"How do you become a diplomat? I think you can start with being a student of Madras Christian college" ❤️

The T. G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture

5th January 2026 | 10.30 am

A Report

The 14th Edition of the T. G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture was held today at 10.30 am in the Centre for Media Studies Auditorium.

The Chief Guest of the day was Shri T. P. Seetharam, IFS, former Ambassador of India to the UAE, and an illustrious alumnus of the Department of English, MCC.

Dr. Joshua, introduced the Chief Guest of the day.

Excerpts from his introduction –

It’s my wonderful privilege to introduce the chief guest - Ambassador TP Seetharam. He was the Chairman of Heber Hall in 1977-78. He did his BA in Loyola College in English Literature from 1974 to 76, then he came to MCC to do his Masters here in English language and literature from 1976 - 78.

I’m sure he would agree with me that he found true freedom after coming to MCC, where he could enjoy boundless freedom here - not only in the Hall, but in the department and in the college as well.  

That is one of the unique features of MCC. MCC has always encouraged the freedom of thought and they are also given the freedom to pursue those ideas, those desires which are close to their heart, and that really shapes our careers as well. We are also happy to have his classmate here with us – who is none other than Dr. Nirmal Selvamony.

Four of them in the class formed the Think Tank of the Class –

T.P. Seetharam

Nirmal Selvamony

Indu Menon

Sandhya

These four formed the quartet – the Think Tank.

Now while he was a student here, Seetharam had aspirations to get into civil services, and he is from a very distinguished family. His elder brother also got into IFS.  

While he was in MCC, he exhibited his talents of leadership – both as a thinker and a writer and he also contributed articles to the College Magazine. And this has always been a tradition.

In MCC, some of the best and the brightest minds in the college would be contributing articles, either in the Department Magazine or in the College Magazine.

The best example is Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the former President of India, on whom I did my research as well. When he was the student of this college from 1905 to 1909, he wrote two articles in the college magazine and they were well-appreciated, and this laid the future foundation for his intellectual thought.

So that’s how you students also must explore avenues and means of expressing your own thoughts through writing – it could be writing short poems or essays, or book reviews.

This will definitely contribute to your later career. So TPS had two of his articles published in the College Magazine. From this we know how innovative, creative and expressive he was, even when he was a student here. And then in 1980, he got into civil services. Let me also share that, MCC has contributed some of the best civil servants in the country, and that includes T. N. Seshan.

In fact, the very first Foreign Secretary of India, Shri KPS Menon was a student here. After his studies here, he got into Civil Services, and he became one of the well-respected diplomats. He was Foreign Secretary from 1948 to 52.

Coming back to TPS, he interacted with Rajiv Gandhi, Angela Merkel, Bill Clinton, K. R. Narayanan, Narendra Modi, etc. Finally, he was appointed Ambassador to UAE, from 2013 to 2016, when, he hosted our Prime Minister Narendra Modi (the first PM to visit the UAE after Indira Gandhi).

In the Global Alumni Meet of 2016, in MCC, Mr. Seetharam was our Chief Guest.

It’s my honour and pleasure to invite Ambassador Seetharam to our midst,

said Dr. Joshua in his introductory note.

The topic of today’s lecture by Mr. T.P. Seetharam was, ‘Service without Borders: The Role of Diplomats’.

Giving us all a few excerpts from his engaging speech -

Good morning, everybody here. Thank you, Dr. Franklin for this opportunity. Thank you, Dr. Joshua for introducing me generously, and also for having introduced me earlier to Dr. Franklin.

I don't have a prepared speech. Even if I had one, I would have to tear it up, because what Trump has done in the last couple of days.

It’s about diplomacy.

How do you become a diplomat? I think you can start with being a student of Madras Christian college. It's even better like I did.

I also had the privilege of teaching English Literature in MCC for a year, against a leave vacancy.

They say that there’s no way to learn a subject better than to teach it. That’s because when you have to teach something you have to understand what it’s all about.

So a lot of my learning happened when I was teaching here for a year. And at that time, of course there were some very good teachers and one of them I should mention here, is Prof. Rajani, from the English department who is, sadly, no more.

He was a friend, philosopher and advisor to all of us. And most importantly, he gave me a key to the English department library.

I had access to that English department library while I was teaching here for a year. And after having stayed in Heber as a student, I was staying in St Thomas’s Hall, while being the assistant professor of English. So after dinner I would walk with the key to the main building.

There was nobody in the main building at that time, and I would lock myself into that tiny library and stay there, read and take my notes and sleep there. The library was very helpful for me.

I did choose English as one of my subjects for the Civil Services, apart from Sociology – of which I knew nothing about.

But a friend offered to lend me his notes. I only studied his notes.

I passed the exam. He didn’t.

His father was at that time the Foreign Secretary of India.

His girlfriend also was taking the exam after studying from his notes.

She also passed and joined the IAS.

However, he went on to become a very distinguished person in the NGO sector. So MCC is a good place to begin your preparations for the Civil Services.

It is a highly competitive exam. I will not go into the details now, since this afternoon at the MCC-IAS Academy I will be talking about the mechanics of getting into the services.

So what is diplomacy all about?

It's supposed to be everything that Trump does not stand for.

It’s about making friends.

It is civilised behaviour.

It’s not being selfish. It’s not about Make my Country Great Again, but about, making OUR countries great again. It about engagement, it’s about networking.

And we have a very strict selection process. In 1980, when I joined the service, in my batch there were 20 young probationers. This 20 is from the 1,15,000 people who took the exam.

So that is the intense competition. And once you are in, there is a very extensive training programme in India for about two years. You are sent to Jawaharlal Nehru University, you are attached with the Indian Army in the border areas. You learn how to fire a pistol on a semi-automatic and you are attached in the office of a district collector in a district for a period of time.

What you should never forget is that, as a diplomat, living abroad, you are representing India. India, with all its glorious history and past, India, with all its achievements.

So you need to understand India very well if you wish to represent India outside. My first assignment was in Hong Kong.

My job was to go there to study Chinese language. I had opted for it. They asked me, which language I would you like to study?

Most others chose French Russian or Arabic. And the languages are spoken by many countries.

I chose Chinese because I thought that it was a difficult language.

As for French, you can pick up in three months, but Chinese are Japanese are languages which require dedicated study over a period of time.

And the government was sending me to Hong Kong to study Chinese at the university there for two years.

Before going to Hong Kong, I was a probationer, attending the first India-China border talks in Beijing.

I was a note-taker in the backbench in 1983. What has that happened to the border issues since then?

I serve the government for 36 years. Retired 10 years ago, India-China border issue still remains unresolved. I hope some of you will join the foreign service, and resolve our border issue. If you can help, you'll be a great service - to both India and China and the world. Some issues take a long time.

The Chinese say that they will solve this problem, when the time is right!

To be continued…

Dr. Franklin Daniel, our Head of the Department gave the welcome address. Our Principal Dr. Paul Wilson gave the Inaugural address, while Dr. Aruna gave the Vote of Thanks, followed by the closing prayer done by Dr. Ann Thomas. Prof. DC was amazing as MC. Indeed she made Dr. David’s day end on a very happy note, today! 😊

On the whole, a very rewarding day in every way!

PS: You may want to look up the first edition of the T.G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture on 21 December 2012, on our past blogpost HERE

You may also want to look up the 13th edition of the T.G. Narayanan Endowment Lecture, on 5th December 2024, on our past blogpost HERE