 In his office room was prominently displayed a portrait of Ashwini Kumar Dutta, one of the heroes of nationalist Bengal, one word from whom could make the traders of his native town refuse to sell even a yard of cloth to European officers, including the collector of the district.Rao was a patriot at heart and a humanist by action.In 1891, four teachers, whom he had met in Madras, approached him with a proposal to start a school in Mangalore and thus was born the Canara High School, Mangalore.