Alan Hovhaness, Arnold Bake, Amy Catlin, Harold Powers, Jon B. Higgins… the list of foreigners who evinced a deep interest in the classical arts of India and became regulars at the annual music festival in Madras is long and impressive. But who was the first to come? That honour must go to Mrs. Stan Harding. A hard-bitten journalist, she was an active participant in The Music Academy’s 1931 music conference.
That was the first year that The Music Academy was holding its annual conference in a pandal behind the Ripon Building, at a location somewhere close to My Ladye’s Garden. A frisson of excitement must have gone through the audience of assembled representatives of Madras society, for Mrs. Harding was no ordinary journalist; she had been arrested in Soviet Russia 11 years earlier, on charges of being a British spy.
That was in June 1920, when as the correspondent of the New York World , Mrs. Harding had just landed in Russia, with the full permission of the Soviet Government. On arrival in Moscow, she was thrown into prison on charges of espionage. A summary trial three days later had her condemned to penal servitude.
Five months in confinement followed, during which she was repeatedly offered freedom, provided she consented to act as a Soviet spy and propagandist. She however declined and remained incarcerated ‘under atrocious conditions’. Relief was not long in coming, for Britain made her release a pre-condition to its entering into a Trade Agreement with the Soviets.
On release, she filed for compensation, with the full backing of the British Government. The then Foreign Secretary and former Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, was in charge of the diplomatic arm-twisting. The Soviets paid up 3,000 pounds in 1923. It was also eventually discovered that her arrest was entirely due to another journalist — Marguerite Harrison of the American Press , who also doubled as a spy for her country. There was a strong feeling in the U.K. that compensation ought to be sought from the U.S. as well, but that was never pursued. A book on her experiences was released in 1925.
Mrs. Harding’s visit to Madras was in far happier circumstances. She had come to make a film on the Devadasi tradition of Madras Presidency, and her timing could not have been better. The entire region was in the throes of Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy’s Anti-Nautch Bill. Mrs. Harding presented a paper on the Devadasis at The Music Academy’s conference, and from what little has been documented of it, we can see that she was no stranger to our city. She had come 20 years earlier and she commented that the costumes worn by the courtesans in 1911 were completely different to those of 1931.
It is not clear if Mrs. Harding ever made her film, and whether if done, it has been preserved. But visitors to our music season are certainly less colourful these days.
