Mali

Who is Mali?

T. R. Mahalingam, pen-name 'Mali', was a pioneering illustrator and cartoonist from Tamil Nadu, India, in the pre-independence era. He was the Tamil Press's first caricaturist, according to Chennai historian S. Muthiah in The Hindu. Muthiah has written elsewhere that Mali did as much with his strokes for Vikatan as its celebrated editor Kalki Krishnamurthy did with his words.

Mali published his drawings in the Indian Express in the 1930s, and first made his name at the Free Press Journal 'before being immortalised in the pages of Ananda Vikatan, the first popular Tamil periodical'. He also did cartoons for the Vikatan group's English-language Merry Magazine, where he became the editor in 1935. He is said to have left the editorial nitty-gritty to his assistant editor, while continuing to illustrate such humorous serials as 'Private Joyful in Madras'.

While it was the legendary writer and poet Subramanya Bharathi who first introduced cartoons to Tamil journalism, it was Ananda Vikatan that made them truly popular. As cartoonist and senior artist at Ananda Vikatan, Mali was thus a key influence on a second generation of cartoonists. Gopulu and Silpi were illustrators he mentored at Vikatan.