Saidapet is a neighbourhood of Chennai, India situated about from kilometre zero of Chennai city. Historically, an important suburban town of Madras city, Saidapet served as the southern gateway to the city for long by virtue of its strategic location on the Mount Road stretch of the Grand Southern Trunk Road until its inclusion in the limits of the then Corporation of Madras city in 1946. Saidapet functioned as the administrative headquarters of Chingleput District and the residence of its District Collector from 1859 to 1968.Gopalakrishnan 2000, p 1001 The Saidapet Court is located in Saidapet and also the taluk offices from 1798 onwards until 1997, though Saidapet town, itself, had been transferred from Chingleput District to Madras district in 1946.
Saidapet is named after Sayyid Khan, a cavalry officer in service of the Nawab of Carnatic who owned lands here in the second half of the 18th century though there had been settlements in the area long prior to Sayyid Khan's time. Christian pilgrims from Fort St. George to the shrine at St. Thomas Mount had to pass through Saidapet and the Marmalong Bridge was constructed for their convenience across the Adyar River at Saidapet by the Armenian merchant Coja Petrus Uscan in 1726. In 1780, the British East India Company acquired possession of Saidapet along the rest of the jaghire of Chingleput and made it an important administrative centre. Saidapet was the location of the Government Model Farm where experiments were carried out in the late 19th century for growing genetically modified varieties of wheat. Saidapet was also the location of the Government Agricultural College from 1868 to 1906 when it was moved to Coimbatore. The Government Teachers Training College has been functioning from Saidapet since 1864 and the main campus of the Tamil Nadu Open University was set up in 2002.
The municipality of Saidapet was established in 1921 and rapidly grew into a satellite town of Madras city absorbing suburban areas situated on the fringes of Madras. For administrative convenience, the municipality was dissolved in 1946 and its areas incorporated into Madras city where as of 2018, the greater part of Saidapet comes under Ward 169 of the Greater Chennai Corporation with smaller portions in Ward 168 and Ward 170.
The market in West Saidapet is an important shopping and business hub. Traditionally, Saidapet has been an important weaving and hand dyeing centre which was centred on the shores of the Adyar River. Saidapet has important places of worship for all major religions - the Karaneeswarar Temple for Hindus, the Saidapet Jama Masjid for Muslims, while the Little Mount shrine, where the apostle St. Thomas is believed to have lived and preached, an important place of pilgrimage for St. Thomas Christians. Saidapet has a bus depot and is served by the Saidapet railway station of the Chennai Suburban Railway and the Saidapet and Little Mount metro stations.
Location
Saidapet is situated in the southwest part of Chennai city almost exactly halfway between Broadway () and Tambaram (). It is flanked by Nandanam in the north, Raja Annamalaipuram in the east and Guindy in the south and Guindy and Kotturpuram in the south-east. Mambalam and T. Nagar bound Saidapet in the north and north-west and Ekkaduthangal in the south-west. Saidapet is situated about west of the Adyar estuary's confluence with the Bay of Bengal.
Geography and climate
Much of Saidapet is low lying and covered with sandy loam which is generally not suited for agriculture. However, the soil was found to be rich in potash which makes it ideal for tobacco cultivation. It also had high quantities of nitrogen which converts into nitric acid when the first fresh rains fall. Little Mount, an average-sized hillock is situated on the southern banks of the Adyar river.
Saidapet is situated at an average elevation of above sea level. The Adyar river bed at Saidapet is heavily encroached upon and the people who lived along the river bed who were exclusively from low income groups suffered heavily during the 2015 South India floods when their habitations were washed away and the water levels in the Adyar river reached upto the Maraimalai Adigal bridge. As of 2017, two years later, many of the flood victims were still homeless. The southern part of Saidapet might have been covered in scrub forest of which patches survive in the Raj Bhavan grounds and Guindy National Park.
Under the Köppen climate classification, like the rest of Chennai city, Saidapet has the dry-summer version of a tropical savanna climate (As), It gets monsoonal rains between September and December every year. Like most South Indian rivers, the Adyar river is seasonal and is dry for over six months of the year.
The Adyar river at Saidapet is heavily polluted from industrial effluents and laundry activity on its banks that it highly unsuitable for fishes, birds and marine life. Saidapet lies in Seismic Zone 3 which is chacterized by moderate risk of earthquakes.
History Early History
An unidentified worn out Roman coin along with several contemporaneous Indian coins were reportedly discovered from an unnamed Hindu temple in Saidapet in 1883 proving that there were human settlements in the region over two thousand years ago. Nearby Mambalam had also yielded a denarius of the Roman emperor Augustus during an archaeological investigation in 1929.
The older of the two chapels at Little Mount was constructed by the Portuguese in 1551. It has a Portuguese inscription dated 1612 and stands over a cave where the apostle St. Thomas had allegedly lived and meditated. The cave has a small window below which are handprints alleged to be of the apostle.
Following the founding of the British settlement at Fort St George in 1639, a road was constructed for European pilgrims to St. Thomas Mount and they frequented Saidapet as it lay on the route. A wealthy Armenian benefactor named Coja Petrus Uscan constructed the Marmalong Bridge across the Adyar River at Saidapet in 1726 and set up a trilingual marble plaque in Latin, Persian and Armenian recording the event.Madras Rediscovered, p 92 While Marmalong bridge was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with a modern motorable bridge, the plaque has survived intact in its original location close to the Saidapet bus stand.
In the 18th century, Saidapet became a part of the Carnatic kingdom and was given as a fief towards the end of that century by the Nawab of Carnatic to a faujdar named Sayyid Khan from whom the neighbourhood probably takes its name.Madras Rediscovered, p 90 Until then, Saidapet was presumably a part of Mambalam and didn't have a name of its own and its generally accepted that "Marmalong", the name of the bridge across the Adyar river was a corruption of the word "Mambalam". In keeping with custom, the shortened Tamil form "Saidai" is also frequently used often as a demonym.
Under the British In 1763, the revenue administration of Saidapet was taken over the British East India Company from the Nawab of the Carnatic along with the rest of the "jaghire" of Chingleput.Gopalakrishnan 2000, p 999 However, the "jaghire" remained under the Nawab's political rule till 1780. Following British annexation, Saidapet was made a part of Chingleput district in 1794 and the borders of Madras city were extended upto Teynampet in 1871 and later, Nandanam.Gopalakrishnan 2000, p 1000 Saidapet, while not within the administrative limits of Madras city, was still practically a suburb of Madras.
At a short distance before Marmalong Bridge is situated Lushington Gardens, a prominent garden house constructed in the 1830s. Prior to the construction of this garden house, starting from the 1780s, the Scottish botanist John Anderson experimented with setting up a "nopalry" for breeding a particular variety of cochineal at this very spot. A few decades into this experiment, the "nopalry" was shifted to the Lal Bagh gardens in Bangalore. In the northern corner of Saidapet lies the Fourbeck Monument, a pillar dedicated to Adrian Fourbeck, a merchant who donated for the construction of a bridge across the Mambalam canal in 1786.
The administrative headquarters of Chingleput district were shifted to Saidapet in 1859 and a District Collector's office and various other offices constructed for the purpose.Crole, p 71The Collector's Office, an Indo-Saracenic building known as Homes' Gardens (later renamed as Panagal Maaligai) with a magistrate's court presided over by the District Collector was demolished in 1990 and replaced with a modern building.Madras Rediscovered, p 91
The Teacher's Training College was started in Vepery as the Government Normal School in 1856 by Sir Alexander Arbuthnot and shifted to Saidapet in 1864. The Government Agricultural College was started in Saidapet in 1868 and functioned from there from 1868 to 1906.
The Government Model Farm was inaugurated at Saidapet in 1865 by Sir William Denison, Governor of Madras from 1861 and 1866 and wheat and tobacco were cultivated along Mount Road on experimental basis. After a few years, the services of a professional agriculturist, W. R. Robertson were requisitioned. Subsequently, Robertson also headed the Government Agricultural College as principal. The farm endured with little success for about two decades after which operations were considerably scaled down and eventually abandoned.
The Saidapet railway station was constructed in the 1870s. When the Chennai suburban railway electric train service from Madras Beach to Tambaram commenced operations in 1931, the tracks were electrified and motor bus services were introduced at about the same time.
The municipality of Saidapet was inaugurated on 1 April 1921 comprising Saidapet town and Mambalam, Kodambakkam, Puliyur, Saligrammam and Choolaimedu suburban villages of Madras city.Gopalakrishnan 2000, pp 1289-1290While the western part of Mambalam was a part of Saidapet municipality, East Mambalam was the site of the planned township of Theagaraya Nagar which was eventually absorbed into the Corporation of Madras in 1931 The total number of wards was 14 which was soon increased to 20. A government notification published in January 1922 excluded Guindy Race Course from the jurisdiction of the Saidapet municipality. The municipality built roads and parks, collected tolls and electrified streets. However, its unusual size and topography (the municipality stretched from Guindy for in a north-westerly direction upto Choolaimedu and its shape was described as forming "an arc around Madras city") and lack of proper road connectivity between the far-flung areas creative administrative hassles. The outlying areas such as Mambalam, Saligramman and Choolaimedu suffered from poor sanitation and lack of electricity and basic civic amenities. As a remedial measure, the Saidapet municipality was dissolved in 1946, a year before India's independence and all its constituents absorbed into the Corporation of Madras.
Post independence
Saidapet witnessed steady growth through the 1950s and grew in political importance as a stronghold of the Dravidian Movement. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M. Karunanidhi who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for over 20 years was elected from the Saidapet Assembly constituency in the 1967 and 1971 elections. The people of Saidapet also played a significant role in the Anti-Hindi agitations of 1938 and 1967. The 200-year old Marmalong Bridge across the Adyar river was deemed unsuitable for heavy motor vehicle traffic and was demolished and the Maraimalai Adigal Bridge constructed in its place in 1966. A bus depot was constructed along Anna Salai in Saidapet to cater to the needs of an expanding bus network.