12 Facts About Ammu Swaminathan

Ammu Swaminathan's father, Govinda Menon, was a minor local official.

Ammu Swaminathan never went to school and received only a rudimentary education at home, which consisted of minimal reading and writing in Malayalam, cooking and keeping house, to prepare her for married life.

Ammu Swaminathan lost her father at a very young age, and her mother struggled to raise her children and arrange marriages for her many daughters.

Resultantly, when Ammu Swaminathan was 13, her mother arranged an alliance for her which conformed to the Sambandam system which was well accepted in Kerala society at that time.

Ammu Swaminathan's spouse was Subbarama Swaminathan, an Kerala Iyer Brahmin who was more than twenty years older than Ammu.

Subbarama Ammu Swaminathan, born into a middle-class Kerala Iyer family, had struggled hard in his early life to gain an education and rise above his situation.

Ammu Swaminathan had studied with scholarships at the universities of Edinburgh and London.

Ammu Swaminathan's extended stay abroad and financial situation had prevented him from marrying until he was in his mid-30s.

The arrival of the very young and sheltered Ammu Swaminathan fulfilled deep emotional needs for Subbarama and he devoted a large part of his life to nurturing her development in every way.

Ammu Swaminathan was elected as 'Mother of The Year' in 1975 on the inauguration of International Women's Year.

Ammu Swaminathan had four children, including Govind Swaminadhan, who served as the Advocate-General of Tamil Nadu from 1969 to 1976, and Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan a medical doctor and a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement and an officer of the Indian National Army.

Captain Lakshmi Ammu Swaminathan was a member of the Rajya Sabha and was nominated as a presidential candidate in 2002.