Sundara Sastri Satyamurti (19 August 1887 – 28 March 1943) was an Indian independence activist and politician. He was acclaimed for his

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

and was one of the leading politicians of the Indian National Congress from 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 the ...

, alongside S. Srinivasa Iyengar, C. Rajagopalachari and

T. Prakasam Tanguturi Prakasam Panthulu (23 August 1872 – 20 May 1957) was an Indian jurist, political leader, social reformer, and anti-colonial nationalist who served as the chief minister of the Madras Presidency. Tanguturi subsequently became the fi ...

. Satyamurti is regarded as the mentor of

K. Kamaraj Kumaraswami Kamaraj (15 July 1903 – 2 October 1975, hinduonnet.com. 15–28 September 2001), popularly known as Kamarajar was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the Chief Minister of Madras State (Tamil Nadu) ...

, Chief Minister of Madras State from 1954 to 1962. Born in 1887 in Thirumayam in the

princely state A princely state (also called native state or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj, British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, ...

of Pudukkottai, Satyamurti studied at the Maharajah's College,

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 the Madras Law College. After practising as a lawyer for some time, Satyamurti entered politics at the suggestion of S. Srinivasa Iyengar, a leading lawyer and politician, who would later become his mentor. Satyamurti participated in protests against the Partition of Bengal, Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the

Simon Commission The Indian Statutory Commission also known as Simon Commission, was a group of seven Members of Parliament under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon. The commission arrived in India in 1928 to study constitutional reform in Britain's largest a ...

. Satyamurti was jailed in 1942 for his activities during the

Quit India Movement The Quit India Movement, also known as the August Kranti Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8th August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British rule in ...

. He was later released, but died on 28 March 1943, due to

heart failure Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, a ...

. Satyamurti was the President of the provincial wing of the

Swaraj Party The Swaraj Party, established as the ''Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party'', was a political party formed in India on 1 January 1923 after the Gaya annual conference in December 1922 of the National Congress, that sought greater self-government and ...

from 1930 to 1934 and the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee from 1936 to 1939. He was a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1934 to 1940 and Mayor of

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

from 1939 to 1943.

Early life

S. Satyamurti was born at Tirumayam in Pudukkottai state on 19 August 1887. At school he was a fine and diligent student, characteristics which he carried on into his political career. He graduated from Madras Christian College and later went on to practice law as an advocate before entering in the nationalist movement. He entered politics at an early age, winning college elections and eventually emerging as one of the foremost leaders of the Indian National Congress and a doyen of the freedom movement. In 1919, when the Congress decide to send its representative to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (of the UK) to protest the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms and the Rowlatt Act, 32-year-old Sathyamurthi was chosen as a delegate. When in Britain, he functioned as the London Correspondent of ''

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

'', in place of the actual Correspondent who had taken a 10-day leave of absence. He was known for his honesty, his integrity, his belief in racial, communal and religious harmony and equality, and his firm belief in constitutional government and parliamentary democracy in India, which led him to take a view opposed to Gandhi's which in the 1920s was not for participating in the colonial legislature. He was also noted to be strongly opposed to the

Caste Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultura ...

System in Hinduism.

Political life

Satyamurti joined the Indian National Congress when he was a young man. At the time the party advocated racial equality between Europeans and Indians of all creeds and castes. They demanded Dominion Status within the British Empire, which the British rulers had refused to grant. Satyamurti was one of the leading lights of the

Swaraj Swarāj ( sa, स्वराज, translit=Svarāja '' sva-'' "self", '' raj'' "rule") can mean generally self-governance or "self-rule". It was first used by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj to attain self rule from the Mughal Empire and the Adil ...

ists who laid the foundation for parliamentary democracy in India, the others being Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru. It required extraordinary courage of conviction to take a view opposed to Gandhi, who had captivated the entire nation, which in the 1920s was not for participating in legislative politics. But, it was left to the people like Satyamurti, Das and Motilal Nehru to project the need for acquiring experience in legislature. Therefore, though Gandhi did not approve of the objective of the Swarajists, he did not stop them from pursuing their own path. It was due to Satyamurti's efforts in the legislature that the Congress won the 1937 elections to the Madras Legislative Assembly. When Satyamurti became the Mayor of Madras in 1939, World War II had begun. The city of Madras was in the grip of an acute water scarcity and it was left to him to impress upon the British Government and colonial Governor the importance of agreeing to the proposal of Madras Corporation for building a reservoir in Poondi, about 50 km west of the city, to augment the water supply, especially in light of catastrophic global events namely the Second World War. In those days, the tenure of Mayorship was only for a year but due to his efforts, diplomacy in dealing with the British Governor, and his administrative abilities, the foundation stone for the reservoir was laid in a matter of eight months. Though Satyamurti was not alive to see the commissioning of the reservoir in 1944, the completion of the work in four years is considered, even by today's standards, something that is difficult to match. Even now, the Poondi reservoir is the only reservoir built purely for the purpose of Madras water requirements.

Political mentor

Satyamurti is also remembered today as the political mentor of Kumaraswami Kamaraj, who was the Chief Minister of the State between 1954–1963. Because of his strong devotion to Satyamurti, Kamaraj got the Poondi reservoir named after Satyamurti. Additionally, the headquarters of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee was named Satyamurti Bhavan in his honour and in recognition for the work that he did for the Tamil Nadu Congress and for the goal of Indian independence as a parliamentary democracy.

Champion of the arts

Satyamurti was instrumental in the setting up of the Music Academy of Madras. As President of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Madras, and the Chairman of the Board of Studies in Music, he was an active member of the Madras University Syndicate and was associated with the founding of the Annamalai University. When E. Krishna Iyer championed the revival of Bharata Natyam, one of the major classic Indian dance traditions and its introduction in the Music Academy, Satyamurti supported the move. At the golden jubilee celebrations of the Congress in 1935, he arranged Bharata Natyam recitals in the Khadi and Swadeshi Exhibition. In his address at the Conference organised by the Academy in December 1935, Satyamurti praised the Academy for restoring Bharata Natyam to its "pristine place of honour". In earlier years, he had been an accomplished stage actor in classic drama, playing the title role in ''Manohara'', a didactic historical play. Satyamurti was elected President of South Indian Film Chambers in 1937 and 1938, and was invited to preside over the All India Motion Picture Congress at Bombay in 1939.

Arrests and death

Like many other prominent Indian patriots, Satyamurti was arrested and incarcerated numerous times by the British. He was arrested in 1930 while trying to hoist the Indian flag atop Parthasarathy Temple in Madras. He was also actively involved in the Swadeshi movement and was arrested in 1942 for performing 'Individual

satyagraha Satyagraha ( sa, सत्याग्रह; ''satya'': "truth", ''āgraha'': "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth",' or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone w ...

' at the height of the Quit India Movement. He was tried and deported to Amravathi Jail in Nagpur and endured a spinal cord injury during the journey. He succumbed to his injuries at General Hospital, Madras on 28 March 1943, two years before the end of WWII (15 August 1945) and four years before India's Independence (15 August 1947). He was a highly regarded politician of rare abilities, deeply mourned by his colleagues and the people of Madras Presidency, to whom he had dedicated his life to bringing freedom and justice. The prominent Madras paper ''The Hindu'' dedicated a column to Sathyamurthy under the caption "Tribune of the people". It said, "He was a born freedom-fighter, a leadmine fighter as the Scots say, to whom the fight was the thing." Satyamurti is the uncle of Professor

Bala V. Balachandran Bala V. Balachandran (5 July 1937 – 28 September 2021) was an Indian academic who served as Professor Emeritus of Accounting Information & Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He was also the founder, Cha ...

, founder and Dean of Great Lakes Institute of Management, a business school located in Chennai. Satyamurti's daughter Lakshmi Krishnamurti (1925–2009) was a popular politician and author who served in the Madras Legislative Council.

Honours

Satyamurti's work led to him being called ''Dheerar''.August 2010
The Hindu (6 December 2018). Retrieved on 2018-12-10. A stamp commemorating him was released in 1987. On 1 October 2002, a statue of him was unveiled in the

Parliament House Parliament House may refer to: Australia * Parliament House, Canberra, Parliament of Australia * Parliament House, Adelaide, Parliament of South Australia * Parliament House, Brisbane, Parliament of Queensland * Parliament House, Darwin, Parliame ...

by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. This statue was donated by former Union minister Subramanian Swamy.

Special mention

The Congress leader S Sathyamurthy threatened "to per- form his little daughter's marriage in defiance of the Sarada Act"; condemned the Hindu Religious Endowment Act as British interference in religious affairs; portrayed devadasis as retainers of national art and culture and said that each of them should dedicate at least one girl to be a future devadasi, and opposed temple entry by the Dalit.