Shame on you for not remembering that Robert Clive fought a battle at ‘Conjeevaram’, Sriram V. chides me. Indeed Robert Clive did in 1751 after successfully taking Arcot and on the way back to Madras after holding Arcot for the 50 days it was besieged. In fact, he also passed through Kanchi on his way to create the diversion at Arcot to relieve Trichinopoly and then on his return when he found the French holed up in the Varadarajar Temple. In a fierce battle, he ousted the French before marching to Madras with his less than 200-man contingent.
A biographer of Clive Sr. relates that at the battle at the temple a cannon ball just missed him — granting him one of his many lives — and killed an officer of his. Another account says that on his way to Arcot a severe storm forced him to take shelter in Kanchi, where he took quite ill. Taken before Lord Varadarajar, he miraculously recovered the next day and was able to continue the march to Arcot. In gratitude, he may have presented a necklace to Lord Varadarajar, it is stated.
The Kanchi Varadarajar Temple’s official website, I am told by M. Desikan, says that “Robert Clive… donated a gold ornament with precious stones. This is called ‘Clive Mahara Kandi’ and is used in Swamy alankaram daily.” Desikan, however, says that he has also read, “Robert Clive visited the Garuda Seva festival (of the temple) and presented a valuable necklace (now termed Clive Maharkandi), which is used to adorn the Lord during a special occasion every year.”
But I still wonder whether in the 1750s, Captain Robert Clive had the wherewithal to make presents of gold necklaces. Almost an echo of this thought is heard from Sriram who refers to M.S. Ramesh and says, “In her detailed documentation of the 108 Divya Desams (published by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam) she says that it was “Clive the Governor of Madras who donated the jewel.” Robert Clive was never the Governor of Madras; Edward, the second Lord Clive, was. Ramesh goes on to relate that Edward was so enamoured of the processional icon of Varadarajar when he witnessed a grand procession that he asked his wife to present the necklace she was wearing to the Lord!
There you have it, take your choice. But it does seem that a Clive presented the necklace to Lord Varadarajar.
A Clive was not the only Briton to make gifts to various temples during the East India Company days. That Thomas Munro (he astride the horse on The Island) made a gift to the Tirumala Temple is well known.
In gratitude, it is said, for being cured of a stomach ailment, Munro endowed the temple adequately to serve a large vessel full of prasadam daily to the congregation.
This continues to this day. The vessel is called the Munro Gangalam.
Another Briton to make a gift to the Varadarajar Temple was Lionel Place, the Collector of Chingleput, a contemporary of Munro and Edward Clive. He presented several “costly ornaments” to the Varadarajar Temple and these are used on festive occasions, according to the temple authorities. Place, according to Ramesh, also presented head ornaments to Janakavalli Thayar, the goddess at the Eri Katha Ramar temple in Madurantakam.
And, another Collector who made a gift to a temple was Rous Peter, popularly called ‘Peter Pandyan’ in Madura. He was saved, it is said, when his house collapsed in heavy rains. Writes Sriram, “Believing that he was saved by Goddess Meenakshi, he donated a pair of ruby-studded stirrups that are used even today whenever the icon is taken out in procession.” Place died in Madura — and was buried facing the Madura Meenakshiamman Temple, it is recorded.
* “I know you have written about him to the point of satiety, but I can’t help asking you to remember Ramanujan’s birthday tomorrow (December 6) with an answer that is seldom published with an oft-repeated story of a number that the mathematical genius found ‘interesting’.” Referring to the registration number of the taxi they hailed to travel in London, Hardy said he found the number “a dull one”. Not at all, replied Ramanujan. “It is a very interesting one.” He then explained, “It can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.” That answer that is seldom published is 1729 = (12x12x12) + (1x1x1) and (9x9x9) + (10x10x10).
* Like many others, Stephen Spaulding of New Hampshire, U.S., is due to visit Madras shortly in search of his past, in his case to see the nursing home where he was born and the house in which he spent the first two years of his life, 1948-50, “ if they are still in existence, or at least the spots where they were.” The Christina Rainy Hospital is still very much there in Royapuram, but is the house in the picture he sent me still there? The address he says was 14, Casa Major Road at the time. His father was US Vice-Consul in Madras at the time. “I’ll walk up and down Casa Major Road and try and spot it or find the location, if no information is forthcoming,” Spaulding writes. Help! he adds.
* After whom is Balaji Nagar in Royapettah named, asks a reader who has signed as ‘Quizzer’. The area, I learn, was a large coconut and mango grove that belonged to a leading 19th Century lawyer, R. Balaji Rao of Mylapore. It was after the area was developed in comparatively recent times that his descendants moved in there from the large house Balaji Rao had built on North Mada Street near the Mylapore temple. It was in this house that Rao in 1871 established the Mylapore Hindu Permanent Fund, now headquartered in its own building on the parallel road, South Mada Street. He later helped Kanchi Subba Rao establish the SMSO Permanent Nidhi in Triplicane.
Like Dick Whittington, Balaji Rao had also started walking to the capital, in his case Madras, from his hometown Kumbakonam, not in search of a fortune but in quest of further education after his Intermediate (XII). A Christian priest he met while wandering around Madras searching for a job hired him as a teacher for his school in Vepery, and in the evenings Balaji Rao studied Law at Presidency College. He started his successful practice in 1870. Later, Sir P. S. Sivaswami Iyer and V. Krishnaswami Iyer, in time to become luminaries of the Madras Bar, apprenticed with him. He also served as a Municipal Councillor with distinction and was a Fellow of the University of Madras. He was a founder-member of the Madras Mahajana Sabha and its first secretary.
