N. Ramaswamy (Alias Babu) was born in 1961 Betragunta, a village in Andhra Pradesh to a Tamil family from Tiruvahindrapuram, in Tamil Nadu. He has studied Telugu upto high-school level, Hindi upto Visharad and holds diploma in Bachelor of Arts from Annamalai University, Chidambaram. N. Ramaswamy joined the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO in 1992. He is a field-assistant and is also in-charge of the Centre’s photo archives. He goes on regular field trips and continues to enrich the Centre’s rich collection of photos.
Since joining the EFEO, he has assisted many scholars by organising and facilitating their field trips within South India. He has travelled and worked extensively with:
- Jean Deloche and Klaus Rötzer for their projects on the forts of Karnataka as well as the mural paintings of Tiruppudaimarudur temple,
- Francoise L’Hernault during her survey of temples in South India
- Pierre Pichard, for his project on producing detailed drawings of the Vatima agrahara houses
- Marie-Louise Reiniche, for her Kumbakonam project
- Pierre Lachaier, for research on the Nadar and the Lohana communities
- Jean-Luc Chevillard, to produce several drawings for his CD on Tevaram sites
- Eva Wilden, to create a collection of digitized Tamil manuscripts from various libraries and mutts
- Charlotte Schmid, for her research on Tamil Nadu temples during which several Pallava sculptures were discovered and published
- Dominic Goodall, in his search for Sanskrit and inscriptions in Tamil Nadu
- Valerie Gillet, for her various projects on the temples of Tamil Nadu
- Emmanuel Francis, for his search for temples inscriptions in Tamil Nadu
- Dr. G. Vijayavenugopal, during his numerous field trips to collect stone inscriptions for his various projects, and collaborated with him in the preparation of a publication on incriptions of the Tirunallar temples
- T. Rajeswari, to prepare a collection of photographs of flowers for her publication of the critical edition of the Kurinchipattu.
For the DHARMA project, N. Ramaswamy visits sites to locate and photograph stone inscriptions in temples. He then rearranges them according to chronology and works with Dr. G. Vijayavenogopal to read and transcribe them. He is also collecting details and images of inscriptions that he and Dr. G. Vijayavenugopal have discovered and published over the years in the Āvaṇam journal since 1998.
