Why College Road as a name has to be retained in Chennai

I am glad the story had a happy ending — at least as far as I, and several heritage activists were concerned. I’m sure, of course, that actor Jaishankar’s family may have been disappointed that only a lane and not a main road would be named after him. But to me, College Road was far greater as a name than any individual, and it had to be retained. Doing away with it would have been a blunder — especially by a government that professes to love Tamil.

Not WCC, But the College of Fort St. George

Despite popular assumption, College Road does not take its name from Women’s Christian College. It actually commemorates the College of Fort St. George, which functioned from 1812 to 1854 at what is now the Directorate of Public Instructions campus.

The college was founded primarily to train employees of the East India Company in South Indian languages — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam — as well as Persian and Sanskrit. One of its founders was Francis Whyte Ellis (1777–1819), a linguist and a respected Collector of Madras.

The Roots of Linguistic Scholarship at College Road

Under Ellis and his colleagues, the college evolved far beyond its original purpose. It became a centre of scholarly revival for South Indian languages. Instruction was delivered by munshis, pandits, and pulavars — native scholars who brought deep expertise.

With the Company’s backing, the college began collecting manuscripts and publishing books. It was from this very institution that the first dictionaries of all four southern languages were printed, with English translations — a landmark achievement.

A Non-Discriminatory Space for Scholarship

Some of the greatest names in Tamil scholarship worked here. What was remarkable for its time was that the college welcomed collaboration across caste and religion — a rare feat in pre-modern India. In Tamil, the institution was known as Chennai Kalvi Sangam, a name that appears not just in the books it printed, but also in the writings of Dr. U. Ve. Swaminatha Iyer.

His own guru, Mahavidwan Meenakshisundaram Pillai, had close ties with many of the eminent scholars at the college — a direct link to a legacy of knowledge and inclusivity.

The Dravidian Proof Was Born In College Road

When Ellis’s colleague A.D. Campbell wrote a grammar of Telugu, it was Ellis who penned the preface. In it, he first expressed his then-radical belief that Southern languages had a non-Sanskritic origin.

This became what we now celebrate as the Dravidian Proof — a foundational argument for Tamil’s classical status, and a key intellectual bulwark in ongoing debates around language identity and “Hindi imposition.” Though the college shut down in 1854, its influence endures.

College Road – A Name That Still Matters

That an institution of such consequence, remembered through a road name, could be casually erased by Corporation councillors was something I could not accept. I took the liberty of appealing on social media, tagging the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the Worshipful Mayor of Chennai.

To my surprise, the post gained traction, with nearly 600 likes and 118 reposts on X (formerly Twitter) by evening. Clearly, the name “College Road” was etched in the public memory.

Relief and Reflection

By the next day came a clarification: it was College Lane, not College Road, that would be renamed. I heaved a sigh of relief.

There were a few who felt Jaishankar deserved a more prominent naming. But to them I say — the College of Fort St. George was a far greater institution. Even two centuries later, its impact on our cultural and linguistic life is profound.

This article appeared in The Hindu – https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/the-importance-of-retaining-college-roads-name/article69898518.ece

My book, Chennai, A Biography can be ordered- https://sriramv.com/2021/12/27/how-to-buy-autographed-copies-of-chennai-a-biography-from-outstation/