Category Archives: Records, All

HIDDEN HISTORIES – A woman ahead of her times

Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion
Coramseemee Leembruggen's memorial at Armenian church Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu
Coramseemee Leembruggen’s memorial at Armenian church Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu

International Women’s Day was celebrated this week and so it’s perhaps appropriate that this week’s story is about a remarkable woman, who may not have lived in Madras, but has a memorial in the city’s Armenian Church.

Located on the western wall of the verandah that leads to the church is a handsome memorial dedicated to Coramseemee Leembruggen. As to what such a Dutch name was doing in the Armenian church was a puzzle to me till I readArmenians In India, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Mesrovb Jacob Seth, written in 1937. I learnt that the lady was an Armenian whose real name was Hripsimah. Coramseemee or Khoromeseemee is apparently the corrupt form of the Armenian name.

She was born in 1778 as the only daughter of Eleazar Woskan, a wealthy Armenian based in Surat. While still in her teens, she was given in marriage to Stephen Agabob, an elderly widower whose sole aim in life appears to have been to marry young girls and treat them harshly. Not one to stand such brutality, Coramseemee left him and took refuge in the house of an English doctor, who was a family friend. In 1795, she fell in love with Robert Henry Leembruggen, a Hollander who was in the employment of the Dutch East India Company in Surat. However, knowing fully well that he was not to be trusted financially, she had the prudence to enter into what would today be known as a pre-nuptial agreement. As per this, her Rs. 40,000 in cash and valuable jewels were to be hers alone, and she was in no way to be held responsible for any debts her husband may incur.

They lived happily for a while, during which time Leembruggen was transferred to Colombo and Nagapattinam. By then, they had begun a business, of which she was sole proprietor. Differences arose over Leembruggen’s profligate nature and the couple separated in 1817, with Coramseemee paying her husband a monthly maintenance allowance of 25 pagodas thereafter. He died in 1819, leaving behind nothing but some old furniture that she never bothered to claim. She ran her business successfully on her own, till her death in 1833.

Between 1819 and 1833, she had the habit of making a new will each year, copies of which were sent to the Armenian Church, Madras. When she died, the last will and testament, after several charities to Armenian causes, left the bulk of her estate to the Armenian Church, Madras, for the Armenian Orphans Fund. The memorial here was put up for her in gratitude. Two other legatees, the Armenian College and the Armenian Church of Nazareth in Calcutta put up a memorial for her in the church in that city.

Taking into account her tombstone in Nagapattinam, there are therefore three memorials to her in India. That must be a record of sorts.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Shriram V / Chennai – March 14th, 2016

The house of groaning shelves

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All

They were once hallowed spaces of knowledge. Today derelict and with aging collections of books, libraries in the city still hold secrets within their cavernous halls.

 

There’s pin-drop silence. The gentle whirr of a fan, the rustle of paper, and the thud of a dropped book often cracks it. Unlike in school libraries, there are no ‘shushers’. There isn’t need for one; there aren’t many visitors to shush. A few of the city’s grand old libraries, for most part of the day, are left with just the aging books. Pick one from the shelf, amidst a cloud of dust, and you’ll see tiny silver fish play hide and seek. Many of them, difficult to maintain, have been brutally shredded in the past, says Uma Maheshwari, librarian at Madras Literary Society (MLS) — the oldest in the city. But not anymore. People are now adopting books — paying all it takes to get them back in form. These sit on a separate shelf, newly-bound and way past their lifespan. “We have given them a grace life of 200 years for now,” says Uma, drumming her fingers on the remaining 45, which await adoption.

 

Braving vertigo

Madras Literary Society

“Books can be taken from there, but then most do not, because of the dust,” shouts Uma Maheshwari from below, as I carefully climb the metal ladder leading up to a set of shelves. “We should probably install a chair lift…” she says, before turning away to attend to an elderly visitor, who wants a certain book about writings by (Jawaharlal) Nehru. The search begins. The books are not classified; catalogues not set in order. After the renovation of the 203-year-old red-brick structure a few years ago, the wiring has been detached, and the books moved from their places. Founded in 1812, the Society was part of the College of Fort St. George, started by the then collector of Madras Francis Whyte Ellis. In 1830, the Society became an auxiliary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, and functioned out of Connemara Public Library, before moving to its current location on College Road, inside the Directorate of Public Instruction complex, in 1905. “We need volunteers to dust, classify and set them all (around 80,000) up again,” says Uma, leaning on an antique rosewood chair. Clutching the shaky railing, I take another flight of steps. From here, the thick layer of dust on the fan and on the cupboards is visible.

So are the brick-and-lime mortar walls and tall windows with Rajasthani accents. Looking down through the grill gets me a little dizzy. “So when is the lift due?” I ask.

Home to: Arretolis Opera Omania QVAE Extant Graece and Latine (1619), Travels in India by John Baptista (1680) and Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton (1740)

Coffee with Captain G.A. Mustafa

Mohammeddan library

From inside a glass cubicle, an elderly man asks for my business card and tells me to write my address and contact number in a visitor’s register. Retired Air India commander Captain G.A. Mustafa’s family, starting with his great grandfather, has been taking care of the library ever since it was established in 1850. According to the book Madras Rediscovered by chronicler S. Muthiah, ‘the library was started as Madras Muslim Public Library by Surgeon Edward Green Balfour, head of the Museum, and his sponsor, Nawab Ghulam Mohammad Ghouse Khan of Arcot.’ Mustafa was there during the critical period between 1939 and 1945, when the library lost much of its collection; and when the building, which boasted Islamic architecture, was pulled down in 1996, and reconstructed in 2005. “There are over 15,000 books and manuscripts, many gifted by the kings of Egypt, Turkey and Jeddah in the 1850s. They cannot be found anywhere else in the world,” chips in librarian Tameemur Rahman.

It’s around 5.30 p.m., almost closing time. Hot cups of coffee are brought in. An 1852 edition of a yellowing astronomy Persian book in one hand and a freshly-bound book in another, Tameemur gets technical about photo encapsulation — a technique to document manuscripts using specially processed polyester film coated with glue — which he claims was kickstarted in the library.

On my way out, Mustafa stops me and says, “Saba Mustafa is my wife.” There is a long pause. “She was the one instrumental in getting the library back in shape. Will you please mention that?”

Home to: H.D. Love’s Vestiges of Old Madras (100 years old), The Lancet magazine (July 1883),Ramayana written in Persian, and the Bible of Barnabas

Walking in the dark

Connemara Library

On the first floor of Egmore Museum Library, at the far end of the room, a faded poster reads: ‘Way to the old building’. The narrow path leads into a bright circular room with desks and tables, and a staff member who takes your reference requests — just like in a departmental store. That is the closest you can get to the Connemara Library (established in 1890 by Bobby Robert Bourke Connemara) — unless you have special permission to visit.

It’s 15 minutes to 5 p.m. — closing time. I walk down the red-carpeted floor to a mammoth structure with an array of teak wood shelves. To my right is a glass case with important books like Thambiran Vanakkam by Henriques (the original copy of which rests in London); bang in the middle is a Gandhi statue by Roy Chowdhury; and on the floor are old maps of the Tamil Nadu villages, laid out like tiny step mats. I open one to see a dark sketch of Kulavoipatti village in Pudukottai district. To my left is a counter with a small window, from where the librarian used to issue books back in the day. A narrow wooden staircase leads to a long wide hall spread with books that have been left to dry on the floor. The other end includes large circular reading desks. Connecting both is a small space with shelves that house records of Lok Sabha debates. As I pick up a book, the lights snap. It’s spooky, but only for a while. The colourful Burmese windows let in soft shades of light, just enough for me to see the truncated semi-circle roof and the ornamental acanthus leaves and flowers adorning the pillars, marble-floors, and the exit.

Home to: Omnes Quae Extant by D. Hieronymi Strido (1553) and Opera Quae Exlast Ominia (Greek Latin) by Plato (1578) are part of the nearly eight lakh books.

Smelling lemongrass

Oriental Manuscripts Library

Librarian R. Chandramohan carefully unlocks a glass panel inside a room with double doors to take out a lingam-shaped structure. “This is the original text of the Thiruvasagam written by Manikavasagar,” he says. The over-350-year-old palm manuscript was showcased at the World Manuscripts exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, a few years ago, he says. Next, he takes a set of palm leaves which have the famousThirumurugatrupadai by Nakkeeran inscribed on them. Right next to it is The New Testament in Hebrew, Soolini Manthiram, Mahabharata drawings on handmade paper, and an ivory manuscript case. “There is more,” he says, opening the door to rows of wooden shelves with compartments filled with over 70,000 manuscripts in Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, Arabic and Persian; and air thick with the smell of lemongrass. A few palm leaves, freshly anointed with the oil, are spread on the floor. Most of these are personal collections of Colonel Colin Mackenzie (who came to India in 1783 as a Cadet of Engineers on the Madras Establishment of the East India Company), linguist and traveller Dr. Leyden, who was in India between 1803 and 1811, and C.P. Brown who was part of the Indian Civil Service in the 1830s, Chandramohan reads out from a presentation. The library, which is controlled by the Department of Archaeology, Government of Tamil Nadu, was established in 1869 with the collection which was first housed in Presidency College, before moving to Madras University. Locking the door behind him, he says, “Even if you go out of this room, the memory of the smell will linger.” Ten minutes later, I realise he was right.

Home to: Tolkappiyam, Manimegalai, Silapathikaram

Meeting the grandfather of Tamil

U Ve Swaminatha Iyer Library

The security at the Kalakshetra Colony gate says “Go right ahead”, and sure enough, hidden behind the trees, is a white building. A statue of U Ve Swaminatha Iyer, the grandfather of Tamil, welcomes visitors. Only, there are none inside. Just staff members, who are on their lunch break. The library, which was established in 1943, includes Tamil literature collected by UVS, who is known to have spent his life searching for palm leaf manuscripts and transcribing them into books. This content has now been converted into microfilms (462 in total) by Indira Gandhi National Arts Centre; and these have in turn been converted into DVDs. The library in itself is being computerised with research facilities; it clearly seems to know the road ahead.

Home to: 69 of the 96 palm-leaf manuscripts of Sangam literature; 32 of the surviving 120Tolkappiyam palm-leaf manuscripts.

In pursuit of art

DakshinaChitra Library

After catching a show at the Kadambari art gallery, I head to what is probably DakshinaChitra’s best-kept secret. Serpentine queues of children walk in and out of the heritage houses, and a significant crowd waits to get their hands messy at the ceramic art centre. But the library seems withdrawn from the buzz. The library started at Madras Craft Foundation office in 1984 with around 200 books, now has over 9,000, apart from the 5,000 volumes that are National Folklore Support Centre’s collections. With out-of-print art books and journals like Indian Magazine, Lalit Kala, Indian textile history and Marg, and around 1,50,000 photographs, the place seems like an extension of the gallery.

Home to: Traditional Indian theatre, UMI’s dissertation on Therukoothu, Theyyam and Tolubommalata, Sargam; Thurston’s volumes on Castes and Tribes of Southern India

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Naveena Vijayan / Chennai – March 11th, 2016

Oxford Professor’s Tryst with Arni That Sparked a Lifelong Romance

Business & Economy, Education, Records, All, World Opinion

In 1960s, Barbara Harriss-White along with her husband John Harriss began an extraordinary journey driving down from Europe to India in an old Ford van to take part in a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas.

The journey changed her life forever and for the next 44 years, Barbara spent visiting Indian small towns to understand the informal capitalist economy and its regulative politics. She chose Arni, a municipality in Tiruvannamalai district, for her life time study.

In an exclusive e-mail interview with S V Krishna Chaitanya from Oxford ahead of the International Women’s Day on March 8, Barbara, who is an Emeritus Fellow, Professor of Development Studies and Senior Research Fellow in Area Studies at Oxford University, took him through her astonishing journey, her love for India, especially Tamil Nadu, which sowed the seeds for her lifelong study that inspired her to pen 35 books, over 225 book chapters and journal papers, almost all on India. Her work in India is now setting a trend for other sociologists across the world to take up similar studies of small towns.

BarbaraCF07mar2016

Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about the experience of driving all the way from Europe to India.

In the 1960s many young people from Europe took the Overland Route in search of exotic India. We had been invited to a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas. Mountaineering had suited my need to escape and learn about extreme environments. We were poor students at Cambridge. My husband John bought an old Ford van, and we set out. The experience was life-changing. Our van passed through Pakistan descending down the Khyber Pass. The Green Revolution was in its infancy in both Punjabs.

Why did you choose the town Arni for your lifelong study?

People ask me why bother to sweat it out in episodes of field research over four decades in a rapidly growing and changing town, Arni, that is obscure to all but those who live there? With a touch of incredulity local businessmen enjoyed the sight of a European woman, tailed in those days by a line of small ragged children, drawing maps of the businesses in town.

It became known locally as ‘professor’s work’. Because of Arni’s multiple societal dynamics and it being at the centre of the Green Revolution on TN’s Coromandel plain, I chose this town. Besides, it was also the closest market town to the village in which my husband John was researching capitalism and peasant farming.

What purpose did such exhaustive study of a small town serve? Whom does it benefit?

Over four decades, this research has explored a rolling agenda of questions about ‘Middle India’, non-metropolitan India’s economic and social development, which cannot be answered in any other way than through sustained or long-term rural and urban field research.

Over the years it has been possible to build an archive of comparative field material on rural markets and the policy processes through which the State intends to control them on the ground: rice in southern India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Bengal; coarse grains in central India and Francophone West Africa; and lately jhum products in Arunachal. A Chinese sociologist is taking the questions we asked in Arni to market towns in China. If only a young generation of Indian scholars would carry it on into the future!

What are the challenges you faced…did the people accept you to begin with?

To start with, I found Tamil very hard to learn because in the field, talking to businessmen I had no opportunity to practice, make mistakes and learn this beautiful but difficult language. Gradually I came to terms with the fact that I would never be a fluent speaker but I understand the language – territory of my research and work through assistants.

This means I can check and write down the interviews while the conversation is being choreographed. In fact, in juggling all these roles at once, an English interview is quite difficult!

The first wholesaler I ever interviewed, one very long evening in Vellore in 1973, took me through the entire process of paddy and rice marketing and milling and taught me about equipment, technical terms and the tricks of the trade. That was a revelation and a huge gift. Some of the most fascinating details come as digressions in talks about politics, or how local business builds the local economy or visits to meet their families at home.

Is the rural India keeping up with the pace of urban India which is seeing rapid growth?

That’s a question not answerable through field economics. It needs all India statistics, which many feel are not reliable. But we know from India’s fine school of long term village studies started exactly a century ago by Gilbert Slater in what is now Tamil Nadu that the urban industrial economy feeds upon the rural one.

In some regions returns to agriculture are good, even to rice but especially to vegetables, sugar cane and high value crops. But the reasons people are migrating in droves off the land are environmental degradation, the water crisis, the encroachment of common land, the squeeze of costs and prices, the pull of higher wages in the non-farm economy and the constant need to supplement the returns from tiny smallholdings by work other than in agriculture.

Even now, a majority of villagers have agriculture as their primary source of income. So the relative neglect of agriculture by the State is something this cannot support.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Express News Service / March 07th, 2016

MADRAS MISCELLANY – A 200-year-old connection

Education, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

It was at a dinner the other night, when someone wondered why an eminent industrialist from Madurai had gone to Madras Christian College instead of American College in Madurai, that it suddenly struck me that the American missionary presence in this part of the world is 200 years old this year, causing me to interject with a non sequitur. The American Ceylon Mission sank roots in Jaffna not long after the Rev. Daniel Poor and his wife arrived in Colombo on March 22, 1816 together with two other missionary couples and a bachelor clergyman.

Rev. Daniel Poor
Rev. Daniel Poor

Poor opened the first American-run school in this part of the world when on December 9, 1816 he opened the Common Free School, now Union College, in Tellippalai, Jaffna. Seven years later, in Vaddukkoddai, Jaffna, he established another school that was to become the renowned Jaffna College from where came the first two graduates of the University of Madras (Miscellany, August 9, 2004 and October 29, 2012).

It was amongst the second batch of American missionaries to Jaffna that there arrived Dr. John Scudder, said to be the first medical missionary in the world. After working in Jaffna from 1820 to 1836, Scudder, the grandfather of the legendary Ida Scudder of Vellore, was moved to Madras where he established the American Madras Mission that year. He was to move to Vellore in 1841 and found the American Arcot Mission there.

But before the move to Madras, the Revs. Levi Spaulding, Henry Hoisington and William Todd and three Jaffna Tamil students (as translators) visited Madura in January 1834 to establish the American Madura Mission. They soon established two schools there but it was left to Poor, who moved to Madura in 1835, to found 37 schools in the district, including the one that became American College, Madura. He was its first Principal. He returned to Jaffna in 1850 and died there in the cholera epidemic of 1855. On June 28, 1915, one of the finest libraries in South India, the Daniel Poor Memorial Library, was opened in his memory. Its splendid new building, opened in 1926, was funded by a grand-daughter of Poor.

The close connections between the American Missions in Jaffna, Madura and Vellore (the Madras Mission gave way to the numerous British missions then moving in) led to the development of Kodaikanal as an important hill station (Miscellany, September 4, 2000). A connection with Madras, however, remains. The American Ceylon Mission, being a constituent of a union of congregational churches in South India, is part of the Church of South India, headquartered in Madras from 1947.

*****

Jesse Mitchell’s charger

My ever-regular correspondent in Australia, Dr. A. Raman, having seen that unique picture of the Museum Tower (Miscellany, February 29) sends me another picture — but this, though many may have seen its focus in situ in the Madras Museum, I feature because it has a story to tell. It may be considered a memorial to the man who could well be considered the founder of the Connemara Public Library, one of India’s four national libraries, Capt. Jesse Mitchell. Raman had received this picture and the one believed to be that of Jesse Mitchell as well as other information about him from Chrissy Hart whose brother had been researching their descent from Mitchell.

Jesse Mitchell
Jesse Mitchell

Another of those Irishmen to join the East India Company’s Army, Mitchell arrived in Madras in 1829 and was immediately sent to the Pallavaram cantonment. He records an abiding memory of his first days there spent in regaining his land-legs. During those days meant for rest and recuperation, he and fellow newcomers went through “the terrible ordeal of drinking a strong dose of salts and senna every alternate day for six days, (while) formed up in line in the presence of the doctor”. On the last day “we were informed that the salt junk eaten on board for 3 months was washed clean out of us, and we were now fit for our exile in India for 21 years, when we would be entitled to a pension and allowed to go back to our mother”. They were then posted to various regiments, Mitchell being sent to join the Madras Horse Artillery in Bangalore.

While Mitchell was seeing action in China and different parts of India, the Madras Museum was inaugurated in January 1851 with Dr. Edward Balfour in charge. It was born through the efforts of the Madras Literary Society which petitioned the East India Company in November 1843, approval being given in 1846. After being located in the upper floors of the College of Fort St. George (Egmore) it moved into the nucleus of its present premises, The Pantheon, in 1853.

Why, when Balfour retired, Mitchell was chosen to take charge of the Museum cannot be explained, unless you take into account a couple of papers he wrote, ‘On the Influence of Local Altitude on the Burning of the Fuses of Shells’ and ‘Description of a Plain or Waxed paper Process in Photography’. Whether those papers justify the explanation that he was appointed part-time supervisor of the Museum because of his interests in microscopy and Natural Science is debatable. But once he was there he did a remarkable job. He acquired a variety of small fauna, shells and fossils from foreign museums in exchange for specimens from the Madras Presidency, started a collection of old coins and medals, and added to Balfour’s Amaravati collection of sculptures. In all he added over 72,000 specimens to the Museum’s collection before he passed away in 1872. One of those specimens that he added to the Zoology Gallery was the skeleton of the horse seen in my picture today, his regimental charger.

The skeleton of the horse in the Madras Museum
The skeleton of the horse in the Madras Museum

But perhaps the most significant thing he did was write to the Government in 1860 urging it to fund a library: “A few hundred rupees, judiciously expended every year, would place before the public a library of reference that would in the course of time be an honour to the Government.” His wish was fulfilled in 1862, when Government funding enabled the opening of a small library in June that year. This library evolved into the Connemara Library. Initially the library was supervised by the Museum, but in 1939, Dr. F.H. Gravely, the last British Superintendent of the Museum, had the Library separated from the Museum, each with its own head.

Of Mitchell, still very much a part of Madras in St. George’s Cemetery, it was said, “He had very clear ideas of the functions of Museums; first to contain as complete a collection as possible of the natural production of the country and other parts of the world, duly named and systematically arranged as a means of encouraging the study of Natural History, and secondly, to do its share in the advance of Science.” Advancement of knowledge he saw through libraries — and made it happen. That was perhaps a more memorable an achievement of his than all his splendid work for the Museum.

*****

Setting things straight

My Irish visitor Aine Edwards writes to tell me that some of my detailing in the item on Sr. Loreto (Miscellany, February 22) needs correction and she clarifies that the Little Lambs School in Perambur “is a multi-denominational school with Christian moral teaching” and that it was founded by Maria Gislen, not Sr. Loreto. Aine Edwards had volunteered at the school and was introduced by a mutual friend to Sr. Loreto of the Presentation Order who has been “based mainly in Madras”.

My correspondent, quoting Sr. Loreto, says that the names of the first Presentation nuns to arrive in Madras were not those listed by the publication with which the Irish Embassy was associated. Then citing a website of the Presentation Order they gave me two names on my list as well as Mother Frances Xavier Curran, instead of Xavier Kearney, and a Miss Josephine Fitzsimon instead of a Johanna Fitzgerald. The website does not list Ignatius Healy. I also learnt that the Kellys we both listed died of cholera, Regis in 1844 and Martha 18 months later.

But as usual I wonder about the accuracy of some of the material on the worldwide web. This time, the site Aine Edwards refers me to, says those first nuns moved to “what was once Robert Clive’s office, now to be the first Presentation Convent in India”. I can hardly imagine either of the Clives, Robert or son Edward, having an office in Black Town or the Catholics being given space in the Fort after 1749!

The information sent to me also indicates that the Presentation Order went beyond education in India. They helped with healthcare. In 1928, they staffed the railway hospital in Golden Rock (Trichy), in 1933 they established a hospital in Theni, and they opened a hospital at Manapad on the Fisheries Coast.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Society / by S. Muthiah / March 05th, 2016

First Rail Auto Hub Opened in Walajabad

Business & Economy, Records, All, Science & Technologies
 Walajabad :

The country’s first rail auto hub being developed in Walajabad would flag off its first rake, which has the capacity to carry 125 cars, by the middle of this month, according to Southern Railway general manager Vashista Johri.

The hub was inaugurated by Union Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu from New Delhi through video conferencing. Top railway officials were present at the Walajabad railway station, which is located near Kancheepuram district.

Interestingly, the launch of the auto hub may sound the death knell of the facility in Thiruvallur, which is being used by Hyundai to transport its cars to Changasari in Assam. But car majors are cautious in welcoming the move by Indian Railways.  V Anand, senior general manager sales logistics, Hyundai, told Express that they need to evaluate the hub from the commercial point of view. While the hub would be useful in transporting cars to Ennore Port, which usually takes nearly 36 hours by road from the manufacturing facility, Anand feels that the cost factor still favours the road sector.

According to the railways, to move one load of six cars from the factory to the port by road, it takes 36 hours. But 300 cars can be moved to Chennai Port and Ennore Port in 2-3 hours from this facility.

However, Anand points out that the rail freight is too costly than road freight. Only if the distance is above 2,000km, rail freight service is affordable, he says. Interestingly, Hyundai, which produces 18,000 cars per annum, is using the rail to transport only four per cent of its cars and most of it is from the Melapakkam facility sector.

Aware of its limitations in NMG rakes, Indian Railways is planning to partner with APL VASCOR – a logistics specialist – which uses double decker wagons to transport the cars. One rake transports a total of 318 cars.

While the hub is being planned to cater to one million units of four-wheelers being produced per annum, the land looks inadequate and has to be developed to cater to huge containers carrying cars from the manufacturing plant. Johri is optimistic. “It is just a pilot-project. We will evaluate the first phase,” he says.

Interestingly, the initial holding capacity is for 300 cars and it is likely to be expanded to 800-1,000 cars during the second phase. Johri says that of the one million units being produced in Kancheepuram district, 3.6 lakh is being exported while the rest 6.4 lakh is transported to domestic market.

source: http://www.newindianexpresss.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by C. Shivakumar / March 02nd, 2016

Kshema to honour two clinician scientists

Education, Records, All, Science & Technologies

Mangaluru:

To mark National Science Day, the Centre for Science Education and Research and KS Hegde Medical Academy (Kshema) will honour two clinician scientists, Dr VI Mathan and Dr Minnie Mathan, for their contribution to medical research on Monday.

Prof Mathan, who superannuated from Christian Medical College, Vellore, as professor of medicine and gastroenterology and director, has a number of awards to his credit. This includes the Ambedkar Award of the Indian Council of Medical Research for his lifetime contributions to health research. Prof Minnie was the head of the department of gastrointestinal sciences at the college till her superannuation in 1997.

At the event Prof Mathan will speak on the challenges of clinical research and Prof Minnie on integrated research.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Mangalore / TNN / February 29th, 2016

SASTRA professor’s win science awards

Education, Records, All, Science & Technologies

Chennai:

Sastra University on Sunday presented National Science Day awards.

Delivering the lecture, D P Singh director of National Assessment & Accreditation Council expressed the need for senior scientists to mentor youth to take up a career in science. This he said was essential for innovation with three prerequisites – novelty, relevance & implementation.

He also awarded the ‘Sastra – Obaid Siddiqi Award’ to professor K Vijay Raghavan, secretary, department of biotechnology, ‘Sastra-G N Ramachandran Award’ to professor T V Ramakrishnan, distinguished associate, IISc Bangalore and the ‘Sastra-CNR Rao Award’ to professor T K Chandraeskhar, former secretary, Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) and professor N Sathyamurthy director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Chennai / TNN / February 29th, 2016

Google doodle pays tribute to Rukmini Devi Arundale

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, World Opinion

A screenshot of the doodle.
A screenshot of the doodle.

The founder of ‘Kalakshetra’ was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards.

Search engine giant Google on Monday celebrated the 112ndbirth anniversary of Rukmini Devi Arundale, a pioneering dancer of the 1930s, and a visionary institution-builder who built a public cultural and educational centre known as Kalakshetra.

The doodle features a depiction of Rukmani Devi in traditional dance attire with flowers in her hair holding up a mudra amidst trademark lettering of the search giant in trailing pink.

Rukmini-Devi-Arundale established the International Academy for the Arts in 1936, renamed as Kalakshetra in 1938 (kala refers to the arts, and kshetra to a field or sanctuary).

One of the eight children of Nilakanta Sastri and Seshammal, Rukmini was born on February 29, 1904, in Madurai. Brought up in the traditional set up, Rukmini Devi was trained in Indian music by some great musicians. But dance in which field she was to make her mark later was absolutely forbidden to young Rukmini. The only women permitted to dance at that time were the ritually dedicated women known as devadasis in South India.

Rukmini’s father, who was a Sanskrit scholar and an ardent Theosophist, enlarged the intellectual dimensions of his orthodox family by exposing them to the humanist ideals of Theosophy. In one of the Theosophical Society parties, young Rukmini met George Arundale, close associate of Dr. Annie-Besant. Arundale fell in love with young Rukmini who was then barely 16 years of age. He proposed marriage. They were married in 1920.

Love for animals

Rukmini’s love for animals and birds is well known. A Rajya Sabha MP in 1952 and 1956, she introduced the Bill for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was passed in 1960. She was Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board from 1962, till her demise.

Rukmini Devi was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards, including the Padma Bhushan (1956), Sangeet Natak Akademi (1957), Desikothama (1972), Kalidasa Samman (1984) and many others. She served as a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) for two terms.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Internet Desk / February 29th, 2016

Madras Miscellany

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All

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The Bransons of Madras

“Shame on you, Muthu, not remembering Branson Bagh,” said Karthik Narayanan, a former President of the Madras Club, referring to my history of the Club, The Ace of Clubs, wherein it was recorded that the Club had established its second avatar in Branson Bagh after moving from its first, what became Express Estate and now mall. So chided, another penny dropped; I’d heard of a Spring Branson too, who, in his time, was a well-known Madras lawyer. But it was my chronicling colleague Sriram V who linked up the dots in a long mail to me.

Spring Branson of Branson Garden, Branson Garden Road, Kilpauk, may or may not have been related to the fellow-lawyer who was the occupant of Branson Bagh, but it was the latter, Reddy Branson, who was connected to the Richard Branson of my item on February 15th. And Sriram proceeds to bring us up-to-date with those Branson roots.

He begins his story in the 1820s with a Harry Wilkins Branson who — given the date when he was a Managing Partner of Pharoah & Co, Printers and Publishers — was likely to be the second great grandfather. And it was he who in 1832, marrying for a third time, wed Eliza Caroline Wilson Wellington Reddy, with a George Wellington as witness. Somewhere in those Wilson, Wellington, Reddy lines there was a Telugu maternal connection or, possibly, even a potential paternal one.

To Harry and Eliza Branson was born Frederick George Reddy Branson, who studied law and became a solicitor, setting up a firm called Branson & Branson. Sir P S Sivaswami Aiyer once recalled that the firm had the largest amount of business with Indian clients in Madras in the 1880s. The reason for this, states Sir Sivaswami Aiyer, was “due to Mr Branson being a linguist. He could speak Tamil, Telugu and Hindustani better than any native could.”

It was Reddy Branson who lived in Branson Bagh. After his time, the house was acquired by the Rajah of Bobbili, who lived there till at least the 1930s. After World War II, the property passed into the hands of the Madras Club, which, moving from Club House Road, settled into a purpose-built facility that replaced the old house. The property later became the site of government offices, of the Sapphire Theatre complex and Khivraj Motors, and is today part of a multi-storey commercial block after being with a political party for a time.

According to a High Court of Madras record, Branson & Branson existed till 1907 by when R Branson, W Branson and their manager had died. Who W Branson was awaits unearthing. But whether they were kin of Spring Branson is not known; James Henry Spring Branson was the son of James William Branson, who, as a barrister, practised in Madras in the 1830s. Spring Branson was Advocate-General of Madras in 1887 and a Member of the Legislature from 1886.

Sriram concludes. “It is a pity that a book titled The Branson Family of Madras: 1756 to 1863 is no longer available.”

Tailpiece: N.S. Yogananda Rao, referring to my item on Richard Branson, says ‘Reddy’ is a caste name, not a surname. I am aware of that, but I also know that most Reddys use it today as a surname.

*****

The Museum Tower

It was a tower (Miscellany, February 15) that existed for no more than a year, writes my fellow-chronicler Sriram V, who says he had seen brief mentions of it in a centenary volume the Madras Museum had brought out in 1951, and in Prema Kasturi and Chithra Madhavan’s South India Heritage, “but the picture was a pleasant surprise.”

Designed by Henry Irwin, the tower was meant to be very much part of what was called the Connemara Victoria Public Library & Museum Section. A traveller of the time, Eustace Alfred Reynolds-Ball, says it was inspired by the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Jan Morris, the journalist, said it was “unsuitably phallic”, but I still think it was just Irwin trying to do something one better than Chisholm’s Chepauk tower.

A year before the tower was completed in 1897, Irwin retired to Mount Abu and, as in the case of the High Court of Madras, J H Stephen, Chief Engineer, PWD, Madras Presidency completed the work. Whereupon Governor Sir Arthur Havelock inaugurated it in the presence of G S T Harris who had succeeded Irwin as Consulting Architect, Government of Madras. No one knows why, but, shortly afterwards, Harris began instigating a whole heap of rumours that the tower was not stable. He also persuaded the Governor that the library-museum complex would be better off without the tower. Stephen tried his best to keep the building in place, but the Governor had meanwhile heard stories that Irwin had also done less-than-par work in Simla. Havelock, thereupon, decided the tower should be pulled down, though there was much public opposition to it.

When Harris lost no time in getting the earth around the tower loosened and the bricks and stones at the top knocked down, there was much public protest, but it was ignored. And, sometime in 1898 the tower ceased to exist, according to Indian Engineering by Patrick Doyle, which was published in Calcutta.

Tailpiece: I’ve discovered who Geoffrey Burkhart, who sent me the Museum Tower picture, is. Dr.M.A Kalam, former head of the Madras University’s Department of Anthropology, tells me that Dr Burkhart was a regular visitor to the Department from the 1960s, when he started his research for his doctorate, till recent years when he was working on several projects. A frequent visitor to Madras, Burkhart is Anthropologist (Emeritus) with the American University, Washington D.C. Dr.Burkhart’s research from 1983 focussing on an Arcot Lutheran Church congregation, led him to the churches in George Town and an interest in colonial Madras. This resulted in a plan he put together for a study group (of retired people) at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of American University, the subject being “Telling Lives in Colonial Madras”. He organised it based on personal narrative: letters, diaries, biographies, autobiographies, etc.

Kalam also sends me today’s picture of a warning sign somewhere in or near Madras taken in the 1940s. The photograph was accessed and sent to him by Burkhart. I wonder whether any reader recognises it or knows anything about it.

*****

A Gurkha thambi

Not only did he rise from jawan to battalion commander but he, a Gurkha from Pokhara, Nepal, became a Madras thambi in the process. The story is told in a letter from Col. B Nasir to his friend, Om Prakash Narayan, who forwarded it to me. Col.Um Bahadur Gurung of 19 Madras is, however, a man grieved today. It was his ‘little brothers’ who died in Siachen, including Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, the search for whom Gurung kept going, staying put at around 20,000 feet all the time as he supervised rescue operations on the spot, keeping his men going in relays.

Gurung joined the Gurkha Rifles as a sepoy and, in tough competition, was chosen to join the Army Cadet College, Delhi, which trains other ranks to be commissioned as officers. He then did a stint in the Indian Military Academy and was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. But when he was sent to 19 Madras on attachment, his superiors found his ability exceptional that a special request was made – and pursued – to keep him with the battalion. A former commander of his says, “He was a Gurkha but he was received very well by the Madrasis, especially after they had seen him in action at the Line of Control.” Adds Maj.Gen Virendra Kumar (Rtd), “I had left a report with my successor that we should try to retain him, especially for his conduct in small team operations. It is not easy to make the transition from jawan to officer, but Gurung made it through the written tests and interviews. Look what he has delivered today. Bodies have taken six to eight months to be found in the Glacier.” But Gurung had faith; he always had a never-say-die attitude, writes Col. Nasir.

*****

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Metroplus / by S. Muthiah / Chennai – February 27th, 2016

HIDDEN HISTORIES – The Goddess of Madras

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All
The Ekavalli Amman shrine Photo: Dr Vijay Sriram
The Ekavalli Amman shrine Photo: Dr Vijay Sriram

Early one morning this month, I set out for Prakasam Salai (aka Broadway) with a few friends, our destination being the Pidari Amman Koil.

It all began with a search on Google, regarding the North Gate of Fort St. George. I came across a House of Lords paper dating to 1839. Right-wing Protestants of Madras had complained about the practice of the East India Company supporting Hindu and Muslim festivals in the city and its environs. The paper listed several ‘heathen’ events, in which the Company played a part. Among them was the annual procession of the Idol Padarier, the Goddess of Madras. The festival, an ancient one, had not been held for 30 years when Mr E, the Collector of Madras, decided to revive it in 1818. The person referred to is obviously the orientalist FW Ellis, who helped establish the College of Fort St George, gave us the Dravidian proof for the southern languages, and translated the Kural.

Ellis, however, died before his plans became a reality. The Company took it upon itself to revive the custom in 1821, and annually sanctioned Rs. 350 for its conduct. The Goddess was brought out of her shrine in procession and came to the North Gate of Fort St George. There, the collector waited upon her and presented her with a ‘gold botto called talee, a piece of red silk cloth called Cooray with Doopa Deepum (incense)’. Town was then a walled city, and when it was found difficult to carry the idol through the Pully Gate at the end of Thambu Chetty Street, the height of the arch was increased at Company expense.

The Eicher map of Madras revealed a Pidariar Koil Street in Town off Broadway. A call to good friend Prasanna Ramaswami confirmed that Pidari is the Tamil derivative of the Sanskrit term Pida Hari — destroyer of suffering and that it was a Goddess.

And so there we were, looking for the Pidariar temple. We got caught up in a poultry market that comes up each Sunday in the environs, but managed to reach Pidariar Koil Street; from there, we turned into Amman Koil Lane. There was a shrine for Goddess Ekavalli, whose figurine and bali peetham pointed to a venerable past. Without revealing what we knew, we asked the priest about the temple’s history. He did not know much, but he did remember his father telling him that sometime in the distant past the Goddess set out each year on a tour of her city’s bounds and that the collector waited on her at the Fort. That confirmed that this was indeed the Goddess Pidariar. As to how she became Ekavalli is an unsolved mystery. When did she stop going out? That too is not known.

The temple happily shares a wall with a mosque. In Chennai, secularism is a way of life.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus – Hidden Histories / by Dr.Vijay Sriram (Sriram V)/ Chennai – February 26th, 2016