Therattil J. Antony
Congress leader, Thrissur municipal councillor and long-serving municipal chairman
To the people of Aranattukara, Therattil J. Antony was simply Anthonichettan (elder brother Antony). He was the local face of the Indian National Congress for a generation, and people on all sides respected him.
Party worker
Even before Kerala was formed in 1956, the book says, the Congress office in Aranattukara worked from a house near the chapel at Padinjare Angadi. He and Thazhath J. Antony were the party’s local leaders. Those were hard years, with frequent clashes between Congress and Communist workers.
Councillor and chairman
In 1962 he and Thazhath J. Antony won seats on the Thrissur Municipal Council. He went on to serve as a councillor for about thirty years. For about fifteen of them he was chairman of the municipality, the “father of the council”. The book records him in that office in 1969.
As chairman he kept up friendships across party lines. He brought piped drinking water to the Mathaipuram colony at Lalur. He also championed a Ring Road scheme for Thrissur. It stalled over land acquisition, and the book notes that the city still talks of it as a dream project, while the land that could once have been bought has long since gone up in price.
A modest man
The book describes him as the biggest leather merchant in the old Cochin State, yet a very simple and humble man. He quietly helped poor families, and he supported both the church and the school in Aranattukara. The lower-primary section of Tharakans School later moved into a building he had paid for.
The book remembers him less for learning than for his honesty and good character.
Related
Tharakan's School, Aranattukara
The parish school beside St. Thomas Church, which grew from a village writing school into Tharakan's High School and taught generations of Aranattukara children.
Aranattukara Today
Ponds, paddy and bamboo gave way to roads and houses, and a market village became a ward of Thrissur city. What has changed, who has spoken for Aranattukara, and what is still worth keeping.
The Schools That Shaped Aranattukara
From village writing schools taught by Hindu teachers to Tharakan's School, the girls' high schools and St. Aloysius College at Elthuruth, this is how Aranattukara learned to read, and how its classrooms helped heal a divided parish.
Struggles and Movements
From Gandhiji's visit to the Lalur colony and the 1936 electricity agitation to a seventy-year fight over the city's rubbish at Lalur. Aranattukara's part in the public life of Thrissur and Kerala.