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At a time when child marriage was the norm, women’s re-marriage a sin and women’s liberation pooh-poohed, a daring woman rose up — breaking free from the shackles of patriarchy — and stormed the male bastion. T P Rajalakshmi sang and acted in stage plays and films and directed movies, breaking the glass ceiling in the tinsel town. As a woman, she had several firsts: first heroine, first director, first screenwriter and first studio owner. She was a strident freedom-fighter and social reformer, to boot.
The pioneer of women empowerment left behind a rich legacy for posterity — a legacy that drove the emergence of popular personalities later such as T R Rajakumari, P Bhanumathi, Padmini and so on.
The laurels pouring in kept a host of misogynists and male chauvinists frowning and throwing mud on her.
Today’s Tamil cinema has all but forgotten the glittering legend: Tiruvaiyaru Panchapakesan Rajalakshmi (1911 – 1964). In her showbiz life spanning almost two decades, the only memorable official honour given to her by the establishment was the Kalaimamani award in 1964. The other honour was posthumous, when her centenary was celebrated — appropriately by a woman Chief Minister — J Jayalalithaa in 2011.
The ‘Cinema Rani’, as TP Rajalakshmi was fondly called, had studied only up to class 5 in her village Saliyamangalam in the then composite Thanjavur district. But her natural interest in music and dance and her innate memory power took her to the realms of life that women were strictly prohibited from entering into, let alone shine in.
Buoyed by her successful spree, TPR went on to produce, write, direct and score music for her own film Miss Kamala. With her sharp intellect and craftsmanship, she ably did the post-production work for the film in her own Sri Rajam Studio. The story of the film is based on her own novel Kamalavalli Allathu Doctor Chandrasekhar
Rajalakshmi experienced what was then the common scourge to women power: child marriage. At age 7, she was married off to a man much older. Yet the marriage broke up for the reason of another social menace — dowry. She was, though, hardly one to take injustice lying down. This spirit of hers would, later on, reflect in her courage to take on the British rulers, calling them metaphorically ‘vellai kokkugala’ (white storks) in a song. Frequent imprisonment did not deter her; it in fact steeled her resolve.
She did several things that proved slaps in the face of the anti-woman patriarchal culture. Trained under the tutelage of Sankaradas Swamigal, the Father of Tamil Theatre, she sang songs and performed dances in stage plays. TP Rajalakshmi was the first original female actor in Tamil theatre where till that time only boys and men used to don the guise of girls and women. As a drama artiste she had to travel overseas, breaking yet another taboo of back in the day. Though ex-communicated by her own community’s conservatives, she went ahead, guns blazing.
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By age 18, TP Rajalakshmi had become a star in Tamil theatre. When she essayed the lead role in the first Tamil (and Telugu) film Kalidas in 1931 and subsequently in the film Valli Thirumanam (1933), her star status got an impetus, gaining her a lot of fans.
Buoyed by her successful spree, she went on to produce, write, direct and score music for her own film Miss Kamala. With her sharp intellect and craftsmanship, she ably did the post-production work for the film as well in her own Sri Rajam Studio. The story of the film is based on her own novel Kamalavalli Allathu Doctor Chandrasekhar.
The autobiographically tinged story of the film, in which a woman parted ways with her husband and re-joined her lover was too revolutionary and too progressive in nature to be received cordially in the patriarchy-rooted society. But the way the film was far ahead of its time was made interesting with her songs, dances, technical finesse and editing skill cast a spell on the audience. It became too irresistible for them to pause, ponder about and pound on the unorthodox content. Miss Kamala took TP Rajalakshmi to greater heights than her male colleagues such as V A Chellappa, T R Mahalingam and so on could even dream of.
TPR not only espoused the cause of women’s re-marriage but also set an example by marrying T V Sundaram at age 20 after her child marriage turned into a fiasco.
The story revolving around the bold theme of marriage being only a woman’s choice, not the society’s, had become a template for Tamil cinema — which scores of film-makers, male and female, would use down the line.
Her ideals and ideas about elimination of caste, social reformation and feminism were so in synch with those of the Dravidian Movement that even Periyar E V Ramasamy, who regarded cinema as an evil, was carried away by her steadfast devotion to the progressive ideology, and visited her at her residence in Kilpauk. The iconic leader of rationalism called her his younger sister.
The courageous film, made during a highly regressive and reactionary age, came off as an ironic contrast to a film made 45 years later in a comparatively advanced era which insisted on a woman staying in a marriage whether she likes it or not (K Bhagyaraj’s Antha Ezhu Naatkal).
The film’s roaring success inspired TP Rajalakshmi to name her only child after the eponymous heroine of the film. She had also adopted another child, Mallika, that she had saved from infanticide.
“When Kalidas hit the screens, people in Madras used to stand outside theatres for a distance of about 4-5 km to witness her acting in her first pesum padam (talkie). She was welcomed with a roar here. Her name was announced from speakers installed on roads and autorickshaws, as a talkie was something new for the people,” TPR’s daughter Kamala said in an interview after her mother’s death in 1964.
After 1950, by when she had a career credited with 30 films, however, TPR’s life started falling apart. All the houses and properties she had bought in her heyday were sold off at one point, leaving her and her family in poverty.
Also Read: Tamil cinema teeming with anti-woman tropes
T P Rajalakshmi also paid heavily for her patriotism, which had driven her to make the film Indhia Thaai, which of course did not pass the British censor board’s muster and left her financially troubled. Yet, she did not resent making the film; it spoke volumes of her commitment to the fight for independence, her respect for freedom fighters and her reverence for Mahatma Gandhi.
Her ideals and ideas about elimination of caste, social reformation and feminism were so in synch with those of the Dravidian Movement that even Periyar E V Ramasamy, who regarded cinema as an evil, was carried away by her steadfast devotion to the progressive ideology, and visited her at her residence in Kilpauk. The iconic leader of rationalism called her his younger sister.
If Fatma Begum had not made her film Bulbul-E-Paristan, TP Rajalakshmi would have been credited with being the first Indian woman cinema director. So, she had to be content with being the first woman director in South Indian cinema and the second woman director in India.
On this International Women’s Day, there can be no more apt an icon than TP Rajalakshmi to be celebrated and to serve as an inspiration for generations of women: someone who broke the glass ceiling to become an actor and then much much more; a novelist, film director, producer, studio proprietor, a strident freedom fighter and a champion of women’s rights.
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