In 2021, when a Tamil weekly offered poet and writer Vennila Ambalavanan an assignment to write a historical fiction set against the backdrop of the construction of the Mullaperiyar dam, she wanted to know everything about the construction of the dam.
“Instead of basing the fiction on my imagination. I wanted it to be deeply rooted in history and the socio-political context of the period in which the dam was constructed,” she said.
However, she reached a dead end in her journey. Barring the authoritative History of the Periyar Project written in 1898 by A.T. Mackenzie, an engineer who worked in the project, she realised that information available in the public domain was scarce. Her initial attempts to make use of the Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research (TNAHR) were not fruitful as it proved daunting to look for specific topics in the non-digitised and chronologically maintained voluminous records.
When she stumbled upon an opportunity to raise this issue with IAS officer T. Udhayachandran, who was then Secretary I in the Chief Minister’s Office, he sensed the public interest in thematic collation and digitisation of the records.
As a result, Ms. Ambalavanan, with the full support of of G. Prakash, Commissioner of TNAHR, and the staff there, has managed to identify around 35,000 pages of records related to the construction of the dam. Soon, these will be digitised through the Tamil Nadu Virtual Academy (TNVA) and hosted on its website for researchers to use. A 115-page index of the identified documents was recently presented to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin.
Serialised in Tamil weekly
As her historical fiction Neeradhikaram, serialised in the Tamil weekly, crossed the 100th instalment, she said that going through these documents was a fascinating and humbling experience. She said the hardships overcome in the implementation of this architecturally challenging project, which involved inter-basin transfer of water from the westward flowing Periyar to the basin of the eastward flowing Vaigai, and the meticulous documentation by the British were awe-inspiring.
While the documents had thrown light on many hitherto unknown aspects, they have also bust a few myths. Apart from the records from TNAHR, Ms. Ambalavanan visited the United Kingdom and collected some additional records on Colonel J. Pennycuick, who, in the words of Mackenzie, was “the remarkable man to whom the design and the accomplishment of the project are chiefly due”.
The earliest record she managed to trace was a piece of communication from 1800, which showed that T.B. Hurdis, Collector of Dindigul, wanted to depute an engineer to trace the source of the two rivers and explore the possibility of increasing water availability to Ramnad (Ramanathapuram).
Through the 19th Century, the acutely felt need for improving the irrigation of the rainfed regions of Madurai and Ramnad kept the efforts alive with detailed surveys of the Vaigai and the Periyar and new proposals. But none materialised.
The project got a fillip when Major J.G. Ryves submitted a report in 1867, detailing a more practical solution to the construction of the dam. The project, however, did not take off until the mid-1880s owing to architectural and financial concerns.
According to Ms. Ambalavanan, a factor that seemed to have played a key role in expediting the project was the famine of 1876-78, one of the worst to affect the southern region. After multiple architectural changes, the project commenced in 1887 with Pennycuick being in charge.
The Mullaperiyar dam, located in Kerala and maintained by Tamil Nadu, remains a sensitive issue between the two States even today. Ms. Ambalavanan said the records show that despite differences and hurdles during the negotiations between the British and the Kingdom of Travancore, the historic agreement, facilitating the construction of the dam, became possible since Visakham Thirunal Rama Varma, the then Maharaja of Travancore, was sensitive to the cause of the project. He, however, died a year before the agreement was signed in 1886.
The myth that Pennycuick put up his own money by selling his wife’s jewels to overcome the shortage of funds has no basis in the available documents, said Ms. Ambalavanan. While the project was initially estimated to cost around ₹ 64 lakh, it went up to around ₹85 lakh during the completion in 1895. “They have maintained records for every rupee, and nowhere it shows that Pennycuick invested his personal money,” she said.
The documents bring out the human cost of the project. Ms. Ambalavanan said that around 5,000 people seemed to have died during the construction, mainly due to the spread of diseases such as cholera and malaria, floods, and workplace accidents. While the graves of 19 British personnel are there at the dam site, the details of Indian workers who died remain unknown.
While Pennycuick is rightfully credited with the construction of the dam, the documents bring out the significant role played by other personalities such as Ryves, R. Smith, Major Payne, H.S. Taylor, Mackenzie, S.D. Pears and E.R. Logan. Of them, Taylor died in a gruesome workplace accident, which deeply affected Pennycuick and others, Ms. Ambalavanan said.
S. Suthanthira Amalaraj, a retired Executive Engineer of the Public Works Department, who has worked for many years at the dam, said the documents identified now were enlightening to him, even after the extensive research he had done about the dam. He said these documents could also be useful and exciting for engineering students in appreciating the challenges faced.
Larger project
Mr. Udhayachandran, also the Chairperson of TNVA, said the digitisation of the Mullaperiyar dam-related records would be part of a larger project on thematic collation and digitisation of records to be done in collaboration with TNAHR. A set of colonial documents related to Madurai district have been digitised and will soon be hosted online.
He said some of the other themes being considered for collation were development of education during the colonial period, contribution of Europeans (especially those from the East India Company) to Tamil, social reforms in the 19th and 20th Century, and censorship during the colonial period.
According to him, any society keen on conserving its heritage had to digitise all archival records of value, even if they are single page pamphlets, and make them available online. The M.K. Stalin government was committed to doing it.
