On a hot summer afternoon 90 years ago, Sri Thayammal, the only woman member of the then Madurai Municipal Council, became the voice of the voiceless when she moved a powerfully worded resolution in Tamil, seeking urgent improvement in the condition of cheris (slums) in the temple town. Thayammal’s heart beat for rag pickers, manual scavengers, and all those caught in the web of poverty and illiteracy, who were leading a life of discrimination and rejection in the garbage-strewn slums. The ‘scavenger’s colony’ was unfit for human habitation owing to the lack of amenities.
On June 7, 1933, Thayammal drew the council’s attention to the abominable living conditions of the poor and read out her resolution in an emotionally choked voice, seeking immediate release of funds for modernising on a priority two cheris — one to the south of the Raja Mills and the other to the west of the Police Parade Ground, earlier called the Kavaathu Maidanam, on Tirupparankunram Road. It took a deeply concerned Thayammal to propose a reformist legislation at a time when women rarely got a chance to prove their leadership abilities. Her persuasive appeal came straight out of her heart and stunned the council members into silence. They gave her a standing ovation and seconded her proposal unanimously.
The proceedings of the council on June 7, 1933, were reported in detail in The Hindu of June 8, 1933. It was a day of regular meeting attended by two dozen councillors, including L.K. Thulasiram, Umapathy Aiyar, and Nallamuthu Pillai, with V. Muthrama Aiyar in the chair, and some prominent Madurai citizens, including E.M. Gopalakrishna Konar, A. Vaidyanatha Aiyar, and Sivaramakrishna Aiyar, seated in the visitors’ gallery. Some 15 years ago, at the District Documentation Centre (DDC), then housed at the Madurai Corporation Office on Aringar Anna Maligai, Srinivas Rengasamy, retired Dean of the Madurai Institute of Social Sciences, came across the important resolution tabled by Thayammal. Professor Rengasamy says he was taken in by the heavy-duty words, the strong feelings so transparently conveyed and the language of the original resolution in Tamil. He wanted to take a photocopy of the document. But he did not get the permission to do so.
