I wonder if it would interest you to look back at the recently observed Madras Day, marking August 22, 1639, when the East India Company purchased the village of Madraspatnam, also known as Chennapatnam, from Damarla Venkatadri Nayaka, the chieftain of the Vijayanagar Empire. When the British won South India after several wars in the eighteenth century, they rewarded their vassal, the Nawab of Arcot, with the title of ‘Walajah’, meaning ‘most dignified gentleman’ in Persian—an ironic title given his vassalhood, but well-suited to the circumstances with its sarcasm smoothly wrapped and delivered, ‘the needle in the banana’ as the Tamil saying goes.
The Nawab, perhaps to turn the awkwardness of his situation to good account in the critical eyes of his subjects, who were wearied of being battered in war after war by the guns of the parangi (Tamil for firangi), took a loan from the British, and with their permission, commemorated his new title with a new silkweaving centre called ‘Walajahpet’— ‘pet’ pronounced peyt from peyttai, meaning ‘settlement’ in Tamil.
A portrait of Stringer Lawrence, 1697- 1775, the ‘Father of the Indian Army’ adorned the Banquet Hall of Fort St George, the British bastion from which ‘Madras’ began. It was he who used the Nawab ‘Walajah’ of Arcot for the advancement of the East India Company, just as the Nawab used him to ward off Tipu and the French. A reproduction of that painting hangs in the foyer of the Bangalore Club, which I loved visiting with my Bangalore cousins in my teens for a swim and a shandy, and enjoyed staying at in later years. The Nawab, who seems to be held in a firm grip by the stout Englishman, looks rightly worried in this portrait, for he ran up huge debts to the British and eventually lost his territories to them.
I find these histories particularly interesting because a profound consequence of that first ‘Madras Day’ was British schooling, which, with the educational endowments made by the Nawabs of Arcot, benefited my family as individuals, enabling them to emerge from medieval stagnation into the larger modern world.
For instance, my grandmother’s father, Raghavaiyya, graduated in Botany from Presidency College, attended Madras Law College, and set up practice in the town of Chittoor, not far from Walajahpet. It was also close to the hill resort of Madanapalle, famous for its saris and a British sanatorium, located in the Rayalaseema region.
Raghavaiyya had been sent to school in Chittoor before college. The original Chittoor Board High School was a fine institution, a grand colonial building situated on nearly three acres of grounds. Begun in 1854 by the British, it was generously endowed by the Arcot Nawabs (I have its centenary brochure from 1954, discovered in an old trunk). The school had a robust tradition of providing a first-class English education. Several famous South Indians studied there, including a Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Anantasayanam Ayyangar, educationist Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy, and several Telugu parliamentarians.
In later years, philosopher-president Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan taught at the school, and famous visitors included Theosophist Annie Besant, who visited Raghavaiyya’s house, poet-politician Sarojini Naidu, and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1919, who reportedly first sang aloud his composition “Jana Gana Mana” while on a visit to nearby Madanapalle.
Raghavaiyya’s sons, grandsons, and a son-in-law were also to become students and patrons of the Chittoor Board High School, and my father studied there, too. An uncle, Dr CVL Narayana, BA, BL (Madras), Dr Es Sc Politiques (Geneva), Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi, wrote in the centenary brochure about his “home that fostered a cosmopolitan outlook”, and that, “If I had eschewed quite early the mentally cramping restrictions of caste, creed, class and colour which enabled me to travel widely and mix with people of various nations, it was due to my early associations with one and all in the school, no matter whether they were rich or poor, Hindu, Muslim or Christian”.
My great-grandfather’s full name was ‘Brahmadesam Cidambi Raghava Aiyar’ in the traditional South Indian order: place name first, family or father’s name next, personal name third, and lastly, the family title, like Shastri, meaning scholar, or the caste name Aiyar that came from the word Arya.
However, propelled by his growing modernity, my great-grandfather changed his name in 1890 to ‘Raghavaiyya’, which was caste-neutral. The story that drifted down the decades to my ears was that the Brahmins of his ancestral village, Brahmadesam, did not care for Raghavaiyya’s newfangled notions and politely suggested that he move to freer climes. Perhaps that made him choose to never look back.
Chittoor, a large and pleasant town, had a ‘Brahmin Street’ like any other place, but Raghavaiyya did not opt to live there. Instead, he chose to expand his circle of friends and obtain more professional freedom by building a large street house, very close, in fact, to the Chittoor Mosque. He named it Sita Sadan after his mother.
The people of Chittoor spoke Telugu, Tamil, Urdu and English, and they lived on good terms with one another. Raghavaiyya’s youngest daughter, my greataunt Vishali, told me that if the children of Sita Sadan fell sick, Raghavaiyya’s friend, the Maulvi Saheb of the Chittoor Mosque, would come home and say Quranic prayers over their heads.
Small histories contained within much larger histories of the ways we changed and how we co-existed, before our world cracked yet again with a religious Partition, and never quite recovered.
Renuka Narayanan | FAITHLINE | Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)