Kannur :

Sundar Ramanathaiyer (63) who exhaustively documented and archived the history of Indian cartoons, passed away in Sydney, Australia on Saturday. It was Sundar’s “Tragic Idiom: O V Vijayan’s Cartoons & Notes on India,” which made the world sit up and take notice of the cartooning genius of the post-modernist writer.

“Though Vijayan was acclaimed as a leading writer, his first passion, cartoons, was never duly acknowledged till Sundar’s book came out,” said cartoonist E P Unny.

Sundar, born in Thiruvananthapuram, began his career as a development researcher, and his MPhil thesis, “Social Development in Kerala, India: Illusion or Reality?,” published by the University of Hong Kong, is considered a seminal work in the studies on the Kerala model of development.

Sundar was a researcher who loved cartoons even more than the practitioners, said Unny. “Sundar used to say that his exposure to cartoons sharpened his research methodology, giving him a certain ability to look at things obliquely,” he said.

Apart from writing short stories, columns and curating art and calligraphy shows, Sundar also promoted the cause of people with learning disabilities.

His work on the poor conditions at the Mental Health Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, led to the establishment of Abhaya, an organization to care for the destitute 30 years ago, said poet Sugathakumari, who now runs it.

“In 1985, after Sundar published a report on the horrid conditions in the government mental hospital in Oolanpara, I personally visited the place and saw the horrible fate of those admitted there,” she said, adding, “We at Abhaya owe it a lot to Sundar though he later parted ways with the organization.” It was while doing researches on the social development in Kerala that Sundar got attracted to the cartoons of O V Vijayan, said cartoonist and researcher Gokul Gopalakrishnan.