Cho Ramaswamy: An outspoken satirist, who stressed on dialogue

Chennai: “Dialogue is our forte. It must reach the audience. Even if it is antiquated, I’d like to retain it. I’ve never thought of ways to ruin success,” Cho Ramaswamy, with a bright streak of vibhuti applied across his forehead, had once remarked. Perhaps, he surpassed this.

Cho made everyone laugh through his witty remarks and his political satires were well received and savoured by a multitude including numerous politicians. He was known more as a popular comedian, actor and playwright than as lawyer. Cho Ramaswamy aka Srinivasa Iyer Ramaswamy, who boldly asked BJP patriarch L.K. Advani to step down and allow Narendra Modi to lead the nation, is no more. He was 82.

Cho, born in a Brahmin family of lawyers in 1934, began assisting his father and practised in the Madras high court. In 1964, he became the legal advisor at the T.T. Krishnamachari Group of Companies in Chennai. Later, he ventured into films and finally made his mark as a journalist.

He made a mark for himself much before he took to journalism. His work in the popular theatre was laced with political and social criticism. The attempts of the Congress government under M. Bhaktavatsalam in the late 1960s to censor the script of his play Sambavami Yuge Yuge drew popular attention and his political satire Mohamed Bin Thuglak was a runaway success.

The versatile personality made his debut in 1963 with Paar Magale Paar as comedian. From 1963 to 2005 he acted in 190 Tamil films. He had worked with former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in 19 films. He had served as a Rajya Sabha MP from Nov. 1999 to Nov. 2005.  Apart from scripting about 23 plays, Cho — a name from the character he enlivened on the stage in the play Thenmozhiyal — had acted in 200 films, directed four and scripted another 14.