AR Venkatachalapathy AR Venkatachalapathy is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. Apart from his scholarly writings in English, he has written or edited over thirty books in Tamil. His publications in English include Swadeshi Steam: V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle Against the British Maritime Empire (2023), Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture (2018), The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu (2012), and In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History (2006). Presently he is working on biographies of Periyar and V. O. Chidambaram Pillai.