K. N. Kesari

Dr K. N. Kesari rose from a poor home to wealth by his own hard work.¹ He is best remembered as the founder and editor of the Gruhalakshmi, a Telugu monthly for women.²³ The journal ran for about thirty years and argued for the rights of women.² It matters because it gave Telugu women writers a place to be read and honoured.² For the wider story, see Telugu newspapers and journals and Women in Telugu history.

A self-made man

Kesari told his own story in a memoir, Naa Chinnanati Muchchatlu (Memories of my childhood), printed in 1953.¹ The writer Akkiraju Ramapathi Rao reviewed it in the monthly Bharati in 1979. He gives Kesari’s years as 1875 to 1953.¹

In Ramapathi Rao’s account, Kesari was born into a very poor family. By his own effort he became a man of great standing.¹ In the memoir Kesari says he earned a great deal of money by hard work. He did not spend it on himself or on pleasures, but on helping others and on the progress of society.¹

The memoir

Ramapathi Rao finds the memoir a good record of the changes in Telugu social life during Kesari’s long life.¹ It describes the Madras of those days: how students lived, and what the roads, coffee hotels and buildings were like.¹ It tells how Kesari founded the Kesari Kuteeram (Kesari’s cottage), which bore his name, and how he ran the Gruhalakshmi.¹ It also has two chapters on Mahatma Gandhi and on the reformer Kandukuri Veeresalingam.¹

One story in it is about Miller, the principal of the Christian College in Madras. When a fire broke out at the Park Fair, a popular fair of the city, Miller himself pulled down burning sheds and carried women and children out of the smoke.¹

The Gruhalakshmi

Kesari founded the Gruhalakshmi on 1 March 1928, and it was published from Madras.²⁴ He edited it himself until his death in 1953.²⁴ P. T. Raju, writing in 1944, notes that it was meant only for women.³

The historian S. Mahaboob Basha describes what the journal did. It ran a strong campaign for the civil and political rights of women.² Its award, the Gruhalakshmi Swarnakankanam (golden bracelet), honoured accomplished women writers and was held in high esteem.² Basha finds that women writing in it tried to break the limits that men had drawn around them.² The journal went on beyond 1960, with a break from 1942 to 1947.²

Footnotes

1. Akkiraju Ramapathi Rao, “Marikonni Sweeyacharitralu” (more autobiographies), Bharati, Vol. 56, No. 6 (June 1979), p. 10 (in Telugu) (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. S. Mahaboob Basha, “Sculpturing a ‘New Woman’ with Print Culture in Colonial Andhra: A Biography of Telugu Zenana, 1893–1907”, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. IV (2009), p. 137, note 16 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. P. T. Raju, Telugu Literature (1944), p. 87 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²

4. S. Mahaboob Basha, “Flagging off the Marathon: Print Culture and Women’s Intellectual Movement in Colonial Andhra: Story of the Hindu Sundari, 1902–1947”, Kakatiya Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. V (2010), p. 87, notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). Cite-only; paraphrased. ↩ ↩²