A NATION-MINDED SCRIBE
Cho Ramaswami was a conscientious journalist. He had been writing in his THUGLAK on infiltration in Assam implying that all who came from Bangaladesh were infiltrators and so should be dealt as such. But RSS karyakarthas who were well informed on North East asked Cho to pay a visit to Assam and find out the truth. He did so and was helped by Sangh during his visit. Once he was clear in that Hindus from Bangaladesh were in fact refugees and others were infiltrators, he informed his readers of his finding.
AWARE OF ANTI HINDU FORCES AT WORK
It was 1971. Chennai Sangh Pracharak Padmanabhan and a cub reporter Shri Mahadevan from the Sangh weekly Thyagabhoomi met Cho in his office to secure his signature to a memorandum seeking a government ban on a declared procession by Dravidar Kazhagam atrociously vilifying Hindu gods and goddesses. Cho did not sign the petition but assured that he would expose DK (an ally of the then ruling party in the state, the DMK) thoroughly through THUGLAK. He kept his word and thus invited the wrath of the DMK government. His magazine carrying the article was confiscated. But his diligent readers managed to secure copies. Cho was well aware of anti-Hindu designs at work and countered them through his magazine, a rare quality among the journalistic fraternity.
A SANSKRIT LOVER
Cho Ramaswamy had a keen interest in spreading spoken Sanskrit. In 1999, he visited sambhashana shibiram of the Samskrita Bharati in Alwarpet. “Mama nama … bhavataha nama kim?” (My name is…, what is your name?) was in progress just then. When the shikshk asked Cho “bhavataha nama kim?” he shot back “mama nama ekaksharam” (implying his Tamil single letter name Cho). That evoked a spontaneous burst of laughter adding to the jolly good atmosphere typical of any sambhshana shibiram.