A.R. Venkatachalapathy historian, author and translator

A.R. VENKATACHALAPATHY, Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Singapore and Chicago. Apart from the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (History, 2007), he has received the Vilakku Pudumaippithan Award (2018) and Iyal Virudhu (2021), both for lifetime contribution to Tamil. He has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. Apart from his scholarly writings in English, he has written/edited over 30 books in Tamil. His publications in English include The Brief History of a Very Big Book: The Making of the Tamil Encyclopaedia,

Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture; Who Owns That Song?: The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright; T he Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu; In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History. Presently he is working on biographies of Periyar and V.O. Chidambaram Pillai.