A Real Demi-God

Not many of us become a demi-god ..... many try to be, with the Kim family in North Korea top of any wannabe list, followed by some Islamic leaders in Iran and elsewhere.

Worshipping The Kim Family In North Korea

Many African leaders such as Robert Mugabwe have also aspired to this status ......

But many of the aspirants, end up like Colonel Gaddafi in Libya ... secretly despised during their life and openly after death, with their crimes exposed to the world .... so its not necessarily a wise move as a leader to cultivate (or more likely enforce), a cult worship of oneself. After all the higher you put yourself, the greater the eventual fall in your reputation.

However, there are those who make no claims to demi-god like status while alive, and who would probably be greatly surprised, to find that is exactly the status to which they have been elevated after their deaths. 

But such is the case of Colonel John Pennycuick of the East India Company in India. The youngest son of Brigadier John Pennycuick, who was killed at the Battle of Chillianwalla in the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849. 

His Father Brigadier John Pennycuick

 

Born in India, he had been trained in Britain, and commissioned as a lieutenant in the Madras Engineer Group, arriving back in India in 1860. After serving as an officer in some military campaigns (notably in the Abyssinian campaign of 1868) .... he started serving as a chief engineer in the Public Works Department.

Colonel John Pennycuick

He finished his career as the last president of the Royal Indian Engineering College and as President of the Sanitary Board, and was a faculty in the University of Madras. He received a Telford medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers. So whilst a commendable career as a military and civil engineer .... nothing immediately stands out as a reason for later deification. 

We have to go back to that stint the Public Works Department in the Madras Presidency, as it was in this role that he performed the task that would eventually lead to his later status. At the end of the 19th Century there were very few dams in the south of India, which left many regions susceptible to droughts and famines. There had been various schemes mooted to divert the west-flowing Periyar river, (which ran in to the Arabian sea), in to the smaller but usefully eastward flowing Vaigai river.

However it had always been deemed as "impracticable," for various reasons including costs and technical difficulties, but Colonel Pennycuick decided that it not only was practicable, but very desirable to avert future droughts and famines. It's reported that he said: "I am going to be only once in this earthly world, hence I need to do some good deeds here. This deed should not be prorogue nor ignored since I am not going to be here again."

In order to achieve the diversion, the Periyar river had to be dammed and the water channelled to the Vaigai river ... a task that was started when in 1886, a lease indenture for 999 years was signed for the land from the then ruler of present day Kerala state, and work started on the Mullaperiyar_Dam in May 1887, it was completed in 1895, resulting in the irrigation of 223,000 acres in Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Sivaganga and Ramanathapuram districts in present-day Tamil Nadu. Pennycuick retired to his hometown of Camberley in England, and died in 1911, where he was buried in the town.

The 'Periyar project', was widely considered well into the 20th century as "one of the most extraordinary feats of engineering ever performed by man" ... but it came with a cost, as 483 people died of diseases during the construction of the dam, and were buried on-site in a cemetery just north of the dam. The dam, which was not necessarily well maintained in the years post independence used to  help irrigate about 340,000 acres [134,000 hectares] of land, but that has now been halved, following safety concerns over the state of the dam, and its water storage level was reduced. 

There is also a legend that when the project ran out of money, Colonel Pennycuick returned to England and sold some family property to raise the funds to finish it off .... his current descendents have found no evidence of this happening, and have said so, but the myth lives on, and has contributed to his legend.

However countless millions have benefited from this dam, and as Desika Thiruvalan a local farmer said  "Pennycuick is like a god to us. We are blessed to have plenty of water." ... a thought shared by many, many, others, in the districts that have most benefited from the waters. 

Colonel John Pennycuick Posters

In such high regard is this feat and its architect held, that too this day many Indian boys in Madurai district are named 'Pennycuick'.

Colonel John Pennycuick Memorial
 At Lower Camp, Theni, Madurai

...... There is also a golden statue of him at a Memorial camp in his name .....  

Colonel John Pennycuick Image On Shops

...... as well as pictures of him on shops, and in many Hindu shrines (alongside Hindu deities).

Colonel John Pennycuick Memorial In Garden

In 2019, a senior Tamil Nadu police official donated a bust of Pennycuick, which was installed in the St Peter’s Memorial Garden in Frimley, Surrey, where the engineer was buried.

Colonel John Pennycuick Latest Memorial Bust

Mr Ibrahim, a film maker from Southern Tamil Nadu has now instigated the donation of another bust of Pennycuick to Camberley by Southern Tamil Nadu state, and it was unveiled on the 10th of September 2022 at a public park in the town.