About this stamp
The Philanthropist of Madras
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 24 August 2019 for the 150th birth anniversary of Dharmamurthi Rao Bahadur Calavala Cunnan Chetty (1869–1920), businessman and philanthropist of Madras. His father, Chellam Chetty, was a senior partner in Messrs King and Company, timber merchants. After studying at Pachaiyappa’s College and Madras Christian College, Cunnan Chetty took over the family business and built it into a large and prosperous firm.
Charity
He treated wealth as fleeting and spent it on public causes. He founded a Sanskrit college at Triplicane and schools for poor children in Madras, among them a girls’ primary school at Chintadripet, and started night schools for adults in places such as Perambur. He opened Ayurvedic hospitals at Triplicane, Nellore and Nungambakkam, distributed free milk to children from his home in George Town, fed the poor every Sunday, built a free choultry (rest house) at Egmore for travellers and patients, and supported the Ramakrishna Math at Mylapore and the Madras Social Service League, of which he was a vice-president. Residents of Triplicane called him “Kodai Vallal”.
By his will of 19 July 1920 he left his entire property to education and public charity through a trust, Dharmamurthi Rao Bahadur Calavala Cunnan Chetty’s Charities, which continues his work. He died in July 1920. At a memorial meeting on 5 August 1920, Annie Besant gave him the title “Dharmamurthi”; the British government had earlier made him Rao Bahadur.
On the Stamp
The stamp shows his portrait in a turban, with his name in Tamil and English along the right edge. It was designed by Alka Sharma; 402,345 were printed by wet offset at the Security Printing Press, Hyderabad.
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