Chronology

1920	Balachandra Rajan is born to Visalam and Justice Arunachala Tyagarajan of the Indian Civil Service at Toungoo, Burma.
1925	Sent for proper English education to Madras where he boards with his sister and brother-in-law.
1936	Graduates from Doveton Corrie Boys' High School (a Protestant institution) in Madras.
	Because of perfect score probability, if not certainty, is coerced into the study of science over his personal preference, English Literature.
1938	Passes the intermediate science exam (physics, chemistry, mathematics, and English language) of Madras University in first division.
	Father is extremely disappointed because of his failure to stand first in class.
	Sent to England. Studies Latin at a private school to prepare for the entrance examination to Cambridge University.
	Concedes his interest in studying English literature and enrols at Trinity College in economics, perceived by his father as a pragmatic preparation for a career in civil service.
1939	Exhibitioner, Trinity College, Cambridge.
1940	Senior Scholar, Trinity College, Cambridge.
1941	BA Economics with first class honours. Receives first ever fellowship for English studies at Trinity College but is denied the fellowship's monetary value when authorities discover his father is a man of means. Father refuses to provide funds for the study of English. Supports himself working in restaurants and teaching English to dock workers in London, commuting nightly between Cambridge and London.
1942	BA English with first class honours.
1943	'The Motivation of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.' The Review of English Studies 19.75.
1944	MA English Cambridge University.
	Founds (and edits until 1950) Focus, a journal dedicated to criticism on contemporary authors.
	Edits (with Andrew Pearse) Focus One: Frank Kafka and Rex Warner. Appointed Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge.
	Suspects he is being watched by the British Secret Service for publishing articles in support of Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India Movement.
	Under paternal pressure takes the Indian Civil Service exam. Passes the writing part, but the viva is terminated when he is confronted with his anti-imperial writings and speeches supporting the Quit India Movement.
1945	Appointed Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, Cambridge.
	'Simple, Sensuous and Passionate.' The Review of English Studies 21.84.
	Reprinted (1965) in Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism.
1946	Awarded Ph.D in English of Cambridge University.
	Appointed Lecturer in Modern Poetry, Faculty of English, Cambridge University.
	Marries Chandra Sarma.
	Edits (with Andrew Pearse) Focus Two: The Realist Novel in the Thirties.
1947	Publishes 'Paradise Lost' and the Seventeenth Century Reader. Reprinted in 1948 and 1962; paperback in 1966. The book contextualizes Milton within the intellectual milieu of the poet's own times. It quickly establishes Rajan as a leading critic in Milton studies. Sixty-two years after its publication, it is still in use.
	Appointed Lecturer in English at Cambridge University.
	The imperialist establishment at Cambridge not then ready for an Indian professor of English, his appointment is not renewed.
	Edits T.S. Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands.
1948	Responding to family pressure, joins the Indian Foreign Service.
	T.S. Eliot: A Study of His Writings by Several Hands, second edition and third impression.
	Edits The Novelist as Thinker.
1949	'W.B. Yeats and the Unity of Being.' The Nineteenth Century and After 146.
	'Bloomsbury and the Academies.' The Hudson Review 11.3.
1950	'Arjuna's Education.' The Nineteenth Century and After 176.
	'Imagism: A Reconsideration.' Modern American Poetry.
	Edits Modern American Poetry.
1951	Member, Permanent Delegation of India to United Nations.
	Daughter Tilottama is born in New York.
1954	Chairperson, Executive Board, United Nations Children's Fund.
1957	Resident Representative of India, International Atomic Energy Agency.
	Publishes The Dark Dancer. Reprinted in the US in 1958.
1959	Chairperson, Administrative and Legal Committee of Second General Conference, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna.
1961	Resigns from the Indian Foreign Service rather than accept posting to hostile China as ambassador for health reasons.
	Suggests to Simla-based Indian Institute for Advanced Study that the history of western perceptions of India constituted a huge project and that it be pursued in line with the inquiry he launched in his 1947 BBC talks as a collective undertaking, but is...