An archival commemoration
My Madras Week began with Burra Hazri, a Madras Week starter that was being offered to kick off its 125th year by the Connemara, even if the hotel now prefers to call itself, in jazzed-up fashion, Vivanta by Taj-Connemara. The next day was heritage served up differently; I was at the inauguration of its archives at the Ethiraj College for Women. Now, a hearty breakfast and Archives are my cup of tea, so I got off to a good start for the Week.
I leave the food to the food critics, but the Archives provide the opportunity for me to urge not only educational institutions but others like corporates to establish collections of their past records. They will show not only how an institution has developed but also what it has contributed to the city as well as the contributions of those associated with it. The Ethiraj College Archives is still in its infancy, but it can grow only with material supplied by its past faculty, its old girls and anyone else connected with the College. But what I would like to see added to it is a section that I would like to call the ‘V.L. Ethiraj Collection’. One day, if the College starts a Law Department — and even if it doesn’t — it would be an invaluable holding reflecting the contribution of its founder, V.L. Ethiraj, to Madras legal history as well as his legal acumen.
Vellore Lakshmanasamy Ethiraj found himself bored at Presidency College and sought education in a different stream. Law struck him as an interesting field that would enable him to use his assets, a sharp mind backed by a willingness to slog on his homework. But there were few Indians who were not vakils and the vakils did not command the heights in Court. So he decided to go to London and become a barrister. London also gave him the opportunities to develop into a personality that the British judges in India could empathise with, particularly as they could both speak the language in similar fashion.
Back in Madras in 1913, luck favoured him from the start. The Chief Justice was waiting to enroll him. But Chamiers, his proposer, was held up because his vehicle had broken down. Meanwhile, Dr. S. Swaminathan, a famed barrister of the day, was waiting to propose his junior. But when the junior was found missing, the Chief Justice suggested that Swaminathan might propose Ethiraj for enrolment — and when Swaminathan readily agreed a lifelong friendship was born.
Meticulously prepared, a gentleman with the judges, juries and the opposite side, always with a smile and ever ready to concede a point, Ethiraj’s was a manner that ensured a meteorically successful career. Then, in 1937, he was made the Public Prosecutor of Madras Presidency, the first Indian appointed to the post in the territory. During the 13 years he served as Prosecutor — till his retirement at 60 — he adopted an attitude towards the defence that said “I am the prosecutor, not the persecutor.” If ever there was a walking example of fair play in the Courts, it was Ethiraj.
After retirement, he resumed private practice and became known as “the greatest criminal lawyer in India”. His record included appearing in 44 cases on a single day in different courts and in an eight-minute defence obtaining an acquittal after days of evidence had been presented against his client!
Concerned about the state of Indian women, whom he thought were “depressed, oppressed, and suppressed,” he felt that priority should be given to improving their lot. A good friend, Statham, Director of Public Instruction, suggested that if helping women is what Ethiraj wanted to do he should start a women’s college. So was born an idea in 1944 and on July 2, 1948 it materialised as the Ethiraj College for Women, starting with 96 girls in premises leased from Hobart School, Royapettah. Ethiraj had donated Rs. 5 lakh to start the institution. Subur Parthasarathi, acting Principal and Professor of English, Queen Mary’s College, was permitted by Government to join as the first Principal.
When the Government sanctioned on 99-year lease the land where the College now is, 31/2 acres on which then stood a palatial building housing the Public Service Commission, the College moved in there in July 1951. To this Ethiraj added 51/2 acres of his property, valued at Rs.5 lakh, which abutted the Government grant. On his death in 1960, his will placed much of the proceeds of his estate with the official trustee of the High Court (about Rs.10 lakh) to be earmarked for grant of scholarships to the needy.
Today, Ethiraj College has a strength of 7,000 students.
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Discovering the Cooum
On Sunday the 16th I was delighted to find this paper announcing that it was celebrating Madras Week by focusing on the Cooum River and the heritage on its banks in a series of articles. It is to be hoped that this will further push the authorities to do something about the river.
Coincidentally, just a couple of days earlier, I had met Ramanujar Moulana of the Cycling Yogis who too was trying to draw attention to the Cooum and the heritage on its banks. The Yogis were planning on the same Sunday to lead a group of cycling enthusiasts on a 72-km ride along the river from the source of the river, Sattarai village to its mouth near Napier Bridge. And as a souvenir for all participants they had brought out the intriguingly designed booklet, echoing a cycle, that I feature today. Behind that cover are a whole heap of pictures and information on the heritage sites en route. New to me were the Kesavaram Dam, the Sivapuram Sivan Temple and the site of a 949 CE battle between the Cholas and a Rashtrakuta Confederacy, at Takkolam.
The Cycling Yogis were formed in April 2012 to promote cycling and create awareness of heritage, to which end every year they organise Heritage Rides, apart from their weekend get-togethers.
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When the postman knocked
* My item on Harrington Road (Miscellany, August 3) had R. Madhavan writing to storyteller Sudha Umashankar and providing her with other recollections of the road. He relates how the Madras Christian College School property was acquired at an auction of the ill-fated Palai Central Bank’s holdings. He recalls that across from the School’s playground were “two large brick-finished buildings”, one belonging to Ammu Swaminathan and the other to Govind Swaminathan. At the other end of the road, where Shopper’s Stop has come up, was a large garden house property, the building looking more decrepit by the year, where the post office functioned for years. And he recalls wondering about a long abandoned bungalow in a large area next to the Seva Sadan property and next to it “Mr. Kurian’s (Bar-at-Law) bungalow.” It was indeed a quiet road but one with many stories to tell. To which Sudha Umashankar adds, “How Kuruvilla Jacob went about building the school is another story that needs telling again and again.”
* Referring to my item on Wilhelmina’s recipes (Miscellany, July 27) which will be the basis for a book on Anglo-Indians and their cuisine, Jenny Malin writes that I hadn’t provided readers her contact details and supplies them: Twitter: @jennymalin; Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/agrandmotherslegacy; and email: jennymallin@yahoo.com. She’d also like to hear about what’s happened to the last-known address of her family in Madras, 4/23 Foster’s Gardens in Vepery. Not being able to find Foster’s Gardens on the best of maps I have, I needs must presume it was a property in Vepery. In which case, I wonder whether anyone has a road to locate it on.
*All this confusion over Sundar Pichai’s schools reminded Dharmalingam Venugopal that not enough attention was paid to the school our former President, the late Abdul Kalam, went to. Venugopal’s interest in that school, the Schwartz Higher Secondary School, Ramanathapuram, is because the Rev. Schwartz set up the school c.1785 with the support of the Rt. Hon. John Sullivan, Assistant Collector at Tanjore and with “control over districts to the south of the Cauvery”. The Rt. Hon. was the father of John Sullivan of the Nilgiris, Venugopal’s ‘beat’. Venugopal adds that Schwartz went on, with the East India Company’s encouragement to establish schools in Tanjore, Kumbakonam and Trichinopoly. Sullivan apparently believed that “If some of the higher classes of natives were educated in English, they would have a new world of knowledge opened to them and there would be a better chance of the establishment of mutual confidence.” Venugopal then claims that Macaulay, beginning his Minutes on Education and Jurisprudence while on a short stay in Ooty, was influenced by what the powers-that-be, holidaying there at the time, told him about these schools that they described as the core of the “Madras System of English Schools”. I don’t know what St. George’s in Shenoy Nagar, St. Mary’s on Armenian Street, and St. Paul’s in Vepery, all with 300 year-old histories, would have to say about that.
