Industrial district bids goodbye to its popular iconic son Mahalingam
Industrial district bids goodbye to its popular iconic son Mahalingam
Coimbatore: Coimbatore’s famous Gandhian and industrialist, Pollachi N. Mahalingam, who put the coconut town of Pollachi on the industrial map of Tamil Nadu, is no more.
The 91-year-old former MLA of Pollachi, Mahalingam lived his resplendent life in Gandhian spirit and breathed his last at a Gandhi Jayanthi function in Chennai on Thursday.
The funeral was held in his hometown of Pollachi on Friday as a number of VIPs, including Congress leaders P. Chidambaram, G.K. Vasan and E.V.K.S. Elangovan, and poet Vairamuthu paid their last tributes.
A Padma Bushan awardee, Mahalingam was an icon of ethical enterprise in Tamil Nadu as he abhored to do any business in liquor and meat that would affect people’s health.
A close associate of former chief minister K. Kamaraj, Mahalingam was instrumental in initiating the Parambikulam Aliyar Project (PAP), which is even now the lifeline of farmers as it irrigates 1,000 acres in Coimbatore district.
As a fourth form student in a small school in Pollachi, way back in 1935, Mahalingam was asked to write an essay on a car. As the students sat down to complete the assignment, Mahalingam, who was barely 12 years then, declared,“I want to manufacture a car.” He later grew up to become the owner of one of the biggest transport companies in the country and founded the Sakthi Group of Companies with forays into various sectors including the sugar industry.
Contributing to the educational growth of the Kongu region, he founded a dozen colleges, including Kumaraguru College of Technology, Dr Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology, Vanavarayar Institute of Agriculture and Nachimuthu Polytechnic College, and many schools and teacher training institutes.
He was not just a rare industrialist and an educationist, but a politician with rare integrity. Inspired by the Mahatma and freedom movement, Mahalingam entered politics and was elected to the Assembly from Pollachi constituency in 1952, 1957 and 1962 on a Congress ticket.
Realising that active politics and good business do not go together, he finally quit politics to pursue business. Born on March 21, 1923 in Pollachi in Coimbatore district in an agricultural family, Mahalingam was an alumnus of Loyola College in Chennai.
He also secured a diploma from the College of Engineering, Anna University, and was awarded honorary doctorate by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. He is survived by his wife Mariammal, three sons (Manickam, Balasubramanian and Srinivasan) and a daughter (Karunambal).
Though has edited about a hundred works in Tamil and English, one of his greatest contributions to the spread of Tamil literature at the national level is the translation of Thirukkural into Hindi and Oriya.
( Source : dc )
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