As these lines are written, another national hockey championship is about to get underway. Yes, another, for one organised by another claimant to national hockey management has just been completed. Imagine two national hockey championships run by rival bodies within a few days of each other! No wonder our national sport is in the doldrums that it is!

That state of affairs would have broken the heart of the man after whom the trophy for the recently completed championship was named. The S. Rangaswami Trophy was presented by The Hindu in 1957 in memory of an Editor who was passionately fond of sport, particularly hockey.

S. Rangaswami was the son of S. Kasturiranga Iyengar’s elder brother Srinivasaraghava Iyengar, once the Inspector-General of Registration, Madras, and, later, a Dewan of Baroda. Rangaswami, a small-made person, was a keen sportsman at Presidency College where his hockey prowess was well recognised. He was also in his youth a promising cricketer and, later in life, a regular at the billiard tables of the Cosmopolitan Club. His interest in hockey was so great that of him it was said that he never missed a match in the major hockey leagues and tournaments in Madras. It is this interest thatThe Hindu remembered when instituting the trophy named after him. Sadly, it has not been played for as regularly as it should have been; this year, it was competed for after a gap of 16 years!

It was in 1910 that Rangaswami joined his uncle at The Hindu, not long after passing out as a lawyer. In him the paper gained a brilliant analyst and a writer described as a “master of satire and irony”, a writer who contributed “fire, flashes of wit, ridicule and sarcasm, the outpourings of an outraged patriot demanding instant satisfaction.”

His analytical weekly reviews of the action during the Great War were what brought him into the public eye. With no military background whatsoever, he still was able to analyse with remarkable accuracy the happenings on the various battlefronts.

The War over, The Hindu began to pay greater attention to the domestic scene. And this was when Rangaswami was seen at his trenchant best, His “invective”, as some saw it, was neither offensive, vulgar or malicious but was “a fine art”. Of the Moderates who leaned towards the Establishment he wrote, that they are “Moderates only in their patriotism” and that “Moderatism is not a policy but a disease”. Of one of the leading Moderates, the Rev. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri, he wrote, “It was said of the Austrians that they had a genius for defeat. It may be said with equal justice of Mr. Sastri that he has a genius for surrender.”

A voracious reader of everything from penny dreadfuls to the English Classics, Rangaswami developed not only a mastery over the language but also a rationalist’s outlook to life. A friend described him as “an emphatic, exaggerated and extraordinary protest against all social and moral conventions of the world, especially those attached to a Brahmin by birth”. Reflecting these views were his words to a writer on religious topics:

“The best way of influencing humanity for good would be to carry conviction to your fellowmen by a process of rational persuasion and not by mantras… Never mind your textbook theories and discussions. I realise some superhuman agency (what it is I do not care or stop to investigate) is responsible for the creation of the universe and the best way to worship him is to devote your energies and intellect to the service of the poor, the weak and the downtrodden who are all God’s creatures.” This is what students should be taught, he emphasised over and over again.

Stricken by tuberculosis, he died young. At 40, he had been Editor of The Hindu for only three years. But in those years he had made the paper’s anti-Establishment voice heard louder than ever. It was felt that “a great calamity” had befallen The Hindu when S. Rangaswami passed away in October 1926. But given that he thought the best years of his life were his college years, the S. Rangaswami trophy for the national hockey championships is probably the best memorial to him.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai> Columns / Madras Miscellany / by S. Muthiah / June 02nd, 2013