Tripuraneni Ramaswamy

Tripuraneni Ramaswamy (1887–1943), also known as Tripuraneni Ramaswamy, was a lawyer, poet, playwright and reformer active among the Telugu-speaking people. He was popularly known as Kaviraju (the "king of poets"), a title given to him by the Andhra Mahasabha in 1929. Ramaswamy was part of a growing movement in India to reassess the culture of India. This movement included such people as Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Ranade, Dayananda Saraswati, Kandukuri Veeresalingam and Gurazada Apparao. Ramaswamy was born in the village of Angaluru in the Krishna District (present-day Andhra Pradesh) into a family of farmers. At the age of 23, he passed his Matriculation Examination. In the same year Ramaswamy wrote two plays: Karempudi Kadanam, based on the Palanadu battle, and Kurukshetra Sangramam, based on the Mahabharata war. In 1911, Ramaswamy joined the Noble College at Bandar to study for the Intermediate Course. In those years he displayed his literary skills and prodigious memory in his Avadhanam.