G. Venkataswamy Naidu and his wife Venkatalakshmi of Uppilipalayam village, near Singanallur, were blessed with a daughter, G.V. Rajammal, in the year 1916. Rajammal (1916-2007) grew up with her siblings Punniyavathi Ammal, G.V. Doraiswamy, and G.V. Kasthuriswamy. She did her education from the Raja Street Government Girls School, and was quite keen to pursue medicine.

In those days, it was rare for girls from Coimbatore to stay out of town and study, however the discussion with Dr. N. Velappan encouraged the parents to send her to Madras for her medical education. G.V. Rajammal joined the Stanley Medical College during the year 1937 and passed out in the year 1942. On graduation, she was appointed as a paid House Surgeon at the Victoria Caste & Gosha Hospital (currently, Kasturibai Hospital) in Madras.

Subsequently Rajammal got married to UK educated industrialist V.G. Raja, who happened to be a technocrat businessman of those times. It’s appropriate to state that V.G. Raja was a dedicated Freemason all his life. The couple was blessed with four children – R. Parthasarathy, Rajarajeswari, Chandralekha Sudakar, and Vijay Bharathi.

Dr. G.V. Rajammal continued to practice from Coimbatore, while also actively indulging herself in public life by representing the people of Ram Nagar as a Municipal Councillor on no less than three occasions, which began under the Chairmanship of S.R.P. Ponnuswamy Chettiar. She did much for her ward during her times and she was also active in the Congress party.

Dr. Rajammal participated in the historic Avadi Congress and took active part in organizing the Gobi Congress meet. Her service was appreciated by stalwarts like K. Kamaraj and C. Subramaniam. Later on, she was invited by Indira Gandhi to address the members of the Mahila Congress in Delhi. Several of her party colleagues received her support during the election campaigns of the fifties and sixties of the last century. She gave away her gold bangles for the benefit of army wives in 1966.

Acharya Vinobha Bhave, the disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, visited Coimbatore to spread the “Bhoodan Movement,” by collecting and distributing land and resources from the wealthy and giving it to the poor. Dr. Rajammal did much to support his visit by associating herself with his programme, which took to her several villages in the Coimbatore region. The other leading lady representatives of our region, Savithri Shanmugham, Rathinamanickkammal, Ganga Nair, and Kulandhaiammal, were quite well-known to her. She was also on friendly terms with Sarojini Varadappan and Lakshmi Menon.

A multifaceted personality, Dr. Rajammal also happened to be a good farmer. She cultivated sugarcane in her Uppilipalayam farm and used to produce jaggery with the harvest. In fact, the seeds brought by her during her trip to the USA were given to her friends who began growing them, and they continue to supply the produce out of the plantations.

Dr. Rajammal and her husband, V.G. Raja, were quite popular and pen portraits of the couple are found in Coimbatore and the Nilgiris District Directory of 1957. Incidentally, they happen to be the only couple in this compilation of pen portraits of the important personages of this region.

She shares her centenary with two other eminent Coimbatoreans – Prof P.R. Ramakrishnan (former Member of Parliament, founder of Nava India Newspaper, and Principal of Coimbatore Institute of Technology), and Prof P.R. Ramaswamy (former Principal of Government College of Technology).