Your mention of Justice Holloway (Miscellany, July 13) strikes a chord, writes a senior member of the Madras Bar. William Holloway, he tells me, was a great friend and admirer of T. Muthuswami Aiyar (Miscellany, July 6) and was believed to have been a strong advocate of elevating the Indian Judge to the High Court Bench. Sadly, Holloway retired in 1877, a year before Aiyar became the first Indian to sit on the High Court Bench, albeit as an Acting Judge. By the time he was confirmed in 1883, Holloway was in England. But the two of them were still in touch with each other.
My correspondent recounts a couple of instances to illustrate the regard Holloway had for Muthuswami Aiyar. One day in 1864, William Holloway, who had started his career as a Civil Servant and who had been elevated to the High Court Bench that year, sent across a book to Aiyar, then a Magistrate, inscribed “To Muthuswami Aiyar, as a small token of high esteem and regard entertained for him by W. Holloway, Madras.” A year later, when Justice Holloway had to list three names he felt could be considered for a Judgeship of the Sadr Court, he wrote Muthuswami Aiyar’s name three times; he had only one person in mind.
Known for his uprightness as well as his understanding of the local scene, Holloway once told the lawyer representing the British-owned Madras Railway Company that “A rule of English Law is not a rule for us unless it is a correct rule, and it is quite possible that a rule excellent there, may be wholly inapplicable here.” As fair-minded and committed to justice as Holloway, whosoever be the plaintiff and defendant, was the Chief Justice at the time who had, with Holloway, acquitted the maid in the Penn poisoning case I had written about last week.
The Chief Justice, I found, had been Sir Walter Morgan, who came to Madras in November 1871 after having been from 1866 Chief Justice of the North-Western Province High Court, Allahabad. He retired from the Bench in Madras in 1879. An eloquent speaker, he never wrote judgments and it was up to the court recorders to take down the lengthy moral judgments he delivered without ever having to search for the right word. Appeals against his judgments were heard by the Privy Council without a written judgment from him. Once, when a leading lawyer of the time, J.D. Mayne, asked “Reasons, My Lord?” when Morgan had reversed a decision of a lower appellate court, pat came the reply “None”. Of him, it was said, that he was concerned with justice being done than the rules of law.
It was Morgan who appointed Muthuswami Aiyar as Acting Justice of the High Court in mid-1878, succeeding Holloway. The ‘Acting’ nature of the appointment was possibly because many amongst the British in Madras, particularly in the mercantile sector, opposed the appointment of an Indian to such high office. But times changed and he was confirmed by Chief Justice Charles Turner.
The peregrinating statue
My reference to the Cornwallis Cupola in front of the present Collectorate and where once had stood Bentinck’s Building (Miscellany, July 6) has stirred up quite a mystery. Fellow chronicler Sriram V. feels that this cupola was not built there but was the one that stood at the Cenotaph-Mount Road junction and was moved to North Beach sometime in the 19th Century. He further contends that the statue never found a place beneath this roof when it was at its first location, the junction.
For my part, I’m not sure whether this was or was not the original cupola, but have read that it was at the Cenotaph Road-Mount Road junction that the statue was first placed and moved in 1806 to face the Parade Ground in the Fort, turning its back on the Secretariat. To make confusion worse confounded is another Cornwallis Cupola. It stands empty today, just south of the Fort Museum in which, beneath a staircase, stands the peregrinating statue it was intended to house. This same cupola is to be seen at the eastern end of the Parade Ground in a Klein & Peyerl picture that could date to any time between 1890 and the early 1920s and in a Frederick Fiebig picture dating to c. 1851 and which is in the British Library. It is recorded that this cupola was built in 1799 to receive the statue in 1800 and that it did so with due pomp on the statue’s arrival. Cornwallis, passing through Madras in 1805, examined it at a parade held before it. The next year, he died in Calcutta, and Madras decided to build a Cenotaph for him. If that be the case, the Cupola mentioned in the first paragraph was built after the Cupola in the Fort. So when was it built?
A possible hint of this is found in an 1810 report of those much mentioned “evening outings to the Cenotaph”. This description says “the sweep around this monument they (those taking the evening breeze) slowly circle….” A few years later another description of the same ritual says “it is the fashion for all the gentlemen and ladies of Madras to …. circle round and round the Cenotaph for an hour….” So was it built between 1806 and 1810?
Adding to the confusion is the rotunda in front of the Collectorate office (once Bentinck’s Building ). Was it built here or was it, as Sriram contends, moved there from Cenotaph Road? If so, when and why? If the picture from the Frith Collection I used (Miscellany, July 6) is anything to go by, the cupola was in position on North Beach Road sometime between the 1850s and 1870s, the date of the Frith Collection. And if it had moved there it would have had to be sometime before that period. The statue, however, was placed in it for a while, 1925-28, after which it was moved to the Connemara Library and then to the Fort Museum. But why that temporary sojourn?
Perhaps I will get a cogent story about all of this one day. Meanwhile, this is why people like Sriram and I find history — with all its mysteries — fascinating.
Left hand, right hand
For years I, and others like me interested in the heritage of Madras, have been reading about the left hand and right hand castes of the city and never been quite sure who they were. Some of the most riotous situations in Olde Madras were the clashes between these two groups, amongst whom were, in many cases, to be found members of the same caste on either side. Several writers have tried to resolve the confusion, but I have never been clear after reading many of them what the reason for the divide was or how it happened or what it meant.
Just the other day, my Australian correspondent, Dr. A. Raman, sent me yet another version for the reason for the divide. His source is Admiral Hyacinthe de Bougainville of France who circumnavigated the globe in 1824-26, commanding the Thétis and Éspérance . They visited Pondicherry in July 1824 and it was there that the Admiral wrote in his journal:
“The Indian population on the coast of Coromandel is divided into two classes— the ‘right-hand’ and the ‘left’. This division originated under the government of a Nabob against whom the people revolted; those who were faithful to the Royalty were of the ‘right-hand’, and the rest ‘left-hand’. These two great tribes, which divide between them almost equally the entire population, are in a chronic state of hostility against the holders of the ranks and prerogatives obtained by the friends of the prince. The latter, however, retain the offices in the gift of the government, whilst the others are engaged in commerce. To maintain peace amongst them it was necessary to allow them to retain their ancient processions and ceremonies.... The ‘right-hand’ and ‘left-hand’ are subdivided into eighteen castes or guilds, full of pretensions and prejudices, not diminished even by the constant intercourse with Europeans which has now for centuries been maintained. Hence have arisen feelings of rivalry and contempt, which would be the source of sanguinary wars, were it not that the Hindus have a horror of bloodshed, and that their temperament renders them averse to conflict. These facts, i.e. the gentleness of the native disposition and the constant presence of an element of discord amongst the various tribes, must ever be borne in mind if we would understand the political phenomenon of more than fifty millions of men submitting to the yoke of some five and twenty or thirty thousand foreigners.”
Of Pondicherry itself, de Bougainville wrote: “The town is divided into two well-designed quarters. The one is the ‘white’, dull and deserted in spite of its coquettish-looking buildings, and the far more interesting ‘black town’, with its bazaars, jugglers, massive pagodas, and the attractive dances of the bayadères (temple devadasis, presumably)”. A view I rather offered in this column on March 9th.
In what must be a unique occurrence, this 19th Century circumnavigator was the son of Admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainvillle who was the first Frenchman to sail around the globe (1763-69). Sailing with de Bougainvulle senior was a botanist — the voyage being an exploratory one — Philibert Commerson. It was the botanist who noted a plant that flourished throughout South America, with different ones among them producing different coloured flowers that seemed to be made of paper. He named them after the commander of the expedition and so the world first heard of the bougainvillea in Commerson’s 1789 book on the plants he had seen during the voyage.
Footnote : A question for local quizmasters: Who was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe? Jeanne Barrè, Commerson’s mistress. With women not allowed on the voyage, she disguised herself as a boy and served as the botanist’s scribe and assistant throughout the voyage!
