Madras miscellany: ‘The Father of the Congress’

January 25, 2015 06:36 pm | Updated January 26, 2015 04:15 am IST

Lithograph of Fort St. George

Lithograph of Fort St. George

It’s Republic Day today, but to me today is the day a united India was born, the day when the whole country became a political unity, which it wasn’t on Independence Day, when several princely States were still deciding what to do. Leading India into this new age was the Indian National Congress founded 130 years ago after the seeds for it were sown at a Theosophical Society Convention in Madras in 1884 when Col. H.S. Olcott and A.O. Hume called for the founding of an Indian political party to speak for the people of India. With Hume travelling throughout India to champion this suggestion and helping organise the first Indian National Congress convention in Bombay on December 28-30, 1885, he became known as the ‘Father of the Indian National Congress’.

Allan Octavian Hume arrived in India in 1849 to serve in the Bengal Civil Service. He was only 20 years old. He was to become a Secretary in the Government of India in 1870 but was virtually hounded out of the Service in 1882 because of his criticisms of the Government. His concerns about the attitudes of the British began after the Great Revolt of 1857 when many of the promises made to India by Queen Victoria’s Government were not kept or only half-heartedly implemented. He wrote a book called Awakening that predicted an even bloodier uprising if ways were not found to give India self-government. He told the newly arrived Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, that the British were not welcome in India because “a studied and invariable disregard, if not actually contempt, for the opinions and feelings of our subjects is at present the leading characteristic in every branch of the administration.”

He met Mme. Blavatsky and Olcott soon after they arrived in India in 1879 and before long became a Theosophist. And it was as a delegate that he came to the convention under the Adyar banyan tree in 1884 and met the ‘Mylapore 17’ who had resolved that “a national movement for political ends” should be created. Hume made a clarion call of that. And the Indian National Union the ‘Mylapore 17’ sowed the seeds for what became the Indian National Congress a year later. Hume never sought to be its leader but served as its General Secretary till he left for England in 1894. What Hume started Annie Besant took over.

Today, on Republic Day, how many remember their contributions? In fact, how many, till Gujarat appropriated him last year, remember Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who truly made India one?

Tailpiece: Whenever I speak about ethnicity in Ceylon I half jokingly say, it is ‘The Ugly Americans’, those do-gooders, who are responsible for the Island’s ethnic problems. It was the Scudders and Greens and other missionaries who brought first-rate Western education to Jaffna and created a well-educated class of Tamils who went to Colombo and got plum Government jobs. Later, Olcott, with Anagarika Dharmapala, last year honoured with an Indian stamp, revived Buddhism in the island, established Buddhist schools and designed the Buddhist flag, following which a new Buddhist militancy developed in Ceylon. Ergo!

******

The Mother of Madras University?

It was 175 years ago that higher education came to South India when Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone’s proposal, after receiving the approval of his Council, began to be implemented. The Governor had in 1836 proposed that it was “expedient that a Central Collegiate Institution or University be established at Madras” and that the university should comprise two principal sections, a College for the higher branches of Literature, Philosophy and Science, and a High School for the cultivation (sic) of English Literature and of the vernacular languages of India and the elementary departments of Philosophy and Science. The first meeting of the governing body of the proposed institution was on February 8, 1840 and it requested the Governor to select a suitable person to head the institution — and higher education in South India was on its way.

Elphinstone’s choice was Eyre Burton Powell, a Cambridge Wrangler in Mathematics, who arrived in Madras in November 1840 to serve as Headmaster of a slowly evolving institution. Meanwhile, Elphinstone, a man in a hurry had got down from Hooghly College, Calcutta, a senior teacher called Cooper to act as Headmaster and get a preparatory school started. This school opened on October 15, 1840 in a rented building in Egmore, Edinburgh House. When Powell arrived — and after Cooper returned to Calcutta — he began work on establishing the High School. The preparatory school was moved to Popham’s Broadway in 1841 and on April 4 that year the High School was opened in D’Monte House ; from the 1860s, it houses the Presidency Magistrates’ Court.

In the 1850s, Governor Sir Henry Pottinger quickened the pace for higher education in the Presidency and in April 1852 constituted an University Board. The Board added collegiate departments to the School in 1853. When, in 1855, the Department of Public Instruction was created, in the same year it named the High School Presidency College. The College was the nucleus of the University of Madras and considers itself the ‘Mother of Madras University’. The University itself considers as being the mother of Mysore (1916), Osmania (1918), Andhra (1926), Annamalai (1929), Travancore (Kerala) (1937), Sri Venkateswara (1954) and all the post-1967 universities in Tamil Nadu.

When in the early 1860s it was felt the College needed more space and a home of its own, a design competition was held in 1864 for the Presidency College’s own building to be raised in the Chepauk Palace grounds. That Robert Chisholm from Calcutta won and went on to fame as a developer of the Indo-Saracenic style is another story. More relevant here is the fact that the foundation stone for the building was laid by Lord Napier in October 1867. The visiting Duke of Edinburgh opened the building ceremoniously on March 25, 1870. The statue of Powell, later Director of Public Instruction, was raised in 1882 in the building. And women began to be admitted to the College in 1889.

To celebrate Presidency’s centenary in 1940 the memorial dome that now dominates the building was built. A feature of it is the four-faced Fyson clock built in-house. Designed by H. Parameswaran, Professor of Physics, it was put together in his Department by a team led by Laboratory Assistant Munusami Naicker.

****

A calendar from the past

The Christmas and New Year Season is just over and greeting cards and calendars have been fewer than ever. But one calendar has been particularly welcome — a calendar from the past.

Titled ‘Once upon a time…in Madras’, it came from the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation and features reprints of twelve old prints of Madras, eleven from the collection of V. Narayan Swami who probably has one of the best collections of prints from South India. The calendar, conceived as a collector’s item, has been priced and is available at the Foundation’s office in Eldams Road, the funds raised to be used to plant and sustain trees that are a focus of the Foundation’s Environmental Wing.

The pictures featured are:

Fort St. George, a hand-coloured engraving by Vauvillier of a William Daniell’s engraving, 1820;

Inside Fort St. George, a water colour by James Hunter (1740-92);

Fort and scenery near Chingleput from Mount Road ( sic ), a hand-coloured aquatint engraved by J. Clark from a drawing by James Wathen, 1811;

The Armenian Bridge near St. Thomas’ Mount, a hand-coloured aquatint of a drawing by Thomas and William Daniell, 1792-93;

The Assembly Rooms on the Race Course Ground, a hand-coloured aquatint of a drawing by Thomas and William Daniell, 1792-93;

New Customs House, a hand-coloured aquatint engraved by J. Clark from a drawing by James Wathen, 1811;

Masoolah boats, a hand-coloured lithograph by John Gantz, 1827;

Fort St. George in the East Indies, a hand-coloured copper plate etching and engraving by Jan van Ryn, 1754;

View of Black Town, Madras, a hand-coloured aquatint of a drawing by Thomas and William Daniell, 1792-93;

Landing on Madras Beach, a hand-coloured aquatint engraved by Charlie Hunt of a painting by Sir James Buller East, 1856;

Catamarans, a hand-coloured lithograph by John Gantz, 1827; and

Storm over Coromandel coast, Madras, a hand-coloured engraving by W.J. Cooke of a drawing by William Daniell, 1830.

All the pictures are printed to a size of 14” x 9” and featured here is the first of them on my list.

******

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.