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Kumaramangalam R Srinivasa Raghavan

Kumaramangalam R Srinivasa Raghavan (3 January 1910 – 16 Nov 1964), also known as RAF Raghavan, was an Indian Karnāṭaka saṃgīta composer. He was a contemporary of MaharAjapuram ViswanAtha Iyer, GN Balasubramaniam and Madurai Mani Iyer .

Raghavan was born in Nachiarkoil village, home of the 2nd Century Vaishnavite temple famous for the Kal-Garudan, about 5 miles east of Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu. He was the eldest son of Kumaramangalam P Ramaswamy Iyengar (PR) who served as Municipal commissioner under Madras Mayor, S.Satyamurti (1939-1943); PR was also a Sanskrit scholar selected in the early 1960s to be the Vaishnavite titular head known as ‘Andavan’. He passed away before taking that role.

Most of Raghavan’s life and accomplishments are known today thanks to his son Thiruvaiyaru S R Krishnan who had years of interactions with his Guru/father before Raghavan’s death in 1964.

Raghavan was self-taught in music and became proficient in Veena and mridangam. He was a classmate of G N Balasubramaniam and learned the Tyagaraja compositions from GV Narayanaswamy iyer (father of GNB), and later from Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer. He was a keen observer of great musicians of his time and thus combined the techniques of Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer and Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, the gamaka style of GNB and the emotive style of his other friend Madurai Mani Iyer while teaching his children. It is this passion to integrate several styles of performance that helped him compose hundreds of songs in Tamizh, Telugu, and Sanskrit.

Raghavan’s father wanted his son to become a Civil servant (ICS) and a scholar in literature pursued by Vaishnavas, but Raghavan’s focus was always on to music; and his penchant for non-restricted scriptural learning took him to His Holiness Kanchi Sankaracharya (aka Paramacharya). He obtained mantropadesam from Paramacharya and became his ardent devotee for life. Upon prompting by his Acharya, he translated the entire medieval Sanskrit text Narayaneeyam (a summary study of Bhagavata Purana) into Tamizh poetry suitable for devotional singing.

Raghavan took his degree in History and English literature from the Madras Presidency College (MPC) and was not happy working in temporary jobs in the government service. He was drawn to Mahatma Gandhi’s Freedom movement in 1930 after watching the famous Dandi Salt March in Gujarat, India challenging the British-imposed salt tax. Raghavan’s father was irate that his son was wasting his education and valuable youth running around the country with his friends to assist the freedom movement. He was worried that Raghavan may end up in jail given his passion to organize freedom fights in the footsteps of Mahatma. Reluctantly, Raghavan obeyed his father and became a trusted assistant to Sri Vedantam, the founder of the famous Auctioneers in Madras, Murray & Co and soon became the assistant manager for its operations in Madras. This job was also short lived. He married Ambujam, daughter of Srirangam Srinivasa Raghava Iyengar (well-known Public Prosecutor of Thanjavur), in 1933 and moved to Tharangampadi (aka Tranquebar) as the Port Officer in 1934.

The next five years were spent in dare-devil life threatening operations capturing smugglers and criminals and earning the respect of the British Government. This was also the time when Raghavan was drawn closer the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and later towards Subhas Chandra Bose until Bose was ousted in 1939 from the post of the president of Indian National Congress differing with Mahatma’s ideals of satyAgraha and Ahimsa (non-violent) pursuits for the Indian Freedom Movement. A visit to Mahatma in Segaon Ashram (which later became “Sevagram”) became the turning point that made Raghavan join the Indian Air Force as a flying officer in 1940.

His son Krishnan remembers his father explaining how he was one of the dozen direct-entry-officers at that time and how within a year got to visit Britain to fly with the Royal Air Force pilots. Raghavan served in both European and the South Asian theaters, but mostly fighting in CBI or IBT theaters and especially the Japanese in Burma. In January 1945, flight lieutenant Raghavan’s Blenheim Bomber was gunned down by the Japanese near Kamaing in north-east Burma but saved by the villagers from the remains of the burning plane, hid from Japanese for several weeks, and then taken POW by the Japanese. Raghavan was reportedly tortured and forced to fight the British (as part of the INA) but resisted the coercion. Luckily, with serious casualties, monsoon rains and thanks to the Operation Dracula, Japanese army lost interest in the POWs in the first few months of 1945; Raghavan was kept alive as a POW and was rescued from the camp in May 1945 when the axis army was routed out of Burma. After King George VI declared IAF to be the Royal Indian Air Force, Raghavan was honored by RIAF to the rank of a squadron leader, post-war.

Raghavan joined the Military Engineering service in Madras and then the Madras Electricity Board which he served until his sudden death in 1964, leaving his wife Ambujam and his children, Ramamani, Bhooma, Krishnan, and Lakshminarasimhan. Both the daughters served the Tamil Nadu State Government and Bhooma retired as a gazetted officer while Lakshminarasimhan retired as a senior banker in India. Krishnan was a banker in India since mid-1960s left the country in the early nineteen eighties and served as an International Banking executive with multinationals in France and the Great Britain before permanent migration to the United States of America in 1987.

Raghavan spent most of his spare time (1951-1964) teaching and composing. His compositions are being sung and propagated by his children. His wife Ambujam, the guiding and spiritual force to the children after Raghavan’s death, passed away in May 2014.