Serendipity is what this column thrives on — the happy discovery of some other facet or aspect of something that has found a place in it. And there could be no better example of that than the picture featured here today.
The picture of the Christina Rainy Hospital, reflecting the sorry state its original main building is in, that appeared in this column on January 6, jogged the memory of veteran photographer Desikan Krishnan, who, for long, has been putting together a collection of pictures of ‘Madras Past’. He searched in his collection to find and send me this picture of the Hospital as it was in its heyday. When it was taken is not marked on the original nor are there any clues in the picture itself that might indicate an approximate date. But the photographer was M.R. Naidu, Mount Studio, High Road, Triplicane. Is this studio still in existence? If it is not, does anyone remember it and can they provide an approximate period when it existed?
On the hospital itself, now called the CSI Rainy Multi Specialty Hospital and modernised with multi-storey buildings, matching facilities and 250 beds, there is a little more information. There were almost no medicare facilities in the Washermenpet-Royapuram area of the early 19th Century till Dr. John Scudder of the American Mission (whose name should be writ large in the annals of Education and Medicine in Jaffna and Tamil Nadu) began going to Royapuram from 1830 to conduct a roadside clinic. In 1856, he was succeeded by Scottish medical missionaries. In 1888, one of these doctors, Matilda (I’ve found the name Alexandrina too!) Macphail, made the visiting facility a permanent dispensary. This facility in time added a few beds, and that was what Christina Rainy, a Scottish educationist, saw when she visited Madras towards the end of the 19th Century. Back in Scotland, Rainy raised funds for a full-fledged mission hospital in Royapuram and its main block, seen standing tall in today’s picture, was inaugurated in 1914. Though the Centenary has passed, perhaps it’s still time to have yesteryear’s block restored. Will INTACH Chennai help?
Meanwhile, mention of the name Matilda Macphail made me wonder whether there were any connections with the Macphails of Madras Christian College, both distinguished Principals. Earle Montieth Macphail was Principal in the early 1920s and James Russel Macphail in the late 1950s. They were not related but were probably clansmen. The former was made Vice Chancellor of the University of Madras in 1923 and also served as a Member of the Indian Legislative Assembly. Dr. Matilda Macphail was, it is recorded, associated with the Hospital till 1928 and there, thus, could be a connection with Earle Macphail. As for the other Macphail, James, outside the College, this rugby-playing Macphail’s signal contribution was writing many of the prayers of the liturgy of the Church of South India when it came into existence in 1947. They are still used.
One more connection of the Hospital with MCC I suddenly remembered was of another visitor to Madras from the U.K. wanting to visit it a few years ago.
He was Richard J Bingle, former Curator of the India Office Library and responsible for its collection of Thomas Munro papers (Miscellany, December 29, 2003). His father Ernest Bingle taught History at MCC from 1927 to 1944. Mary Bingle taught at Ewart’s School and had Richard delivered at the Christina Rainy Hospital.
The forgotten diaspora
I bumped the other day into a couple of the well-fed, well-dressed hotshots from the diaspora who had attended the Pravasi Bharati Diwas in Bengaluru and couldn’t resist having a go at them. At their only concerns being what they could get out of India by way of beneficial citizenship rights and by way of awards and by way of business. At not one word being uttered in homage to those who had suffered and died in the earliest days of emigration from India and the many who had died in later years in tragic circumstances.
Reacting to the two as I did was entirely due to two recent happenings. In the first instance, I had been re-reading for the umpteenth time former colleague Donovan Moldrich’s The Bitter Berry . The other instance was, while discussing The Bridge on the River Kwai, have someone ask whether I had seen the documentary Siam-Burma: Marana Railpathai (Thailand-Burma: The Death Railway). I hadn’t, but I knew the theme — a harrowing tale we all tend to forget whenever we acclaim David Lean’s Oscar-winner.
I wonder how many in Bengaluru knew that the first large Indian labour migration to any country was to Ceylon in the last years of the 18th Century. In Bitter Berry, Moldrich recounts how, year after year, the mainly Tamil labour force sailed in abysmal conditions from Thondi to Mannar and then walked through animal-, dacoit- and illness-infested jungles to Madawachiya and on to ‘Kandi-Seemai’ (The Promised Land) and back after the coffee berry plucking season ended. Over a million died on the route over a 75-year period, Moldrich has asserted and has never been challenged. How many today know of those journeys of a few million Tamils, leave alone remember them?
The number of South Indians, mainly Tamils, who died on the Death Railway were far less than on the road to Kandy. But the number was still substantial — around 150,000 — and hugely more than the British and Australians whom Lean’s film has made unforgettable over the last 60 years. Those Tamils and other Indians are remembered by R. Kurunjivendan, an academician from Karaikal, in a documentary that my informant tells me is more moving than The Bridge... film. Was it shown in Bengaluru? And, if not, why? In fact, why hasn’t it had a wider screening in Tamil Nadu apart from a couple of private ones?
Over 200,000 workers were forcibly taken from the plantations in the Federated Malay states and the Strait Settlements and from menial jobs in Rangoon and Lower Burma by the Japanese in 1942-43 to build a 400 km railway line linking Siam and Burma. Only 35,000 returned, according to a British census taken after World War II. Mainly illness and ill-treatment took the toll.
But many others died due to snake- and insect-bites and still more died due to overwork: Testament to that is a railway scheduled to take five years to build being completed in 18 months!
It has always struck me as strange that very very few in Tamil Nadu get agitated over these Tamils and their descendants. In fact, I didn’t even see them mentioned in the list of countries whose people of Indian origin could get Overseas Citizenship of India.
Did I miss something?
Memories of a legal duo
I have just caught up with Memories of Madras , ‘A compilation of writings of Randor Guy’. And, as always with Randor, it makes entertaining reading about movies, musicians — and, in this instance, V.L. Ethiraj. With lawyers another fascination of Randor’s, we could have had a little less of Ethiraj and a few more than the two he gives a little space to — S. Duraiswamy Iyer and T. Muthuswami Iyer. A couple of tales from their stories will hint at how much more we can expect when editor T. S. Gopal makes a compilation based on Randor’s writings on crime and lawyers for publishing sponsorship by the TAG Group.
Duraiswamy Iyer gave up politics and then the law, both early, the first due to disappointment with the Indian political scene of even that age, the latter due to a family tragedy. But during his heyday in the Madras courts he and V.V. Srinivasa Ayyangar dominated what were known as the ‘Periamet Suits’ — litigation by the hides and skins merchants. One European judge was constrained to remark how ironical it was that two Orthodox Brahmins who had never seen either hide or skin of a dead animal should be earning a fortune in cases built around such material.
While in retirement, Duraiswamy Iyer was invited in 1937 by Rajaji, the Premier of the Madras Presidency, to become the Advocate General. Thanking him for the offer, Duraiswamy Iyer replied, “I am a retired lawyer who gave up practice many years ago. It is not correct to ask such a man to be the Advocate-General.” By using the word ‘correct’, was he saying something to Rajaji?
As for Muthuswami Iyer, who had never practised Law and had come to the High Court Bench starting life as a District Munsiff, he had no hesitation in sitting bare-footed on the Bench before the leading British luminaries of the Bar. One of them, Eardley Norton, considered it a positive advantage. The judge had a habit of flexing his big toe while listening to an argument. As the flexing gathered pace, it indicated he was thinking more deeply about the arguments. Norton realised. And when the toe stopped moving, the barrister wound down his case; he knew the judge had made up his mind and there was no point in arguing further.
Such observation accounted for Norton’s brilliance; recital of such anecdotes is what makes Randor Guy so eminently readable even if you don’t agree with his florid flourishes.
