Madras Week ahead
When the coordinators of Madras Week recently announced that the Week will this year be celebrated from August 16 to 23 and events, as in the past couple of years, will continue to be scheduled into the first days of September, one of the founders who had got the commemoration of August 22, 1639, started 12 years ago, Vincent D’Souza, pointed out that the Week was tending to overwhelm Madras Day. Let’s everyone come out and celebrate enthusiastically the City’s 376th birthday on August 22, particularly in the schools and colleges of the city, he urged, besides having a bash during the Week.
That’s when Padma Swaminathan, INTACH Chennai Chapter’s coordinator of school and college programmes, came out with a bit of news I had long waited to hear. About 15 years ago, INTACH Chennai planned to encourage the formation of Heritage Clubs in schools in the city and targeted 100 being set up in the first two years. It got to 25 and, like so much else here, sustainability became an issue, but around 15 still hold regular meetings and organise events. The good news Padma announced was that in the past two years they had taken the number of clubs in schools to 40 and they’ve also added a dozen in colleges. Responding to Vincent D’Souza’s suggestion, she promised that she and her colleagues would get all the Heritage Clubs involved in an August 22 celebration and persuade them to get neighbouring educational institutions to join them in their activities on that day. Taking the idea a step further, INTACH Chennai Convener Sujatha Shankar suggested that every school screen at a special assembly on that day a 45-minute film that INTACH Chennai had made on the history of Madras; a DVD could be obtained FREE by any school by writing to Sujatha Shankar (shankarsujatha@gmail.com), Padma Swaminathan (padmaathreya@yahoo.com) or INTACH Chennai Chapter (intachchennai@gmail.com).
When it was announced that there were likely to be more cycle rallies, photo-shoots and walks this year, it was urged that there should be more area-oriented walks led by local residents, such as a Pudupet Walk, a Royapuram Walk, a Triplicane Walk, an Alwarpet Walk, etc. These could be heritage walks, discover-your-area walks or even foodie walks.
And with the heap of books on Madras now available, bookshops and other institutions should be looking at reading and storytelling sessions. Certainly there was no shortage of ideas for Madras Week, which brackets Madras Day, at the coordinators’ get-together and the initial press meet; I only hope to see it all come to pass, particularly in northern and western Madras and in the suburbs.
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A song of freedom
Ninety-nine years ago, Subramania Bharati quit the Swadesamitran , when G Subramania Aiyer thought him too fiery in his writing, and joined S N Tirumalachari who, in May 1906, started India, a weekly, with the motto Swantantiram, Samattuvam, Sahodaratvam (echoing the French Revolution’s Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ). At India , Bharati got the opportunity to espouse the cause of India’s freedom and various Swadeshi causes as loudly and aggressively as he wished.
Trouble with the British-run government was inevitable. A cartoon showing British ships taking away grain from India while Indians were starving first stoked the fires. They became a blaze when Bharati wrote a poem for the front page that was an ‘exhortation’ to Lord Krishna. It read:
When will our thirst for
liberty be quenched?
When will our love for
slavery die out?
When will the fetters on the
hands of our Mother be removed?
When will our troubles cease
and become things of the past?
O, Krishna, hero of the
Mahabharata and protector of the Aryas!
Is it not your grace that helps
one to victory?
Does it look, well that we,
your adorers, should suffer?
Are famine and disease the
lot of your devotees?
If so, for whom are all the good things
of the earth?
Government charged M Srinivasan with sedition. Srinivasan had lent his name as Editor of the journal for Rs.30 a month! Despite this plea of his supplemented by his stating that he was barely literate and that Bharati was the real Editor, he was sentenced to five years RI, while the British wondered whether they could charge Bharati. He was advised by well-wishers to flee to French Pondicherry. Which he did in September 1908.
Within a week of his settling in there, India ’s printing equipment had been smuggled into Pondicherry and publication began again. The journal somehow found its way into Madras every week and began enjoying greater success than when it was being published there. Despite its circulation in Madras, advertisers, sensing the dangers in supporting a banned journal, refused to advertise in it and the weekly began to face a financial crisis. Once again, Bharati refused the proprietor’s plea to tone down his writing — and quit late in 1909.
Journalism’s loss was Tamil Literature’s gain. Bharati now spent more time writing poetry. Much of his best work was written at this time. But man cannot live by poetry alone. So he freelanced in the world of Pondicherry journalism. But every journal he wrote for, folded — the British pressure too much for them, needing as they did the Madras market. And, so, Bharati gave up journalism for Literature. By the time he returned to journalism, rejoining the Swadesamitran in 1920, after the British had let him return from exile in 1919 on the understanding that he would give up political advocacy, he was a mellower man.
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Recalled less as a legal great
When C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar — CP hereafter — is spoken about, it generally is in terms of his Dewanship, his Government of Madras years, the conferences and councils he attended as a statesman, and the Western Oriental Brahmin Gentleman-about-Town he was. Reading a recent biography of his, I was struck by the fact that few remember his brilliant legal career at the Madras Bar.
The biography, a rather critical one but not on this aspect, recalls that he became Advocate General at the age of 41, rejected a High Court Justiceship, was Law Member of the Governor’s Executive Council, presided over the first All-India Lawyers’ Conference, and became considered “one of the all-time greats in Indian legal history”. Turning down the offer of a place on the Bench, he wrote, “I prefer, Mr Chief Justice, to talk nonsense for a short while to listening to it all day long.” But much of the time it was not for a short while that the “reluctant lawyer”, who preferred teaching (at Presidency), spoke.
Starting as an apprentice in the chambers of V Krishnaswami Aiyar, that lawyer of many parts, CP launched out on his own in 1903. Fortune favoured him when his brother-in-law Kumaraswami Sastri, a sick man who preferred the quieter life on the Bench, moved up and handed over 300 cases to CP, most of them briefs from some of the leading citizens of the Presidency. He was in time to defend Kasturi Ranga Iyengar in a defamation suit, appear for the Maharajah of Travancore in several cases, and serve as a lawyer for several rajahs and zamindars. But the most sensational case of his was when he represented J Narianiah against Annie Besant, his client claiming his two sons, J Krishnamurti and J Nityananda, had been abducted by her and placed in the care of C W Leadbeater, a fellow Theosophist. An observer wrote of the hearing at the time, “Sir C.P.’s argument in the case was one of the greatest things in the legal history of the Madras High Court. For terseness of speech, clearness of thought and for advocacy, it has not been surpassed. Mrs. Besant’s eloquence (she argued her case herself) and passionate appeal were of no avail against the clear-cut logic of his argument.” She lost in the lower court and in the High Court. But the Privy Council ruled in her favour on technical grounds.
Respectful of both his opponents and the judges he appeared before, CP expected that respect to be returned. When arguing a case as Advocate-General once, the Chief Justice, an Englishman, remarked he had made up his mind on the point CP was making. CP pointed out that, nevertheless, it was his duty as a lawyer to change the mind of the learned judge. The Chief Justice felt that would be futile and a heated argument followed. When the judge sought to end it by asking CP not “to waste the time of this court”, CP retorted with all dignity, “This court has treated me in an undignified manner. I consider your Lordship’s remark an insult. I must inform your Lordship that I shall never again appear before this court in any case, be it on behalf of the Government or on behalf of any client as his lawyer.” He bowed to the Bench and walked out of the courtroom.
During the lunch break the Registrar brought him a message: the Chief Justice would like CP to visit him in his chambers. CP replied that he would be glad if the Chief Justice met the Attorney General in his chambers. Neither budged. But the next day, the first thing in the morning, the Chief Justice visited The Grove in Alwarpet, CP’s home, and apologised to him.
Stories like this of CP’s legal career are legion. Readers must forgive me if over the next few weeks I relate a couple of them.
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