His father, P. S. Krishnaswami, was a sanitary engineer in the Madras Government who after retirement undertook the first complete translation into Tamil of Valmiki’s Ramayana.
On matriculating in 1912, Swaminathan joined Presidency College where he was to spend five years, finishing his Intermediate before taking a first-class degree in English Literature.
[3] On his return to India, Swaminathan resumed his job at Chidambaram before moving in 1930 to teach at his alma mater, Presidency College in Madras.
In 1934, Swaminathan wrote a comic opera, called Kattaivandi (the Cart), an adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers,[4] which was staged several times in Madras and other southern towns.
After retiring from teaching, he became Associate Editor of The Indian Express, with special responsibility for bringing out their weekend supplement, The Sunday Standard.
While the main newspaper, edited by Frank Moraes, focused on politics, economics, foreign affairs and sport, the weekend supplement, handled by Swaminathan, published book reviews, features, poems, and short stories.
Swaminathan recalled that his duties included ‘mending [Gandhi’s] quill pens because he would not use nibs, then all imported, filling his ink-stand with swadeshi ink and going with him on foot or by tram to the Roman Catholic Bishop’s house in San Thome, the Anglican Bishop’s house near St. George’s Cathedral, the Mahajana Sabha Hall [in] Mount Road, Ranade Hall, Mylapore, George Town, Royapettah and various other locations.’[6] On Gandhi’s later trips to Madras, Swaminathan occasionally attended his public meetings.
[8] In 1956, the Publications Division of the Government of India began a project to bring out Gandhi’s published and unpublished writings in book form, and in three languages: English, Hindi, and Marathi.
Each had a preface, an appendix, a chronology, a list of sources, and an index, while the main text containing Gandhi’s writings were carefully footnoted and annotated.
In her foreword to this volume, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi remarked: ‘I wish to place on record my appreciation and that of the Government of India of the dedication and competence of Professor K. Swaminathan and his team of editors, research scholars and staff who have laboured over the last twenty-five years to complete this monumental work’.
Although he was no longer Chief Editor of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, he assisted his former colleagues in New Delhi in bring out seven supplementary volumes and in preparing consolidated subject and person indexes to the series.