V. A. Sundaram

• 1. Introduction

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  V. A. Sundaram was 19 years old when he heard Mahatma Gandhi speak in Madras in April 1915, and made a decision that would shape the rest of his life. He abandoned his studies at Pachaiyappa's College on the spot and followed Gandhi to Ahmedabad. What drew a Tamil Brahmin student from Coimbatore into the inner circle of India's independence movement? How did he end up meeting Albert Einstein in a German village, and Pope Pius XI in Rome, all on behalf of Gandhi? And what was the memorial stone he placed outside his own house in Benares that still stands there today?

• 2. Roots in Coimbatore

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  Sundaram's full name tells his family's story in miniature. Vellalore Annaswamy Sundaram carries within it his father's name, Annaswamy Iyer, and the village the family came from, Vellalore, just outside Coimbatore. Tamil naming customs preserved geography and lineage in the same breath. His family traced its ancestry to the 16th century Sanskrit scholar Appayya Dikshita, a connection that would later resurface unexpectedly when Sundaram befriended Swami Sivananda, another descendant of the same ancestor.

  His father was an advocate, and Sundaram grew up in the orbit of language and argument. He developed a passion for English literature from an early age, which eventually led him to Pachaiyappa's College in Madras, one of the most respected institutions in South India. He was halfway through his studies there when he attended his first Indian National Congress meeting in December 1914 in Madras. That single meeting changed the direction of his life, though the more decisive moment was still a few months away.

• 3. Gandhi's Disciple

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  Gandhi's first assignment for the young Sundaram was an austere one. He brought him to Ahmedabad to join the newly founded Sabarmati Ashram, where Sundaram became one of its first inmates. The ashram's strict dietary regime and discipline proved too demanding. Suffering from malnutrition, Sundaram left after nine months. But his commitment to the independence cause did not waver.

  Back in the South, he began translating Gandhi's ideas into local action, introducing weaving and spinning activities in his family's home village of Vellalore. Gandhi employed him as a regional worker across southern India. By October 1919, Sundaram had risen to a position of genuine prominence. Gandhi's circular letter of that month, which called for a nationwide hartal tied to the Khilafat movement, was addressed to 28 of India's leading independence activists. The list included Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, C. Rajagopalachari, C. F. Andrews, and Rajendra Prasad. Sundaram's name appeared alongside theirs.

  He was arrested in Madras in early 1931. The arrest drew enough public attention that Gandhi felt compelled to write directly to Viceroy Lord Irwin in protest and to issue a press statement to Reuters.

• 4. Seven Months in Europe

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  In June 1931, sponsored by the industrialist Jamnalal Bajaj, Sundaram left India on a seven-month journey through Europe. Gandhi was preparing to attend the second Round Table Conference in London and wanted his message carried ahead of him. Sundaram was to be his ambassador.

  In Italy, Sundaram met both Mussolini and Pope Pius XI, and brought Gandhi's message to Italian readers through the Giornale d'Italia. In Germany, he held public speeches in Kassel and Berlin. In Caputh, a village outside Berlin, Wilfrid Israel introduced him to Albert Einstein. The meeting left a mark. Einstein, having learned of Gandhi's ideas through Sundaram, wrote a letter to the Mahatma, which Sundaram was asked to carry back.

  The European tour continued through Switzerland, France, and Czechoslovakia, where Sundaram met President Tomás Masaryk in Prague. In England he rejoined Gandhi in London in the wake of the Round Table Conference. He accompanied Madan Mohan Malaviya on study visits to Harrow, Cambridge, and Oxford. Along the way he met writers and intellectuals including Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, André Maurois, and Arthur Mee. Each encounter was an opportunity to deepen European understanding of what Gandhi stood for.

• 5. Builder of Benares Hindu University

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  Sundaram had first encountered Madan Mohan Malaviya's dream of a great university in Benares during a visit there in 1916. A decade later, in January 1926, Malaviya called him to Benares to serve as his personal secretary, and Sundaram answered.

  Malaviya's first task for him was unexpected. He sent Sundaram and his newly married wife Savitri to Kotgarh in the Himalayan mountains, where an American friend of Malaviya's named Samuel Evans Stokes had set up a school. Stokes needed a qualified English teacher, and Sundaram spent one season in the mountains filling that role. Throughout this time he wrote Gandhi a letter every week containing what he called "noble thoughts." Gandhi kept every one of those letters, and years later presented the entire collection back to Sundaram.

  Fundraising for the emerging university became Sundaram's central work. As Secretary of the BHU Collection Committee, he became known for his skill in approaching maharajas and ruling princes across India. He raised funds in the range of lakhs. Malaviya had a house built for Sundaram on the university grounds, close to his own. Sundaram named it Krishnakutir, and it became a gathering place for an extraordinary range of visitors: C. Rajagopalachari arrived as Governor-General of India in 1948, the scientists C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan came, and so did writers Somerset Maugham and Paul Brunton. Gandhi visited several times.

• 6. A Life of Words

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  Sundaram's contribution to the independence cause was largely carried through print. He published articles and letters across a wide range of English-language newspapers, including Gandhi's own Young India, the Modern Review, The Hindu, New India, and the Amrita Bazar Patrika. His writing was marked by emotional intensity and high moral conviction. That same fervor translated well to the spoken word, and some of his later speeches were broadcast on All India Radio.

  His output over 30 years of service to the BHU included books on the university itself and on Malaviya. He edited commemorative volumes marking the university's major anniversaries, published a monograph on Rabindranath Tagore in 1941, and produced a series called Torchbearers devoted to Gandhi and Malaviya. After retiring from the BHU in 1956, he and his wife Savitri moved to Bombay, where he died on the 11th of March 1967.

• 7. Harmony Across Borders

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  Despite fighting against British rule, Sundaram never lost his admiration for English culture and English literature. He made determined efforts to send all of his children to England for higher education. This was not contradiction but consistency: he separated the political from the cultural.

  The same spirit shaped his religious life. From youth he had taken a serious interest in Christian thought and practice. His house in Benares regularly hosted both Christian and Muslim guests. He exchanged letters on interreligious questions with Gandhi, with the Christian mystic Sadhu Sundar Singh, and with Swami Sivananda. The tie to Sivananda carried a personal resonance: both men shared the same distant ancestor, the 16th century scholar Appayya Dikshita.

  A memorial stone Sundaram placed beside Krishnakutir, marking the spot where Gandhi had prayed in 1942, remained visible on the BHU grounds as recently as 2013, when plans were being drawn up to turn the house itself into a Gandhi Memorial as part of a Heritage Complex on the university grounds.