Doing the rounds of what has developed into Madras Fortnight and beyond, this column found a wealth of information in the numerous talks and sight-and-sound shows on offer. And some of the tidbits it picked up during those rounds is what it offers today.
Two spring a surprise
What Chennai Heritage and the Chennai Freemasons co-hosted during the latter part of the fortnight were some of the best programmes of August, but did not get the attention they deserved because the Press apparently thought that after a week's celebration the subsequent events could be ignored. Be that as it may, those who made it to the eight performances — despite pouring rain on almost all the days — had an enriching experience. Particularly with the Freemasons, now emerging from their world of secrecy, to tell all and name names.
And that naming process brought me my first surprise. Apparently Swami Vivekananda and C.Rajagopalachari had been Masons before one took robes and the other a political mantle. It wasn't mentioned, but I wondered whether Rajaji was a member of the oldest surviving Lodge in South India, the Lodge of Perfect Unanimity, consecrated in 1786. The first Indian to become a Freemason in India was Umdat-ul-Umra, the second Nawab of the Carnatic in the Wallajah line. He had been initiated in l775 in a Lodge in Trichinopoly which was the family's headquarters at the time.
The original Charter of the Lodge of Perfect Unanimity, nearly 225 years old, was on display at the small exhibition the Freemasons had arranged in their new auditorium during the Week. And it struck me how much care they were taking of all the Charters of their Lodges, unlike in the case of a Charter I had searched for over a year. That was the 1857 Charter of the University of Madras which needed to be included in a history of that venerable institution but had gone walkabout. Eventually it was found in a locked but discarded safe whose keys then had to be searched for, for over a couple of months. Where it's gone after it found a place in the pictorial history of the University I do not know, but I do wish it is properly framed and installed in a prime position in the Vice Chancellor's chambers.
Elephants as Nawabi gifts
The Nawabs of the Carnatic were the subject of photographer-journalist S.Anwar's presentation in which he traced their origins to the Mughal satraps in Gingee. Speaking of the harmonious relations the family had with other communities in Madras, he cited the Thomas Willing painting of the The Last Supper that Nawab Muhammad Ali Wallajah gifted to the Governor's Church, St.Mary's in the Fort, c.1780, and the numerous benefactions to temples in the Tamil country, particularly the Kapaliswarar Temple in Mylapore, the Varadaraja Perumal Temple in Kanchi, the Nellaiappar Temple in Tirunelveli and others in the southern districts. Elephants were also donated to several temples in the Madras and Trichinopoly areas and, initially, the mahouts were all Muslims from the Carnatic's elephant stables.
Two against the Raj's policies
At two presentations, echoes of Thomas Munro's views on the role of the British in India were heard in the words of two other friends of India. T.V.Srinivasan of the 167-year-old Pitt MacDonald Lodge spoke of a Past Master of the Lodge, that eminent late 19{+t}{+h}-early 20{+t}{+h} Century lawyer Eardley Norton of Admiralty Gardens, the great house on what was named Norton Road.
It was Norton who, at the 1887 Congress sessions in Madras, spoke fervently on behalf of Indian nationalism and the need for a political party like the Indian National Congress. The Congress, as a consequence, appointed him to the Committee set up to draft its constitution. Norton's involvement with the Congress had him being called a seditionist by many in British officialdom, to which he responded at a Congress meeting:
“If it be sedition, gentlemen, to rebel against all wrong, if it be sedition to insist that the people should have a fair share in the administration of the country and (its) affairs, if it be sedition to resist class tyranny, to raise my voice against oppression, to mutiny against injustice, to insist upon a hearing before sentence, to uphold the liberties of the individual, to vindicate our common right to gradual ever advancing reform – if this be sedition, I am right glad to be called a seditionist; and doubly, aye, trebly, glad when I look around me today to know and feel I am ranked as one among such a magnificent array of seditionists.”
Nearly fifty years before Norton and 25 years after Munro, John Sullivan of the Nilgiris was expressing similar sentiments. D. Venugopal of the Nilgiri Documentation Centre, making a presentation on Sullivan at the Association of British Scholars-Chennai Chapter's Silver Jubilee celebrations held during the fortnight, referred to an obituary in the Indian in 1855 which stated,
“Mr. Sullivan may be said to have continued without a break the energetic and perpetual protest of Sir Thomas Munro's later years against the East India Company's system of absorbing and degrading the princes and aristocracy of India and reducing the whole native population to one dead level of pauperism and serfdom under the Company's servants.”
Venugopal, who visited Sullivan's grave in London earlier this year – “to pay my respects on behalf of the people of the Nilgiris” – discovered that John Sullivan of the Nilgiris was not buried in the family vault as he was considered to be an illegitimate child, being conceived before the marriage of the Rt.Hon. John Sullivan (Senior) to Lady Henrietta Ann Buckingham (of the Duchy). He also learnt that Justice (Sir) Benjamin Sullivan (Miscellany, August 30th) of Sullivan Garden's Road was John Sullivan Senior's elder brother.
The days of cybercrime
City Commissioner of Police T. Rajendran, speaking of policing Chennai, pointed out that urban crime was shifting from the traditional robbery and violence pattern to white collar crime, particularly cybercrime. Recounting the now-familiar modus operandi of ‘friends' and ‘well-wishers' offering you millions on your making payment step-by-step in response to messages on cell phones and computers, he had his audience gasping when he related that one woman had come to the Police only after giving away Rs.50 lakh from her business over a period of time! On the other hand, the majority to turn up at his daily darbar are those with real estate problems, difficulties in collecting loans — particularly from relatives — and family disputes, usually of the marital variety — in most of which cases he could do little except offer a sympathetic ear … unless there was a court order.
The Anglo-Indian line of descent
Another official who spoke during the week, Richard Connor of the Customs, had a member of the audience describe his presentation as “excellent”, echoing what he had said after he had heard the Commissioner of Police earlier. He then went on to add how impressed he was with the communication skills of these officers and wondered why they couldn't pass them on to their juniors and the rank and file.
Connor's presentation was on the Anglo-Indians and though he went back to Portuguese times — when the Luso-Indians or Indian mestizos (the de Souza's, Percras etc.) emerged as a community — he did not dwell on the difference that existed for decades between the descendants of the Portuguese and the British Anglo-Indians whose ancestors were Irish, Welsh, Scots, English, French, Dutch and Germans, among others, with names like Murphy, Morgan, MacDonald, Smith, La Salle, van Geyzel and Muller. But he did stress that it is the only community in India defined in the Constitution and in these words:
An Anglo-Indian is a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes only.
Those descended from Europeans through the male line, once called Indo-Britons, Eurasians, East Indians, Luso-Indians etc. alone are today's Anglo-Indians. Those descended through an Indian male line and a European female line are Indians or Eurasians.
Two castes remain a mystery
Who are the Left Hand and the Right Hand Castes, about whom K.R.A. Narasiah spoke? From the first days of Madras till well into the 18th Century they were at odds with each other, participants in the most common communal rioting during that period. With generally known caste-communities being found in both groups, the basis of the two groups remains a mystery. Narasiah felt it could be a division based on merchants being the right-hand group and artisans the left hand — but going through caste-community lists of each of the two groups, which kept changing over the years, you'll find even that broad definition comes nowhere near solving the mystery.
