Many is the time that I have in this column mentioned the name of someone who had been a pathbreaker and sought further details. There has usually been silence.
But my mention of A V Ramalinga Aiyar, who was the first Indian to be recruited to the prestigious Indian Engineering Service and who became the first Indian Chief Engineer of the Madras Public Works Department (Miscellany, May 23), brought me a heap of material from his kin. Around the same time, I got much material about P M Audikesavalu Naicker, a labour leader and a legislator (Miscellany, January 18) who in later life was addressed as Sardar. Both men had remarkable careers, but I wish everyone had been a bit more meticulous about accuracy; lilies need not be gilded.
The engineer
During his final year at Engineering College, Guindy, in 1892, Ramalinga Aiyar was posted with the designation Engineer Student at the Periyar Project.
After graduation he was to be with the Periyar Sub-Division for seven years and for a further three years in Madurai as Executive Engineer. Certificates testify to his good work during this period. But it was left to him to state in an article he wrote in the Madras Engineering College magazine that in that very first year he apprenticed at the project, he spotted a discrepancy between two tunnels which were meant to join. Given the lack of modern equipment at the time, these types of discrepancies could happen in major projects and checks like this one were done over and over again. But what I can’t understand is why this finding was not specifically commended by the Superintending Engineer to the Chief Engineer.
Instead, he goes about it in a roundabout way: “If I may be permitted to make a suggestion… I recommend that he (Aiyar) be sent to No 2 Periyar Division to check all the levels of the irrigation system, which, I understand, have all been settled by a Surveyor, whose methods from what I have heard of them, are not likely to lead to accuracy.” Did the Superintending Engineer’s omission have a tinge of racism to it, even though the commendation is still an excellent one? Apparently, Ramalinga Aiyar had more to say in that same article about the difficulties he faced as the first Indian Superintending Engineer and first Indian Chief Engineer. I wish someone would send me a copy of that 1950 article; I only have a little bit of it, highly technical, about the two tunnels that did not meet.
Equally confusing for a layman like me was the lengthy judgment in what was called ‘The Peranai Case’, a consequence of the Periyar Project, in which a Mr. Fischer and other wealthy farmland owners near the ancient dam sued the Government over allegedly not getting enough water from the Periyar project because of the impeding Peranai. The Government engineers led by Chatterton, and with Ramalinga Aiyar providing reams of data, could not be shaken by Eardley Norton, and Government was allowed to get on with its work because it was shown that the wealthy land owners had suffered no losses.
The verdict in favour of Government was delivered in November 1908. Once again, Ramalinga Aiyar was commended.
The labour leader
In this column on January 18, I had wondered what exactly had been P M Audikesavalu Naicker’s role as a labour leader. The information given to me at the time spoke of him joining the labour movement in 1916, leading three or four trade unions at the time, and leading strikes in 1917.
I now find the same information in an M Phil thesis on him. But it is generally accepted that the first trade union in India was the Madras Labour Union of which I have written much in the past. The MLU was formed on March 27, 1918, and the thesis lists the office-bearers (Naicker was not one) and only states that Audikesavalu Naicker “associated himself with the organisation from its inception” and participated in its meetings.
Now comes the curious part. The thesis avers that he was head of an M & SM Union and of the Massey & Co Employees’ Union in 1916. But later, it states that it was some years after the Madras & South Mahratta Employees’ Union was founded that he became President of it. Similarly, his association with the Massey & Co strike is dated to 1927.
I still await a clearer picture of the early history of the labour movement. What seems certain is that Selvapathy Chetty, Ramanujulu Naidu and T V Kalayanasundara Mudaliar, encouraged by Annie Besant and B P Wadia, were the parents of a formal labour movement and that Audiakesavalu Naicker was an active fellow-traveller and a union leader in the 1920s.
But if he played an activist role in the labour movement, Audikesavalu Naicker was equally drawn to Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation movement.
He was Secretary of the Madras District Congress Committee from 1920 to 1925 and did much work in increasing the Congress membership in the Madras and Chingleput Districts.
In February 1928, he was in the vanguard of a procession protesting against the Simon Commission and his head bore a bit of the brunt of the lathi charge resorted to by the Police to disperse the procession. He was again victim of Police action after a Salt Satyagraha meeting organised at the Triplicane Beach on April 27, 1930.
The thesis states, without providing any details, “On account of his extraordinary courage exhibited during this tense situation, he earned the title ‘Sardar’ – a rare honour which was shared only by two persons, namely Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Sardar Vedaratnam Pillai of Vedaranyam.”
Gandhiji is said to have addressed Naicker by this title on later occasions.
Audikesavalu Naicker was again a victim of Police lathis in China Bazaar on January 26, 1932, when leading a procession demanding the boycott of foreign cloth.
This time he also had to serve a year’s RI. He went to jail again in 1940 for leading a procession against India being made to participate in World War II. It was jail again in 1942 for organising Quit India meetings.
He was in due course to become the President of the Tamil Nadu Political Sufferers’ Association! Whether that anguishedly named association got him any compensation is a moot point. Another active role of Audikesavalu Naicker was as a Municipal Councillor representing Korukkupet from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1940 to 1949. He was Deputy Mayor during 1939-40.
He was also an active member of the Madras Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1939, representing North Madras. He was an advocate of total Prohibition as well as of relieving farmers of their debts — two subjects still being headlined.
Naicker later served on the Drafting Committee of the Constitution and was nominated to Parliament from 1950 to 1952. As early as then he was demanding broad gauge train services for Tamil Nadu.
Once very much in the limelight, Audikesavalu Naicker is a forgotten figure today.
The link I missed
You had them on the same page last week, yet you failed to mention that they were linked, was the implication in Dr. N Sreedharan’s latest note to me. He was referring to Ramanujan and Namberumal Chetty. No, I hadn’t missed the link, but I thought I had written about it long ago in the past, so didn’t want to repeat myself. However, since Dr. Sreedharan has raised the point let me recall the link briefly.
After he returned from England, a sick man and with no means to support himself and his wife, it was Namberumal Chetty who came to his rescue. He called on Ramanujan and offered him and his wife the hospitality of his house Crynant where he took care of all their needs. Namberumal Chetty called on the Ramanujans every day to inquire whether they had everything they needed and when he found that Ramanujan was uncomfortable in the luxury of Crynant and with the number of visitors who called there every day, he moved them to another house of his nearby, Gomitra , which was where the mathematician passed away. Then, Dr. Sreedharan adds what was new to me. Ostracism again played its role. His father, brother and brother-in-law were alive at the time and were informed of the bereavement. But fearing being ostracised by fellow-caste persons for their kin crossing the seas, they did not turn up at Gomitra . Neither did any other relations. No priest too was prepared to perform the final benedictions.
However, there were others who admired him and turned up. No rites were performed at Gomitra (or, later, at the cremation ground). Ramanujan’s mortal remains left for cremation within a few hours of his death. The pyre was lit by three outsiders: Namberumal Chetty, who cared for him in his last days, N Ramachandra Rao, the Collector of Nellore, who had been one of the first to recognise his talent and to help him financially, and the Collector of Madras, an Englishman!
