Sir Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar (14 October 1887 – 17 July 1976) was an Indian lawyer, diplomat, and statesman who was the first president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council[1] and the 24th and last dewan of Mysore.

[2][3] He also served as a senior leader of the Justice Party and in various administrative and bureaucratic posts in pre- and Independent India.

He was India's delegate to the San Francisco Conference and served as the first president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

[9] In July 1918, he went to England along with T. M. Nair and Kurma Venkata Reddy Naidu as part of the Justice Party delegation to argue in favour of communal representation and offer evidence before the Reforms Committee.

Theagaroya Chetty in 1925, Mudaliar functioned as the sole link between Shahu Maharaj's Satya Shodhak Samaj and the Justice Party.

When its activities had spread from Bombay to Madras, from the Vindhya mountains to Cape Comorin, its very extent and the lightning rapidity with which its principles have pervaded the country will be the best justification of the MovementMudaliar's utterances at this conference became the target of The Hindu, which criticised him by saying that "the speaker was desiring to produce an effect in another province, forced him to draw rather freely on his imagination".

[4] On 25 February 1937, he was knighted in the 1937 Coronation Honours List,[14] by which time he was a member of the Council of the Secretary of State for India.

[18][19] Mudaliar served as India's delegate to the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference between 25 April and 26 June 1945, where he chaired the committee that discussed economic and social problems.

[23] At the conference which was eventually held on 19 June 1946, inaugurated by Mudaliar, the World Health Organization came into being, and the constitution for the new organisation was read out and approved by delegates from 61 nations.

Mudaliar was appointed as the Dewan of Mysore in 1946 by Maharaja Jayachamaraja Wadiyar,[25] succeeding Sir N. Madhava Rao.

During his tenure as Diwan of Mysore, Mudaliar organised a number of Tamil music concerts in the kingdom in order to raise money for the restoration of the Carnatic musician Tyagaraja's tomb at Tiruvaiyaru.

[30] Despite his violent tirades against the Varnashrama dharma and Hindu scriptures in his writings and editorials in the Justice, Mudaliar was known to be a staunch Vaishnavite.