- Monday, March 10, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India this year completed 75 years of attaining Independence from British rule which had lasted for nearly two centuries. While the general mood in the South Asian country is high about its revival on the world stage as an economy of the future (it recently pipped Britain to become the fifth largest economy) but yet, there are places in India where people still remember with respect the contributions made by the former colonial rulers.
One such man is Colonel John Pennycuick (1841-1911) who was a British army engineer and civil servant and had served as a member of the now defunct Madras Legislative Council in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He had received military training in London and returned to India to join the British Indian army as an engineer. He had also worked in the public works department of the erstwhile Madras Presidency, an erstwhile administrative division in southern India.
TN has gifted a bust of Col John Pennycuick to his hometown Camberley in England. It wll b unveiled on 10Sep at a public park in Camberley, 50km from London.
Pennycuick is a revered figure in TN for designing and building #Mullaperiyar dam. pic.twitter.com/GqW4MkQWkC— RJ Ophe Imsaiarasi (@ophe_imsaiarasi) September 8, 2022
Pennycuick, who was born in Pune (then Poona), is still a revered figure in Tamil Nadu for his contribution towards designing and building the Mullaperiyar dam, which is a key source of water for drinking and irrigation purposes in as many as five districts of the state. The century-old dam has also been a source of dispute between Tamil Nadu and its western neighbour Kerala which has also sought its demolition.
But these have not affected the legacy of Pennycuick in Tamil Nadu and it has even gifted the bust of the man to Camberley, about 50 kilometres from London, where he died and it will be unveiled on Saturday (10) at a public park, BBC reported.
The people of the districts that benefit from water from Mullaperiyar dam remember Pennycuick so fondly that his photographs are even seen hanging in shops, houses and government offices in one of them called Theni, the report added. Many baby boys are also named after him while some have even named their daughters Sarah after his mother.
“His work has not yet been fully recognised. Only people in our state [Tamil Nadu] knew about him,” Santhana Ibrahim, a London-based documentary maker who has played a major role behind the project to install the statue in England, was quoted as saying.
Colonel John Pennycuick is always remembered and celebrated by the people of Tamil Nadu for his historic contribution #MullaiperiyarDam
It is disheartening to know that his cemetery in Surrey was vandalised by unknowns. Hoping to see his cemetery restored soon. https://t.co/Hp1EmE9Gcn
— M.K.Stalin (@mkstalin) August 31, 2020
At the public works department of the Madras Presidency, Pennycuick worked on designing the dam which transferred water from the Periyar river flowing to the west to the Vaigai river going to another director.
In a paper called ‘The Division of the Periyar’, which was written towards the end of the 19th century, Pennycuick said the idea of building the dam had been brought up much earlier.
“The first recorded expression of it dates from the beginning of the present century, when surveys were made for the purpose of ascertaining how far the proposal was a practical one,” he wrote in the paper, BBC added.
However, while surveys, which were allegedly made in “somewhat half-hearted manner” found that the idea was “impractical”, as the paper said, Pennycuick showed strong determination to get the design approved. Construction of the dam had started in 1888 and completed in 1895 and according to data, between 4,000 and 6,000 people had worked on the project to make it a reality.
“At the end of the 19th century we had very few dams in south India,” K Sivasubramaniyan, a retired professor who studied water management in Tamil Nadu for decades, told BBC.
The Mullaperiyar dam, according to him, was a “great engineering feat which helped end the water scarcity for people living in five districts in present-day Tamil Nadu”.
Thirsty-two-year-old Desika Thiruvalan, who quit her job in a tech company a few years ago to look after her family’s farms in Theni, said she is able to harvest two crops of rice every year, while her ancestors had to rely on unpredictable rains.
“Pennycuick is like a god to us. We are blessed to have plenty of water,” she told BBC, adding that before the dam came into existence, the region was hit by periodic famines and droughts.
Pennycuick’s supporters believe that celebrating him does not mean endorsing British colonialism.
“Pennycuick, due to his sheer determination, was able to build a dam which is still standing and providing water to us. We are just saying thanks to him,” Ms Thiruvalan said.
In 2019, a senior police officer from Tamil Nadu donated a bust of Pennycuick which was installed in the garden in Camberley where he was buried after death.
Ibrahim also hopes the new statue in England will make local people interested in Tamil Nadu and its culture.
