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Academic year 2007-08:
150 year celebration special:
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Life Sketches

Rao Bahadur M.A.Singarachariar

Life Sketches - Rao Bahadur M.A.Singarachariar Buildings of education occupy a prominent place in human society. For its present flourishing condition and for its position as a first class institution in this presidency, the
Hindu High School owes not a little to the late Rao Bahadur M.A.Singarachariar who by long, patient and devoted labour for over 40 years made it what it is today.

Sri Singarachariar was born in 1841. He came of a distinguished and historic Mysore family. His grandfather, Pradhan Tirumal Rao (Rao was a military title) with his brother Narayana Rao rendered eminent services to the Hindu rulers of Mysore during the troubles times of the Mohammadan invasion. Sri Singarachariar was one of the earliest in Madras to take advantage of the English education introduced then by the Government. He had his early education in the Pachaiyappa's High School, Madras.

He subsequently joined the Government High School, afterwards the Presidency College. He distinguished himself in the college as a good English and Telugu scholar and won some prizes. In 1864, he commenced life as a teacher in the Anderson School, the now famous Christian College.

In 1866, he joined the Inam Commission and on the abolition of that office he took up service in the Madras Bank—now called Imperial Bank—as Assistant Cash-keeper of the Bank in 1886. As Cash-keeper he won the extreme commendation of the general public and the mercantile community. But his life-work, the work by which he would be longest remembered, was what he accomplished for the Hindu High School. He assumed charge of the school then known as Balura Patasala on 5th Fubruary 1869 when its prospects were very gloomy. He was so devoted to the work that he devoted all his leisure hours to it. Whenever he could spare a few hours from his office, he came out and took some classes.He was particularly careful about finances and his object was to build up a capital for the school, which would make it permanent and not the plaything of varying fortunes. He succeeded in giving the school a local habitation and secured for it a name with which his own would long be lovingly associated. Besides the building and a fund, his anxiety to make the school a permanent institution showed itself in his constituting a committee for its management of which he was the President until his death. Besides this, as the President of the Veda Vedanta Vardhini Sabha, he rendered all the encouragement and assistance he could to the cause of education.

Sri Singarachariar always evinced a zeal for systermatic and silent work and was scrupulous to a degree in everything that he said or did. He worked disinterestedly in the public cause and was actuated by a suncere desire to advance the cause of education.

In his 67th year, on 10th February 1908, he departed this life leaving behind two sons, the late Dewan Bahadur M.A.Parthasarathy Iyengar, who succeeded him in the Bank and the late Rao Bahadur M.A.Thirunarayanachariar, Retired Advocate of the High Court.

The big hall on the first floor was dedicated to the memory of Sri Singarachariar in 1909 at a meeting presided over by Sir John Wallis, the then Chief Justice of Madras. In 1942, another storey was added to the building and as the original Singarachariar hall was converted into six classrooms, the present hall in the second floor just over the original one is now dedicated to his memory.


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