, and beech, and a whole lot of temperate plants from England and Australia – because the climate in Ooty was temperate.” From some of these trees, they produced viscose, a semi-synthetic fabric called viscose rayon or rayon.
Cutting down the original forests “was very harmful to the birds and the animals. Shola forests are soft, but the pines had sharp needles which were harmful to the birds and the native mammals. Now the government is pulling down the invasive species – but the native trees take a very long time to grow back.”
Eucalyptus trees, which were commonly planted to replace the original trees, also produce an oil that has antiseptic properties and can be used as an insecticide. Because of these properties, it was toxic to many of the birds, animals, and native insects which had lived there.
This lesson learned in childhood of how native plants and animals are essential to sustaining a thriving eco-system served a valuable purpose later on. One of the key projects of CPREEC, one of the foundations headed by Dr. Krishna, is reclaiming eco-systems, especially the complete restoration of 53 sacred groves. These are acres of forest land, held by and cared for by local village people, but over the centuries, many have fallen into neglect.
The officers of CPREEC, especially the botanists and other scientists, have brought these 53 sacred groves back to life, ensuring that every tree they plant is originally native to that specific area, and that it will help to bring back the wildlife and animals that used to live in these sacred lands. In restoring eco-systems, just “planting trees” will not do, they must be the specific trees native to that area.
Away from the forest and back in Bombay for the school year, there was not so much of nature. Nanditha’s school, which she attended from kindergarten through the eleventh standard (eleventh grade) before going on to university, was Cathedral and John Connan High School.
When she was in the ninth standard, she and a few of the other girls came upon a fledgling crow – a pied crow, the kind of Indian crow that is pale gray and black. The young crow had a bit of a crooked beak, was being tormented by the other birds, and was clearly in need of help. They rescued the crow, calling him “Charlie,” and hid him out of sight in the bathroom on the top floor, since they weren’t allowed to have any pets or other animals at school.
Without any knowledge of exactly what to do, they nevertheless managed to take good care of Charlie. “We knew nothing about how to care for a crow. We just fed him our lunch.” Fortunately, crows are omnivores, who will eat a wide variety of food, and Charlie had no permanently disabling injuries. He had a good appetite and grew stronger.
When they were sure he could fly well, they released him from the top floor. On the ground floor they had a tiny garden – there wasn’t room for a big garden in Bombay. That was where they had lunch, and they all shared part of their lunch with Charlie who would fly down every day to join them. Usually lunch was sandwiches. “He had a lot of sandwiches. I used to come on Sundays. I’d walk over to the school to give him something to eat.” She also gave food to two rabbits who were there as well. Very sadly, to the horror of the students, the rabbits were sacrificed by the biology teacher to be dissected – the only lessons the students learned from that horrible incident were that human beings can be very cruel and that science is not infallible.
Charlie continued to return daily for lunch while Nanditha was in the ninth, tenth and then the eleventh standard – and perhaps afterwards too. She left to attend college.
The many enchanted, magical hours that Dr. Krishna spent with her father, her great grandfather, and sometimes her grandparents, roaming through the forests and the wild places of India, experiencing a mystical connection with the wild animals, left an enduring legacy of kindness and of being at one with nature, that she has passed on since to thousands of young people. Through the schools and universities run by the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation and all the many school programs that CPREEC carries out throughout south India, children come to experience an enduring love and reverence for the natural world.
Top photo: L. Shyamal / cc-by-2.5 / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.” / Exacum bicolor, Shola flower from Talakaveri, Coorg, India.
Second photo: Sharon St Joan /A sacred grove near Arunachala, the first sacred grove restored by the C.P. Ramaswami Foundation; Dr. Nanditha Krishna, and Mr. Selvapandian, who is the CPREEC officer in charge of managing the restoration of the sacred groves.
Third photo: J.M.Garg / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” / A pair of Indian pied crows in West Bengal.
Fourth photo: Sharon St Joan / Dr. Nanditha Krishna with one of the children at the Kumbakonam school run by the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, following an event at the school.
To visit the website of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, click here.
To find Dr. Nanditha Krishna’s book Sacred Plants of India on Amazon, click here.
From her earliest childhood, her father and mother used to drive from Bombay to Madras, where they would stay for two or three months in the summer.
They would drive along the back roads and would always stop along the way at a couple of wildlife sanctuaries. They are no longer there now – replaced by factories or businesses.
One of India’s leading environmentalists, Director of CPREEC (C.P. Ramaswami Environmental Education Centre) and President of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, and author of many books, including most recently Sacred Plants of India, Dr. Nanditha Krishna has always been fascinated by the natural world. She credits her family, especially her father and her great-grandfather for introducing her to the wonders of nature when she was a child.
At the wildlife sanctuaries they visited along the road to Madras, they would see many birds, and lots of leopards, tigers, elephants, deer and gaur. Gaur is the Indian bison; they are not the same as water buffalo. The gaur is the tallest species of wild cattle, and they are still found today in the forests of India.
Dr. Krishna recalls the leopards as being “very curious.” “The tigers were very shy and would just disappear.” “Spotted deer were dainty and elegant.” “Sambar deer were big.” There were wild boar and several different species of monkeys – macaques and langurs. There were also Malabar squirrels which are large tree squirrels, called giant squirrels. She saw a black panther once. “It was magical.”
They would go from Bombay to Bangalore – off the main road and off the beaten track. The Dandeli forest is the second largest wildlife sanctuary in Karnataka; the river Kali and its tributaries wander through the forest. Bandipur National Park is adjacent to Mudumali National Park, with the Moyar River running between them. “We saw so many animals – mongoose, snakes, peacocks. And a huge variety of birds.”
Whenever they drove up to Ooty, a town in the hills of the Nilgiris, leopards and tigers would often cross the road. “When a herd of elephants was on the road, you would have to stop and wait because they could be unpredictable. The gaur were also unpredictable.”
When they saw leopards and tigers, her father and she would get down out of the car and go through the trees to have a look. Her mother, like mothers everywhere, was worried about their safety. “My mother was always shouting at my father, ‘Don’t get down!!’”
Whenever they saw a leopard, her father would say, “Come, let’s go as near as we can.” They would watch the leopard, and the leopard, equally curious, would watch them too. “Animals don’t attack unless they feel threatened or are hungry. They were just as curious about us as we were about them.”
“In those days, the animals were very curious, but the tigers were so shy.”
After serving for several years as the Dewan (Prime Minister) of the state of Travancore, Dr. Krishna’s great-grandfather, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, who is remembered as one India’s greatest statesman, went to live in Ooty where he spent the summer months and sometimes part of the winter. He lived there from 1948 until he passed away in 1966.
During this time he was the Vice-Chancellor of two Universities. When Nanditha was there as a child, C.P., as he was known to his friends, (she called him Thatha or “Grandfather”) would take her for daily walks into the forests. This is one of the most beautiful regions of India, with steep green hills, covered in green vegetation, dotted with rocks and boulders. The road there makes a steep climb, with many hairpin turns, up from the Mudumalai Forest or from Coimbatore. Ooty was popular with the British because of its cool, temperate climate.
On their walks, C.P. showed Nanditha how to find edible berries and which berries were poisonous. Because he had an excellent western education, as well as a profound knowledge of Indian culture, he would often quote English poetry. If they saw a yellow flower, he would quote from Wordsworth’s poem about the daffodils –
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils; …”
She remembers him fondly, “He understood the beauty and harmony of nature. He knew places in depth…he taught the art of silence.” Often, they would simply “sit and watch a lake or a river.”
Top photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96109131@N00/ Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.” / Mudumalai Forest in Tamil Nadu.
Second photo: Sharon St Joan / Dr. Nanditha Krishna outside the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation.
Third photo: Rakesh Kumar Dogra / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.” / A Malabar Giant Squirrel, or Indian Giant Squirrel, in the Mudumalai Forest.
Fourth photo: Yathin S Krishnappa / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” / Leopard in the Kabini Forest Reserve, Karnataka, India.
Fifth photo: Courtesy of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation / C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar as a young man, early twentieth century.
To visit the website of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, click here.
To find Dr. Nanditha Krishna’s book Sacred Plants of India on Amazon, click here.
