At his farewell from the Rajya Sabha in July 2019, Maitreyan Vasudevan broke down. He had served three terms in the upper house, had known its rituals and its rhythms for nearly two decades, had been a close aide to J. Jayalalithaa during the years of her greatest power. But it was not politics he spoke of in those final minutes on the floor. It was a genocide in Sri Lanka in 2009 \u2014 150,000 people killed, this house silent, no condolence motion, not a moment’s pause. “I urge that this house should not pass any condolence resolution for me whenever the situation arises,” he said, voice breaking. The two letters before his name \u2014 Dr \u2014 would outlast the two after it. GMC, he told them, would always be in his heart.<\/p>\n\n\n
Maitreyan was born into a Vadagalai Iyengar family, the son of K.R. Vasudevan, an independence activist, and Manga Vasudevan. His early schooling was in Madras, but his father’s work brought the family north to Nagpur, where Maitreyan spent four years \u2014 from 1968 to 1972 \u2014 at 204, Shankar Nagar. He completed his Higher Secondary from Saraswati Vidyalaya, Shankar Nagar, finishing seventh in the Maharashtra State Board. That ranking was enough. He entered Government Medical College, Nagpur, in 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the GMC years, Maitreyan was among the group of friends who gathered around Vikas Chitnavis’s cricket team and the college’s social life. After graduation he completed his rural internship at PHC Mohadi in Bhandara district alongside Rajeev Laul, Jayant Pande, Vikas Chitnavis, and Ramesh Mundle, then his urban internship at GMC Nagpur.<\/p>\n\n\n
In June 1979, Maitreyan returned to Chennai. He enrolled at Madras Medical College and obtained his MD (Medicine), writing his thesis on Landry Guillain-Barr\u00e9 Syndrome under Professor Sam G.P. Moses. He then moved to the Cancer Institute at Adyar, Madras University, where he completed a DM in Medical Oncology \u2014 the first qualified oncologist in India to hold the DM (Oncology) designation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The distinction mattered. Indian oncology in the early 1980s was a field still finding its institutional shape. Maitreyan joined the Cancer Institute as an Assistant Medical Officer in 1982 and spent the next decade rising through its ranks \u2014 Assistant Professor, Reader, Associate Professor, Professor at Dr. Muthu Lakshmi College of Oncologic Sciences. He also spent two years in the United States, training in bone marrow transplantation and HLA typing under Dr. Robert Peter Gale of UCLA, the bone marrow transplant specialist who had treated radiation victims from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. He published research papers in peer-reviewed journals and contributed a chapter on the epidemiology of cancer to the API Textbook of Medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The turn toward politics came gradually. In his early years, Maitreyan had been associated with the RSS. By 1991 he had joined the BJP in Tamil Nadu, serving as its general secretary from 1995 to 1997, vice president from 1997 to 1999, and president from 1999 to 2000. Then, in 2000, he resigned and joined the AIADMK, entering the orbit of Jayalalithaa.<\/p>\n\n\n
In January 2002, Maitreyan was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha, filling the vacancy caused by the death of G.K. Moopanar. He served three terms. The upper house gave him a platform he used selectively but with force. The Sri Lanka genocide of 2009 became his defining cause in Parliament \u2014 a cause the house largely ignored, and whose neglect he carried with him into his farewell speech a decade later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July 2023, he left the AIADMK after 24 years, having served as its Organising Secretary. On 9 June 2024, he rejoined the BJP and was appointed to its national committee. Politics, like medicine, had given him work to do. He had no intention of stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A bachelor throughout, Maitreyan made a comment at the GMC 1973 batch reunion in December 2013 that his classmates remembered. “The two letters after my name are temporary,” he said, “and will leave me after my term is over. But the two letters before my name will remain with me until my very end. The institution which gave me that honour, GMC, will always be in my heart.” The room understood exactly what he meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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