Kongu Nadu · Deccan Inland Plateau

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
G. D. Naidu	1893–1974	Inventor and industrialist	Left school early, ran a motor transport business, then built Coimbatore's first electric motors and a long list of prototypes — a razor, a radio, a petrol engine, a distance-adjustable camera. He is the reason the city's engineering trade thinks of itself as inventive rather than merely industrial, and the museum he left holds the workshop pieces.
Robert Stanes	1841–1936	Planter and industrialist	Set up the first cotton spinning mill in Coimbatore in the 1880s, along with coffee and tea interests on the slope above it and the schools that carry his name. The mill economy the region is now defined by starts with that plant.
T. S. Avinashilingam	1897–1991	Educationist	Founded an institution at Coimbatore for the education of rural women and pushed basic education across the Kongu districts. The university that grew out of it carries his name.
P. Sabapathy	Twentieth century	Engineer	Designed the tilting granite wet grinder at Coimbatore in 1955 — an object now in most South Indian kitchens and still overwhelmingly manufactured within a few kilometres of where it was devised.
T. R. Sundaram	1907–1963	Film producer	Built Modern Theatres at Salem into a full studio with its own laboratories and processing, and produced the first Tamil feature made in full colour in 1956. Running a major studio from a mill town rather than from Madras was the point.
G. K. Devarajulu	1920–2000	Industrialist	Founded Lakshmi Machine Works at Coimbatore in 1962 to build textile spinning machinery, which moved the region from spinning cotton to making the machines that spin it.
R. Shanmugasundaram	1917–1977	Novelist	Wrote Kongu agrarian life from inside it, most durably in Nagammal, using the region's own register at a time when Tamil prose fiction was largely written in the language of the coast.
Nallathambi Sarkarai Manradiar	1873–1927	Cattle breeder and landholder	The Pattagar of Palayakottai, credited in the livestock literature with consolidating and improving the Kangayam breed and with defending the korangadu grazing system that supports it.
Kongu Velir	Dated variously between the ninth and eleventh centuries	Poet	Author of the Perunkathai, the Tamil retelling of the Brihatkatha, and known only by a name that places him in this country. The attribution is traditional rather than documented, and it is the region's oldest claim on a literary text.

People from Kongu Nadu who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (9)