Following a trail of judges
The Madras Book Club did something different the other day. Instead of hosting the release of a new book, it pulled out a book from the attic and requested storyteller Sriram V. to narrate the story it told of the Bhawal sanyasi case. That mystery of possible murder, possible impersonation and possible resurrection was set in a zamindari estate in what is now Bangladesh. So that's a story that's not meat for this column.
But when I heard it narrated that Sir C. Madhavan Nair was one of the three Privy Councillors to pronounce the final verdict in the case there was the man I needed to follow for this week's column. But following his trail I found three other judges of the Madras High Court who, in rather uncanny fashion, were linked to each other despite all not serving on the Bench at the same time.
Madhavan Nair, a barrister, legal academic and a Judge of the Madras High Court, was, I believe, the last of the Indian Privy Councillors. If I am not mistaken, the first Privy Councillor from the South was V.S. Srinivasa Sastri who was appointed one in 1921. Madhavan Nair, the nephew of C. Sankaran Nair, was also his son-in-law.
From Madhavan Nair the trail thus led to Sankaran Nair, an earlier Judge of the Madras High Court. In 1915 he was appointed to the Viceregal Council and his legal career came to an end and a political one replaced it. He once said, “Since my 13th year I have been in constant touch with Europeans, and I have never hesitated to speak my mind to them.” Sankaran Nair spoke his mind once too often when he sounded off against Sir Michael O'Dwyer, Governor of the Punjab. This was in a book Sankaran Nair wrote titled Gandhi and Anarchy , in which, Sir Michael claimed, he was defamed. O'Dwyer was in charge of the Punjab at the time of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. O'Dwyer sued for libel and the case was heard in 1924 in London. In what, in retrospect, appears to have been a trial by a kangaroo court, Sankaran Nair was found guilty and O'Dwyer was awarded £500 damages and costs. The Hindu at the time thundered, “The case has only served to demonstrate once again that when there is the lightest touch of politics involved for an Indian, justice cannot be expected in an English Court and from an English jury.” While calling the trial a “hideous mockery”, The Hindu also pointed out that several “faulty steps” were taken by the defence. Leading the defence was Sir Walter Schwabe.
Schwabe was a former Chief Justice of Madras and is the next link on the trail. He arrived in Madras in 1921 to serve as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court but despite his popularity and erudition, particularly in civil matters, he suddenly resigned in 1924. He was a Jew and it is believed that he “found himself in uncongenial waters in the English society of Madras.” He was, however, given a never-before farewell party by the staff of the Court who each contributed half a month's salary towards it. This was their ‘thank you' for his having met every one of them in person during his tenure and, having found out their difficulties, ensured that their salaries were considerably enhanced.
Treating Schwabe with great deference, almost “like a schoolboy addressing his master,” was his junior Sir Murray Coutts-Trotter, the fourth link in my chain. A barrister in England, he came out as a Judge of the Madras High Court in 1915, was made Chief Justice in 1924 and resigned in 1929 due to ill-health; he passed away aboard ship on the journey back to England. Of him it was said in 1962 that he “was the greatest Chief Justice that adorned the Bench of the Madras High Court” in its first 100 years. Generous to a fault, ever willing to admit a lapse, never a person to stand on his dignity, he was a scholar of superior intellect looked up to by the other justices and the Bar. What endeared him to all was his sense of humour. When a junior once asked for adjournment of a case as his senior was busy with ceremonies “in connection with the bringing forth of a child,” Coutts-Trotter smiled and promised, “I shall give every indulgence to any member of the Bar who is able to perform that wonderful feat.” Well, those were the days when there were no women at the Bar or on the Bench.
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A Rao in the DHC
Josephine Felton whose father spent most of his tenure in the British Deputy High Commission (DHC) in Madras as its acting head, and whose husband was with Wilson &Co, I have mentioned in this column before (Miscellany, November 12, 2001). Now they want me do what almost seems like a search for a needle in a haystack. To make my task easier, I hope to rope all of you, my readers, into the search with their story.
Simon Felton's father had walked out of Burma with others fleeing before the Japanese advance in 1942, but had died of malaria in a Gauhati hospital. The Feltons had recently read a book, Exodus Burma by Felicity Goodall, which gave them an “amazing insight” into what Simon's father and those like him must have gone through on that frightful march to safety. After reading the book Josephine recalled that when she had lived in Madras in the late 1960s there had been a ‘Mr. Rao' who had worked in the Deputy High Commission and who had once told her “he had walked out of Burma and had stumbled into a camp at night full of sleeping people, where he picked a few grains of rice off the ground to eat and fell asleep. When he awoke early and tried to wake his companions, he found they were all dead.” Josephine writes to me wondering whether there is any way I can trace Mr. Rao's family. “He would no longer be alive, but his family may have some recollection of what he might have told them about that terrible march and that may give us a better idea of what Simon's father went through,” she writes.
Enquiries that the Feltons have made from former diplomats with the DHC in Madras “offer a few pointers for you, Muthu.” Rao apparently was in the Trade Commission at a time when a George Newnes headed it. Rao was “the Oriental Secretary due to his contacts in the upper echelons of the local community.” Those contacts were possibly due to his having been in the Civil Service after having served in Burma as a District Commissioner. One of the Feltons' contacts adds, “The initials BKS come to mind.” All these sources confirm that he walked out of Burma.
Now all this is as vague as you can get, but that's the fun of this column. You never know where answers are going to turn up from, to questions which you couldn't possibly imagine.
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When the postman knocked…
*A telephone caller, referring to my item on memorials for Pennycuick (Miscellany, January 23, 2012), felt that whatever memorial the Government was thinking about, it should include remembrance of the thousands of workers who worked on the site and particularly those who died while working in that jungle fastness, possibly as many as 200 of them. I entirely agree with my caller who wishes to remain anonymous. Perhaps some kind of Roll of Honour could be included in the memorial Government intends to raise.
*A reader long interested in early Indian shipping and the Indians who sailed to Southeast and East Asia is marine engineer K.R.A. Narasiah. Adding to what I had to say about a Tamil presence in Quanzhou last Monday, he writes that that authority on Tamilzhagam Prof. Noboru Karashima, the Japanese scholar who has been a regular visitor to Madras and Madurai for years, had once told a Madras audience that in the temple museum of Wat Khlong Thom in Krabi Province, southern Thailand, he had seen a small greenish stone (3.7 cm x 7.5 cm x 3 cm) which bore an inscription in the Tamil Brahmi script which read ‘Perum Battan Kal', meaning the (touch)stone of the ‘Big Goldsmith'. The Brahmi script Prof. Karashima dated to c. 3rd Century C.E. and in his view it is, chronologically speaking, the oldest evidence of a Tamil trading presence in East Asia. Apparently the flat stone was found in Thailand in a port town called Khuan Luk Pat.
Tracking the Khuan Luk Pat lead, I came across mention of another Thai port, Takua Pa. Excavations at both ports have found several Pallava and Chola coins. Amongst the Pallava coins is one with a bull on one face and a double-masted ship on the other. This must be the rarest of rare finds — a representation of a South Indian ship!
Narasiah also reminds me that perhaps the first person to write of South Indian style Tamil temple architecture being found in southern China was Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Ceylon-born art historian who spent much of his life in the U.S.
*Dr. G. Sundaram believes that the remnants of a Buddhist vihara might still be found in Nagapattinam and wants me to check it out. I hope someone will do it on my behalf. He thinks it was built by Rajaraja Chola for visiting Chinese sailors (Miscellany, January 30). He also tells me a story that I had not heard even a hint of before. Apparently the Chinese emperor had requested Rajaraja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola to send troops to quell rebellions in Tibet and Xinxian, “both problem areas still.” Problems areas they may have been for the Chinese for centuries, but I find it a bigger problem to accept the thought that Chola troops may have been expected to march almost upto the borders of Kyrgystan. But then again, I might be wrong; stranger things have happened in this world.
*The Guava Garden was the first cemetery of the British in Madras. It was where the Law College hostel came up. For many years there remained evidence of two tombs there — one called the Hynmer's Obelisk or the Yale tomb and the other the Powney vault. Sriram V., who recently led a walk to the site, says the Yale tomb is still there though not in the best of condition. But of the Powney vault there was no sign. Has it been flattened, he wonders. The Yale/Hynmer Obelisk was raised by Governor Elihu Yale over the graves of his four-year-old son David and Yale's friend and contemporary Joseph Hynmer. Yale's wife Catherine — who bore him David — was the widow of Hynmer.
