Pointing out that I don't pay enough attention to academicians and scholars in this column and that there's rather too much focus on lawyers, missionaries, feminists etc., is K. Ravichandar. He suggests I pay a little more attention to people like Gilbert Slater, Edgar Thurston — he's certainly had his share of space — and Kathleen Gough (Help!) and sets me off on the Slater trail. He's someone I'd heard of as an outstanding economist, but Ravichandar indicates a much more interesting aspect about him, namely that he was a Shakespearean scholar. And that's something I doubt if even too many in the University of Madras, where he spent many years, know much about.
Slater's Shakespearean scholarship, however, is best known for his positing alternative theories to Shakespearean authorship. In 1931, he wrote a book, Seven Shakespeares, in which he expresses the belief that Shakespeare's plays were written by seven different authors writing at various times in the 16th Century. He also suggests that they were written as part of a propaganda campaign mounted against England's arch-rival Spain by these officially-blessed authors who took the over-arching name William Shakespeare to hide their respective identities. Slater's views certainly caused enough debate in the 1930s.
Closer home, Slater, a Cantabrigian, taught at Balliol House and Toynbee Hall, before becoming Principal of Ruskin College (1909-1915). In 1915, he left Britain to found and head, as Professor of Economics, the Economics Department of the University of Madras. In England, he had been an active supporter of the Labour movement and in Madras they were views he expressed by asking his students to look beyond their texts that were oriented towards Western capitalism and seek economic solutions to what constituted the greater part of India, in those days more than 90 per cent, its villages. He sent his students out to survey their native villages in districts as varied as Ramnad, Malabar and Kistna and come up with economic profiles of them. These he published in 1918 in a book titled Some SouthIndian Villages . These villages became known as ‘Slater's villages' and have been re-surveyed from time to time by the Department even into the 21st Century.
Slater served as a member of the Madras Legislative Council in 1921 but appeared to have changed sides in that role; he became a totally Establishment man and was far from popular with the Indian Members. He returned to Britain in 1923 but was back in Madras a few years later to serve as Labour Commissioner of the Madras Presidency. Back in England after a brief stint in the bureaucracy, he concentrated on writing before passing away in 1938.
His dozen or so books include half a dozen on economics and a few on Indian subjects. One of the latter, published in 1924, was titled The Dravidian Elements in Indian Culture. In it he claimed Egyptian origins for South India's Brahmins and Mediterranean origins, with roots in Africa, for other South Indians. Controversy was something Gilbert Slater cherished but there is no gainsaying that he laid the foundations for what was one of the best Economics Departments in India.
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Lutyens' Madras connections
As Delhi gets into its stride celebrating its Centenary as the eighth capital of India and as the work of Lutyens and Baker is re-examined in the context of whether buildings raised with an imperial vision in mind are still valid today in one of the world's largest democratic republics, that Lutyens had a Madras connection is a thought that struck me one recent Sunday morning during a heritage walk around the Madras Club. It is indeed a little-known connection that, at the end of the walk, made me wonder whether it was a connection that was really necessary.
As the Great War drew to a close towards the end of 1917, the Madras Club, then located where Express Avenue now is and at the time an all-British Club of Anglo-Celts, remembered that several of its members had paid the great price during the War and needed to be remembered. It was decided that a handsome plaque would be made and mounted in a prominent position in the Club. At the time, Edward Lutyens was busy designing and supervising the handsome buildings of New Delhi. Seeking inspiration for the design of these buildings he had visited several cities in India, including Madras with its famed Indo-Saracenic architecture. Madras was also where his sister often visited for long stays; she was an ardent Theosophist. One of the buildings he would have seen in Madras was the first home of the Madras Club — that was pulled down to make way for Express Avenue. One of the handsomest Classical style buildings in the City, it owed much of its design to Robert Chisholm. Given the shortage of good hotel accommodation in the City at the time, Lutyens may even have stayed in the Club's Chambers.
Whatever his travels in Madras, one thing appears clear and that is that he was known to Members of the Club. And, so, when the memorial plaque was agreed on, the designer the Club — priding itself as ‘The Ace of Clubs' and wanting only the best — approached was Lutyens. The renowned architect accepted this minor commission — and promptly forgot about it. Several reminders later, he wrote to the Club towards the end of 1922 that he had lost his original drawings but would do them again.
It was to be six months later that he sent the Club drawings for the plaque and got its approval. He then placed an order with E.P. Broadbent of London in June 1923 to do the modelling and with M/s. H.J. Jenkins & Sons Ltd of Torquay to do the work in marble. The memorial tablet eventually arrived in Madras in January 1924. The modelling had cost £75, the tablet and shipping charges £215, and Lutyens' professional charges were £30. In May 1924, Fenn & Co. of Madras erected the tablet in the Club's handsome Reading Room. What is inexplicable is why Fenn & Co. was not selected for this work in the first place; it is, after all, a simple, tall, vertical tablet with rounded tops and those remembered engraved on it below an engraved cross.
When the Club moved in 1948 from what was to become Express Estate into a new building it built in what was called Branson Bagh on Mount Road — where the Sapphire Theatre and Khivraj Motors later came up — the memorial tablet moved with it and found a new wall to embellish. It moved again when the Club moved to its present location in Adyar in 1963 — till then the Adyar Club's home. During that move, however, the tablet got misplaced — and it was only a few years ago that it was found in a Club godown rather badly cracked in two. Rescued from what could have become its last resting place, it was handsomely restored and mounted on another wall, this one the river-facing wall of the Club's residential chambers. It must be one of the few commemorative plaques in the city (Miscellany, February 13) that is rather well looked after still.
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When the postman knocked…
*Khalsa does not mean ‘appointment' in Urdu, asserts S.M. Pasha after referring C.S. Kuppuraj's use of the word to “several Urdu experts and dictionaries”. Kuppuraj was talking about Khalsa Mahal that many are now calling Kalas Mahal (Miscellany, February 13). Now I'm no expert on Urdu, but as I stated last week, not only did Kuppuraj's father call the building he studied in Khalsa Mahal but the records of the College of Engineering (now in Guindy), which functioned there from 1859 to 1920, describe it in some places as Khalsa and in others as Kalasa Mahal, depending on their antiquity.
*M. Saravanamuthu wants to know whether the Assembly Rooms and the Public Assembly Rooms in Old Madras were the same. In fact, there were two Assembly Rooms — andboth being called by the same name could well be confusing to us today, but no doubt speakers in that long ago time would have known which Assembly Rooms was being referred to in the context in which it was mentioned. What was officially the Public Assembly Rooms was The Pantheon that is now part of the Government Museum, Egmore. It was raised by public subscription from the European residents of Madras on land granted to them in 1778 and was meant as space to hold “public amusements, entertainments and celebrations”. The other Assembly Rooms was in Guindy — and according to the titling of a 1792 painting done by the Daniells, Thomas and nephew William, it was “on the Race Grounds” ( see picture ). This handsome classical building survived till 1985.
