When a reader the other day mentioned to me that the centenary of the birth of artist G.D. Paul Raj was being celebrated in mid-October and that I should recall him in this column, my first reaction was ‘Why?’ But then the name rang a faint bell and, slowly, a mind picture took shape of a painting I had once used on the cover of a book I had been associated with. My picture today is of that landscape which had nearly twenty years ago provided me with an intriguing little story I retell today.
When the Marylebone Cricket Club, then the premier cricketing institution in the world, decided in 1953 to open a War Memorial Museum in its premises at Lord’s, it sought paintings of the Test cricket grounds around the world. That of the other MCC, the one in Chepauk, was one of those requested and the Madras Cricket Club promptly responded positively. The Club commissioned Paul Raj, the leading landscapist in Madras at the time, to do the painting. A fee of Rs. 500 and the copyright to vest with the Club was agreed on. What happened next was related by Jack Barnes, the President of the local Club at the time, some years after A.W. Stansfeld, head of the club, had personally presented the painting to the MCC in London in December 1953.
Barnes, who described Paul Raj as “the most eminent artist in South India at the time”, had invited him to watch a Saturday afternoon game at the ground and provide a rough sketch of what he planned to paint. “I thought the picture would be more alive if it contained a game actually in progress,” Barnes recounted. Paul Raj readily agreed to the suggestion and in due course sent a pencil sketch to Barnes.
After examining the sketch, Barnes and Bulloch, the then Vice President of the Club, made some corrections on the positions of the fielders, particularly of the slips who they felt were standing too deep. With the changes in the field, to make the action more real, the Club was fine with the sketch and he could proceed with the work, Barnes wrote to Paul Raj when returning it. What happened next is best told in Barnes’ own words.
“We waited some weeks and as nothing further happened I rang Paul Raj and spoke to his brother who told me that Paul Raj was annoyed because he did not like his sketches being messed about and that he would prefer to give up the commission. Anyway, after a little argument he carried on with the work and the result now hangs in the Museum at Lord’s…” But look carefully at the picture; I have a feeling the compromise arrived at was that there would be no action on the field! As for the picture, it no longer hangs in the Museum but is still very much part of its collection. Two other Paul Raj pictures in eminent collections abroad are, according to his daughter Shiba Paul Raj, in the Queen Elizabeth collection and the Pope’s collection. The former, I think, was presented to the Queen when she visited the Madras Club in 1961 and could have been a landscape painted of the Club or of the Adyar seen from its rear verandah.
Kodaikanal-born Paul Raj belonged to the first batch of students trained by the legendary Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury at The Madras School of Arts and Crafts. His two brothers, Arul Raj and Tyag Raj, were also painters, as was his sister Egma. Arul settled in California and painted there, Tyag Raj was artist-in-residence in the palace of Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, and Egma became the curator of the National Gallery, Melbourne.
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Remembering the Emden
(Left to right) von Muller, von Mucke and Lauterbach
On September 22nd, the day a hundred years ago when the German light cruiser Emden shelled Madras, there came to a close this year a month-long photographic exhibition mounted by the Australian Deputy High Commission in South India of the Sydney-Emden battle that brought to an end the saga of the daring German raider that had terrorised the Indian Ocean for three months. To have been held with the exhibition were talks by Australian author Mike Carlton who has written the latest in a long list of books on the Emden and its ultimate fate, which offered him the title of his book, First Victory — 1914 , the reference being to the first ever victory in war of the then new nation, Australia, thanks to H.M.A.S. Sydney . Unfortunately, that part of the programme did not come off, but a copy of the book came my way — and I must say it is by far the best of the published material I’ve read of the Emden .
One of the things in the book that grabbed my interest was the example after example of the chivalry and gentlemanliness shown by Karl von Muller and his men to the crews of the ships they captured (not one life of an Allied merchant seaman was lost during the cruise of the Emden ) and the appreciative reports this behaviour received in the English-language press everywhere. “The Gentleman of the German Fleet”, he was called. This appreciation of von Muller almost bordered on reverence — or should I say typical British irreverent humour?
One newspaper, The Empire , Calcutta, carried this classified advertisement:
“ There is no doubt that the German cruiser Emden had knowledge that the Indus was carrying 150 cases of North West Soap Company’s celebrated ELYSIUM Soap, and hence the pursuit. The men on the Emden and their clothes are now clean and sweet, thanks to ELYSIUM Soap. Try it! ”
A month later, in October 1914, an Australian newspaper reported that “all British residents in India hold the captain of the Emden in very high regard, although they would like to hear of his capture.” Then the report goes on to burnish von Muller’s reputation further, stating: “ When the Medina was at Bombay, an interesting story was going the rounds of official circles there which goes to show that the Emden’s commander is not without a keen sense of humour. Knowing that the ships were hung up at Rangoon (fearing the Emden ) he despatched a wireless message to the authorities there stating that if they wished to send any mails to Calcutta he would take them on .” The Brisbane Courier concluded its report:“The humour of the situation was fully appreciated in Calcutta.”
The couple of stories I’ve related above about the Emden are from the newspapers of the time, but for years now there has been celebrated, beside the Emden plaque on the Madras High Court’s eastern wall, a tale of an Indian being aboard the Emden and “guiding it to Madras” and then visiting kinsfolk in Cochin. This well-publicised annual commemoration on September 22nd celebrates these ‘exploits’ of a ‘hero’ from the Nagercoil area, Chempakaraman Pillai. Sadly, none of the material I have read on the Emden by British and German writers, and now this detailed history by an Australian, mentions Chempakaraman Pillai. Nor do a couple of German friends of mine who checked the Emden crew list in the German records.
On the other hand, Chempakaraman certainly deserves remembrance for being in the forefront of the Indian freedom movement, founding one freedom-for-India Committee in Switzerland and then merging it with the Indian Independence Committee in Berlin in September-October 1914 (when he was supposed to have been on the Emden in South Indian waters!). He was a student in Germany at the time (of engineering? of medicine? — both are mentioned) and is said to have been the first to raise the ‘Jai Hind’ cry. He also urged Indian soldiers in Europe to revolt. Later, he was associated with Subhas Chandra Bose, after Bose had visited Vienna. Making Berlin his home, Chempakaraman championed Indian freedom till he passed away in 1934.
While there is no evidence to show that Chempakaraman was on the Emden , there is plenty to show that he was one of the earliest and most dedicated champions of Indian freedom. And that certainly deserves commemoration. Even on September 22nd, because, it has been suggested, that one of von Muller’s reasons for shelling Madras was “to stir up local discontent against the British.”
Footnote: To clear up several different stories about what happened to von Muller and what was left of his crew after the ‘Battle of the Cocos Islands’, Carlton tells us: the Sydney took von Muller and most of his surviving crew to Colombo and then to Malta where they remained prisoners till the end of the War; his second-in-command, Hellmuth von Mucke, and his landing party who blew up the Cocos Islands’ communications post escaped to the Dutch East Indies, from there to Yemen and, thereafter, by foot and dhow, along the Red Sea coast, to reach Turkey, an ally, and then Germany; and the third group, the prize crew on a captured vessel were imprisoned in Singapore but escaped when the Sikh infantry guarding them mutinied. The Emden and von Muller’s story have been the subject of a couple of films, but von Mucke’s and prize captain Julius Lauterbach’s epic escapes would certainly be film-worthy even today, I had long speculated, till a film buff recently told me that the von Mucke story had been made in Germany into an exciting film, Odyssey of Heroes , that was released last year. When do we see it? And will a film of Lauterbach’s peregrinations be made someday?
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E & O A
Dr. A Raman, whose hobby is documenting those who contributed to Indian Science and Medicine, writes from Australia that Gerhard König ( >Miscellany, September 29 ) died closer to Cocanada (Kakinada) than to Vizagapatam, which are about 160 km apart.
