Madras miscellany by S. MUTHIAH
APART FROM those in their late fifties and over, I wonder how many in Madras, leave alone Tamil Nadu, remember Potti Sriramulu the martyr. Since a Potti Sriramulu Memorial Building is being raised in Mylapore, for which a foundation stone was laid recently, it would seem opportune to recall those unhappy events of 1952 that led to violence, martyrdom and, above all, to the acceptance of linguistic States. In fact, that memorial building could well be a memorial to that much-debated concept that is now part of the Indian reality.
The issue that came to a boil that December in 1952 was not the formation of Andhra Pradesh but the fate of Madras City. Pointing out that Prime Minister Nehru had made it clear that the demand for Andhra could not be conceded unless the State-to-be's claim for Madras City was withdrawn, The Hindu commented, "As Mr. Nehru has justly said, the terrible ordeal to which a good man has, in pursuance of his own convictions, submitted himself, cannot but move everybody who has regard for human values. But by the same token it is unfair to others, who are as honestly attached to their own convictions, to expect them to give up their position because something is being done which they can only regard as moral coercion. Fasts have no place in the politics of a free country..." Nor does kidnapping, or terrorism, it might be added in today's context.
The willingness of The Hindu to go along with the formation of Andhra and its plea to Sriramulu to give up his fast, views that reflected those of the majority in the country, went unheeded by Sriramulu and he passed away, a martyr "without any overwhelming necessity, since Andhra State had long been conceded in principle". And then The Hindu added a couple of significant lines, namely that "There will be deep if unavailing regret that those who were entitled to plead with him to desist were unable or unwilling to sway him from his tragic purpose".
The contribution by C.R.
ONE WHO was unable to get Potti Sriramulu to change his mind was the once and former Premier of Madras who became its Chief Minister in early 1952, C. Rajagopalachari. C.R. was convinced that linguistic provinces (the preferred word at the time) would "impede national intercourse and economic advance... he called the concept tribal," to quote his biographer, grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, who also says this was contrary to the views of his grandfather, the Mahatma, who had seen "practical worth in (them)". But shortly after Potti Sriramulu began his fast, C.R. advised Nehru that "the sooner it (Andhra) is put through, the better?'' It took a martyrdom and two days of violence and death that followed in the Andhra districts before Nehru announced the formation of the new State.
But on Madras City, C.R. was adamant, The 1951 Census figures were clear: Tamil-speakers in the City greatly outnumbered Telugu-speakers. He was opposed to making the city a union territory or a joint capital and would not agree to it being used even as a temporary capital, despite many a friend urging him to be "above these controversies, as our common leader". But he was adamant. At the same time he wholeheartedly conceded Tirupati to Andhra Pradesh, because it had "a clear Telugu-speaking majority".
C.R. played a further role in those eventful days when India was trying to find its feet as a polity. As C.R.'s Food and Finance Minister, C. Subramaniam told the Assembly, "Unfortunately for the Communists, Sri T. Prakasam, the erstwhile leader of theirs, joined hands with the Congress. And everybody knows that our Chief Minister played no little part in that." When it was clear that Prakasam would be Andhra's first Chief Minister, his first visit was to C.R.'s home in Bazullah Road and it was there that the first Indian Governor-General came down the steps to congratulate 'The Lion of Andhra', recognising that Prakasam was older by six years.
I hope the Memorial Building in Mylapore will have an archives that will house all the details of those momentous days in word and picture. The arguments for and against linguistic states in particular should form the heart of such a collection.
Sad passing of heritage names
THERE WAS a tea the other evening at the Taj Connemara and large numbers of the guests wound up at the Taj Coromandel, where I was told a person had to be stationed at the entrance to direct them to the correct venue. I have myself on a couple of occasions made the same mistake. And all because, to those of us who take pride in Madras, the Connemara will always be THE Connemara; it could be a unit of a renowned hotel group, but it could never be the Taj Connemara. The Taj prefix will always be associated with only the Coromandel. I frankly can't quiet see why the Taj Group, with a heritage property on its hands far older than itself, wants to try and make such a hotel change its identity when the place has such a strong identity of its own, an identity that's part of the ethos of the city.
A couple of days later, I came across a rather similar approach to another ancient name in the City. An advertisement for FoodWorld, Music World and Health and Glow now appeared under the RPG logo. All these successful chains were given birth to by what had once been the biggest department store and hotel chain in Asia, Spencer's, whose flagships were the great store where Spencer Plaza has now come up and the Connemara. The Spencer name now remains only in that shopping mall and in the superstore in it - as well as in Kodaikanal, Thiruvananthapuram and Madikeri - focussing on consumer durables. For other consumer items Spencer's was once famed for all over undivided India, the RPG Group, which took over Spencer's in 1989, would appear to want to distance itself from a grand old name. And so would the Taj, which leases Spencer's hotels.
Charles Durrant and John W. Spencer, who worked for Oakes & Co. in Popham's Broadway, founded in Mount Road a smaller version of that premier department store in 1863. In 1867, Durrant sold his share to Spencer and Spencer & Co. was born.
Charles Durrant is remembered in the name of the bar at the Chola Sheraton - but does not warrant being remembered as the first name in the liquor business in Madras; places like Oakes, Commission Salesmen, meaning 'retailers' of any imported items, including liquor, go back to 1843. It took Spencer's many years to catch up with Oakes and then take it over; Charles Durrant was nowhere in the picture when all that happened.
Not the best of neighbours
IT WAS like the old boys' day when Ambassador Eric Gonsalves, formerly of the Foreign Service and now directing the Indian International Centre and editing the South Asian Survey in Delhi, spoke at the Madras Book Club recently. Classmates at Loyola and Presidency present included B. S. Raghavan, former Chief Secretary of Tripura, and K. V. Ramanathan, once of the Indian Administrative Services and then Regional Editor of the Indian Express for a while. And there may have been others, but I missed the introductions.
Gonsalves' subject, 'Indian Foreign Policy in the Next Decade', gave him enough room to roam the world but naturally he paused longest in Pakistan. What he had to say about India's other neighbours - in South and Southeast Asia - is, however, what had many in the gathering silently applauding. "We don't take enough trouble with our neighbours; we are just not interested in them and, so, are with no friends among them," he stated and wondered, in a more general context, "When are we going to get rid of our Western, white-oriented snobbishness?"
Summing up, Ramanathan was even more condemnatory of this Indian attitude which he described as a "self-righteous condescension" towards our South and Southeast Asian neighbours.
Recalling Nehru's policies of non-alignment, Gonsalves also recalled that Nehru could be very "pragmatic" at times. Gonsalves, who served in Burma, remembered when Prime Minister U Nu was arrested during the Ne Win military takeover in 1962, Nehru eventually agreed to the Foreign Office arguments and recognised the military government, even though U Nu was a very close friend and had been associated with him in formulating the Pancha Sheel doctrine in international relations.
Gonsalves' final note was to deplore the fact that the study of International Relations is sadly lacking in most of our institutions of higher learning. Few universities in the country had a Department of International Relations/Affairs and that is something the country needed as much as all the departments of science and technology. So said all of us on that evening.
S. MUTHIAH
The issue that came to a boil that December in 1952 was not the formation of Andhra Pradesh but the fate of Madras City. Pointing out that Prime Minister Nehru had made it clear that the demand for Andhra could not be conceded unless the State-to-be's claim for Madras City was withdrawn, The Hindu commented, "As Mr. Nehru has justly said, the terrible ordeal to which a good man has, in pursuance of his own convictions, submitted himself, cannot but move everybody who has regard for human values. But by the same token it is unfair to others, who are as honestly attached to their own convictions, to expect them to give up their position because something is being done which they can only regard as moral coercion. Fasts have no place in the politics of a free country..." Nor does kidnapping, or terrorism, it might be added in today's context.
The willingness of The Hindu to go along with the formation of Andhra and its plea to Sriramulu to give up his fast, views that reflected those of the majority in the country, went unheeded by Sriramulu and he passed away, a martyr "without any overwhelming necessity, since Andhra State had long been conceded in principle". And then The Hindu added a couple of significant lines, namely that "There will be deep if unavailing regret that those who were entitled to plead with him to desist were unable or unwilling to sway him from his tragic purpose".
The contribution by C.R.
ONE WHO was unable to get Potti Sriramulu to change his mind was the once and former Premier of Madras who became its Chief Minister in early 1952, C. Rajagopalachari. C.R. was convinced that linguistic provinces (the preferred word at the time) would "impede national intercourse and economic advance... he called the concept tribal," to quote his biographer, grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, who also says this was contrary to the views of his grandfather, the Mahatma, who had seen "practical worth in (them)". But shortly after Potti Sriramulu began his fast, C.R. advised Nehru that "the sooner it (Andhra) is put through, the better?'' It took a martyrdom and two days of violence and death that followed in the Andhra districts before Nehru announced the formation of the new State.
But on Madras City, C.R. was adamant, The 1951 Census figures were clear: Tamil-speakers in the City greatly outnumbered Telugu-speakers. He was opposed to making the city a union territory or a joint capital and would not agree to it being used even as a temporary capital, despite many a friend urging him to be "above these controversies, as our common leader". But he was adamant. At the same time he wholeheartedly conceded Tirupati to Andhra Pradesh, because it had "a clear Telugu-speaking majority".
C.R. played a further role in those eventful days when India was trying to find its feet as a polity. As C.R.'s Food and Finance Minister, C. Subramaniam told the Assembly, "Unfortunately for the Communists, Sri T. Prakasam, the erstwhile leader of theirs, joined hands with the Congress. And everybody knows that our Chief Minister played no little part in that." When it was clear that Prakasam would be Andhra's first Chief Minister, his first visit was to C.R.'s home in Bazullah Road and it was there that the first Indian Governor-General came down the steps to congratulate 'The Lion of Andhra', recognising that Prakasam was older by six years.
I hope the Memorial Building in Mylapore will have an archives that will house all the details of those momentous days in word and picture. The arguments for and against linguistic states in particular should form the heart of such a collection.
Sad passing of heritage names
THERE WAS a tea the other evening at the Taj Connemara and large numbers of the guests wound up at the Taj Coromandel, where I was told a person had to be stationed at the entrance to direct them to the correct venue. I have myself on a couple of occasions made the same mistake. And all because, to those of us who take pride in Madras, the Connemara will always be THE Connemara; it could be a unit of a renowned hotel group, but it could never be the Taj Connemara. The Taj prefix will always be associated with only the Coromandel. I frankly can't quiet see why the Taj Group, with a heritage property on its hands far older than itself, wants to try and make such a hotel change its identity when the place has such a strong identity of its own, an identity that's part of the ethos of the city.
A couple of days later, I came across a rather similar approach to another ancient name in the City. An advertisement for FoodWorld, Music World and Health and Glow now appeared under the RPG logo. All these successful chains were given birth to by what had once been the biggest department store and hotel chain in Asia, Spencer's, whose flagships were the great store where Spencer Plaza has now come up and the Connemara. The Spencer name now remains only in that shopping mall and in the superstore in it - as well as in Kodaikanal, Thiruvananthapuram and Madikeri - focussing on consumer durables. For other consumer items Spencer's was once famed for all over undivided India, the RPG Group, which took over Spencer's in 1989, would appear to want to distance itself from a grand old name. And so would the Taj, which leases Spencer's hotels.
Charles Durrant and John W. Spencer, who worked for Oakes & Co. in Popham's Broadway, founded in Mount Road a smaller version of that premier department store in 1863. In 1867, Durrant sold his share to Spencer and Spencer & Co. was born.
Charles Durrant is remembered in the name of the bar at the Chola Sheraton - but does not warrant being remembered as the first name in the liquor business in Madras; places like Oakes, Commission Salesmen, meaning 'retailers' of any imported items, including liquor, go back to 1843. It took Spencer's many years to catch up with Oakes and then take it over; Charles Durrant was nowhere in the picture when all that happened.
Not the best of neighbours
IT WAS like the old boys' day when Ambassador Eric Gonsalves, formerly of the Foreign Service and now directing the Indian International Centre and editing the South Asian Survey in Delhi, spoke at the Madras Book Club recently. Classmates at Loyola and Presidency present included B. S. Raghavan, former Chief Secretary of Tripura, and K. V. Ramanathan, once of the Indian Administrative Services and then Regional Editor of the Indian Express for a while. And there may have been others, but I missed the introductions.
Gonsalves' subject, 'Indian Foreign Policy in the Next Decade', gave him enough room to roam the world but naturally he paused longest in Pakistan. What he had to say about India's other neighbours - in South and Southeast Asia - is, however, what had many in the gathering silently applauding. "We don't take enough trouble with our neighbours; we are just not interested in them and, so, are with no friends among them," he stated and wondered, in a more general context, "When are we going to get rid of our Western, white-oriented snobbishness?"
Summing up, Ramanathan was even more condemnatory of this Indian attitude which he described as a "self-righteous condescension" towards our South and Southeast Asian neighbours.
Recalling Nehru's policies of non-alignment, Gonsalves also recalled that Nehru could be very "pragmatic" at times. Gonsalves, who served in Burma, remembered when Prime Minister U Nu was arrested during the Ne Win military takeover in 1962, Nehru eventually agreed to the Foreign Office arguments and recognised the military government, even though U Nu was a very close friend and had been associated with him in formulating the Pancha Sheel doctrine in international relations.
Gonsalves' final note was to deplore the fact that the study of International Relations is sadly lacking in most of our institutions of higher learning. Few universities in the country had a Department of International Relations/Affairs and that is something the country needed as much as all the departments of science and technology. So said all of us on that evening.
S. MUTHIAH
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