Category Archives: Historical Links, Pre-Independence

Lester and Ceylon’s films

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Nri's / Pio's, Records, All, World Opinion

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The death of Lester James Peiris, the father of the ‘New Sinhala Cinema’, brings back to mind his winning in 1965, with his Gamperaliya (The changing village; 1963), the first Golden Peacock awarded and for taking Sinhala film-making not only out of Madras State studios but away from the clichétic Tamil film formula.

Lester was the London Correspondent of The Times of Ceylon when I was its Foreign News Editor in the 1950s. We were in regular touch during that period, when he was experimenting with film-making. When he returned to Ceylon he opted out of journalism and focused on cinema — first with government documentaries and then the making of a new kind of Sinhala film, one drawing inspiration from the realism of Italian and French films. We kept in touch, however, because Iranganie Serasinghe and Sita Jayawardana were two of his leading supporting actresses, both girls who worked with me in features and who were forever asking for time off for ‘shooting’ or who kept dozing after ‘night shoots’. But when I moved to Madras I lost touch with Lester whom many consider one of the greatest South Asian film-makers.

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Lester made 20 full-length feature films and about a dozen documentaries and short films. He started with a winner, Rekawa (Line of Destiny, 1956), which focused on village life. It was the first Sinhala film to be shot entirely in the country and the first to be shot mainly outdoors. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival. Gamperaliya, for its part, was shot entirely outside the studio. Besides the Golden Peacock, it also won Mexico’s top international film festival award.

The first Sinhala film to be made, Kadavanu Porundhuva (Broken Promise), was shot entirely in Madras and released in Colombo on January 21, 1947. It was produced by S M Nayagam, who was what they called in Ceylon an Indian Tamil (being from the Tamil districts of Madras Presidency) and who not only pioneered the making of Sinhala films but also the starting of local industries. The film was directed by a Bengali, Joti Sinha. This was followed by 42 other Sinhala films being made in Madras, Coimbatore and Salem. It was only in the 1950s that Sinhala films began to be made in Colombo, where Nayagam had established the first studio. But even then, till legislation in the late 1950s, technicians from Madras continued to work in Ceylon — and the generation of Sinhala technicians who followed them benefited considerably from their mentoring.

One of the earliest from Madras to direct Sinhala films was Anthony Bhaskar Raj. Lenin Moraes was another director from Madras where he had learnt cinematography and make-up. J A Vincent was Art Director for over 100 Sinhala films after starting out with Asokamala being made in Central Studios, Coimbatore. Another connected with Asokamala was experienced cameraman Mohamed Masthan who also shot Sujatha in Salem. When he moved to Ceylon, he was guru to a generation of Ceylonese cameraman. He later went into direction. Other directors from Madras to work in Ceylon included A S A Samy, P Neelakantan, L S Ramachandran who pioneered Sinhala films on village life, and A S Nagarajan. After having been a scriptwriter in Madras, Nagarajan moved to Ceylon and into direction. Among his films was Mathalan, based on the Tamil hit Mangamma Sabatham.

Starting from where the Madras technicians left off, Lester James Peiris gave a completely new face to the Sinhala film industry. R.I.P., Lester.

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They mined for diamonds too

My scrip-collecting correspondent, Sayeed Cassim, has sent me some fascinating material, responding to my gold rush story (Miscellany, April 23). The best of it is a share certificate issued by the Devalah (Devala) Central Gold Mines Company Limited in 1881. This was one of the first companies to be established— even before the gold rush began — and, as I had recorded, it was promoted by Parry & Co, though the certificate (my enlarged picture today) gives no indication of that.

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Accompanying it are the headings of three other certificates, those issued by the Western Pathoom Gold Prospecting Company Limited, the Sonepat Proprietary Gold Mining Company Limited, and the Dumra Gold Prospecting Syndicate Limited. Having made a study of these three certificates, Sayeed Cassim feels that “these were companies set up only to rake in the money and hoodwink the public.” He bases his presumption on the fact that there are several identical features in these certificates which “make their intentions suspicious”. He lists the following:

Similar authorised capital of each of these companies:

Date of all issues very close together in 1890

Printer the same: Calcutta Catholic Orphan Press;

Per value of each share only one rupee (to induce greater subscription?), and

Certificates of Western Pathoom and Dumra signed by the same person.

But that is not all. Apparently there were optimists who thought that there were diamonds in the hills too and companies were formed to prospect for them. He names The Madras Diamond Mining Company Limited and The Madras Presidency Diamond Fields Limited. Were they genuine speculators or in it for the quick buck?

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If you want to take a better look at these certificates, Sayeed Cassim suggests you have a look at the website of David Barry of London (www.indianscripophily.com), who has “the largest and finest collection of Indian share certificate in the world.”

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture> Madras Miscellany / by S. Muthiah / May 14th, 2018

The Tawkers of Madras

Business & Economy, Education, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Leaders, Records, All

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Thanks to that recorder of the stories of famous old houses in Madras, Sriram V, I recently discovered where a once-legendary old family of Madras, the Tawkers, had their mansion. After passing out of the Tawker hands into Government’s hands in 1925, it became the residence of the Rajah of Panagal (pronounced Paanagal) when he was the Premier of Madras. He stayed there till 1928. Tawker’s Gardens then became Limbdi Gardens, when the Raja of Limbdi (in Gujarat) acquired it. Next we find the University of Madras renting it in the 1930s for some of its departments and staying there till 1948 when it was auctioned. The buyer was the Muslim Educational Association of South India (MEASI) and there it developed in the 12-acre campus on Peter’s Road what is today New College, a name inspired by an eponymous one in Oxford. The college opened in 1951.

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The Tawkers were one of the earliest Gujarati families to settle in Madras, moving here from Trichinopoly in the early 18th Century. In time, they were to become the leading gem and jewellery merchants in South India, under the name TR Tawker and Sons from 1761. As befitting their status they had Henry Irwin design a palatial headquarters building for the firm on Mount Road. The Indo-Saracenic-styled building was built in the 1890s by T Manavala Chetty, a leading contractor. The Tawker Building, like Tawker’s Gardens, passed out of the family’s hands when the firm’s dues from many of the leading citizens of the South, particularly the Nizam of Hyderabad (or, rather, his estate when he died), were not paid, leading to bankruptcy in 1925.

Tawker’s Building, next to what is now VGP’s main showroom on Mount Road (but once Victory House, home of the then leading Tamil daily, Swadesamitran), after its sale, became the property of the Maharajah of Venkatagiri in 1926. It next passed into the hands of Kasturi Estates (The Hindu family) in 1931. The South India Cooperative Insurance Company bought it in 1948 as its headquarters and when insurance was nationalised it became LIC property. In 1953, the year Indian Airlines started, its Madras office moved into a part of this spaciousness. Indian Airlines remained there till 1980 before it moved out whereupon the building, an architectural heritage building if ever there was one, was pulled down by the LIC and a mundane highrise took its place, now housing several offices.

The philanthropy of the Tawkers was legendary. Two women of the family, Ramba Bai and Ratna Bai, set up a trust in 1804 and the next year built the Sri Kasi Viswanathar Temple in Ayyanavaram. Other charities they endowed included building a choultry, now an agraharam, next to the temple. The Tirupati umbrellas taken to the Seven Hills from Madras are traditionally kept in this temple for one night before their onward journey. Trichy is also a place that has benefited from Tawker munificence.

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There are still Tawkers in Madras, but the name no long creates the awe it once did.

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The coffee blight

The news that the White Stem Borer (WSB) is back, threatening the three major coffee-producing districts of Karnataka; Kodagu, Chikmagaluru and Hassan, causing them to be declared “pest affected areas”, took my mind back to the horror stories I had read dating to when Leaf Blight / Leaf Rust and the Borer wiped out the coffee plantations of Ceylon and those in the Nilgiris-Wynaad. A South Indian planter wrote in 1896, “In all these once beautiful plantations, complete desolation now reigns…The destruction came in gradually from 1864-65, first by borer (1868) and completed by leaf disease (from 1875) caused by Hemileia vastatrix…The destruction that went on before one’s eyes would have to be seen to be believed.” Another writer wrote of the disaster, “Acre after acre, mile upon mile died out and what were once happy valleys became valleys of dry bones and there was no hope of resurrection.” But resurrection though there was. Anon.

Ceylon started planting coffee before South India, though there were small coffee gardens in Mysore State and Coorg long years before the 1830s when George Bird opened up the first coffee estate in the Island. By the 1860s, coffee was driving Ceylon’s economy. It was from those estates that the blight slowly spread into the Nilgiris. In South India, coffee on estate scale was first planted in 1798 by Murdoch Brown in Anjaracandy in North Malabar, but the effort did not take off. It was in the 1840s and 1850s that venturesome Europeans got into growing coffee on plantation scale. By 1870, there were 20,000 hectares of coffee in Mysore planted by Europeans from 1854 and producing 6,000 tonnes. However, in the same territory, there were nearly 28,000 ‘Native plantations’ with an area of 80,000 hectares and producing around 9,000 tonnes. Much of this escaped the coffee blight, whose spread from the Nilgiris was, fortuitously, slow. Coffee planting in the Nilgiris by “enthusiastic lunatics” began in the late 1850s and by 1863-64 there were 40 estates.

Resurrection came when Ceylon planters who had not sold their estates for a passage home began experimenting with tea in 1867 and made a success of it by the 1870s. South Indian tea, on the other hand, was slow to take off. The gold rush (Miscellany, April 23) was one of the reasons. It was not till James Finlay’s developed the Kannan Devan High Range that tea began to make slow but steady progress till South India became the major tea producer it is today. Its slow beginnings were in 1854 in Coonoor, on Thiashola estate, southwest of Coonoor. Post-Second World War, the tea industry in South India has boomed but despite ups-and-downs, it is one of the healthiest industries in the country. So is coffee today.

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture> Madras Miscellany / by S. Muthiah / May 07th, 2018

Taking on British justice

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

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I had meant to write this piece for my April 2nd column, but events overtook me, so it comes as a bit later reminder of new ownership taking over The Hindu on April 1, 1905. In selling it to the paper’s legal adviser, S Kasturiranga Iyengar, M Veeraraghavachariar, a founder who had become sole owner, made sure with a formal notice that this would not be considered an April Fools’ Day story.

But before that happened, Veeraraghavachariar made one last effort to keep control of the paper. On the advice of Kasturiranga Iyengar, a company with capital of ₹1,20,000 (1200 shares of ₹100 each) was formed with P Rungiah Naidu (Chairman), Dewan Bahadur R Ragoonath Row, P Anandacharlu, C Jambulinga Mudaliar, C Sankaran Nair, TV Seshagiri Iyer and M Tirumalachariar as Directors. Kasturiranga Iyengar was the Legal Adviser and Veeraraghavachariar the Manager. But by 1903 the scheme failed with less than half the shares subscribed. Two years later, on March 18, 1905, Kasturiranga Iyengar announced, “Mr. Sankaran Nair and myself have agreed to purchase The Hindu from Mr. Veeraraghavachariar for ₹75,000,” the latter selling it to them though he had received an offer for ₹5000 more. Sankaran Nair remained a co-owner till 1922.

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Over the years, there were to be differences between The Hindu and Sir Sankaran, but the break came when they took opposing views on the question of Gandhiji and civil disobedience. Nair even wrote a book, Gandhi and Anarchy, in which he attacked Gandhiji and the Congress. The consequences of the book were unexpected. In it Nair wrote, “Before the reforms it was in the power of the Lieutenant-Governor (Sir Michael O’Dwyer of the Punjab), a single individual, to commit the atrocities in the Punjab we know too well.” This was with reference to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that Sir Sankaran held was due to O’Dwyer giving the man-on-the-spot, Col. Reginald Dyer, an excessively free hand. O’Dwyer, angered by Nair’s charge, sued for libel in London, which is where Nair had once thought he would file charges against the Authorities for the massacre. Instead, as a member of the Secretary of State for India’s Council, he moved to England, and campaigned for a Royal Commission of Inquiry which led to several civil and military officials being punished for what happened in 1919. “As far as it lay in my power, I was determined to prevent another Jallianwala Bagh in India,” Nair stated of his success.

You win some, you lose some and the lawyer Sankaran Nair found himself paying for his views on Jallianwala Bagh and O’Dwyer. In London, the jury ruled against him after Justice McCardie kept intervening at every stage of the trial asking questions that favoured the plaintiff. O’Dwyer was awarded £500 damages and costs, which came to £7000.

The Hindu, which covered the trial extensively, called it “a hideous mockery,” adding, “almost from the first day when the trial commenced, it was apparent that Sir Sankaran Nair had lost the case.” The paper later wrote, “The case has only served to demonstrate once again that when there is the slightest touch of politics involved for an Indian, justice cannot be expected in an English Court and from an English jury. In such cases both judge and jury become weighted with the cares of empire. No wonder a case which was meant to test whether Sir Michael O’Dwyer was guilty of terrorism, resulted in the finding, altogether gratuitous, that O’Dwyer saved the empire, that justice was not done to Dyer… and that (the Inquiry had got it all wrong…)”

Ironically, the case led to Nair in 1924 wanting to sue The Hindu for libel alleging that it had accused him of “appealing to the Congress leaders in the matter of the suit (filed by Sir Michael O’Dwyer).” Matters were settled out of court.

Sir Sankaran Nair lived in The Palms on Poonamallee High Road and was, with Kasturiranga Iyengar, a member of the Egmore Group of lawyers, rivals of the Mylapore Group, which was mainly Brahmin.

Music maestro’s centenary

April 27th was the birth centenary of Handel Manuel, Madras’s ‘Mr. Western Classical Music’, (Miscellany, March 19) and it was a grand music event in the Manuel style at St Andrew’s Kirk, with which he was associated for over fifty years as organist and choirmaster.

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Born in Tuticorin into an old Nagercoil family, he was named Handel by his music-loving father who thought George Frederic Handel’s Messiah was the greatest piece of Western Classical music ever written. His son lived up to his hopes. An untrained composer, he became an outstanding Classical musician after his time at Madras Christian College. But Handel Manuel was down-to-earth as well: He was Station Director Western Music, Madras.

A part of his legacy includes founding the Madras Philharmonic and Choral Society. And the Handel Manuel Chorus is a memorial to him founded by his younger brother and his wife, flautist Surender and Sarada Schaffter, in 2003. He was also instrumental in writing and augmenting the Western musical notes for the National Anthem. His son Vijay, considered by many the best pianist and bass player in India in his time, worked long with composer Ilayaraja for whom he played the keyboard. Handel Manuel was elected an Honorary Life Member of the Royal School of Church Music, London.

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture / by S. Muthiah / April 30th, 2018

An obsession with gold

Business & Economy, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

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The last of the great British commercial names of the South still in business, Parry & Co, now Indian owned, has a curious historical sidelight that had its beginnings 150 years ago. It’s a story pointing to the firm’s obsession with gold in South India, an item few who know the Parry story would associate with its hard-headed business approach from its founding in 1788.

It was a few years before the lure of gold drew Parry’s to it in the 19th Century. The story of that gold began with the coffee blight ruining the planters in the Nilgiris and those who did not give up and go ‘Home’ frantically searching for alternative means of sustenance. Two of them were Australians who had been miners and were planting in the Wynaad near Gudalur. There’s gold in them ther’ hills, they announced in 1868, and the trickle that followed them turned into a gold rush.

The rush began in 1879 following a positive report of gold in the Nilgiris-Wynaad that Bough Smyth, an Australian mining engineer, had submitted to the Government of Madras. But Parry’s were ahead of him. In 1874, the South India Alpha Gold Company was promoted with a capital of £100,000 and Parry’s became its Managing Agents. This was followed by Parry’s seeding the Devala Central Gold Mining Company.

Estates that were being sold for virtually nothing now found their prices sky-rocketing, going for anything between £70 and £ 2600 an acre, as not only planters began to dig for gold but a rash of new companies followed them. It was reported that 41 companies were floated in England with a total capital of £5 million and 44 companies sprang up in Mysore and the Wynaad with a total capital of ₹5,50,000! And the ‘engineers’ they employed, one report has it, were “a quondam baker and a retired circus clown”. Prospectors like these made Devala and Pandalur, near Gudalur, boom towns. Hostelries sprang up, Devala even got a magistrate and Pandalur a racecourse!

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Crushing began in 1881 and when one of the biggest companies reported to London that it had found four ounces of gold per ton, investments went through the roof. A few months later it reported that 19 tons had yielded two pennyweights of gold. And the crash began. In 1883, Government reported that the gold mining enterprise in the Wynaad had “almost collapsed”. By the next year, it had collapsed altogether. An 1875 newspaper from as far away as New Zealand had to eat its words: It had predicted “Ooctacamund, the delightful recherché sanatorium on the Neilgherries is to be the new bustling Ballarat (once Australia’s gold mining heart)… There is sure to be an exodus from Melbourne to Madras.” If the Australians had continued coming, they would have found Devala and Pandalur ghost towns. But it must also be stated that were enough traces of gold found to keep prospectors optimistic; one company in 1884 extracted 363 ounces of gold, another over a couple of years found 1174 ounces – the former valued at ₹16,500, the latter at £4500 – a pittance considering the investment.

You would think that with all this experience a company like Parry’s would think twice about gold. But when a prospector called TB Cass came to Parry’s in 1902 with a mining licence in the Nizam’s Hyderabad, Parry’s began sighting gold again. A few years later it floated the Indian Minerals Exploration Company which began operations in 1907. The losses were ₹5 lakh when the company was wound up in 1910 after winding down from 1908, all Parry getting out of it being an almirah that for years remained in Parry’s headquarters!

But Parry’s had not done with gold. A couple of years later, two South African miners turned up at Parry’s Calicut office with gold they said came from the Malabar rivers into which it would have been washed from the Wynaad. And in 1913 Parry’s formed the Pactolus Dredging Syndicate. That was washed away in 1913. Next, in 1916, a Parry’s sugar factory near Vizagapatam reported that it had found gold traces when boring for water. Could they secure the mining rights? A Director replied, “Quite interesting, but I sincerely hope we will not put money into it or even have an interest again in a mining venture.” Before and after, the firm has stuck to green gold (sugarcane and tea) and black gold (manure).

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A search for a doctor

They still keep finding this column from abroad, this time my correspondent being a Dr David Dance from the UK. He is trying to trace the descendants of a Dr CS Krishnaswami who worked in Rangoon, c. 1911. Working with the Pathological Laboratory there, Assistant Surgeon CSK had with his Chief, Dr Alfred Whitmore, presented a paper on a then new disease called Melioidosis (later Whitmore’s Disease) that D. Dance has been working on for the past 30 years. Dr Dance writes, “I have a fair bit on Whitmore but not Krishnaswami, who I would think returned to Madras on retirement.” Krishnaswami did, for I find in a book written by Burma-born Lakshmi Sundaram that a Dr CSK, who’d been in Burma, used to regularly visit her father who had returned to Madras on retirement. Dr. Dance (David.d@tropmedres.ac) wonders whether any of Dr CSK’s descendants will see this appeal and get in touch. The Doctors Whitmore and CSK had published their findings in the Indian Medical Gazette in July 1912.

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The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today

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source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> History & Culture / by S, Muthiah / April 23rd, 2018

Chronicles of the fall of Thanjavur, Madurai

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All
Thanjavur Maratha Palace The Darbar Hall of the Thanjavur Maratha Palace
Thanjavur Maratha Palace The Darbar Hall of the Thanjavur Maratha Palace

The Vijayanagar Empire was decisively defeated by the Deccan Sultanates in the Battle of Talikota, in 1565 C.E. The empire soon unravelled when many provincial governors, called Nayakas, declared independence one by one. Even before the last emperor died the Nayakas were at each other’s throats, making opportunistic alliances, and seeking the support of Europeans and even the Sultanates. Thanjavur and Madurai, once key constituents of the empire, engaged in a protracted and destructive conflict which eventually doomed both ruling dynasties.

The reasons behind the rivalry were many. Thanjavur Nayakas hailed from a noble house which strongly supported Vijayanagar even during the empire’s terminal decline. The Madurai Nayakas were of humbler origins and had changed colours right after Talikota. In 1614 CE, Madurai sided with a usurper who murdered the Vijayanagar emperor and his family. By 1659 Madurai’s expansionist activities led to the Sultanates annexing any remaining Vijayanagar crownlands: this reduced the last emperor to a refugee. Such actions also led to the Thanjavur kingdom losing lands to the Sultanates. Madurai’s alliance with the Sultans enabled roving Deccani Muslim warlords to quickly gain power in Tamil lands. Legends also say that a Madurai Nayaka murdered his bride, a Thanjavur princess (who was offered as a token of peace), in a moment of rage. The feud grew over the years — interspersed with very brief alliances of convenience — and reached a climax in 1673 CE.

Thanjavur was then ruled by the ageing Vijaya Raghava Nayaka. He was a patron of the arts and had written numerous poems and dramatic works. However, he believed in hoary notions of tradition, valour and honour — he even refused to modernise his army with firearms. The ruler of Madurai was the young Chokkanatha Nayaka. He had actually attempted to check the growing power of the Sultanates and the warlords but failed. In 1673 Chokkanatha requested the Thanjavur princess’s hand in marriage. The Thanjavur king contemptuously refused; the enraged Chokkanatha ordered his generals to capture the princess. Madurai’s army consisting of Deccani cavalry, musketeers, cannons and European mercenaries simply outclassed Thanjavur’s army. The Thanjavur fort was breached after heavy fighting; despite multiple offers of lenient terms, Vijaya Raghava resolved to “die with honour”. The royal palace was rigged with gunpowder and incendiaries and the royal womenfolk were herded into it. As the defenders sallied out and fought to the death, they blew up the palace, killing everyone inside.

Chokkanatha installed his brother Alagiri as a viceroy. However, Chengamaladas, a minor son of the fallen Thanjavur king, had escaped the carnage.

Chengamaladas later surfaced in Bijapur and requested the Sultan’s aid. In 1675 CE, the Sultan sent his general Venkoji, half-brother of Chhatrapati Shivaji, to reclaim Thanjavur for Chengamaladas (Ironically, Venkoji and his Maratha troops served Bijapur while Shivaji was invading it in the north). It was an opportune moment as Alagiri and Chokkanatha were now at war with each other. Thanjavur was conquered by the Marathas in a short campaign.

However, heeding to a prophetic dream (and perhaps sensing the Bijapur Sultanate’s impending end) Venkoji crowned himself King of Thanjavur in 1676. With Chengamaladas fleeing into obscurity the rule of the Thanjavur Nayakas ended.

Meanwhile in Madurai, rebellions and Chokkanatha’s plummeting popularity weakened the kingdom. The expansionist Thanjavur Marathas now began to prey on Madurai. Chokkanatha was deposed by the Madurai nobles and another brother was enthroned. In 1680, a powerful Deccani warlord named Rustam Khan captured power, chasing away the new Nayaka and installing Chokkanatha as a puppet ruler. Rustam Khan’s power grew alarmingly and he apparently began to forcibly claim women from the royal families. In 1682 Chokkanatha Nayaka’s heart finally gave out when Madurai was repeatedly invaded by her neighbours, and subsequently betrayed by her feudatories.

The Madurai kingdom was totally devastated at this point. Chokkanatha’s teenaged son Rangakrishna managed to reclaim some glory but he died of smallpox just seven years into his reign. Queen Mother Mangammal became the Regent for the next fifteen years as Rangakrishna’s heir was an infant. Mangammal’s brilliant leadership bought Madurai back from the brink. Using diplomacy, stratagems and military might, she eliminated threats and rebuilt Madurai’s power. However, after her death in 1705 the kingdom went into decline again. Madurai was slowly worn down by civil strife, and the campaigns of Thanjavur, Mysore and the Nawab of Arcot. In 1736, Arcot forces under Chanda Sahib ended centuries of Nayaka rule.

Madurai was subsequently tossed between various belligerents till the British became her overlord in 1764. The Marathas of Thanjavur fared slightly better. In 1855, Thanjavur lapsed into British rule when the last Maratha king died without a natural heir.

The author, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate working in the energy sector, has a keen interest in history, politics, and strategic affairs

source: http://www.dnaindia.com / DNA / Home> Analysis / by Ananth Karthikeyan / April 08th, 2018

The Serbian connection

About Chennai(Madras) / TamilNadu, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Inspiration/ Positive News and Features, Leaders, Nri's / Pio's, Records, All, Science & Technologies, World Opinion

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The news that TAFE, India’s second largest tractor manufacturer, has bought the Serbian company Industrija Masina i Traktora (IMT) is the culmination of a 55-year-old relationship that has gone through different phases. It is a story that began with TAFE establishing its offices on January 1, 1961 on Kothari Road after it had been decided that TAFE would thereafter manufacture Massey Ferguson (MF) tractors in India. The TAFE factory opened in Sembiam and the first tractor assembled with components from Coventry was driven out by S Anantharamakrishnan in 1961, watched by his son A Sivasailam who was in charge of TAFE, now one of the most successful flag-bearers of the Amalgamations Group.

But it wasn’t all wine and roses in those early days. The first challenge was posed by IMT who had a 10-year agreement with MF to manufacture tractors in what was then Yugoslavia. India, in those Rupee-payment days, was able to import these IMT-MF tractors, while TAFE was struggling to get foreign exchange to import its CKD components from the UK. Sivasailam’s answer was to go to Yugoslavia. With him went one of his sales representatives in North India, V P Ahuja – who was to make Yugoslavia his home – and they successfully negotiated for IMT-MF components to be regularly supplied to TAFE, meeting Rupee-payment requirements. Slowly business picked up.

The initial imports from IMT were not without their headaches. Yugoslavia used the metric system, India the imperial. TAFE’s technical staff had to devise ways and means to adapt IMT components to TAFE’s requirements. Ahuja (made Chief Liaison Officer, TAFE, in Yugoslavia in 1962) also remembers that while the IMT parts were very good, the factory’s documentation was “terrible”. TAFE would get crates-ful of components but would not know what was packed in what; Ahuja was the problem-solver.

Profits, however, were yet slow in coming. Then came windfall. A World Bank tender called for 3000 tractors to be sold to farmers in the Punjab, where the Green Revolution was taking place, under a financing scheme of the Bank. The Punjab Agro Industries Corporation was to distribute the tractors to farmers who could prove they owned land in the Punjab and nowhere else. TAFE won the tender. Later, even as the deadline for the closure of the scheme neared, TAFE still had 600 tractors on its hands. Sivasailam persuaded the Punjab Government to let the firm sell them to Punjab farmers who owned land in Haryana. And TAFE was on its way.

With the business relationship in Yugoslavia well-settled, Ahuja, who is now Offshore Director, established an agency business for TAFE in Belgrade helping the firm’s export business by representing several Indian auto-product firms in the region. Gradually he also began introducing TAFE tractors, which before long were outselling IMT tractors, even though being more costly but being superior in quality. But, adds Ahuja, we remained “passive sellers throughout because of the Chairman’s regard for IMT.”

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With the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1980s, IMT slowly started slipping till it finally closed in 2015. At an auction, Mallika Srinivasan, Sivasailam’s daughter, closed the over 50-year-old circle. IMT tractors will be in the East European market again in a year or so, she promises.

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Madras’ first American Church

Zion Church I’ve long known as one of Chintadripet’s three landmarks, the other two being the Sathianathan memorial and the Goschen Library. As an architectural precinct it was quite a striking one, inevitably drawing attention to it. What I didn’t know then was that this was the first and only church built by American missionaries in Madras.

The legendary Dr John Scudder, who founded the American Madras Mission after arriving from Jaffna, and the Rev Miron Winslow, his colleague in Jaffna where he started work on the dictionary that is part of Tamil literary history, built a small church in 1847 in the weavers’ settlement after buying the land from a G V Naidu. They named it the Zion Church and it is now in its 170th year, a Church of South India church since independence.

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In April 1865, the American Mission, then concentrating on the Arcots and Madurai, sold the Church for ₹10,000 to the Church Mission Society, London. Some years later, in 1878, the Church was gifted its bell by the Christian Missionary Society; it is said to be the second oldest church bell in Madras. Another piece of antiquity is the pipe organ which was made in England in 1895. The church was completely renovated in 1995.

Noteworthy has been the long pastoral connection of the Sathianathans/Clarkes with this church. I’ve written about this in the past (Miscellany January 28, 2002) but it deserves retelling. The Rev W T Sathianathan became, in 1862, the Church’s second pastor and its first Indian one. There followed five generations of the family who have preached in the Church. Rev W T, after 30 years of pastoral care there, was followed by his son-in-law W D Clarke. The Rev Clarke was followed after 28 years by his son Samuel S Clarke, who served for about 20 years. He was followed by his son Sundar Clarke, who served a few years and went on to become Bishop of Madras.

In 1995 the Clarke family gathered at the Church to celebrate their connection with it and the service was conducted by Sathianathan Clarke, the great-great-grandson of the Rev W.T. The fifth generation Clarke was visiting after completing a Doctor of Divinity degree at Harvard after a Master’s at Yale.

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Congratulations to a contributor

The Indian National Science Academy (Delhi) has awarded the prestigious Vulmiri Ramalingaswami Chair for 2018 to my regular contributor on Madras medical history, Dr. Anantanarayanan Raman of Charles Sturt University, New South Wales.

Ramalingaswami was a distinguished medical doctor and Director General of the Indian Council for Medical Research.

At the same time Dr M S Swaminathan was Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

Dr Raman will spend July in India, headquartered at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, but travelling around to deliver lectures and conduct workshops. Congratulations, Dr Raman; it couldn’t have been awarded to a more dedicated researcher.

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture> Madras Miscellany / by S. Muthiah / April 16th, 2018

2,500-year-old rare circular labyrinth found near Hosur

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All
With a complicated network of paths, labyrinths have been a fertility symbol associated with many cultures
With a complicated network of paths, labyrinths have been a fertility symbol associated with many cultures

Chennai :

A rare circular labyrinth, about 2,500 years old, has been discovered at Kundhukottai, a remote village 55 km from Hosur in Krishnagiri district. It was after hearing from a shepherd about a strange circle of rocks in Kundhukottai, hero stone expert Sugavana Murugan and archaeological officer of the Krishnagiri Historical Research Centre S Paranthaman set off to the village a week ago. Since the village is situated close to the forest, they trekked more than six km to reach the site, crossing mounds of dry elephant dung on the way.

Soon after the discovery, the duo sent the details with pictures to Jeff Saward, a London-based expert in the field of labyrinths and mazes, for his opinion. After studying it in detail, Saward said it must be more than 2500 years old. With a complicated network of paths, labyrinths have been a fertility symbol associated with many cultures. They represent a unique pattern of consciousness and have been used as meditation tool since the Neolithic period.

“We discovered labyrinths in spiral and rectangular shapes, but this is the first time we have come across one in circle shape. Experts like Saward said it’s one of the oldest forms of labyrinths. We have to study the rocks in detail to find the exact age,” said Sugavana Murugan, who had discovered a rectangular shaped labyrinth in Kambainallur in Dharmapuri and a spiral one in Kundhani in Krishnagiri district in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

People used to worship labyrinths for various reasons. A labyrinth has seven paths and one has to come out through the right path. Even though it is difficult to find one’s way inside a labyrinth, it is believed that those who come out through the right path are blessed by the god. “People used to worship labyrinth to be blessed with a child, or to attain success in their pursuits and for long life for their cattle,” said Murugan.

After verifying the photographs, T Satyamurthy, former superintending archaeologist of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), said the labyrinth in circle shape was an interesting discovery. “It’s a promising one. But we have to conduct further excavation on the site to find the age and the actual role played by this labyrinth in the life of people those days,” he said.

The labyrinths and mazes, according to Saward, have been found to be in existence since the Neolithic period. “Maze is a multi-curved category where we have multiple pathways to reach our goal, whereas in labyrinths there is only one pathway which leads inexorably to the goal from the point of entry,“ said Saward, who is editor of `Caerdroia’, the journal of mazes and labyrinths. EOM

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Chennai News / M.T. Saju / TNN / April 10th, 2018

Anatomy and history of a 200-year-old Ivory skeleton

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All, Science & Technologies, World Opinion
The ivory and rosewood skeletons on display at the AMC’s Anatomy Museum in Visakhapatnam. | Photo Credit: C.V.Subrahmanyam
The ivory and rosewood skeletons on display at the AMC’s Anatomy Museum in Visakhapatnam. | Photo Credit: C.V.Subrahmanyam

A rare masterpiece from Saraswati Mahal of Thanjavur, it’s now the prized possession of the Anatomy Museum of Andhra Medical College

A rare ivory skeleton, the bones of which have been carved to clockwork precision on the lines of the human skeleton, is the cherished treasure at the Anatomy Museum of Andhra Medical College (AMC) here.

The ivory skeleton, 5’6” in height and weighing 231 lbs (104.78 kg), reflects the ingenuity of the sculptor, who had carved it more than two centuries ago. It was procured from the famous Saraswati Mahal of Thanjavur, which was under the patronage of Rajah Serfoji (1798-1832). The skeleton is said to have been made between 1805 and 1810. Dr. R. Krishna Rau, a Professor in the Department of Anatomy between 1929 and 1946, who was instrumental in setting up the museum, had bought the ivory skeleton and a rosewood skeleton for a sum of ₹75. The 18th century skeleton has been drawing appreciation of not only experts in the medical field, but also the general public during exhibitions.

“The British are said to have paid ₹5 lakh to display it during an exhibition in London in 1970. The skeleton was taken in a specially made coffin and returned after about a week,” Dr. Ashalatha, Head of the Department of Anatomy, told The Hindu.

Mortem and taboo

“In those days, there were several taboos in handling human bodies and skeletons, and Dr. Krishna Rau was said to have stayed back in the department for a few days on the arrival of the skeletons. Even today, some anatomy professors do not tell their family members that they handle dead bodies,” says Dr. K. Lakshmi Kumari, an Associate Professor of Anatomy. “The ivory skeleton is a masterpiece and is said to be one among the few in the world. No wonder, it was taken by ship all the way to London for display at an exhibition there. The ivory and rosewood skeletons are displayed at exhibitions, organised on special occasions,” says Dr. P.V. Sudhakar, Principal of AMC.

The museum signifies the efforts and dedication of the illustrious teachers, professors and HODs, particularly of AMC during the early days.

Prof. F.J. Anderson, who as Principal of AMC, gave full freedom to Dr. Krishna Rau in securing the unique collections.

The department was named after Dr. Krishna Rau on January 24, 1984 honouring his efforts.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by B. Madhu Gopal / Visakhapatnam – April 06th, 2018

The Palayamkottai mystery

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

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Dr Samuel Vasundaran who is determined to prove his family’s links with Yusuf Khan (Miscellany, March 5) aka Maruthanayagam Pillai spent a morning with me recently telling me a fascinating story. He’d heard it from his paternal grandmother, Alice Samuel Mathuranayagam Pillai in 1981 and had been following the trail ever since.

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As a starting point, she pointed him to two tombs in the Adaikalapuram cemetery near the family home in Palayamkottai. The pictures he sent me show today the tomb of Veyagammal (died 1858) and, partly hidden, that of her husband the Rev Srinivasagam Mathuranayagam (the inscription shown better in the second picture). Born in 1802, the Reverend was trained by ‘The Apostle of Tinnevelly’, the Rev CTF Rhenius, and served in the area till his death in 1861.

From Dr Vasundaran’s point of view, the Rev. is his father’s great grandfather but from Alice Paati’s view he was the grandson of Yusuf Khan! And in trying to follow that trail, Dr Vasundaran had found some intriguing – but not definitive – information.

Apparently, a boy called Mathuranayagam, said to be the adopted son of Yusuf Khan’s Dewan, Srinivasa Rao, a Vaishnavite Brahmin of Tanjore, was christened Samuel one day in 1778 according to the Palayamkottai Church records. Baptised by Schwartz on the same day at the same place was the legendary Clarinda (Miscellany, December 18, 2017) and Vedanayagam Sastriar (Miscellany 22, 2009). Intriguingly, the same records show a Brahmin woman baptised on the same day. But her name has been erased. She, the legend goes, was the mother of Yusuf Khan’s son whom Srinivasa Rao adopted after the death of the Khan Sahib. Yusuf Khan’s wife has been well recorded as Maza (possibly Marcia), a Luso-Indian. Did she become a Hindu when she sought Srinivasa Rao’s protection?

Now comes one more twist. Who this Samuel Mathuranayagam (Srinivasa Rao) married is not known, but he named his first son Srinivasagam, after Srinivasa Rao and the family have followed the practice to this day.

After a long morning’s conversation, neither Vasundaran nor I was able to convince each other about the antecedents of Yusuf Khan, but the roots from the Srinvasagam Mathuranayagam life have certainly been traced on solid ground.

Samuel Srinivasagam Pillai (1856-1909), for instance, better known as ML Pillai because he was the first person in the Tinnevelly District to have a Master of Law degree, was the grandson of Rev Srinivasagam Mathuranayagam. He was an eminent lawyer, much sought after by litigating Zamindars and land-owners. His fourth daughter, Thai Elizabeth, was Dr Chandran Devanesen’s mother and his fifth daughter, Kothai, was Manohar Devadoss’ maternal grandmother.

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A 300-year-old spy story

Governor Joseph Collett (1717-20) is best remembered for his establishing Collettpetta that at some point in time got corrupted to Kaladipet (Miscellany, November 21, 2016). As intriguing as that story of his Head Clerk going to Kanchipuram every day to worship is the story of the spy Collett had to deal with in Fort St George. It was for the first time that, in February 1718, Collett informed the Board that he had held prisoner for some time one Francisco Ferera who claimed to be a doctor. Ferera was being held “a close prisoner” because he had been passing on Fort St George information to the Moors in the surrounding country.’

Typical of the times, Ferera was a multi-faceted personality. Or at least he claimed to be so. He had been a Jew in Italy, Constantinople and Grand Cairo. In Cairo he became a Turk (a Moor), married and had children there, settling down as a family. He is next heard of on the Coromandel Coast, claiming to be a Christian and married to a Portuguese woman who lived in Madras.

Collett offered the view that Ferera had been kept in captivity long enough, could do no more harm, and had many citizens appealing for his release. He proposed that the prisoner be freed on giving security for his behaviour and agreeing that he would not go out of the bounds of Madras without the permission of the Governor. The Board agreed with the Governor’s recommendation.

Francisco Gregorio, a resident of Madras, and referred to by the prisoner as, and known to be, a person of substance, offered to be “bound with him in the penal sum of 1,000 pagodas for his good behaviour”. Ferera was freed and vanishes into the mists of lesser history.

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When the postman knocked…

A quizzer wants to know how Beri Thimmappa, one of the founders of Madras, was connected with Guindy Lodge that has now grown into Raj Bhavan. It’s an indirect connection. His youngest brother Chinna Venkatadri was the dubash of Governor William Langhorne. Before leaving for England in January 1678, Langhorne sold Guindy Lodge and its environs to Chinna Venkatagri who, before long, had problems with the Company and had to virtually gift the property to the Government.

He also wants to know who was the only Chief Minister to occupy the official residence meant for the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Cooum House. T Prakasam. It later became for some years the official residence of the Speakers of the Legislative Assembly.

Sad, sad, sad. Even the 1930s Bosotto’s façade seen in a picture last week as bitten the dust.

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes, from today

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture / by S. Muthiah / April 02nd, 2018

D’Angelis now dust

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Historical Links, Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

DAngelis01CF27mar2018

Yet another Madras Court-listed heritage building bites the dust with not a question raised by Authority. The latest victim of the wreckers’ hammers is a building better known in recent times as the Bata Showroom. The desecrators have been clever; they’ve left in place the Mount Road façade, and crushed the rear where remained many a feature of the building’s 100-year-and-more heritage . The façade itself is not the original; it was rebuilt in the Art Deco style sometime in the early 1930s.

To make sense of the paragraph above, let’s go back to 1880 when Giacomo D’Angelis, from Messina in Sicily and who had trained in France, arrived in Madras and set up shop in small, rented premises on this site, called it ‘Maison Francaise’ and announced he was a “manufacturing confectioner, glacie &c., general purveyor and mess contractor”. For this service he’d established a “Kitchen Department”, the “first of its kind” in South India. I think what D’Angelis was claiming was that he had an outdoor catering service for large parties, which the hotels of the time, like the Connemara, mostly residential, did not have. This service, supervised by a “First Class French Chef”, was, before long, catering to Government House and, in time, became the official caterer to Governor Lord Ampthill (1900-1906) for all his parties, balls and banquet.

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Once Ampthill set the tone, D’Angelis was sought by everyone who was anyone in Madras. With prosperity, the Italian decided to open “a small hotel on the premises, Mount Road, for our customers from up-country”. The property opened in 1906 and by 1908 had developed into Madras’s leading hotel.

Seen from the Mount Road entrance was a three-storey building with splendid decorative wrought iron railings on the first floor verandah. This is the beautiful façade (see picture) that was replaced by what still stands. Off this verandah were the rooms with Mount Road-facing entrances as well as entrances off a verandah at the rear facing Blacker’s Road. These rooms were identifiable even in recent years, being occupied by a variety of small shops. And it is this historic part of the building that has been pulled down.

Between Blacker’s Road and the rooms was developed a Parisian Garden, one of Madras’s most popular places in its day for wine and roses. Within was a restaurant as famous for its French and Italian cuisine as for its Tea Service, mesdames dropped in to enjoy after shopping expeditions. D’Angelis also had Madras’s first electrical hotel lift, making possible a roof garden, hot water on tap, electric fans, an ice-making plant and cold storage. Its floors were of imported tiles and there was elaborate wrought iron embellishment everywhere. A three-table billiard room and a pub-like bar made it an inviting haunt of an evening for gentry who had no club to go to. With all these facilities, it was renowned as Madras’s No. 1 hostelry till 1937 when the completely rebuilt and refurbished Connemara re-opened after three years of rebuilding. But by then, D’Angelis had changed hands; an Italian confectioner in town, Bosotto, had taken it over and was probably responsible for the new façade. The continuing classiness of the hotel was attested to by Douglas Jardine’s English cricket team staying there in 1934, and Sassoon’s of Bombay, a five-star emporium, having a shop in it.

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Before the Bosotto transaction went through, Giacomo D’Angelis had left for France and the business was run by ‘Giacomo D’Angelis and Son’, the son being Carlo. A duck-and-teal shoot in a jheel 20 miles from Madras went wrong in 1920 and Carlo drowned. Giacomo’s youngest son, Louis, who was in New York, returned to Madras and from that time tried to sell the hotel, complaining the while that the attempt was going very slow. Eventually it was 1928 or 1930 before Bosotto bought it and the D’Angelis connection with Madras came to an end.

In later years, Bosotto’s was succeeded by Airlines Hotel, a restaurant and the Bata Showroom backed by cubby-hole shops which enabled the hotel rooms, their numbers, verandah-cum-corridors and toilets to remain recognisable. As usual, in the case of Madras’s heritage buildings, a fire, in 1986, threatened it but it survived – its fate uncertain. Your columnist had approached the Taj Group and a couple of other hotel groups to take the building over and develop it as a boutique heritage hotel. But I could never understand their lack of interest.

D’Angelis, legendary in many ways, also ran from the 1880s till 1925, Sylk’s Hotel in Ooty (owned by Sylks but which had started as Dawson’s Hotel in 1842-43). When D’Angelis gave up its management, it was re-named in 1943, but still later owners as the Savoy and continues to this day as such, owned by Spencer’s but run by the Taj Group.

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When the postman knocked…

Yusuf Khan continues to attract attention. Theodore Baskaran, a person well-versed in Tamil history, writes: “When Yusuf Khan (Miscellany, March 5) controlled Madurai, the people, impressed with his benevolent rule, called him the icon of Madurai — mathurai nayagam. In colloquial usage, particularly in the South, kuthirai morphs into kuruthai and mathurai becomes maruthai. It was an affectionate name given by the people.

“Secondly, in Tirunelveli’s Evangelical Christians: Two Centuries of Vamsavazhi Tradition edited by Packiamuthu and Sarojini Packiamuthu, (2003), there are chapters on 18 families. One on Chandran Devanesen, by Vasantha Appasamy, traces CD’s ancestry to one Shanmuganathan, who was working as an odhuvar(who sang hymns in temples). She makes no reference to the Yusuf Khan connection. Dr. Devanesen and I interacted often, particularly in Shillong, and we have talked about Palayamkottai. But he never mentioned the Khan factor.”

The chronicler of Madras that is Chennai tells stories of people, places, and events from the years gone by, and sometimes from today.

source:http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> Madras Miscellany > History & Cultural / by S. Muthiah / March 26th, 2018