Maddy's Ramblings

Nangeli’s story, is it true?

A considerable furor seems to have been created by news reports detailing the legend of a lady named Nangeli who once lived at Chertala in Travancore. Some based their stories on the oral testimony of descendants of this hapless woman following which a few of my friends contacted me for its authenticity, but I must admit that my research did not prove conclusive. The story as I could see, spread in the last two years and seems to have formed an impression that Travancore and Cochin in the 18^th and 19^thcentury was going through a terrible period of casteism, an opinion which is not wrong, for it was indeed a troubling period. But what happened is that most newspapers who re-publicized the issue combined two subjects into one, the two subjects being the so called ‘Breast tax’ and the ‘upper cloth revolts’. These were two different issues relating to Travancore, with differing origins and backgrounds.

So it is perhaps the right time to revisit the topic in some detail so as to understand what it was about and how matters took the course they did. The story as published and oft repeated mentions an incident concerning an Ezhava lady in Chertalai named Nangeli, who it seems sliced off her breasts to protest against two things, the oppressive breast tax and secondly the fact that she could not hide her modesty by wearing an upper cloth. Some reports mentioned as well that the tax was to be paid if a lower caste woman wanted to cover their breasts. There were apparently some descendants who remembered the event.

Most of you who have studied Malabar, Cochin and Travancore history to some degree would have come across what they call ‘peculiar’ customs existing in those days. They relates to matrimonial customs, dressing (or lack thereof), matriliny, matrimonial fidelity, methods of justice etc. to name a few. I had over many articles covered just some of these issues over the past few years.

First and foremost, let us get to the so called oppressive taxes which were in out into place in the Travancore Kingdom ruled (1729-1758) by Marthanda Varma (MV) and administered by Ramayyan Dalawa. During the course of many studies and topics we perused thus far, we saw that MV had a huge difficulty in raising money, all through his reign. He had to beg and borrow, he had to plead and pledge with the rich and he even had to usurp wealth from others to keep his kingdom in control and pay the thousands of Nair and Muslim troops as well as his Marwa mercenaries fighting for him. To tide over these crises, he was instrumental in introducing and enforcing many of these downright silly taxes. In all, this category covered some 120 ‘minor taxes’ which hit the downtrodden masses quite hard. This is not to say that he did not collect monies from the rich landowners, which he certainly did. These so called minor taxes netted small amounts for the ‘sircar’ treasury, but they were oppressive for the virtually enslaved Nadar and Ezhava communities, who were paid just a pittance for their hard work or sometimes not at all.

For example they had to pay Kuppakazcha (taxes for living in a hut), talakkaram (head tax), meniponnu (ornament tax), Ezhaputchi (toddy tapping tax), meeshakarram (moustache tax), Tariyira (cess on handloom), Mechikkaram (cattle rearing), Meenpattam (fishing tax), Mulakkaram (breast tax), chakkira (oil pressing tax), Kusakkaram (earthenware making tax), vivahakkaram (marriage tax). The list goes on and covers as I mentioned earlier, some 120 categories. Oozhium service incidentally was adhoc ordering of these communities to do manual work and supply goods without pay. In addition, they were also not allowed to wear gold or silver ornaments, only bead/stone necklaces.

Of the 120 taxes, some 110 were particularly applicable and extortionary to the poorer communities. They bore through it for centuries, considering it their fate till somebody came by to tell them there was a way out. Changes occurred when some of these communities found willing ears which would listen to their difficulties, namely the LMS Christian missionaries. Much of the criticism of age old practices and conventions started with the arrival of these missionaries in Travancore. The British administrators at Travancore and Cochin also abetted these missionaries in their attempts to increase conversions from these depressed classes. Starting with Munro, then Cullen (Cullen was briefly not in support, though) and forward, they pushed and prodded the rulers of Travancore and Cochin in obtaining permissions for establishment of schools, churches as well as management of large communities of Christian converts. One of the earliest conversions if you recall, was effected by De Lannoy, an event involving Vedamanickam which perhaps spoiled his relationship with the king Rama Varma, as some allude. As you read the many accounts of Augur, Ringeltaube, Mead, Mateer and later writers such as RN Yesudasan, Ibrahim Kunju etc, you will come across a mention that it was easier for them to find willing converts from amongst the Nadars of Tinnevelly and South East Travancore, not so much from the Ezhava community, who even if they did convert would not easily adopt new and ‘decent’ ways or throw aside old ones.

Nevertheless, the missionaries introduced Western morality, the concept of Christian marriage, Western methods of personal conduct such as ‘decency in clothing and manners’ and created a sense of equality amongst their fold. In this new community, there were no barriers of caste and nobility and so it was in a sense, uplifting of these downtrodden masses and their emancipation. Others started to see the effects of these evangelization efforts and reacted differently. The Hindus, especially the powerful Brahmins and Nairs, as you can very well imagine, did not like it at all and took to violence even, at times. We will soon get to the details, but what was important was that these early missionaries made detailed records of what they saw and heard, the ills practiced in the pagan or heathen communities they met, during their attempts to show them the light. I bring this up because, their records as far as I can see, make only a single mention of a mutilation on account of the terrible breast tax.

Before we get to the event, let us try to understand what the Breast tax levy was all about, keeping in mind that this was a period when nobody really knew or bothered about their exact age. The head tax or ‘thalakkaram’ was charged when a lower caste boy attained puberty (age>14) and became a wage earning adult. Similarly, a lower caste woman had to pay a ‘mulakkaram’ when she joined the working class (age>14) of women. It certainly had nothing to do with the size or shape or attractiveness of her breasts, as SN Sadasivan had wrongly mentioned, nor did it have anything to do with covering of a woman’s breasts. The Thalakkaram and Mulakkaram were basically one and the same thing and was a revenue term only differentiated with gender.

It was certainly a nuisance and we shall now see a story related to a protest. This documented record relates to a hill tribe in Poonjar, namely the Malai Arayans. It was substantiated by the well-known anthropologist L Ananthakrishna Iyer and earlier by Thurston, so let us see what they had to say, verbatim (Travancore tribes and castes Vol 1, page 165)

The Malayarayans appear to have suffered from heavy disabilities in former times. “The Puniat Raja, who ruled over those at Mundapalli, made them pay head money - two chuckrams a head monthly as soon as they were able to work and a similar sum as 'presence money' besides certain quotas of fruits and vegetables and feudal service. They were also forced to lend money if they possessed any, and to bring leaves and other articles without any pretext of paying them, and that for days. The men these villages were placed in were in a worse position than the slaves. The petty Raja used to give a silver headed cane to the principal headman, who was then called ‘Perumban or 'cane man’. The head money was popularly known as ‘thalakaram’ in the case of males and ‘mulakaram’ in the case of females. It is said that these exactions came to an end under very tragic circumstances. Once, when the agent of the Raja went to recover talakaram, the Malayarayan pleaded inability to pay the amount, but the agent insisted on payment. The Arayans were so enraged that they cut off the head of the man and placed it before the Agent saying ‘here is your ‘thalakaram.’ Similarly, inability was pleaded in the case of an Arayan woman from payment of mulakaram, but the Agent again persisted. One breast of the woman was cut off and placed before him saying ‘here is your mulakaram.’ On hearing this incident, the Raja was so enraged at the indiscretion of the agent that he forthwith ordered the discontinuance of this system of receiving payment.

Tracking this incident back is not difficult and this observation could be attributed to Rev Henry Baker. We know that he was the one who preached the gospel at Kombukuthy near Mundakkayam in 1847-49 and converted a few of the local inhabitants into Christianity. But we can also see from Baker’s records that his work slackened after 1860 and that the Punnattu Raja maintained that if Baker or his successors converted anybody, they had to leave his kingdom. The situation changed only much later after the Raja’s tone mellowed. So the last sentence in LAK’s quote above has to be dated later than 1847-49 and before 1865 when the tax was formally abolished in Travancore, of which kingdom, Poonjar was a suzerainty. We also observe that the tax was a flat 2 chakrams per month per working head, and this was an income tax of sorts.

Nageli’s case dates farther back to 1840 according to SN Sadasivan and if that was certain, should have been gleefully reported by these missionaries, in my opinion. The LMS missionaries who stirred things up in the name of social awakening, during that period, had not pounced on that story when it happened and had never reported it though they highlighted many macabre events of the period. A case from the 1840’s Chertalai would have had reporting precedence over an Arayan hill tribe near Munnar, being nearer and accessible. Reading the histories of Nadars, missionaries, the LMS etc,, we do not come across any such case in Chertalai during 1840, but that is not to say it never happened, only that it is unlikely. RN Yesudasan also reports this mutilation on the strength of a retelling from NR Krishnan’s account in his book ‘Ezhavar Annum Innum’. It is possible that Sadasivan too picked this information up from Krishnan, a bureaucrat who published his work in 1960. That is the source of Nangeli’s self-mutilation event.

While we see that the Poonjar Raja abolished these head taxes sometime between 1845 and 1865, the government of Travancore abolished these 110 minor taxes under pressure from the British vide an order dated 22^ndkarkidagom 1040 ME (1864-1865). These stupid taxes were not applied or mentioned from then on.

But there was still an unresolved issue, that was the so called ‘upper cloth issue’.

The upper cloth controversies relate to something else. Again reporters and writers have described the whole story in a wrong light, stating that only the lower classes went about with uncovered bosoms and that they were expected to do so as subservient slaves. It was certainly not the case and most castes of that time dressed in a similar fashion, willingly so, for it was the norm, custom and practice in Travancore. In reality, there was no shame attached to it till they saw their converted sisters doing so and till those women berated them for not doing so. I was also surprised to note Yesudasan mentioning that Nambudri woman (I think he confused the Nambudri with the few Tamil Brahmin women of Travancore) always wore a smart colored jacket fastened in front and an upper cloth over it (also mentioning that they wore silk dresses, and were adorned with many gold ornaments and diamonds), Nair women wore a chela and that only Ezhava, Nadar and other lower caste girls had to go about bare bosomed. This I believe is not quite factual and will be refuted by anybody who has studied these communities. The only womenfolk who covered their bosoms were Muslim and Christian woman (Syrian Catholics and early Portuguese converts). The Christians wore what is known as ’Ethapu’ and the Muslims the ‘Kuppayam’. It is true however that upper caste women of repute did wear a chela or upper cloth loosely slung about their chests, but one should note that they usually removed it while at home or while visiting temples.

As conversions increased, the Nadar women (Shanars of Channatikal) took to wearing the kuppayam (Converts were loosely termed Kuppayakar) or a loose upper garment as they were advised to, in the interest of modesty and decency. The non-converts were prevented from robing themselves by the upper castes of Travancore.

But the first upper cloth issue was picked up even earlier, around 1750.The first reported ‘upper cloth’ related mutilation is connected to Grose, Forbes and the Attingal Rani. This dates all the way back to the time when Grose visited Travancore and Cochin. He wrote about the incident thus, in his travelogue. Forbes who visited later checked out the story, and confirmed that such an account did take place.

The women of those countries are not allowed to cover any part of their breasts, to the naked display of which they annex no idea of immodesty, which in fact ceases by the familiarity of it to the eye. Most Europeans at their first arrival experience the force of temptation from such a nudity on the foot of the ideas, to which their education and customs have habituated them: but it is not long before those impressions by their frequency entirely wear off, and they view it with as little emotion as the natives themselves, or as any of the most obvious parts of the body, the face, or hands. In some parts of the Malabar, this custom is however more rigorously observed than in others. A Queen of Attinga, on a woman of her country coming into her presence, who having been some time in an European settlement, where she had conformed to the fashion there, had continued the concealment of her breasts, ordered them to be cut off, for daring to appear before her with such a mark of disrespect to the established manners of the country….

I will now provide you with a brief overview of the well documented ‘upper cloth movement’, connected mainly with the Channatikal (the Nadar or the Shanar women) in South Travancore. The first uprising happened in 1822-23 when converts started wearing the kuppayam (according to an order dated 1814) and the upper caste Hindus would not tolerate it. The courts intervened at Fr Mead’s behest and agreed not to fine the ladies covering themselves. The friction between the converts and the Hindus continued and in 1829-30 erupted into more troubles. The Ranee of Travancore now intervened and stated that nobody, not even the Shanar converts were allowed to wear upper clothes. The Nadars did not quite heed to the order and continued to wear the kuppayam. In 1858-59, the dewan reiterated the Ranee’s order and of course troubles erupted again. This order also incensed the missionaries who petitioned the Raja of Travancore first and later Sir Charles Trevelyan, the new Governor of Madras following the establishment of British governance of India w.e.f. 1858. The governor contacted the resident Cullen and asked him to take up the matter with the Raja.

The raja finally issued a proclamation in 1859 permitting converts to wear the kuppayam, but not an upper cloth in the same fashion as caste Hindus of Travancore. This was also not acceptable to the missionaries as the Shanars wanted to wear the same upper cloth to signify parity with Hindu upper castes. They continued the pressure through the British administrators, forcing the Raja to issue a new proclamation in 1865 granting full ‘freedom in dressing’ for the Nadars. There are also papers (Chandramohan) which imply that British economic interests slanted the upper cloth issue such that it had a positive impact on imported cloth sales.

But if the Nangeli case occurred, why did the missionaries or historians not document it? One could always argue that the missionaries did not report Nangeli’s case because it was unrelated to them, for Nangeli was an Ezhava who did not convert. The point I am getting to is that regardless of its authenticity, the breast tax issue and upper cloth issues were unrelated and that combining them to create a sensational story does not seem right. In the reported cases at Attingal and Poonjar, the punishment or mutilation was put into effect by another, upon the victim. There is also another aspect to be borne in mind. Self-mutilation is probably easy to write about, but not the easiest thing done, especially slicing off one’s own breasts. As for Nangeli’s story, I could find no factual evidence, maybe it is true, maybe not, but it has nothing to do with the upper cloth. Perhaps there is something more out there on the event, if so, please do let me know and I will add a para to this article, gladly.

I should also make it clear that I profess no disrespect to any caste or religion and totally agree that all these communities were oppressed at that time, pushed down by the so called upper castes. I do not condone any of these actions, nor am I in support of any kind of caste segregation, but I am just being objective in this analysis as an observer and student of Kerala’s history.

So much for the story of the taxes and modesty, all matters which have since been corrected in the progressive state which we now know as Kerala.

Before we leave the topic, let me mention something seemingly related. You will be surprised to note that women around the world still pay a certain amount of ‘breast tax’ and men pay an ‘underwear tax’ annually. Surprised, right? I chanced on this information while perusing Gresser’s interesting work which expands on the premise that the highest tariffs of most countries are on the items most important to low income families and on the produce imported from the world’s poorest countries. Taking the example the USA and records from the early years of the 21^st century, he records that tariffs generated an amount of 560M$ (2.4%) on imported steel worth 23B$.

There was uproar about it in various exporting countries, but they failed to notice that USA also imported about 10B$ worth of underwear and this generated an even higher tariff of 786M$ (8%). In this category was included brassieres, panties, garter belts, negligees and men’s underwear. To summarize, brassieres worth 2B$ generated the highest tariff, 270M$ or 12.9% (5 times higher than steel in %) while men’s underwear worth 2B$ generated 116M$ or 6%!! Spread over approximately 140 million women in America, this ‘breast tax’ amounts to roughly 70 cents per breast, per year! This Gresser explains, is still only the tariff. Add the markup of the retailer, other sales and administration costs and overheads, state taxes etc., and you can see that it works out to so much more! Have somebody run the same calculations in India and compare it to the historical past. Regrettably this is how it is, even today, only you don’t see it.

References

A Social History of India – SN Sadasivan

Travancore tribes and castes Vol 1, L. Aanatha Krishna Ayyar

A Voyage to the East Indies – John Henry Grose

Protestant Christianity and people's movements in Kerala - J W Gladstone

A People's Revolt in Travancore – R N Yesudasan

The History of the London Missionary Society in Travancore - R N Yesudasan

Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the British in India – BS Cohen

Freedom from want -Edward Gresser

Let the hills rejoice: the conversion of the Hill Arrians of Kerala and its effect on evangelism – K G Daniel

The Nadars of Tamilnad; the political culture of a community in change - Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr.

Colonial connections of Protestant missionaries in Travancore – P Chandrmohan

The Breast-Cloth Controversy: Caste Consciousness and Social Change in Southern Travancore Robert L Hardgrave

And V.E. Mathew of Ka-su-ma-su

I am almost sure that many of you would not have heard this story, barring a few live in Britain and Australia, those who peruse newspapers and old WWII stories carefully. This happened at a remote locale in the Indian Ocean, some 250 miles south of Java, named Christmas Island, where a revolt or mutiny of sorts took place. The revolt was carried out by a handful of Indian soldiers serving in the British army, during the 2^nd world war. The date being 10^th March 1942 makes it an early revolt against the crown, yet it is hardly mentioned today, in India or Pakistan. So let’s proceed back in time, on a trip to the island and find out what happened during those balmy, but intrigue filled and tense days.

The Southeast Asian campaign of WWII started when the Japanese bombed Victoria Point in Burma during Dec 1941, cordoned off Burma and followed up with the capture of Singapore and a land attack into Burma. The Japanese intent was to get to the oilfields in Burma, a strategic conquest to ensure they had the resources before the grand entry westwards across India. Within a span of three months, the British in Burma were in a hasty retreat, and Burma was in Japanese hands. Subhas Chandra Bose was still in Germany and the Azad Hind had not yet been formed. Fujiwara, the Lawrence of the Indian Army was heading the F Kikan and pretty soon the first ISI/IIL was formed under the leadership of Mohan Singh. If you recall, we covered this ground with the story of the valiant Kumaran Nair.

As events galloped on at a fast clip, Kuala Lumpur fell in Jan 1942 and Singapore was surrendered in Feb 1942. The British bastions had been breached and the victorious Japanese were on the March northwards to Rangoon. By February 1942, from a total of about 40,000 Indian personnel in Singapore, about 30,000 joined the INA led by Mohan Singh.

South of all this hectic fighting was the lonely Xmas Island where newspapers used to come in now and then from Singapore updating the few Chinese, Sikh, Malay, British and Indian population in the island. The island got its name from the day of its christening in 1643 and we see it being annexed by the British in 1888 and administered out of Singapore through the Straits Settlements government. The CIP Company started its phosphate mining operations with Chinese and Malay labor. The beginnings were filled with stories of disease, extortion, bad living conditions, coolie riots, revolts, booms and busts. A few (5) Sikhs were brought over time to head a police department and manage the town of Kasma, they built their own Gurudwara as their fold increased to 14 (there were Sikh company guards too) and kept to themselves and their work. Initially they were all bachelors except their corporal who had his family (There was an interesting case of a Sikh policeman who fancied a Chinese headman’s wife and got murdered).

And they had a couple of brothels called the White House’s 1& 2 (with distinct spiral staircases), to service the hard working Chinese bachelors (They were called seamstresses or carpenter’s wives and were inspected weekly by the medical officer and strangely the island’s electrical engineer for disease!). The Malays kept to themselves and their families, and were mostly Muslim. The First World War happened, the feared raider ship Emden captained by Von Mueller passed by and was eventually scuttled in Cocos Islands some 600 miles away. The Europeans later got busy installing a telescope to view the 1922 solar eclipse and check out Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The island community slept well though 1939-under the belief that the great guns of Singapore would keep the enemy out of reach, even after the many reverses in Europe during 1940 and the capitulation of France. As the war gathered force, a small volunteer force comprising the Chinese and Malays were formed in the island and a 1900 vintage 6” breech loader gun was installed at Smith Point. Captain Williams was sent out from Hong Kong, supported by four British NCO’s (Sgt W. Giles, Lance Sgt G.H. Cross, Gunner G.S. Thurgood and Gunner J. Tate), and 27 Punjabi Muslim soldiers to support them. But as you can imagine this was more of a charade, and would only help delay the inevitable, for the island which at that point of time was contended and calm, was simply not defensible. By 1942, the population comprised 30 Europeans, 1175 Chinese, 122 Malays, 88 Indians, 2 Eurasians all put a total of 1,417.

Everything changed in Dec 1941 with Pearl Harbor as Japan entered the war with a roar and well, to put it simply, the Eastern part of the allied world had been caught not just napping, but in deep slumber. The people of Xmas Island were by now a nervy lot, wondering about their future. The seas around the island boiled with all types of naval frigates, transports, aircraft carriers, allied subs and axis U boats.

Manning the Marconi DX radio under call sign ZC3AC and transmitting at 14,015 Khz, CW, was our own man from Kuriyannur (Pathanamthitta), one Vadakathu Easow (V E) Mathew, aged 28, who had arrived in 1939 as a wireless operator. Originally a teacher in Malaysia and needing to escape frequent dust allergy attacks there, he went on to requalify as a wireless operator after completing the course at Calcutta! Accompanying him were some five more persons from Kerala, them being KG Alexander, TA John, AY Dethose (also a wireless operator), Thomas (cook), and Gopal (cook), whom MAthew had managed to recommend and obtain jobs for.

V E Mathew - Manning the Christmas Island Radio (Pic Courtesy Mary Mathew)

What Mathew and Dethos heard from other radio operators and Singapore was not reassuring. Capt Williams was now supervising defensive measures such as drills and building of pillboxes. Europeans sent their wives to Australia and London. Meanwhile, the ship which ferried between Singapore and Xmas Island, ‘the Islander’ suddenly found itself without a radioman, for he had absconded, and Dethose cried his way out not wanting to get killed in a Japanese bombing. Mathew thus took on the last run to Singapore for a tripled salary and a bonus. It was not a good choice, the ship ahead and the ship behind were bombed and Mathew and the ‘Islander’ escaped only due to providence. Reaching Singapore, they were again in the eye of the storm, for Singapore was being bombed and Mathew and his relatives there had to frequently flee to hide in the drains as air raid sirens blared.

The plan was to get the Islander fitted with an AA gun. But that also did not happen due to technical difficulties and the ship sailed back to Xmas Island. The Malayalee’s stuck together and stayed away from harms reach. But in Jan 1942, war reached the island when a Norwegian ship being loaded with Phosphate, was hit by a Japanese torpedo. In Feb, a corpse in a boiler suit washed ashore, to be later buried as the unknown sailor.

False alarms and Air raid sirens sent most islanders scurrying to the jungles. Mathew picked up more bad news of the capitulation of Singapore, after which he lost radio connection to the HQ. The remaining European and Sikh women with their children and a few men were sent away to Australia. Mathew sadly reported ‘I was unlucky because I was of ‘essential services’ and was not allowed to go’.

A Malay fisherman now reported that a Japanese submarine was moored off one of the island’s beaches and that some of its crewmen were seen bathing in rock pools of the island. The railway and factory machinery were quickly dismantled and hidden as the coolie’s stooped working and fled into the jungles. Meanwhile an US aircraft carrier USS Langley was hit and its captain Thomas Donovan was accidentally left behind on the island. He conveyed his whereabouts to the US forces over Mathew’s radio.

Mathew continued to be in the thick of things, and heard on the radio all kinds of rumors, of the British discussions about independence for India, of the formation of the INA, of the activities of Gandhi and the Congress, the Muslim league and so on. On 23^rd Feb, Japan occupied the Andaman Islands and from 28^th Feb to 3^rd Mar, following the Battles of the Java Seas and the Sunda Straits, they eliminated Allied naval resistance. On March 1^st the Japanese bombed the island (It is mentioned in the CQ magazine report that this was because the Japanese spotted a wooden mock aircraft built by the XI soldiers as a deterrent). Nine Japanese planes were in action, bombing and perhaps strafing the island. 3 Chinese were killed.

Mathew was on the radio, sending one last message. As the account goes - Upon hearing a whistling sound, of what proved to be a direct hit, he lunged out the door and dove into the adjacent swimming pool, narrowly escaping the subsequent explosion. His bicycle was bombed to smithereens. With that the island went silent and was shut off from the world.

With ZC3AC shut down, the island was left only with an emergency SW transmitter, but that was buried at Grants hill and hidden for the future. The Japanese commenced long distance shelling of the island’s pier from the sea and the Indian contingent abandoned the gun to take cover. Cromwell (District Officer) and Donovan decided (against the advice of Capt Williams) to hoist the white flag on 7^th March and dismantle the naval gun, following which the Japanese left without landing on the island. Williams told his team that they should lay down arms, have them locked up, that there was no more war, and that the British flag should be replaced with white if they spotted Japanese, but also that the Union Jack should go up if allied ships or planes were spotted.

Some of the Indian soldiers murmured amongst themselves that hoisting the British flag was going to invite sure death. The island prepared for the arrival of the Japanese. Malays built underground shelters, young girls shaved their heads to pass off as boys and the ladies of the night attached themselves to the older men to appear married. White men split into two, those who wanted to surrender and those who wanted to fight. Williams pulled down the white bed sheet and replaced it with the Union Jack and reassembled the gun, which Cromwell told Williams, was not correct per international law.

This was the situation when the so called mutiny or revolt occurred. Some accounts of the mutiny mention that the soldiers had been listening (Subedar Muzaffar Khan later denied this at the trial) to Azad hind or Azad Muslim radio broadcasts coming out of Germany, Holland and Japan. The Indian soldiers were headed by a ‘graying and grizzled’ Bengali (East Bengal) Subedar Muzaffar Khan. The two havildars who reported to him were Punjabis, namely Mir Ali and Ghulam Qadir.

During later depositions, it was recalled that some of the instigators had refused to salute Capt Williams at parade, so they had indeed fallen out in a way, after the white flag act. It is also mentioned that the British were overbearing on the Indian troops, and on one occasion the Indians were asked to shut up when they started singing. John Michel mentions in his book that this was the reason for the mutiny (considering that Muzaffar Khan denied that any of them ever listened to Axis radio broadcasts, it is likely that British gave the soldiers repeated cause for a revolt to occur!).

The soldiers hatched a plot to revolt, waiting for an opportune moment which presented itself on the night of 10^th March 1942 when Williams and team went for a birthday party. Mir Ali the ring leader and Ghulam Qadir unlocked the ammunition store and distributed the weapons. They were sent out in pairs to finish off the five British soldiers. From records we know that Ghulam Qadir, Mir Ali, Alla Ditta, Mohd. Ashraf, Abdul Aziz (a medical orderly), Nazir Hussein, Sher Muhammad, Muhammad Hussain and Sultan Muhammad, Niaz Ali etc. were involved in this action. Many of those who did not participate fled into the jungle when shots rang out. Subedar Muzaffar Khan woke up in alarm and reached for his revolver which had apparently been removed by somebody in the know, and he too fled into the jungle. The next action was to dispose of the dead bodies which were consigned into the sea through a blow hole and these bodies wrapped in bed sheets were seen by a few witnesses. Qadir then cleaned the blood from the floor. Some of the Sikh policemen joined the mutineers while others abstained. Muzaffar Khan was livid and appears to have berated the 60 Indians assembled. Mir Ali wanted to kill the remaining Englishmen, but agreed not to, after heeding to remonstrations from Muzaffar Khan. At long last, they stood down.

The Punjabi soldiers then went to Mathew and asked him to send a radio message to the Japanese that they could dock at the island safely. Mathew replied that the radio was gone, destroyed in the bombing. The Europeans were locked up in Cromwell’s bungalow. The above listed men, about 12 of them and a few Sikhs who took their side, now waited for the Japanese to turn up. The wait took close to 4 weeks. The incoming Japanese fleet led by the frigate Naka was being shadowed by an American Submarine SS197 Seawolf, and as they berthed in Christmas Island, the Seawolf fired her torpedoes, but strangely not one hit the Naka.

Japanese take over the CI 6" Gun

Commander Ando stepped ashore with some 850 men to take control of the island. When they saw the wrecked phosphate loading machinery, Ando was enraged, but he eventually accepted the explanation that it was due to Japanese bombing. The biggest damage was to the loading belt and this meant that loading would have to be manual. Mathew and the other Malayalee’s were accosted by the Japanese who assumed they were Indonesian. When Mathew mentioned Gandhi’s name, they were left alone.

The Seawolf shot another three torpedoes at the Naka while at XI, but they missed again. How Fred Warder commanding (SS197) Seawolf missed hitting a ship with all these torpedoes is a mystery, but the likely cause was malfunction of the armaments (a chronic problem in the early war years). Eventually the Seawolf got the Naka on its return voyage when one of the last two torpedoes finally hit the target.

The Japanese were allowed 3 days of plunder after which things settled to a routine at the island. Mir Ali approached the Japanese stating that he had his cohorts had finished off the British soldiers and that he wanted protection and a reward. But to his dismay, the Japanese set all of them to a labor routine, with the other island workers. As the allies avoided the island, the Japanese remained in place for another two years. It was not a horrible occupation, but relatively mundane and Japanese efforts at shipping out large quantities of phosphate never took off. The Japs built a pretty Japanese temple, but the Muslim Malays were not happy being forced to pray there.

The Japanese did want the White houses opened up but the Chinese girls were not too keen to service them. As it turned out, the Japanese brought in some Indonesians, for their comfort. These Javanese girls were tricked into coming to Christmas Island after answering a "Teachers wanted" advertisement in the newspaper. The 21 Europeans were also put to tasks befitting their skills, and they were the only prisoners. Mathew is mentioned as one who helped these prisoners with food, rolling food sacks down the hill at night, to waiting hands.

In Nov 1942, a Japanese ship loading phosphate was torpedoed and in the following year (Dec 1943) as their food supplies dwindled, the Japanese plans changed. They evacuated the island and most of the people including the Indians and the mutineers were shipped to Java’s prisons. Mathew and some of his friends were sent to a prison camp in Surabaya. Some soldiers and a small population remained, and the remaining Japanese left by early 1945. Christmas Island was isolated, once again.

The first person to resurface after Japanese internment, in Sept 1945 was Cromwell, but he never managed to return to his island, passing away in Dublin in 1946. Seven Indians were next seen in Singapore as British prisoners. Based on depositions by Cromwell and Donovan, the British decided to bring them to justice. Mir Ali and a dozen others had vanished and were thought to have fought for the INA in Burma.

As the Indians could not be charged with murder three years after its occurrence, they were charged with mutiny, under the Army act Section 7 (3), and the ensuing trial in Singapore stretched over a period of many weeks, with the convoluted court martial covered in detail by Straits times. I will not get into technicalities, but war trials sometimes stretched the rule of law in the winner’s favor. In this case too, the witness testimony was inconclusive and the defense claim that Cromwell had already raised the white flag thereby making a mutiny charge incorrect, was not allowed to stand. There were many other inconsistencies in the depositions.

Inayat Khan and Ghulam Qadir were two of the main witnesses. Some tried to shift blame on Mir Ali and butter up to Muzaffar Khan, the Subedar who was on the prosecution side. Allah Bux was found innocent and Niaz Ali to be coerced by others. In March 1947, the court sentenced six of the accused guilty and to die by the gallows. Allah Bux was acquitted.

On 13^th August 1947 King George VI confirmed five of the death sentences on Ghulam Qadir, Sher Muhammad, Nazar Hussain, Muhammad Hussain and Allah Ditta. Niaz Ali was sentenced for two years imprisonment and a dishonorable discharge. They were to die at 7AM in Singapore, on 18^th Sept 1947.

On 14^th August 1947, Pakistan became a free nation.

On 15^th August 1947, India became independent. The five prisoners were now considered Pakistanis.

On 17^th Sep, the day before the execution, the governments of India and Pakistan informed the commonwealth relation office that the executions be stayed until they have had an opportunity to study the case. In the meantime many INA prisoners had been freed by Nehru, in independent India. Citing that as a reason, Pakistan which was now in charge of the five prisoners insisted that they be re-sentenced to imprisonment and not death. The British agreed that Pakistan had a strong case, and the death sentences were commuted.

Gunner Sultan Muhammed who had been apprehended separately and tried in Nee Soon in 1948, was also sentenced to death. He too had his sentence commuted on the same grounds. All of them were now to serve imprisonment until 1956/57. Pakistan then requested that they be transferred to Pakistan jails. Eventually all of them were sent back to Pakistan in 1955. Nothing more is known of these internees. Mir Ali was never found. Perhaps he died in the INA battles at Imphal, but nobody knows. Strange, these Punjabi Muslim’s left a land oppressed, and returned to lands violently divided. They must have wondered about their acts and after escaping death, having spent 12 years of their lives in various prisons, only to return to more violence, hatred and chaos!!

Christmas Island - today

Following WWII, Britain resumed control of the island and from January 1, 1958 it was administered as a separate crown colony. Today Christmas Island is an Australian external territory and famous for its red crabs. Now let’s get back to our man Mathew.

Mathew’s initial days of internment at Surabaya were harrowing, but he met a Christian Japanese captain who took a liking to him. He was allowed to work in a workshop, heading a team of some 30 Indonesians. Some of the other Island Malayalee’s were also with Mathew. As the war ended, they narrowly escaped retaliation by the Indonesian prisoners. So close were they to death that they had written their last words to their families and buried them in a bottle underground for some future finder. But they were let go when the Indonesian’s found they were Indians. Eventually help arrived and they were guided to an Indian Red Cross ship by a friendly Indonesian watchman. They returned to India from Surabaya via Singapore and Mathew managed to reestablish contacts with his employers.

As it turned out, Mathew got married in 1948 and came back to Christmas Island continue work as a wireless operator, live in relative peace and father five children. Mathew’s name reappeared on the airwaves in 1958, as he was trying to reconstruct his radio. W4LYV sent a new crystal (14034 Khz) to ZC3AC while VS1JF was still handling some of the cards to him. In 1964, the Short wave magazine reported that Mathews, ex-ZC3AC, was still on the island but transmitting as VK9MV (1959), he continued with a 40 watts transmitter and his DXing passion is archived with his QSL cards.

He retired in 1971 and his friends honored him with 57 dinners during his last two months. Mathew departed saying ‘ I am leaving Christmas Island after seeing her in her young days, uncouth and wild, and now as a lady in her teens, with her mini flats and respectable highways!’ He went back to Kuriyannur, lived his last days peacefully, ever an honest man and passed away in 2000 at the ripe age of 88. His children are all well settled in Australia. I did get in touch, with Mathew’s youngest daughter Mary Mathew who in a charming and lengthy telephone conversation filled in a great many missing blanks.

The thrill of a HAM radio operator in contacting obscure persons around the world and/or listening to them and sharing notes is a fascinating experience. While the DX community still thrives, internet, skype, chats and emails have largely taken over the communication channels.

The excitement and danger of war is another thing though, though I am not sure what Mathew thought. To narrowly survive three or four narrow brushes with death, to live as a prisoner in a camp and survive, to get married, raise a family and eventually retire in peace simply means he was a blessed person. And to be sure there are many more stories like this, of people who played a part in those wars.

References

Suffering Through Strength: The Men Who Made Christmas Island – John Hunt

Christmas Island - the early years – Jan Adams, Marg Neale

Straits Times reports (over a 100 of them) 1945-1947

Mr Michel’s war – John J A Michel

An Ordeal to forget – Thomas A Donovan Jr (Naval history Vol14, issue 3)

CQ Amateur radio magazine May 1977 issue

USS Seawolf at the Battle of Christmas Island - John Domagalski

The ISI and the 5th Column

Notes:

This Christmas Island is not to be confused with the one known as Kiritimati in the Pacific, more popularly associated with the UK’s H Bomb tests. The Book by Adams and Neale has some interesting pictures e.g. the Sikh Policemen, the Japanese AA gun etc. My thanks to John Hunt’s painstaking research and a fine book, and Mary Mathew for a great interview.

You may wonder why I chose to call this a revolt or rebellion, not a mutiny. I tended to take the side of the prisoners based on some related facts (white flag, salutes, and singing) before the rebellion, and considering that the prosecution witness who testified against them was very emphatic in that they had not listened to the Axis radio. It was also clear from the trial that all the accused had been away from India for a long time 7-10 years, so they could not have been seriously indoctrinated with a rebellious cause before coming to Christmas island. Jan Adams in her book also concurs that their ‘motivation remained uncertain’. Perhaps a reason was self-preservation, knowing that the Japanese would kill everybody if they detected a threat in the island (Williams and his men must have proved to be a needless threat!). But this is just my conclusion.

Thomas Donovan the American who was spared in the revolt, survived the war and was awarded the Legion of Merit. He continued in the US Navy and retired as a Rear Admiral. Donovan was transferred early to Makassar (Celebs Island) and later to Java where he had an eventful internment. It appears that the Japanese told Donovan that if a single shot had been fired by the islanders, they were planning to kill everybody in the Island. So in hindsight, the revolt probably saved a large number of lives!

Ka su ma su – is how ‘Christmas’ was pronounced by the Chinese.

What is a QSL? Many DXers attempt to obtain written verifications of reception or contact, sometimes referred to as "QSLs" or "veries" The picture shows QSL’s provided by Mathew to other DX’s.

Pics- Mathews QSL card

Louisa Carolina Maria Ouwerkerk and her travails

There are some people who deserve all the respect you can give them. Louise, if you ask me is one of them. Her story is multilayered and complex, with only one facet briefly known to most, her life in Travancore. As you will soon read, her decision to venture out for a career in the East, would prove to be very stressful, for her independent thinking and forceful nature pitted her against some very powerful forces that converged to take her destiny far away from what she planned it to be, a simple teacher. She was to get involved in the Indian freedom movement, many intrigues in the South Indian Kingdom of Travancore, a wartime prison camp, an eventful fight to clear her name and finally find peace.

Her ten years in Travancore are well detailed (based on her recollections and research) in her account ‘No Elephants for the Maharaja’ and the book covers her turbulent relationship with the mercurial dewan Si CP Ramaswami Iyer. After she passed away in 1989, the book was put together and published posthumously by Dick Kooiman in 1994. What it did not cover, however is the story of the rest of her life in India. This is that story, which readers will read for the very first time, but before we get into it, a recap.

Louise Ouwerkerk was born in England to naturalized Dutch parents in 1904 and went on to obtain an MA degree in economics from Cambridge, in 1925. As a student she was involved in many movements and was a keen rower. After graduation, she had some difficulty in finding a job and for a while worked as a temporary teacher. One day she saw an advertisement inviting applications for a professorship in economy and history at the Maharaja's Women's College in Trivandrum. Louise applied, got the appointment, and sailed to India in 1929. Aboard the steamer, she raised eyebrows by dancing with the one and only Indian on the ship. Many a memsahibs warned her that it was not right "You wait till you get out East, then you will understand the color bar". She cared not, and was to cross that divide many times after that.

She arrived in Colombo sometime in the fall of 1929 and was led to Trivandrum by an exquisitely dressed Indian in a blue flannelled suit who was sent by the government of Travancore to tend to her luggage. Travancore surprised her, it was green, the people looked contended, buses plied on the roads and electric street lighting was in vogue. When she joined the Women’s college, she found it a mess, undergoing a renovation and run haphazardly. Moreover she was asked to teach economics and political science instead of economics and history.

She found her students mugging their topics and it took a while for her to wean them away and get them to derive their own answers to problems. Later she was given the additional responsibility as warden of the women’s college hostel. In 1936, she became an acting principal and proved to be an able administrator. Soon she had moved into a bungalow opposite the college sharing it with the principal Ms Grose and later into her own, which she found hard to tend even with half a dozen servants to help. Her next advance was to a new position in the University of Travancore as a professor of history and Economics. It appears she was quite uncomfortable in a largely male bastion. But her independent self, abundant energy, keen intellect and lofty ideals carried her through.

Louise’s book goes on to detail the days when Sir CP ruled Travancore with an iron hand and tolerated no dissent. Brilliant as he was in actions favoring Travancore, the way he steered Louise out of the state eventually is a sad tale. That much is well known.

This tale however starts after Louise left Travancore, and will perhaps be the first time a wider audience gets to know it. I had initially completed a draft on Louise’s times in Travancore and her tempestuous relationship with Sir CP, but I shelved it for a later date after I got a chance to read her wartime internment files. The story it revealed, was sobering, saddening and something that should never happen to anybody.

Louise found time for her work and much more within both European and Indian circles mingling with families, partaking in many social activities. The British resident CP Skrine was a friend, so also many other key Europeans. As a devout Christian, she was in regular touch with not only Catholic clergy, but also the protestant missionaries and many a missionary at Kodai Kanal. Along the way, she acquired a summer holiday house there, so she was not doing badly. She got involved with Rev RR Dick Keithan’s Sarvodaya and national congress movements at Kodai Kanal after which she is known to have imparted socialist and pacifist ideas to her students, sometimes discussing these with them after hours, at her house.

Meanwhile, there was a good amount of turmoil in the palace and to get a good feel, one should read Manu Pillai’s well researched book, Ivory Throne. In 1924, Mulam Tirunal had adopted two nieces (cousins between themselves) from the Mavelikkara royal family and the junior Rani’s son was to be the heir to the throne. The accession of Chitira Tirunal as planned was becoming a tough prospect, what with rumors (seemingly propagated by some in the Christian clergy of Travancore) of the young Raja being a bit on the wonky side, doing their rounds early on in 1930. To add to the discomfort there was an anti-royalty movement afoot in Trivandrum, led by the anti-durbar Nair party.

Sethu Parvathi had been in contact with Sir CP earlier in 1929 as waters were getting murky. CP who was serving as the Viceroys EC member, put in a good word with Willingdon. The Viceroy eventually agreed to let the boy be the king a bit earlier than originally planned. Eventually the prince and the Viceroy met at Simla, the latter agreed that the boys mind was sound and the decision was sealed. The boy had earlier requested (with Willingdon’s prodding) that Sir CP become his legal and constitutional advisor. That was how CP first landed in Travancore.

Why did Louise, who thought Sir CP was the "the perfect dinner partner" change it later to Sir CP, the "the power-hungry autocrat"? Was it her strong evangelical roots manifesting themselves, was it her strong sense of righteousness or did she just nurse a grouse? Was Sir CP or for that matter Chitira Tirunal a staunch proponent of a Hindu Travancore? Or was the queen mother behind it all?

If you read other accounts of that troubled period in Travancore, you will find vociferous arguments by the Catholics and vehement retorts from the Hindu factions, both seemingly right in their own ways. In addition you will find another set of factions, pro-British and pro monarchy, both marvelously detailing and exquisitely positioning their lucid arguments alongside other issues such as development and social rehabilitation. I was alternatively swayed by these groups as I perused the many sources, tilting from one side to the other. But as I mentioned earlier, this is more about Louise, the lady, in the middle of the storm.

Ouwerkerk’s problems, so to say, started with the arrival of this egoistic and forceful new Dewan, the well-known C P Ramaswami Aiyar. As time went by, in the Travancore of the 30’s and well into the 40’s and until independence, three people shared the powers of the Travancore throne, the young Chitira Tirunal, his mother Sethu Parvathi and most of all, Sir CP occupying the driver’s seat,

Ouwerkerk is not at a loss of words to describe the volcano of character that Sir CP was. She does not hide her admiration in any way, for she says CP was ‘a man of outstanding intellect, immense charm, a rapier keen mind, prodigious learning, and possessing an incredible ability to marshal facts, administate and deploy arguments, with brilliance in oratory, conversation and always, an outstanding lawyer’. As contemporaries in Travancore, Louise was some 25 years younger than the senior statesman CP was and perhaps for that reason, she would mostly observe him from a distance. Even after all the bitterness she left with, she stated that in CP’s canvass, you would see two threads of pure gold, his sincere devotion to the Hindu religion and his unshakable devotion to those he elected to serve, in this case Sethu Parvathy and Chitira Tirunal. He braved many political storms and even threats to his own life in defending them. Louise however maintains that he never cast the blame where they belonged (at the royal doors).

The next decade saw a number of issues crop up between the royals and the people. The Syrian Christian lobby, the Ezhava SNDP lobby, the TSC, the youth movement, the anti-Durbar Nairs and a smaller number of communists questioned every move of Sir CP and he countered them sternly. He muzzled the press, banned organizations, used his law and order machinery, sometimes mercilessly and they were all actions which invited much wrath from the general public.

CP stuck to his guns and once he was formally instated as the Dewan, the autocracy that he supported came down heavily on the rebels and violence erupted at times. While the temple entry announcement surprised all and sundry, CP’s opposition to responsible government was firm and absolute, he would not have it. The Quilon bank case threw much mud on the Syrian Catholics. All these stories are well known to the knowledgeable Travancore public even now and so I will cut to the chase.

As all this was going on, Ouwerkerk, now a professor of History in the Travancore University was getting more and more involved with the pacifists, congressmen, the Syrian Christians, the missionaries and the agitators. CP was losing his patience with this foreigner in his employ, who he now believed was stirring up the mud excessively and also hobnobbing too much with the British resident CP Skrine. He decided to get rid of her and wrote to the Raja on Sept 17, 1938 thus“She seems to be a very disturbing factor in the Arts College. It has been reported to me that she is in touch with a lady who lives in Kodai Kanal and who poses as a dancer and who constantly frequents Trivandrum and meets the member of the state congress and students in the middle of the night in Miss Ouwerkerk’s house. There is some reason or thinking that she is really a communist doing some propaganda”.

Sir CP also mentioned to Resident CP Skrine that O’s house was the rendezvous of ‘an unhealthy pseudo religious spiritualistic circle’. Sreedhara Menon notes that the immediate royal decision was to keep a watch over her.

Ouwerkerk had an inkling that her job was already in jeopardy as she set out to Europe on vacation in March 1939, amplified by the fact that she was drawing a salary more than two times the other professors in the college. By July, vacationing in Denmark, she received the formal notification of her termination. She was first served a 6 months’ notice of termination and the Raja’s final decision of her termination (due to exigencies of public service) was recorded on June 17^th 1939. Louise travelled around Sweden, Holland, Denmark and Germany before being served with the termination notice by post.

Events rapidly snowballed and soon the world was at war, by Sept 1939. Louise hastened back to India in Dec 1939 and went on a lecture tour around India visiting Bombay, Calcutta (meeting R Tagore at Shantiniketan), Wardha (meeting M Gandhi) and most other cities in the north on behalf of the International fellowship, to end up conducting a rural survey in Paniyaram TN. She then managed to obtain the position in May 1940 as Acting principal at the Maharani’s College for women, in Bangalore. We can note that she is happy that she had left the intrigues at Trivandrum and was slowly relaxing and enjoying Bangalore. What she did not know was that her world would very soon get turned upside down.

In Travancore, CP reigned supreme and his 60^thbirthday was celebrated in grand style. As Travancore tensed, some leaders agitating for responsible government were arrested while others fled to neighboring British India and Cochin and some went underground. Newspapers were shut down. People learnt that war policies and draconian laws were too difficult to fight.

Louise had an inkling that something was not right. Perhaps her friends in the Sarvodaya movement (Ramachandran, Brother Keithan) supporting home rule, tipped her that the CID were watching her, or perhaps it was because she saw that her letters were being intercepted or tampered with. The input to all this activity seemingly originated from Travancore, where it was determined that Ouwerkerk was known to express anti British sentiments, was not only friendly with congress leaders but was also known to associate with pacifists, communists and other undesirables (As a member of the international fellowship, she was decidedly pro congress). The first tip of Sir CP’s involvement appears in the home ministry files where it is stated that he did not approve of her behavior in Travancore. But the British also noted that they felt Sir CP was biased in this opinion. Later letter intercepts proved that she did have pro congress, pacifist and Anti-British leanings and that this was the reason she got her into a morass. Dr Ada Hetherington (Nabha Maharani’s physician) also seems to have made some negative remarks against Louise, around this time.

The state of Mysore decided that she was undesirable and had to be expelled, and it was decided that she should not be allowed to ‘wander around India ‘and stir up dissent. The debate between the political and Home department was if she should be sent back to England or interned in a parole camp. Eventually in Nov 1940 it was decided to arrest her and send her to the parole camp in Satara, concluding that she would neither become pro-British nor neutral during the war period.

The bewildered and overwrought Ouwerkerk objected in no uncertain terms and insisted on a review of her case, as a British subject. Both she and her mother in England contacted everybody they could think of and in power, sometimes repeatedly asking for their involvement and personal influence to get her released. Many who reviewed her files suggested that this was all too drastic and that she had done nothing ‘dreadful’ or extreme. On the other hand they recorded that she was more of a crank, somewhat queer, an eccentric or quite opinionated at times and that the action planned was unduly harsh. But it was not reversed. Her mother wrote to Winston Churchill asking for redress stating that they were owed that (reminding Churchill of the services Gen Ouwerkerk had carried out for Churchill’s father, the Duke of Marlborough). This flurry of communication was making the political department and the home department very nervous. As letters flew back and forth, Ouwerkerk languished at the Satara camp, ensconced with other female parolees, where she would soon fall sick of food poisoning.

In the meanwhile she got a job offer as principal in a women’s college in Bombay, and she tried again to get a release, but the Home department refused. They believed that she should not be allowed to teach again, since she would impart bad ideas to her young wards. But there was one person who always thought she was being treated wrongly, that was Sir Maurice Gwyer, the Chief Justice of India who stood squarely in support behind her.

In desperation Ouwerkerk changed her stance from wanting to finish her ‘mission in life in India’, to being expatriated to London, which the ministry wanted to mull over, if only she could find funds to finance her voyage back. She also resigned from all her pacifist association memberships. Some officers looking at her files remarked that she was harmless as such, and belonging to ‘a wild type of theoretical pacifist’, many of whom could be seen even in England. But the outstanding issue was her association with the objectionable Rev Keithan, his so called communist views and the strong pacifist faith Louise’s mother was exhibiting through her letters to Louise.

By April 1941, the government who believed that O’s case had given them far too much of trouble than it ever deserved, decided to ‘perhaps’ let her go if she could maintain herself and not teach. Louise suggested that she could lodge herself with friends and support herself from a £120 annual pension she was drawing from Travancore. Thus she was eventually released from detention in April 1941.

The Mysore resident was however not willing to take her into his state considering her previous activities. In the meantime the Maharani of Vizhianagaram decided to employ O as her assistant at Ooty, and live there, as she said, quietly and not teach. O later contacted the resident to ask if she could go back with the Rani to Bangalore. The request was denied.

Ouwerkerk was not going to let this lie, she challenged the grounds on which she had been instructed not to take a teaching post (she of course did not know it was due to her being perceived to be one with communist views). As this was going on, she got a position as a Hostel superintendent at Lady Irwin College Bombay. This did not work out for obvious reasons, and next O applied for a position at The Nazareth convent in Ooty. The Home department asked the Madras government for advice. It was Jan 1942 already and an entire year lost in limbo for this iron willed lady, but she was slowly wilting.

The Chief justice recommended that the case be taken leniently since O had learnt her lesson and changed her views. He pointed out that she had renounced her pacifist views. The government was finally willing to lift the ban placed on her teaching. As this was being discussed, Louise obtained a job with the department of information & broadcasting as Publicity officer to lecture American troops on Indian economic problems.

She did not let go of her ongoing battle with Conran Smith of the Home dept. on the teaching ban, which she wanted fully lifted. She now ratcheted it up a notch by applying for a position as a secretary in the WVS (woman’s voluntary service). The home department when asked for a reference were lukewarm, suggesting that her talents lay elsewhere. Eventually, not having sufficient grounds any longer, and perhaps positive news from the war fronts, a formal notification allowing her to teach was issued by the Home department in Oct 1944.

O continued her wartime work, and won much appreciation. Later on in 1946, she was even recommended for an MBE but it did not pan out after the concerned in the Viceroy’s office read her files.

The machinations of the British bureaucrats would have naturally made you wonder how they ever thought O had communist leanings. An analysis shows that it was her proximity with RR Keithan in Kodai Kanal which triggered it. The British in those days saw all the people against British rule to be possessed by leftist leanings, be it Krishna Menon, Nehru or Keithan. Added to that, Keithan had correspondence with a group called war resistors international, considered communist. The CID established that O continued close contacts with Keithan (who had also moved the IF to Banaglore and O was a family friend), Leonard Schiff, Dr Mees, G Ramachandran and UG Exner all of whom had problems on the same count with the British and were not people with strong Anti-Nazi feelings. O also blundered in stressing that she was proud of her Dutch origin in various meetings, rather than British. Finally, the CID tapping O’s mail found her making general antiwar remarks when communicating with her mother and Hilda Elsberg.

Though Sir CP had started the train rolling, I cannot affirm he had any interest in O personally, and did not quite destroy her career, as O herself thought. Nevertheless, Sir CP continued to target those against his interests and his CID continued to track activities in neighboring regions.

Sad, the way this brilliant lady was treated, as she herself explains – ‘being judged for the acquaintances she had with such persons under police supervision, but not the far wider contacts she normally had which had not attracted police attention’. Anyway after a fight of over 4 years, she managed to get justice, though her teaching career in India had been inexorably ruined. In 1945 she published her book ‘The Untouchables of India’ and had the last laugh, to see Sir CP himself being ejected out of Travancore.

She was later involved in creating an East West fraternity in Delhi and after Indian independence, O returned to England and moved later to Nigeria where she taught during 1953-1963. In 1963, she returned to Ooty, spent 4 years reconnecting with old friends and went back to England for good. In 1974, she completed her accounts of Travancore, but did not succeed in getting it published even though advertisements appeared calling it “A popular history in Epic tone” and describing the book thus - A readable, impressive story about the Princes and the people, the modernization of Travancore, communal problem, temple entry proclamation, attitude of the Paramount power, civil disobedience and the final steps towards independence.

MA Thomas wrote fondly about her in his memoirs, explaining how she treated him like a younger brother and even taught him how to use a knife and fork. He recalls a visit by her and her sister in the 60’s to Bangalore and the important advice she gave him while in London - ‘Do not be in a hurry to make your contribution. Study and prepare yourself’.

Louise Ouwerkerk passed away in 1989, 85 years old.

That was Louise Ouwerkerk, India’s friend….

References

No elephants for the Maharaja – Dick Kooiman

National archives of India – Home office files, Louise Ouwerkerk (Political-E-1940-Na-F-67-32-40)

Ivory Throne – Manu Pillai

Triumph and Tragedy in Travancore: Annals of Sir CP's Sixteen Years - A Sreedhara Menon

Envoy of the Raj (the career of Sir Claremont Skrine) – John Stewart

Sir CP Ramaswami Aiyar a biography – Saroja Sunadararajan

Notes

The dancer, Hilda Elsberg, was a Jewish German, who was employed in the Presentation Convent in Kodaikanal as a dance and gym teacher. She too was a pacifist and as a good friend of Ouwerkerk, corresponded with her, but if she went regularly to Trivandrum or not is not clear (I still don’t know what she was up to in Trivandrum. Interestingly, the daughters of the Queen Regent were studying at the very same Kodai School – Information courtesy Manu Pillai). Copies of letters sent to her by Louise do exhibit some controversial views and were intercepted by the British.

Dick RR Rev ‘brother’ Keithan was expelled from India, but returned and spent his remaining life, as a Gandhian, in Dindigul. His story is a project for the future, I will retell it another day.

Xanadu – Where Ouwerkerk lived in Trivandrum, is a minister’s house, these days!

O defined Malayalees thus - The Malayalee is above all an individualist, used to going about his business regardless of anybody except the members of his own family, tenacious of his personal rights, quarrelsome, difficult to organize for any continuing purpose. There is a saying in Kerala which may be relevant here, as it certainly is to the main theme of her book: “Take one Keralan: you have a politician; take two Keralans: you have a political party; take three Keralans: you have two political parties.”

Indo Burma Border 1942 – The story of Jamadar Gopala Krishna Warrier

I did not believe that there existed any book in the history of this world, so dedicated to a simple Malayali soldier, but I was wrong, for there is one as the author states prominently on its first page. My heart swelled when I saw that his English officer had written it proudly and prominently and quite rightly I guessed that both the writer and the dead men must have been buddies. What made this man who by hereditary profession should have been stringing garlands or doing some such work in a temple, march against the Japanese at the remote jungles bordering Assam and Burma? What happened to him? Would you not like to find out? If so read on…

Maj David Atkins, his officer wrote thus, in dedication:

Dedicated to the memory of Jemadar Mohan Singh (a Sikh) and Jemadar Gopalkrishna Warrier (a Malayali) who died building the Tiddim Track on 24th December 1942 and 14th January 1943 respectively.

Gopala Krishna Warrier was a dark skinned, buck toothed, short man from Travancore as described by his superior officer. He was a jamadar, meaning in the British Indian Army, that it was the lowest rank for a Viceroy's commissioned officer commanding platoons or troops themselves or assisted their British commander. It was later renamed as Naib Subedar in the JCO or junior commissioned officer category. He hailed from E Kalalda, Quilon and was in charge of a group of transport soldiers doing back breaking work of driving a number of Ford 3 tonners from Canada, ferrying goods and supplies, part of the 309 GPTC, during the buildup of Dimapur in the preparation for a war with the Japanese at the Indian borders in Assam.

Today you have so many youngsters from Assam working in Kerala, but this was a time when it was just the reverse. A time when the allied wanted to desperately shore up the border from the marauding Japanese, who had managed to get Singapore to capitulate, taken Burma and driven the British and all the Indian working class out of Burma and across the mountains back into India. Now they were digging their heels in Rangoon and planning the next steps with India. On the Western front, the Axis powers led by Germany were chalking up many a victory and were poised at the gates of Leningrad. In the East, Japan had entered the war with a roar, bombed Pearl Harbor, got the Americans involved and the Great War was on. As people died in the thousands and the entire world was in disarray, the Japanese earned victory after victory, until the mountains, lack of supplies and an inhospitable terrain stopped them at the Arakan mountain range dividing British India on one side and the fallen British Burma on the other, with not only the Japanese but the budding INA led by Subhas Chandra Bose. The Naga and the Chin hills presented the armies some of the most difficult jungles in which the allies had to fight a war, and prevent a potential Japanese conquest into British India.

Why do I say potential? Because it was not really in the plans, but on the other hand, the humiliated British did want to take back Burma, Malaya and Singapore while the INA wanted to march into India. The Japanese, in a veritable quandary were rethinking their strategy, while cooling their burning heels in Rangoon, and taking their time. It was this time which afforded the British to build up at the inhospitable border, racked with monsoons, malaria and disease, and put together a few plans to build roads leading into Burma, roads which could carry men and machinery, weapons and tanks. Easier said than done, as you will soon see. Some would wonder why such a network was being considered during wartime, and well, it was because all movement was across the bay in ships until the war. During the war the Bay of Bengal no longer afforded safe passage with the prospect of monsoon winds and bad weather, air attacks, mines and submarines. So the bosses had to resort to building a twisting, turning road which dropped into valleys, climbed up mountains, ran past fjords and rivers over new bridges and would they hoped, be all weather and not just fair weather.

It was in this inhospitable country that two platoons of Malayalis, a third comprising Tamil and a fourth from Andhra, all in all four platoons forming the 309 General purpose Transport Corps totaling to 450 recruits, literally broke their backs on, after arriving with a few hundred badly designed and hurriedly constructed, 3 ton Canadian Ford trucks. Their story is hardly known, and their efforts totally forgotten, but for the small book written about them by their commander, the inimitable Major David Atkins. He had a tough task, commanding a group of people who had no training, who had seen no war and who had never been under command or orders. They spoke a mish mash of six languages. David Atkins spoke two, English and Urdu (sparingly) which again was foreign to the people he commanded. What could have transpired?

But before the formation of the 309^th GPT, let’s see how the situation was in Malabar and Travancore. As I wrote in a previous article, the south was starting to suffer from the effects of a terrible famine. Jobs were becoming scarce and many an able bodied person joined the Indian army, for it was a source of food and some money. The political situation was bad, with the heavy handed rule of Dewan Sir CP and all the other issues going on with anticommunist moves, the Punnapra Vayalar uprising and so on. All in all, it was a good idea to join the British Indian army and keep your stomach full and have a steady income. As records were to show, some 160,000 people from Travancore joined up either in the army or in labor battalions working in Burma. Many of them were formally attached to the newly formed 309^thwhich was part of the RIASC or the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. They were not really considered fighting material and were usually part of these labor corps, responsible for the provisioning, procurement and distribution of food, living supplies, fuel, munitions etc. to the forward units. All mechanical transport (except at the front lines) and animal transport (mules, horses and elephants to name a few) were the responsibility of the RIASC.

It was in these circumstances that our story starts. Presumably Warrier joined up in the army even before the war, for we see that from the outset, he was a JCO, a Jamedar. His boss, Staff Captain David Atkins had just escaped dismissal by court martial, the dismissal being contended for two very interesting reasons. The first was that he, in charge or the Army supplies at Delhi had requisitioned 20 million bottles of Rum instead of 2 million (an act which was to later help the army in very distressing conditions). The second was diverting all spare flour supplies to Karachi with the feeling that the soldiers at the western front would needed them, when all of a sudden, many military units had to be rushed to Assam to stave off a potential attack by the Japanese who had taken Burma. To get the supplies diverted from Karachi to Assam was going to be very difficult indeed and the army laid all the blame on Atkins. But there was a shortage of officers, especially those who spoke Urdu and so Atkins found himself promoted to Major instead and transferred out of Delhi and ordered to head the 309^th GPTC which was to be formed at Jhansi, South of Delhi.

The events which transpired were to expose not only Britain’s total unpreparedness for an attack from the East and a war on India’s frontiers, but also its inability to handle the difficulties and logistics in mounting a counterattack on the inhospitable and terrible mountain jungles of Assam. That they prevailed in the end was a combination of many acts of fate, some superb tales of valor, individual grit and determination of many a soldier and their supporting units. The Kohima and Imphal battles, the effects of disease and lack of supplies on the Japanese, who got stranded on the mountains, fighting the British and the issues they had with the INA units are all part of another story, this was a period in 1942, well before the war heated up in those cold mountain jungles.

Many a story of valor has been written about those larger battles on the Assam front, a few have been written about the miserable trek of the Indians who fled Burma, but the story of the 309 GPTC is a rarity. The men so slated to form this new company under Atkins were fresher’s from the South, kind of irregular as they say, for most other companies had picked their men from the Northern regions. Atkins who himself was new to the workings outside an office, waiting for his new junior officers and men, was summoned to the station to take charge of his 400 or so men who were asleep at the station. The Punjabi VCO introduced the group as ‘a very bad sort – the Telugus are black and ugly, the Tamils obey, but they are smooth like girls, but most of the men, sahib, are Malayali and they are very clever, Sahib, but bad. Yes indeed, much bad! They have hit our colonel on his illustrious head, they have chased the Subedar Sahib into his house, and they have fought with the military police’.

A Marathi Havildar who was later put in charge of the two Malayali platoons added that the ‘malayalis sit and make much talk, and that they did not love the king emperor or the sahibs. After they had settled down, the first of the rebellions had Atkins rush to mediate, over the food quality, which as you can imagine, was not right for the Malayali, for he wanted rice and not wheat rotis. The second was over the fact that some of the Punjabi officers had tried to bugger some of the young Tamil recruits. Thus started the days of the 309 Madrasi Company.

Atkins’s translator was one Havildar Kuttappan Nair, an NCO, but soon two other Malayali VCO’s arrived, Jamadars Warrier and Koshy. Gopalkrishna Warrier was a dark skinned, short man who Atkins states, looked like a walking mushroom under his toupee, and was to later known as Mickey Mouse for his large ears. Warrier was a joy to work with according to Atkins, but had this disconcerting habit of quoting Shakespeare often. Understandably for an Englishman, managing this group was tough, for example the Malayali platoon had over 20 Krishnan’s and most names had initials. Atkins also found out soon that the Malayali is a great lover of disputes, for disputes sake!

Training continued and it soon dawned that the company’s responsibility was to get supplies to the rough Burmese front. The people from the south could handle heat and humidity, but handling cold weather was going to be testing, as they would all soon find out. Nevertheless, the men shaped up and Warrier was to declare “They say best men, Sahib, are molded out of faults and are better for being a bit bad”! They heard about the malaria and mosquitoes, cholera and typhus in those north eastern jungles and were armed only with mosquito screens constructed by themselves. Their orders were to pick up 134 trucks or as the British called it, Lorries from Delhi and drive out to Agra, then go by train to Calcutta and head to Guwahati in Assam.

There were interesting events such as the one when they found one of the recruits had nice little breasts when everybody was stripped waist up during a physical exam. It is perceived that the recruit was actually a girl who had joined up, anyway he or she was quickly sent home.

The Lorries were beasts, and were fondly called green elephants, and notoriously hard to drive, heavy to steer due to half of its weight tilted up front, horrible gears and a lousy petrol system. Added to it, these Ford 3 tonners made hurriedly in Canada for the war effort had underpowered engines making them very difficult to handle. The green elephants actually proved to be surly pigs and on top of it to be driven by men who had no idea about driving, for the only powered vehicle they had been on had been a bullock cart. But war is war and you learn on the field, as they say, and on the very day when Gandhiji called on the British to Quit India, August 1942, the Lorries and the Malayalis and Tamilians and Telugu platoons drove out of Delhi to protect that same country, under the command of a British major.

Both my wife and I are fond of crème caramel, and many a time, we found it prominently mentioned on all menus while traveling around India. We never thought about it and it was while reading Atkins’s memoir that I chanced on the tidbit that the pudding was part of every railway refreshment room’s offering, perhaps concocted so by Spencer’s of madras. It appears that for a cook to be certified good, he had to know how to make crème caramel to the liking of his British boss! Atkins believed that this had been so for some 200-300 years! So now you know!

Atkins’s biggest challenge was teaching the soldiers driving and how to wear a condom seeing how many of them quickly contracted VD. And thus armed with this kind of important knowledge, the platoons trudged down to Manipur road and on to Dimapur from where their adventures were to start. But let me warn you, this is not a story of shooting or armed combat with slashing sabers and whirling knives. It is a tale of work, hard work on a dirt track running through a steep, rough, torturous and rugged jungle terrain. Their task was to supply the teams building the road in front and preparing for large armies which would come later to battle the Japanese and after victory in the plains, go on to liberate Rangoon.

It was a tale of how officers learned to command, of soldiers learning to obey, learning to drive and handle a beast of an unserviceable truck, up and down a length of some 120 miles of terrible single and double tracks and finally of making soldiers of themselves! The Burma campaign was a low priority war for the British high command in London, for they were more worried about losing Britain and the western fronts, and so the army at Assam had to improvise and help itself most of the time. They had hardly any medicine to fight the many diseases which would soon decimate everyone out on the hills, friend or foe, British, Indian or Japanese, soldiers and refugees.

The trains with the trucks and men reached Manipur road. Atkins found to his horror that there was no hospital, repair shops or anything by way of support at this frontier post. And he heard about the rampant malaria, caused by the feared anopheles mosquito, the characteristic of which was that it rested with its butt in the air. In a matter of days, every single person in his unit, except him were down with illness. All they could witness was the dense jungle, rain and a steady stream of emaciated refugees arriving from Burma. Many arrived and simply died at that entrance point into India. Atkins was ordered to go from Dimapur to Kohima and on to Imphal with his Lorries and men. You can imagine how tough it was when the daily distance covered was just 5 to 10 miles! Some Lorries went over the edge (over the khud as they termed it), many had mechanical and fuel problems, most batteries were flat and so once started with a spare, the truck had to be kept running the whole day!

As the drudgery and hard work continued, Warrier kept pestering Atkins with questions on why a poet like Tennyson used words like jug-jug in his poetry (Atkins brushed Warrier off saying English poets wrote no such thing). How Warrier learnt and memorized this amount of diverse Elizabethan poetry is mystery to me, but perhaps he was a student at the Travancore University, a fact I really could not ascertain!

The terrain was unforgiving, the roads continued to be tracks of slush which these trucks could not really handle and the health of the drivers down to nothing. The Madrasi was less resistant to disease compared to the Northern recruits, perhaps attributed to their eating polished rice which held less vitamins, according to Atkins.

Atkins being born in India was somehow immune to malaria and was the only one in the platoon who did not fall sick. The quinine stocks had been depleted, for they were coming from Malaya, which was in Japanese hands and that meant everybody contracted the fever. During his days of despair and anger, he took to observing his people and some of his jottings would not be alien to us even today – Look at this classic example. The Madrasi soldier when sick had a disconcerting habit, he pulled his shirt out and left it flapping and wrapped a rag around their head! He noticed that they too slowly picked up Pidgin English and Urdu as days went by, with more and more sick personnel shivering and groaning, and Warrier quoting Keats grandly ‘the weariness, the fever and the fret, here where men sit and hear each other groan.’ They struggled to drive the three tonners, having no strength left with malaria bouts every 5-7 hours and no medicines even invented to treat it, so it was just a matter of suffering till it went away. Everybody was sick, looking like bags of bones, tempers ran high and it was an absolute disaster, with nothing got done. But they soldiered on, while the high command complained about the 309 GPTC’s lack of pace and results. Nobody had time to listen to complaints about the trucks, lack of spares or repair shops, lack of experience and so on and a funny facts that only 3-4 out of the 450 men had a watch!

It appears many officers were to remember and comment on this Madrasi unit which stood out for its ‘strange looking’ people and the ghastly green steel Ford 3 tonners. Their problem was that the other companies were issued with long nosed Chevrolets with twin headlights. These were better vehicles which handled well and so the frequent comparison between the Madrasi unit driving Fords and the others driving Chevys always resulted in the former being branded as the losers. But soon enough the Chevy drivers were also bogged down with malaria.

Many a truck went over the ‘khud’ as they ferried goods and men back and forth. The Malayali, Tamil and Telugu driver stuck to their task and held on to the steering wheel for dear life as the Fords sometimes spun off the road and teetered on its edge. The lone headlight on the Fords reduced to a slit produced no light and trucks drove bonnet to boot (actually there was no boot, they were mostly tarpaulin covered backs behind the cabin). The road was dotted with broken down green Ford Lorries and many remembered the sight. Atkins was castigated often by his superiors, but nobody understood his problem with the horribly designed trucks and lack of medicines to fight malaria which every single one in his platoon suffered. Nevertheless, they soldiered on or more correctly, drove on, back and forth.

Dec 1942, the Lorries were directed to the Tedim track. The 6,000 odd men who worked on the road construction cut through the jungles and rock at the rate of 1 mile a day. Mohan Singh was the first JCO to die, owing to rash driving after an argument with Atkins. It was tragic, for in fact Atkins had just the previous week sent recommendation letters promoting Mohan Singh and Warrier. A few days later, Warrier was also dead, at Milestone 48 when he hitched a lift on another truck after his 3 tonner had broken down. That 15 cwt truck he was on, flipped over at a turn and Warrier was crushed in it. In five terrible and difficult months at the border, his life had been laid to waste.

Only Atkins remembered him. Jemadar Warrier was a fine officer, a jolly man and above all he was Atkin’s friend, so concluded Atkins as he ended his book, and forlornly packed up Warrier’s belongings to be shipped back to his parents Quilon. I think he was buried at the Rangoon war memorial cemetery, or not, at least his name is mentioned.

Most people do not get the point that at no time was India to become a base for any kind of military operations. While the Americans used the Assam bases to build the Ledo road to China, it was only the Japanese entry into Singapore, Malaya and Burma which forced the British to make new plans in 1942. There was no war infrastructure in place such as roads, trucks or transport trains. All of these had to be hurriedly imported and that is how these Ford & Chevy trucks as well as Jeeps landed up in India and how inexperienced people were put on the supply corps. On top of all that, these chaotic years were compounded by famine in Bengal and Malabar, Travancore, a subject I partly covered earlier.

There were two journalists who reported later on, during the actual war from that front, and one of them was the great man PRS Mani who wrote about the bravery of Dr Goplakrishnan of Calicut, Havildar Ravunni Nayar, Yakub from Malabar and Kuttiya Pillai.

There were 10 transport companies and 1,200 Lorries on that front. 309^th was one of them and of the 1,200, only 120 lorries plied the 120 mile track at any given time due to disease and mechanical and support issues. Supplies never got to the fronts in time and many fighting units were recalled. Malaria abated, The Dimapur project was scrapped and a new strategy to build a proper Tedim road was now formed. This ‘forgotten army’ as it was called, forged on, without enough tools or support, this was warfare as it really is at its worst, confusion, lack of clear directives, sickness and danger

The records at the Rangoon memorial state starkly ; THEY DIED FOR ALL FREE MEN

GOPALA KRISHNA WARRIER, Jemadar, M, 17185/IO. 309 G.P. Transport Coy. Royal Indian Army Service Corps. Died 14th January 1943. Age 22. Son of K. Madhava Warrier and K. Subhadra Amma, of East Kallada, Quilon, India…

I tried to track down the family of Warrier, but nobody in East Kallada seems to remember them. Atkins, Koshy and Kuttappan Nair continued on with new duties after the Dimapur buildup was scrapped. Their story is continued in a sequel to the first book and their next task was the Tedim road construction. I will cover all that when I write about the rest, looking from the other side, from Burma.

References

The Reluctant Major – David Atkins

The Forgotten Major – David Atkins

Military economies, culture and in logistics the Burma campaign 1942-1945 - Graham Dunlop

Tedim Road—The Strategic Road on a Frontier: A Historical Analysis - Pum Khan Pau

Malabar war years

Notes

I tried to find an answer to Warrier’s question and did.

In fact Thomas Nash did write - Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

A definition of the term Jug-jug goes thus -Jug Jug' can sound like sound without meaning, nonsense syllables; or 'in Elizabethan poetry' it can be, in Southam's words, 'a way of representing bird-song', or, alternatively, 'a crude joking reference to sexual intercourse'." According to Gareth reeves, jug jug could be an approximation of wordlessness, a sound without meaning.

Hope JCO Warrier up there reading this, is contended…..

Pics

Burma border pic Courtesy – Burma star association, Ford truck Google pics (thanks to the unidentified owner)

Sabu Selar’s trip from Mysore to Hollywood

Some months ago, I saw the latest version of the Jungle book film in IMAX 3D hoping it will be a great experience, and came away with the conclusion that I liked the 1967 Disney cartoon film better. But if you have watched ‘Jungle Book’ an even older non animated version, you’d have seen an Indian boy acting as Mowgli. Americans of the 40’s and 50’s would recall him, but hardly any of you would have come across this name in India. For a long time he was a popular actor, India’s cultural ambassador in Hollywood, the first and perhaps only Indian to figure in the Hollywood walk of fame. That was Sabu, the person enacting Mowgli in ‘Jungle book’ and as Sabu in the film ‘Elephant boy’. He hobnobbed with nobility, was President Reagan’s friend and for a while a very well to do actor in Hollywood. The story of the boy’s travel from the jungles of Mysore to Hollywood, his exploits as an American turret gunner during WWII are all legends that will remain in American minds for a long time. He is the subject of books, movies, numerous articles and even a doctoral thesis. I had mentioned him in my Elephantine caper story where I had mentioned that Senator Don Kennard was called Sabu, the elephant boy in jest.

Don’t you think it is time to get to know this interesting character?

A number of mature Indian actors ventured into Hollywood after him, Om Puri, Nasiruddin Shah, Saeed Jaffrey, Kabir Bedi, Irfaan Khan and so on, but the story of Sabu started right at his childhood. It was a time for extravaganzas and the lure of the orient was just getting its due exposure in the Americas. Silent movies of the 20’s were making waves in Europe, WW1 erupted, but filming continued as usual in Hollywood and soon, the era of regular motion pictures with sound a.k.a ‘talkies’ had started becoming popular. Color in movies were just about to make a splash. There is a curious story as to why artistes and filmmakers flocked to Hollywood and it involves Edison. Edison, brilliant man that he was, was also one who liked to protect his turf and used the legal process as much as possible to benefit him and his business. On one side he was having his tussles with the father of alternating current transmission systems – the brilliant Nikola Tesla while on the other he was fighting with filmmakers arguing over his motion picture patents. To escape Edison’s legal forays, many filmmakers moved to the tinsel town in California where those patents could not be enforced.

And it was into this showbiz world that the little boy from Mysore arrived, as a representative of his exotic Eastern land. The western press then went on to showcase a rags to riches route which the little boy undertook and his pursuit of the American dream. And as you can guess, the root cause of Sabu’s good fortune was Rudyard Kipling and his jungle book stories. One story in the Kipling collection was ‘Toomai of the Elephants’. Kipling, if you did not know, was introduced to the elephant by his father Lockwood who was fascinated by the animal in India and wrote about it. Now there was a naturalist who worked in the Mysore irrigation department named George Sanderson and his novel efforts at catching numerous elephants fetched him the nickname Elephant King (Sanderson’s book covers his trips to Malabar). This was the character named Peterson around whom Kipling wrote his Toomai story.

Anyway Toomai, the mahout’s son is a boy attached to his elephant (strangely called Kala Nag) and this was the story which Flaherty the film maker wanted to showcase (whose rights were later purchased by Kroda) for America. He wanted to make the film ‘Elephant Boy’, tracing the story of a little boy and his big animal friend. To do this he collaborated with Alexander Kroda and set out in 1935 to commence filming in India. Within a year they had spent a colossal amount and completed the movie, though not quite to Flaherty’s satisfaction. But let us get back to Sabu.

Flaherty was clear about one thing, he did not want an established actor for the film, so he asked his photographers to keep an eye out for young boys especially one who was around 14 years old, with personality and character in his face and one who knew his way around elephants. The requirements were advertised by the Times of India and the film makers even checked out some aspirants in Malabar (alas! No Kerala firsts here, seems they looked too thin and weary). The Mysore maharaja Wodeyar offered one of his palaces, the Chittaranjan Mahal and his elephants for the filming. It was in these stables that Borradale, Flaherty’s cinematographer spotted the alert, smiling, strong and forthright little boy among the elephants. From one story, it appears Sabu had come to Mysore to collect his late father’s 30 cents pension from the Maharaja’s office, but from another he was caught hiding from the casting interviews. It appears that his uncle or head stable keeper kicked him out from his hiding place and into Kroda’s sight!

July 1935 - The 10 year old Sabu was auditioned together with three others over a period of time and soon it became clear that he was the potential actor. Sabu was relatively assertive, free in front of the camera and a natural. The Times of India promptly proclaimed him a rival to the reigning child star, Shirley Temple. The filming progressed quickly but the two makers Flaherty and Kroda kept fighting over its direction methods, the former who wanted to enhance the poignant relationship between the boy and the animal shown on screen, while the latter Kroda wanted to stick to Kipling’s story. The other parts were shot in Britain with British actors interspersed with the Indian footage, somewhat crudely, to today’s standards. As you can imagine, Flaherty’s Indian shots stood out compared to Zoltan’s (Kroda’s brother) work from Denham. Anyway the movie was released, was a success though not a money spinner for the producers and won a few awards. Sabu got noticed and became a member of Kroda’s human stable. He was a star and settled down to live in Britain…

Reviews were good – One states, First performance honors go to Sabu, the Indian stripling who brings to the part of Toomai a childish simplicity and directness which are strongly convincing. His work should be viewed a dozen times by child prodigies of Hollywood and by Hollywood producers who debauch juvenile talents with an eye to the box-office.

Soon Sabu-ware was launched, like elephant teapots and he went on to lend his face and body to various advertisements and dug in to even more filming in Britain, mainly animal based movies while also obliging zoos and cultural events, riding the obligatory elephant. This was the period when the west, as they said, went on to civilize this native boy rescued from the jungles and taught him new tricks – his passage from loin cloth to suits and luxury!

Born Selar Sheikh to Sheikh Ibrahim (and an Assamese mother) from Mysore, he was brought up in the Kanakpura jungles initially by his father after his mother died. Later it appears his uncle Hussain became his guardian when his father died as Sabu turned three. When Sabu left India, he was accompanied by his older brother Sheikh Dastagir a taxi driver, who served as his guardian and two others from Mysore. Kroda seeing the potential, insured the boy’s life for £50,000. It was clarified (Philip Liebfried) that a British Customs officer wrongly recorded his name as Sabu Dastagir perhaps borrowing the name of his brother as his last name.

Can you believe it, a Times story even went on to add further ridicule by stating that he was named Sabu after the Hindi word for Soap, signifying that the British tried to make him an acceptable western product after washing the dark boy with white soap. But he moved in style, when formally presented at occasions, he was dressed as a maharajah or a prince (sometimes bare chested) at times in an opulent sherwani and a red turban, leather shoes and a whip! In 1937 he was even presented a midget car (as it was one of his ambitions to drive). He was enrolled in a prestigious school in Middlesex where he went on to become a popular student, a favorite of the teachers and excelled in tennis and football. He was homesick of course, once writing to the Mysore stable keeper, asking how Ayrawatha the elephant (the one used for filming) was faring.

Kroda released a number of Technicolor movies set around oriental themes and Sabu starred in some of these new and unusual releases where his skin tone was a notable asset. He had become a star by now and made a lot of money for his producers, He kept his physique well-toned physique and his skin clear, and to top it, his long hair and charming smile were considered his greatest assets. The ‘Thief of Baghdad’ a film which followed had Sabu cast as Abu, and this filming took him to Hollywood.

By 1942, Sabu had moved to Hollywood under a contract for Universal studios and was part of a number of not so great movies, but ones that showed off mostly his half naked physique. Film roles were written for him, big names feted him and by the age of 17, he was leading the glamorous, fast life of a regular Hollywood star. The Jungle Book was then completed in 1942. But with the world at war, Sabu had decided to settle down in the US and try to become a U. S. Citizen. But the path was not easy.

In September 1943, at the age of nineteen, Sabu enlisted (his brother did too, a little later after sorting out some of Sabu’s financial issues ) in the U. S. Army Air Force mainly because of immigration requirements which would have otherwise made him ineligible as a non-white to apply for US citizenship. After training in California, he became a heavy bomber gunner. Being one of smaller build, he was placed to man a B24’s nose turret gun. He was deployed to the Pacific theater to join the 307th Bomb Group, a.k.a. the Long Rangers who saw action all over the Pacific theater and the Far East, operating in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Philippines and in the defense of China.

Sabu flew forty two combat missions (425 combat hours) in the dangerous position of ball-turret gunner, and when he was discharged in 1945 he was the proud recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross (sinking six Jap freighters), four battle stars, three Oak Leaf Clusters, Philippines liberation ribbon, The American Campaign Medal, and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. As they reported, the sky was his jungle, the B24 was his pachyderm, the Japanese were his game and the hunting was good. By all accounts, he did well and was naturalized in Jan 1944.

At the time of his leaving the air force he had been a resident of the United States for five years and had served two of those years in the armed services. He then graced the face of an American stamp and supported the war cause by selling war bonds travelling through 25 cities with a baby elephant, and parading his celebrity status. When asked whether he was either Indian or American in a Hollywood press conference in 1944, just days after returning to the United States from WWII, Sabu’s reply was, “I’m from India, but I’m American, of course. It sure is good to be home.” Sabu's favorite movie actors were Mickey Mouse, Freddie Bartholomew, Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple and Carole Lombard.

During the ‘Songs of India’ shooting in 1948, he met Marilyn cooper and they were soon married. Two children were born, Paul and Jasmine. Sabu continued to work in Hollywood, but the public’s appetite for eastern themes were waning. Though the 1950’s showcased many animal and orient themed movies, nothing distinguished Sabu as an actor.

His later period in America proved to be somewhat sedate. Initially he dabbled in real estate, building apartments and homes in LA’s San Fernando Valley. But misfortunes followed one after another, first a robbery and arson attack on his home in 1950, during a widely reported court case in England when a ballet dancer Brenda Marian Julier Ernest sued him in a paternity suit which was eventually settled. In addition to all this, insurance companies sued him for causing fires to his own home, which he contested on the basis that he and his wife were never at home when it happened. Subsequently, this ended with the conviction of one Andre Prez, upon his own confession. Then came the shooting, at the furniture store in Van Nuys which he and his brother managed, where his brother was killed by an 18 year old James Shields. Shields admitted that he tried to rob the recently divorced Dastagir of the money bundles he carried and in the scuffle shot him, a tragedy Sabu took a long time to come out of.

When Hollywood’s “Walk of Fame” was inaugurated in 1960, Sabu was one of the first to receive a star on the famous boulevard alongside other Asian American actors including the Chinese American starlet, Anna May Wong, and the Japanese actor, Sessue Hayakawa. A large remainder of Sabu’s life was spent in Los Angeles playing eastern sidekick roles onscreen while trying to project a rich and fancy American life off screen. His fascination for cars made him an owner of a rare Ferrari built 340 MM Vignale Spider which can be tracked even today, passing hands for many millions. African American musician JR Redd a.k.a. Korla Pandit was a high profile friend of his.

His Muslim identity was quite important to him, and he was quite miffed being termed a Hindu by the Hollywood press. Columnist Louells Parsons took it upon herself to correct the record in 1940: Sabu, the dark-skinned Mohammedan boy, yes, he is a Mohammedan and not a Hindu—who has been with us every day, has grown into our hearts on this personal appearance tour. He is a darling and the only thing that irks him is to be called a Hindu. He looked so grave about it and so sad, I asked his tutor Austin Menzies, why Sabu disliked being called a Hindu – “he is afraid”, said the tutor, “that they will tear him limb from limb when he goes back to India, for there is a great rivalry between the Mohammedans and Hindus”. She continues "You speak English so much better now than you did when I first met you," I told him. "Yes," he smiled, "I studied very hard when I made 'Elephant Boy for Mr. Korda. I learned the words, but I didn't know what they meant. Each day I spoke English the way they told me how to say each sentence. It was very funny, so different from my native tongue." Everything Sabu does he does well even to composing a charming Indian song (Democrat and Chronicle Oct 20, 1940).

Such was the situation post-independence.

When Mother India was to be shot as a film in India, Director Mehboob Khan wanted to cast Sabu as Birju. In fact the movie was to be a bilingual and titled ‘This land is mine’. However, Sabu, who had become an American citizen, failed to get a work permit from India (there is even a dubious mention that he claimed Pakistan as his motherland, was he miffed or was that the reason?) and the role went to Sunil Dutt. Seems Mehboob Khan put him up at Bombay's Ambassador Hotel, a posh hotel, paying him Rs 5,000 a month, an astronomical sum those days.

In 1953, Sabu eventually came back to visit India, and filmed at Chalakkudi in Kerala for the film Sauda with Sashikala. The press ravaged the ‘American returned clown’ who was his ‘master’s boy, ‘a pet of the west’ riding about Chembur in his imported American car. Later, his off screen romances with Shashikala and Nimmi were splashed on tabloids. The movie Sauda was in the end, shelved. All reporting about him in India during his time in Hollywood can be seen as uncharitable, mainly frustration about the poor depiction of the eastern cultures in films.

Caliph’s FilmIndia review stated - As for acting, there is nothing much to write home about. Sabu, who plays the title role, throughout wears a loin-cloth which is something unheard of and unseen in any part of Arabia. As the thief, looks as ugly as ever, it could not be an accident that the only Indian actor tolerated in Western films should be a dark-skinned South Indian stable boy, but acts with a certain amount of boyish vivacity.

Later on his marriage - Sabu hails from Mysore and plays roles to feed the Yankee notion of Indians being elephant boys, tiger hunters or snake charmers. His marriage makes Sabu an American citizen now. Let us hope some more stable lads cross the Atlantic. We have so many of them here.

Another report said- At the International Dance Festival held in New York. Ram Gopal with his ballet of talented girls gave performances which gave the Yankees a peep into our art of classical dancing. After all they are not all Sabus in India, eh, Sam!

His death in 1963, a fortnight after Kennedy’s assassination (or according to one news report - at the restaurant he was managing and running in Los Angeles) was sudden. He died of a heart attack aged just 39 and shortly after completing his first Disney film (A Tiger Walks). He was buried in Hollywood's famous Forest Lawn cemetery. He was always a very visible character and sported his signature turban for occasions, so much so that even his death announcements mentioned ‘elephant boy dies’.

Philip Libfried said it fittingly – No actor ever enjoyed a role more than Sabu did his in The Thief of Bagdad, and his enjoyment is infectious. In truth, he was a youth, living a fantasy and knew it, so he reacted, rather than acted. Though the young Indian boy who charmed his way around the world is gone, his film legacy keeps him alive, proof that "All things are possible when seen through the eyes of youth."

Marilyn Cooper his wife, passed away in 2009. Jasmine Sabu became a writer and trainer of Arabian hybrid horses, and passed away in 2001.Paul Sabu who started as a recording engineer now heads a very successful rock band and is an Emmy-Winning Singer/Songwriter, Producer & Guitarist.

References

Sabu – Michael Lawrence

Kipling, Sabu, and Goldie Hawn: Reflections on Elephant Boy, a Forgotten Film of Robert Flaherty’s - Paul Hockings

India in Britain – Sushila Nasta (Civilizing Sabu of India)

Sabu - Philip Leibfried (Films in Review - October 1989)

Jungle Boys, Babus and Camp Orientals- The Liminal Personae of the Film Star Sabu (Thesis) - Jyoti Argadé

Moving Images: India on British Screens, 1917-1947 (Thesis) - Jacqueline Audrey Gold

The muted sounds of the CCU were permeating my consciousness, I was supine and I had nothing to do. After a while, I was scanning the hall, starting with the fluorescent lights, and stopping often at the flickering tube that escaped the maintenance rounds. I noticed that they hummed, like they were alive, perhaps due to older ballasts, or was it so that the hum was from the air-conditioning? And then there were the gurgles and hisses from the various fluid and gas lines and cocks, valves or spigots as they called them here.

Now you can understand how bored I was, and I was starting to doze off, with the reassuring sounds of the busy hospital lulling me to sleep. It was then that I picked up a conversation in the distance, in Malayalam. I could discern two accents, one being Kottayam Malayalam and the other somewhat strange, it was Malayalam alright but with a very heavy Tamil tinge. I had heard that accent before but I just could not place it then. The voices revealed much more, that one was being spoken by a confident nurse (it must be Thresiamma), while the other was more childlike and hesitant, as though she was finding it difficult to converse in this tongue. I thought she could be a Tamilian lady who had picked up this difficult language sometime in her past. The voices faded as they moved to the farther end of the ward and I lapsed into a fitful slumber. The drapes around my bed fluttered in the light breeze as the piped and hydrated air gushed in at just the temperature and humidity set by a computerized system.

I must have slept for not more than 15 minutes when the very same voices, now louder and close, woke me up. Through bleary and half open eyelids, I recognized the Malayali nurse, Thersiamma, she strayed not from the ‘tending to chubby’ build, practically attired, ramrod straight stance and a tough countenance, but her eyes were friendly as always. The lady standing next to her was totally different, for she was definitely plump, incredibly fair in color, her skin texture tending to a kind of translucence. She was certainly on the wrong side of her 50’s but life had treated her well and her unlined face was home to strikingly large and smiling eyes, she was indeed pretty, even in that late middle age. As I was looking at her, my eyes now wide open, I could see the face of the nurse taking on an ominous frown, obviously disapproving of any attempts to flirt with her boss!!

The pretty doctor took her eyes of the chart and looked down at me. Something was familiar about her eyes and face, but I just could not place it. The lady looked at me, screwing her eyes a bit and went back to the chart, then again down at me, then again back to the chart. Are you from Kerala?

Yes!

Where?

Palghat!

Where in Palghat?

Pallavur!

Her eyes now widened in alarm and locked.

That was when realization hit me like a thunderbolt. Of course! I moved my eyes to the left corner of her coat to check the name, yes, part of it was just what I thought - Dr Maimunna Faizal. I did not say anything, for I was not sure what to say, but muttering an affirmative, I continued to look at Maimunna, a trifle sheepishly. The doctor did not say much more, just tightened up and went through the routines of a perfunctory examination which doctors on rounds tend to do, check your lungs with a stethoscope, look under your eyes, check your pulse and the such. I was there for a angioplasty, the present day plumbing routine on your arteries to remove plaque buildups, resulting from an affluent and sedentary lifestyle.

It had been a fairly uneventful period of rest following a successful procedure and I was recovering famously or so declared the pretty and plump Dr Maimunna. But her voice betrayed her, for it was a wee bit nervous and the nurse missed not the looks her doctor were casting on this patient. She steered her doctor quickly off my bed and they were off to the next, after drawing my drapes back to ensconce me into my own insurance paid private hospital space.

Tremulous is not just it, but I think my mind was racing furiously into its recesses, to recover memories from my youth, of days more than 40 years into the past. It was difficult, a few events came to the fore quickly, but the details would not and it took me a good 2 hours to figure whatever little I could, concerning a girl called Maimunna and Pallavur. Amazing, I muttered, how on earth did this girl surface after so many years, and of all places as a cardiologist in Raleigh? What an amazing coincidence, to have come across a very person, the very same family which was once the cause célèbre in our obscure village of Pallavur?

I am sure you guys are wondering what kind of a silly story I am planning to regurgitate, assuming of course that it could be one of those silly childhood infatuations. In a way it is, but mostly it is not. As you would have guessed, I have to take you to our village and the 70’s.

I still remember that hot summer day, Mani and I were on the parapet wall and listening to the cricket commentary on my trusted little Keltron Transistor radio. I stopped to smile, thinking how a radio got its name from one of its minor components, the transistor, a part which had unceremoniously unseated the venerable radio valve that used to rule the roost. Anand Setalwad was droning away and we were all waiting eagerly for AIR to switch to the more enthusiastic Suresh Saraiya. BS Chandrashekar my favorite, was bowling and the Englishmen facing him were behaving like cats on a tin roof, dodging his vicious leg breaks and googlies. Just as the mike was handed over to Suresh Saraiya, a bullock cart appeared on the road connecting Kizhakethara to Kunissery and stopped in front on the post office. The post office in those days was housed in the nice home which had been rented out for that purpose, close to Kizhakethara.

Across the post office was a little cement home which had been built by Koran, Raman Nair’s supervisor. In fact people used to wonder how this bloke saved money to build his own hovel. It was not difficult actually, for he was the only one among the field workers who was careful with his earnings. He did not drink or whore around, and after a couple of decades saved enough to buy a small bit of land from Nair. That was the first of the big scandals in our village, as a landlord sold land to his serf. But my uncle had intervened and eventually the villagers accepted the fact. Now Koran had become old, his wife had passed on and it appears that he had decided to move to Kozhalmannam, where his daughter lived.

The bullock cart looked strange, it was not like one of those plain Palghat varieties, it was more ornate, there were colored ribbons festooning the vehicle, the shape itself was different and the bullocks pulling the two wheeler were bigger and healthier. The smaller wheels did not creak and groan and they even had a rubber padding around them. It was a summer afternoon, very hot and you could see the shimmer over the tar road, which was softer here and there. Krishnan Kutty, that son of the priest, had his Hawaii slippers stuck in the tar the other day! The cart stopped, the bullocks looked around and settled down, I guess they sighed with tiredness, after a long trek from god knows where. The whole incident was happening just a few hundred yards away from us, although a little curve in the road covered up parts of our sight.

A burly middle aged man alighted from the front, and we could make out that he was an affluent and purposeful man. His attire was quite alien and he sported a great big green Mecca belt around his waist and a fierce mustache and a beard under his beaky nose. The shirt he wore was clear white, his lungi was checkered, riding well above his ankles and his hair was not black but brownish red. What was most striking about him was his great height, sharp eyes and his somewhat haughty bearing. Next to jump out from the rear of the cart was a rotund lady, attired in bright Muslim clothes, more like a gown, and with her head covered. Last of all was a young girl in her teens, wearing a bright green skirt, a white blouse on top. Uncharacteristically her head was not covered and we could see from the distance that she was a beauty, incredibly fair and tall, but a little pudgy.

The cricket ball had changed hands, Bishen Bedi had replaced Chandra and his tight maiden overs were tiring the English. Now Balu Alaganan was droning on, and our attention strayed from cricket to the activity across the post office. The Pathan, for we assumed he was one such, had untethered the bullocks and tied them to the tree in front of the house. The woman and the girl were systematically removing their belongings from the cart and taking them to Koran’s house.

Mani, I am sure you remember my live-wire cousin, for I had introduced him some time ago, could not take this any longer. He had to find out what was going on and in a jiffy he was off, headed Eastwards. I had to smile seeing Mani go, his brown dhoti at half mast, hands and legs pumping furiously, eyes screwed up, head inclined up and Northwards as though it was tracking the wind. I went indoors, as I knew Eacharan had arrived after the weekly shopping at Alathur, some time ago. There were fresh and hot SNR banana chips to be munched.

I saw my uncle at his usual place, lounging on the rattan ‘easy chair’ with his legs draped on its extendable leg support. He had woken up after his afternoon siesta a little while ago and seeing me asked what the cricket score was. I was more interested in narrating to him what I had seen, that a Muslim family was settling down in Koran’s house across the post office. What I had not expected was to see the look of alarm turning to consternation on his otherwise resolute face. He dropped his legs down, pulled in the leg stops and sat up to ask me ‘Did you say Muslim’? And I answered ‘yes, they are Pathan’s, I think that fellow is 7’ tall! He has come with his wife and daughter’.

What I could not have imagined was the furor this event created in our otherwise obscure little village. In fact it took no more than a couple of hours for various events to unfold.

That evening Mani and I went to the temple. My brother was studying in Coimbatore and my cousin was studying rural management in Gujarat. All the other cousins were here and there, in Madras or Bombay while I was alone at Pallavur for a study holiday. So there was not much to do other than read, gossip with Mani or smoke a forbidden Passing-Show (only one we could afford, the cigarette with no filter but looked like it had one) cigarette and visit the temple to ogle the girls who came for evening Deeparadhana. In those days that was the only place where one could do a bit of honest flirting in Pallavur. Youngsters gathered there and not surprisingly many girls came too, to offer their prayers, looking demure and pretty, in small groups, with the heady fragrance from jasmine flowers trailing their wake.

I had a crush on my friend’s sister Lakshmi and so I was hoping to see her that day. She did come, wearing a blue skirt and half saree (dhavani – they call it) and looking ever so pretty and bashful while I was wondering how I could muster some courage and start a conversation with her, but with all the people around, it was proving neigh impossible. So Mani and I sat at the temple ledge and just looked and ogled. Lakshmi and her sister had finished their prayers in the Sreekovil, she had completed her pradikshanams and was soon off on a tangent, homeward bound. I had again lost an opportunity to talk to Lakshmi and there were only 20 days left of the study leave left to further this potential affair. In the engineering college, it was not a problem talking to girls, but here closer to home it was too complicated, the families knew each other so well and all news reached home in a jiffy.

Usually, the village retired for the day when the sun set. People went indoors to escape the heat, the mosquitoes, and listened to Vividbharati and other local AIR programs on the radio (no television to watch, those days). Interestingly, the village had just two phones, one in the post office and one in the company mill, as it was called. The mill was where paddy was de-husked and milled and polished to make white rice as you see it in shops, and my friend Babu’s family ran it. They also manufactured par boiled rice from raw rice, a process which created a fantastic aroma if you ask me, I can still smell it in my senses!

As usual the voltage dipped with Babu’s Mill working overtime and we all cursed him. I was trying to find a book to read, my uncle had a fantastic collection of books, some entirely unreadable and covering terrible subjects like world history. There were books on the great wars and anthropology. He also archived a number of old Readers Digest issues, Life magazine and Imprint magazines which were the best. On some days my aunt from Koduvayur brought in old pocketbooks for me to read. They were usually Perry Mason books which her cousins had picked up during their train journeys. I would devour those fascinating mysteries sitting next to the brightest lamp in the house.

Today it was all different. By 6 PM, the village think-tank appeared at our door steps. Karavatte Raman was first. Soon to come was Krishna Aiyer, then there was Aravancheri Raman Nair. Vadasseri Krishnan Nair followed and FACT TRS Iyer completed the entourage. Ooops, I forgot, after a little while, one more person landed up, Subedar Ananthan Menon. Sometimes I think we have the strangest characters in our village, comprising people from three communities - the Nair landlords who had their nalukettu homes, Iyers who were once upon a time associated with the temple and lived in the agraharams near the Tripallavurappan temple, and a few people who started and settled down due to marriage connections with the aforesaid landlords like Subedar Ananthan (he was actually from North Malabar). Of course there were Cherumans who worked in the fields, as well, but they were not represented in temple matters, those days.

The people of the village had only one occupation, agriculture, more specifically growing different varieties of paddy. That’s why you see those endlessly beautiful green paddy fields north and opposite our house, right upto the bottom of the black hills of the Western Ghats in the distance. On the rocky hill nearest, beyond the leaves of the Palmyra palms dotting your sight, you could see a little temple atop the hill and on cooler days, we cousins trekked up and lounged there till the sun set, shooting the breeze and chit chatting.

Of the families boasting some importance, Karavatte Raman was the remnant of a once prosperous tharavad, all that affluence lost when an uncle squandered it all away in the past, though they retained their position among the village elders. Nowadays he ran a Landmaster taxi and it is said that everybody in our village had travelled on it at least once, with normally specific reasons such as - a wedding at Guruvayur, the hospital in Palghat, the railway station at Olavakkode, the Palani temple or saree shopping at Trichur or Coimbatore, for a wedding. If somebody got bitten by a snake or a dog, Raman would speed the stricken patient to the GH at Palghat, though the speed is not what you believe, it was possibly 30-40 km per hour, and you would still reach Palghat in a half hour at best. He had a son, Mohanettan, whom I have on occasion seen cozying up to Aravancheri Malu in the dark recesses of the temple. Let him be, lucky fellow, though I don’t like Malu, she never gave me a good vibe. I don’t know too much of the Vadasseri tharavad, in fact I do not recall seeing many youngsters from that family, all of them were older people, so out of my circuit.

FACT Iyer gets his name because he used to work in FACT Kalamassery and had recently retired. He was a very helpful and philanthropic man actually, and would ensure delivery of fertilizers for the farmers of our village at special rates due to his company connections. He was the main person on all temple related activities, the temple committee president actually. Krishna Iyer on the contrary was a little eccentric and more interested in Yoga and some occult studies. I was told he used to teach history in Calicut and was an author of some history books and one on the Zamorins of Calicut. My uncle used to discuss matters with him for hours sometimes, and Iyer could often be seen cycling from one end of the village to other, dhoti tied round his neck, lost in thought.

Ananthan Menon was an oddball, he had returned after the Second World War from the Assam border where he served with the British under a general called William Slim. He used to tell us all kinds of stories and in general it was accepted that he added a 70% exaggeration factor, so we never knew exactly what and how much to believe. Like he used to say that black American prisoners were building a road to China. Nobody believed him at first, but it was only some year’s back that I read details of the Ledo road and the handiwork of the Americans at the CBI Theater, and how the Chinese Madam Chiang (Soong Mei Ling) got Americans to do it. Anyway, the villagers called him Vidals Ananthan (exaggerator Ananthan), but of course due to his apparent knowledge of all kinds of matters, he was part of the think tank.

The discussions were held at our poomukham or what we called the Porathalam. Everybody was animated, the decibel level went up, and my Gandhian uncle looked troubled. That was the scene I observed after I got back from the temple. The matter was simple. Pallavur had three strict commandments since time immemorial. One - the village would allow only Hindus to live within its temple Sanketham. Two – No coconut tree would be used for toddy tapping, ever and Three – People could go to other places to live and work, but they had to come for the yearly Navarathri festival in September or they would not be considered legitimate citizens. The first one had now been broken, and nobody had anticipated that a Pathan family would acquire Koran’s house.

Raman Nair mentioned that the rumor was that Koran had borrowed a sum of money from the Pathan who was originally from Putunagaram across the Tamil border, for his daughter’s wedding but had not paid back. Koran, by virtue of the stamp paper he had signed, had no recourse but to leave the house when his wife died to the Pathan and move to his daughter’s place. That is how the Pathan got the house, square and simple.

The elders were in a quandary, what to do next? The law would not serve any purpose, the Pathan would win and any argument over obscure and ancient edicts would not stand upto the test of the legal systems. As a quiet and harmless village, goondagiri which you see in movies was also not a direction to consider. The motely group decided to task the only person who spoke Hindi (they all assumed Hindi would be more persuasive) – Subedar Ananthan to go and speak to the Pathan. Ananthan without any further delay strode purposefully, you know what – a military man can be easily identified from his stride, its measured length and the simple movement of hands – the left hand will always follow in perfect synchrony to the right leg even when not marching and the hands won’t be idly swinging about like other’s tend to do.

Meeting the Pathan, who ceremoniously offered him a glass of red Rhoo-afsa, Menon explained gruffly the quandary the village was in. The Pathan, Afzal Khan was his name, politely told him that they had sold off their small hovel in Pudunagaram and had moved into this house, that they had nowhere else to go and that they had no plans to do anything else other than starting a small shop and maybe attach a small hotel to it over time. Menon came back and reported the matter to the group, who were aghast. A Muslim hotel now? The Iyers from the agraharam were trembling - What if they served beef and other non-vegetarian items in the village? Something had to be done, and in the end, they all hoped that my uncle would figure out a way.

My grandmother’s stentorian voice cut across the hall, she stated that it was already late and that the lamp lighting at dusk had not yet been done. This was a polite reminder for the think-tank to wind up their meeting and get lost. My grandmother was known to be very strict and even her son, my uncle the Karanavar of the tharavad, would obey when her voice was raised. My cousin sis soon walked in with the lamp and sat down to mutter the prayers on the kolayi or corridor adjacent to the thalam. My grandma would not have that, she wanted the prayers loudly sung and heard by all in the house. I saw that my uncle was distracted and troubled, he was trying to figure a solution and was perhaps using all the management experience he had gained from his corporate days in Calcutta.

After dinner, I tried to imbibe some knowledge from BL Theraja’s electrical engineering text book but was soon left wondering why they prescribed a book purportedly written by a librarian, not even an engineer for us, but it was all heavy going and thoughts of that pretty Pathana kept intruding my thoughts. Scenes of belly dancers from Persia (that’s how they show it in movies) kept flashing at the back of my mind, and in my dreams, I was soon prancing about with the Pathana.

Next morning, I accosted Mani and appraised him of the previous evening’s happenings. We decided to walk past the Pathan’s house. The father had gone out and the girl was up and about in front of the house. Before I could, Mani asked what her name was, and she answered without hesitation or a blink – Maimunna. There was nothing more to add or ask, and that was when we stole our first looks, and our glances locked. Like they say in those novels, I was simply rooted to the spot for a while, and I interpreted that the look conveyed a more than subtle startup interest. My blood pressure rose, I guess, so also my heart rate, so much so that I was alarmed to hear its thud thud. At close range, she looked fascinating, a bit on the plump side, charming and pretty. Mani pulled me away and we got back to doing other tasks like going to the post office to collect letters, a swim in the pond and more attempts at trying to master Theraja and Benjamin Kuo’s Control systems, for the upcoming exams. But Maimunna was a distraction and electrical technology, a nuisance.

Days passed by, the think-tank met often, voices were becoming louder, and my uncle was getting more irritable, after all he was planning to stand for the Panchayat president’s post and this was becoming a litmus test, it would not be good if he failed to find a solution. I knew he was very unhappy about the whole thing, on one hand, his principles were guiding him to let the Pathan be, but on the other hand, he did not want any kind of disharmony in the village, if he could help.

As for me, I wasted days and nights dreaming about Maimunna, but doing absolutely nothing to further anything on the romance front. I would force Mani to accompany me for walks past the Pathan dwelling and the girl and I would exchange glances, but that was it. Kind of stupid, don’t you think? But you can understand I suppose, it was too large a chasm to cross. Needless to mention that my interest in Lakshmi had waned.

This is not the kind of love story you have read, seen or heard of, it went nowhere. As it transpired, my uncle figured out a solution. He identified an area in nearby Ayilur where the Pathan could be relocated to. The villagers decided to split the cost of that plot, the Pathan could sell this Pallavur house to a worker in our employ and move there. My uncle was of course nominated to pitch the idea to the Pathan. Roughly a fortnight had gone by.

What happened was anticlimactic. When Afzal Khan was summoned to our place, the proud man had something else to say. He had heard about what was going on and had decided himself that this was not where he wanted to settle down, he had decided to move to Koduvayur, where he said, business prospects were better, there were many Rowthers and kinsmen and that they could even visit a mosque regularly. His said that his ancestors hailed from some Pashtun province and had moved to Madurai, generations ago. They had eked a living first as Kabuliwalahs and later as money lenders. Now it was time to do something else and his wife and daughter hated the bad will he was getting, lending money, that was why he had decided to start a shop. Anyway it was not meant to be in Pallavur, and hopefully they would do well in Koduvayur. A week later, they left. As I was getting ready to go back to college at Calicut, I heard the bullock cart tinkling and trundling its way through the hills and the forest road, headed to Koduvayur. I caught a glimpse of Maimunna and her mother seated within, both were looking straight ahead, neither unhappy nor forlorn. Perhaps this was not their first experience of being considered as outcasts.

That was so many years ago, was this the same Maimunna?

I was woken out of my reverie by the arrival of the doctor. This time she was alone, sans Thresiamma. She sat on the edge of my bed and asked me if I was the Pallavur lad she had once seen but never talked to. I nodded and she smiled, a wry smile.

‘You remember how you all drove us out of your village?’ She asked.

I had no answer.

She continued, ‘You know, we went to Koduvayur and I studied in the school there. Then I did my pre degree in Victoria and later got admission into the medical college at Trivandrum’.

I pretended not to be surprised.

She added a bit more of personal information– ‘After marriage, I landed up in America and have been working my way through the system. I am filling in for a friend in this hospital this month and we will move to New York, Faizal has obtained an appointment at the power utility there and I have got a job at NYU’.

Now looking at the chart, she went on – ‘So this is your name! I never knew that you had such a funny name! I kept mum, and she professionally filled me in - that my heart was OK, that my vitals were looking good and that I would be discharged soon….perhaps she wanted to add - ‘to lead the life you had chosen’.

I nodded.

With a pat on my thigh and a little sigh (did I imagine that?), she was gone.

I never saw her again. But I wondered often about that month in Pallavur and how the rules of coexistence were decided by a community. Perhaps it was wrong, perhaps it was right, but life in a village cannot be equated with the life in a crowded city like Bombay, I suppose.

The village is still the same, the rules remain, nothing has changed, nothing will, I presume….

For it is, a village frozen in time.

Notes

The Pallavur Sanketham’s rules are factual. KVK Iyer mentions it in his history papers and books. This story however, is pure fiction and just a figment of my imagination.

I had written a more detailed article on the sankethams of Malabar, do take a look at it, if such matters interest you. One thing is still not clear, how Pallavur had such a big temple when the village around it had so few people. Perhaps it all came about as a result of a rumored pillage of the Pallavur temple by Tipu’s marauding forces in the 18th century.

Pathana - meant to signify the feminine gender of Pathan, does not exist as a word – it is my own go at it.

I will also let you in on another not so well known fact - One of the three uralaers (sanketham trustees) responsible for the Pallavur temple was from EMS Nambuthirpad’s Illam. EMS describes his very first ride in a car from Vellangalloor to Pallavur, in his autobiography.

Along the way, I learnt that greenish colored drapes and gowns was chosen after the color of medicine, when a bloke named Harry Shermann in 1914 established that green was perfect for any kind of discriminatory observations and calm confinement.

English and Indian influences – Zimbly English

You start to notice the real difference only after you travel to other parts of the world. As we grew up in India, the English we learnt and the English we heard in the streets were we thought, the norm or the standard. So many usages that we assimilated were commonplace, and interestingly they arrived on the scene due to literal translation or adaptation of a Hindi, Urdu or even a South Indian phrase. Let us take a look at some of these interesting usages and as you can imagine, it is ever growing.

It was very common in the India of the 80’s, to hear the question, Sir, what’s your good name? The usage of Sir at every juncture can be heard only in India, and it for sure does not indicate that you are knighted. The honorific usage came about as a translation from sahib or janab, and coupled with the question above does not mean there are bad names, the ‘good name’ part comes from the colloquial Hindi, shub naam. Another typical usage is ‘boss’ every now and then, amongst the younger crowd. Hey boss, no problem boss, a usage which gets corrupted to ‘bass’ as you hit the Tamil and Telugu regions and ‘buuuss’ in Kerala. Now note here that the usage does not really mean that the person to whom it is directed is your supervisor, but somebody who is temporarily placed at a higher standing during the conversation, again like the use of Sir or Sahib.

And then you hear the usage, how was the lunch? Are yaar, it was First class! How on earth did that ‘first class’ come about? Perhaps due to the railways where the best was for the first class travelers. Sometimes you hear the question ‘when is he passing out’ and wonder, is he getting really drunk or not, only to realize that the question was about your son’s impending graduation. Ek kaam kar, a typical usage from Hindi gets translated to ‘Do one thing’. Maa ki kasam becomes ‘mother promise’ and you often come across ‘out of station’, a usage from the old EIC bureaucracy signifying ‘away from town on company duty’. I used to jot often whilst forwarding emails, the phrase ‘please do the needful’, and once a Turkish employee came to me asking what exactly that was supposed to be. It was then that I realized how stupid the usage was, when placed out of Indian context. Another typical office usage is ‘will revert back’, meaning I will work on it and get back to you, and does not mean the situation will go back to what it once was. Spoken English in India has many such usages and a common usage you will come across in India is the ever common addition of ‘no’ or ‘na’ to the end of the sentence, once attributed to ‘convent educated’ people!

Usages like ‘prepone’ and ‘like that only’ can never be found anywhere else and when somebody comes to you and says ‘I have a doubt’, you understand it instinctively only in India. It is most definitely not a part of a longer sentence such as I have a doubt on Chris’s experience, but it means you are unsure! In America, people get mugged all the time, accosted and deprived of their belongings violently, while mugging in India means cramming for your exams. Fiancé or Fiancée becomes ‘would be’ in India. But there are mixed language sentences which firanghees cannot pick up - like in Bombay you hear the usage ‘tension mat lo yaar’…meaning don’t get tensed up. Sometimes you make a lame joke and the hearer in Delhi says, ‘aree, poor joke’. I wonder – since there were langada beggars, lame became poor? Schoolmates, classmates and batch mates take such important positions in the hierarchy of your memories and are not to be fooled with. It does not mean a mixing of genders in any way, and they need not be friends but belonging to a particular group connected by the calendar and an alma mater.

Nothing to beat the usage of rubber, which in India is precisely what it is, something that can also be used to erase pencil marks, but with its popular usage as a term for condom, you have to be careful these days. Another term I had issues with was the usage ‘co-brother’, while working at Madras. I used to wonder what exactly it meant – brother in law? Step brother? Well, generally it means your wife’s sister’s husband i.e. your wife’s brother is brother-in-law, and to convey a proper relationship, your sister-in-law's husband is your co-brother, a usage common in the Tamil regions of India. These days it is difficult to hear the Tamil usage cent per cent, but once upon a time, it meant ‘very sure, pukka or ‘definitely’! ‘God promise’ is something you will not hear in any other country (another version of - I swear!).

A most commonly used word is ‘fired’. If you say ‘he fired me’, it means ‘he shouted at me’, in India, not that somebody who has been thrown out of his job! Or there is the common place usage ‘by chance’ often heard in the Delhi regions added to Hindi sentences. The wife or missus usually go ‘marketing’ to the mall, and puts all the stuff in the ‘dickey or boot’ (trunk). The drivers in India has to have knowledge in changing the ‘stepney’ (spare tire) and you leave your RC book in the ‘dash’ (glove compartment). But it is only in Bombay suburban trains that you come across ‘time-pass’, which signifies roasted peanuts (eaten to pass time!). In India we have brothers and we have cousin brothers, and everybody who is not your parent is still an aunty or an uncle. I have come to the conclusion that this is so since we have been taught from childhood that ‘all Indians are your brothers and sisters’.

I read the other day that Amazon is teaching Alexa to learn Hinglish, but to be very frank, my experience with Siri and all other similar assistants has been simply terrible. They just do not understand me. The other day my friend was trying to instruct Siri to call me and the phone kept telling him it did not know his mother (for Siri – ‘man madhan’ sounded like ‘my mother’).

I read recently that English colleges are these days offering Hinglish as a subject finally signifying that it is not really ‘same same, but different’. Portsmouth College has offered it as a course and all British diplomats have since a few years been instructed to learn it! But the problem in India is that there is more than Hinglish, as you travel around, there is tanglish, manglish and what not. The only trick is to think in context, especially as the pronunciation of the original word also gets clobbered as in jeebra for zebra! You remember the usages with cum in India? I was in Rooms to go the other day and a young couple from the new state of Telangana were asking the wide eyed Latino sales girl for a ‘Sofa cum bed’. She looked flabbergasted. Well, don’t try using that in US, cum is ejaculate, in colloquial usage. Dual usages such as seat cum berth, toilet cum bathroom and so on are applicable only in India.

The version of Punjabi English mostly heard around Birmingham and London is quite different though, it is more modern in origin and reading a remarkable novel ‘Londonstani’ helped me understand some of the usages from that ‘rudeboy’ world. It is very difficult to follow if you have not lived in England or listened to it for a while. You get to know for example that coconut is the Indian Englishman who is brown outside in looks, but white inside in thinking. So many such similar usages common to the Punjabi dominated suburbs around Heathrow.

Indians actually get upset when you try to tell them they are not native speakers of English or that it is perhaps an alien language for them. They learn it all the time starting from kindergarten and use it effectively every day and at all occasions, sometimes even at home and trying to imply that others speak it better irritates them no end. Take for example Krishna Menon in the 50’s. Menon was complimented by a well-meaning Englishwoman on the quality of his English. "My English, Madam," he said to the hapless lady, Brigid Brophy, "is better than yours. You merely picked it up: I learned it."

In olden times we did have bad English speakers who spoke a broken English, what they called Babu angrezi, and without doubt, such English is still spoken not only in the remote parts, but also major cities and for that matter even more literate states such as Kerala. Nissim Ezekiel once wrote a nice book called Very Indian poems in Indian English and an example from ‘The Patriot’ will suffice to illustrate it

I am standing for peace and non-violence. Why world is fighting fighting - Why all people of world are not following Mahatma Gandhi, I am simply not understanding. Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct. I should say even 200% correct. But modern generation is neglecting- Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.

Pakistan behaving like this, China behaving like that, It is making me very sad, I am telling you Really, most harassing me. All men are brothers, no? In India also, Gujarathies, Maharashtrians, Hindiwallahs All brothers -Though some are having funny habits. Still you tolerate me, I tolerate you…..

The usage of English on Indian signboards, mainly in the North leaves you dumbfounded at times, but when you understand the intent, you can only smile at the mix-ups in usage, when a beer bar become ‘bear bar’, where a tailor offers ‘alteration of ladies and gents’, where they launch a new drink called ‘computer juice’, and a popular Samsung advertisement states that ‘penis is mightier than sword’ and Anu S Sharma’s English school becomes ‘Anus English school’, or instances where they inform- that ‘shop lifters would be prostituted’. And of course there is the famous signboard seen often in Indian towns and cities ‘entry from the backside’ or when you hear it ‘open the backside of the car’. But these are examples of mistakes. It is also properly used, for Hinglish is popular in mainstream advertisements like ‘Hungry kya’? for Dominoes, ‘dil maange more’ for Pepsi, ‘life ho to aisi’ for Coke, ‘what your bahana is’ for MacDonald’s and so on…

Now coming to manglish, the heavily accented English spoken by Kerala’s, especially South Travancore Malayalis, a typical example can be seen below. My brother left koliage and zimbli went to gelf, agjually thubaai where he became very bissi. Agjually my ungle got him the joab. Now he yearns luot of mani and does not pay ingum tax. You know, they have no tembles there, but he listens to lot of pope music and he is planning to do his yum bee yae. The other day his car had an accident with a loree and his aandy had to jemb out of the window to escape. No otos in thubai!

There are more complex ones as documented by the British council, of the ‘teacher sitting on your head’ (wo sir par baitha hai). He is ‘eating my brain’ (demakh khata hain), my neighbor is ‘foreign return’ and was ‘doing his graduation’ in London, and even his sister is ‘convent educated’! There is also the special application of words like belong ‘I belong to Delhi’, but the usage ‘monkey cap’ can only be found in India, try telling you are looking for a balaclava, nobody, I am sure not a single soul would understand the term but a monkey cap, is definitely Indian. Talking about that, we have a number of baby-sitting parents visiting US during the April-Sept time frame and in our neighborhood, we can still see some of them going for their early morning walks in the pedestrian pathways with a monkey cap around their heads, imagine, in May – June when it is like 80 degrees Fahrenheit!!

I will always remember how my boss once corrected me when I said ‘yesterday night’ many moons ago. He explained patiently that it is ‘last night’ or as in ancient English ‘yester night’, never yesterday night. Similarly today morning is always ‘this morning’. Another oft used Indian phrase is ‘years back’ I remember him from years back! ‘Let’s discuss about movies’ is not considered right, it is ‘let’s discuss movies’, similarly ‘let’s order for pizza and fries’ is wrong, the ‘for’ is not required in the Englishman’s English. Now these rules are the so called Victorian English rules, todays rules are more relaxed with so many versions of grammar, spellings and so on. Microsoft word offers various English (US, Australian, UK, Indian, Caribbean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Philippines, South African, Singaporean and so on…..) options for language proofing!

Then of course, we have the interesting case of Parsees who added English trade and food names to their names as surnames, and without doubt are hilarious. And so you will come across Canteenwalas, Cakewalas, Masalawalas, Narielwala, Paowala, Confectioners, Messmans, Bakerywalas, Peppermintwala, Daruwala, Rumwala, Toddywala, Tavernwala, Biscutwala, Hotelwala, etc. But nothing to beat the sodawaterbottleopener wallah. That was a constructive and practical method of designating Parsees by profession in Bombay, I suppose.

It is always good to check out how some of Indian lingo entered mainstream English. Take the word Ginger – It was originally a Malayalam Tamil word, Inchi. Similar are the origins of Copra, Coir, betel, catamaran, cheroot, areca, calico, pappadum, teak, mango, curry.” There are so many similar ones from Hindi, Urdu and other Indian languages. The word Blighty – shows how language is constantly evolving. “It’s usually used by expat Brits referring to Britain and the homeland as in ‘good old Blighty’ but it comes from the Urdu word for foreigner or European, ‘vilayati’. One of the most delightful books you can refer to is the voluminous ‘Hobson Jobson dictionary’ which I introduced to you all some years ago. You will find many examples of worlds which are now part of English and this book tells you their origins.

Sometimes, it all makes sense, our own Ami - Madhavi Kutty aptly expressed it all, while introducing her ‘Summer in Calcutta’

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,

I speak three languages, write in

Two, dream in one.

Don't write in English, they said, English is

Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I like? The language I speak,

Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness’s

All mine, mine alone.

It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,

It is as human as I am human, don't

You see?

There are many papers and books which have analyzed Hinglish and its development, and some even go on to point out that Shoba De writing in Stardust was the originator of popular Hinglish in Bombay while at the same time, Salman Rushdie used a similar vein in his books, living in Britain. This is a topic you can write or talk about on and on, especially if you have lived in India and traveled about. But I promised myself to make this short and that I will.

Strange isn’t it, they say that about 300-400 million in India speak English, out of which 100-200 million speak it perfectly. Just imagine, that signifies the highest number of Indian speakers in the world and so wonder not why this new lingo was born, but see how it is going to develop! It is time for Alexa, Cortona and Siri to figure it all out and factor it in. After all most of the coding for those voice apps is being done by Indians anyway!

And there will always be Shashi Tharoor to gently guide us with great examples of how an Oxford educated English lord in London would have put it. He said - The purpose of speaking or writing is to communicate with precision. I choose my words because they are the best ones for the idea i want to convey, not the most obscure or rodomontade ones….

Recommended reading

Entry from backside only – Binoo K John

Hinglish by the way is defined as - a portmanteau of Hindi and English, is the macaronic hybrid use of English and South Asian languages from across the Indian subcontinent, involving code-switching between these languages whereby they are freely interchanged within a sentence or between sentence

Pics - Courtesy Amul

Indian role in defusing the Korean situation 1950-54

The 38^th parallel, the real line of latitude does not actually divide the Koreas, but in diplomatic parlance is considered to be the divider between the two. Prior to the Second World War (1910-1945) the whole of Korea was under the Japanese regime. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Americans and Russians decided to divide the country into the North and South roughly around the 38^th. The actual line of demarcation today is situated at a slight angle to the 38^th and meanders from the North to the South in a more leisurely fashion. The tensions around that line and the demilitarized zone, close to the large city of Seoul have since its creation, seesawed wildly, at times coming perilously close to nuclear confrontation between world powers. In the 50’s, one of the main peacemakers working hard to prevent a nuclear attack and larger conflict was India, a story not well known to most. The people who played a part in that tale are very familiar to us, and the story is a master class in plays, counter plays and the art of diplomacy. Today with the backdrop of the meeting which took place between Trump and Kim Jong-un and the prospect of lasting peace between the two Koreas, this story will I hope, provide an interesting aside.

The line was established in a hurry actually, for the Americans were worried that the Russians could occupy the whole of Korea after entering the war against Japan. Col Dean Rusk, was tasked with the job of drafting a line, something that he had no idea about. He states - Using a National Geographic map, we looked just North of Seoul for a convenient dividing line but could not find a natural geographical line. We saw instead the thirty-eighth parallel and decided to recommend that ... [Our commanders] accepted it without too much haggling, and surprisingly, so did the Soviets. And that was how Korea got divided! Things got complicated after the chill in the relation between the super powers, and the onset of the cold war. The UNTCOK (temporary commission on Korea) was then formed under the aegis of the UN, headed by KPS Menon. But the Soviets were firmly against it and did not allow the commission to enter the 38^th or set up elections in the North.

By the autumn of 1948 the independent states of North and South Korea had been established, pitted firmly against each other the communist North headed by Kim Il Sung and the South by Syngman Rhee. Both sides conducted independent elections, and the South’s election was supported by the UN. Following a number of deadly border skirmishes, the North Koreans launched a full-scale invasion against the south on June 25, 1950. Whether it was the North who really started it is not clear and Karunakar Gupta is of the opinion that the Indian Chairman of the UNSC did not consider the claims of the North while passing a decision favoring the South. India’s BN Rau condemned the invasion, a decision which was not supported by Delhi’s MEA since Nehru remained under the opinion that India had abstained. During all these parlays, the Soviets were boycotting the UN over the non-inclusion of China in the UN. The US decided to provide military support to the South and Gen Mc Arthur was to lead the UN forces into Korea to help repel the North Koreans as well as to engage in a battle against communism in an Asia under transition. India refused direct involvement, but finally acceded by providing limited moral and medical support.

This was a critical phase and India’s involvement as an interlocutor in matters concerning Asia considered very important. The players on the UN scene and the ambassadors in key capitals were experienced diplomats, namely VK Krishna Menon, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, KM Panikkar, BN Rau, KPS Menon, KN Raghavan and so on, each held in high esteem. At this critical juncture, USSR offered support for India’s permanent membership if it supported the Soviets on Korea while US offered India the same to replace a possible Chinese position at the UN. Nehru rejected both proposals stating that India was opposed to these kinds of pressures to create a chasm between India and China. Since China was not represented in the UN, India was the interlocutor between them and the West. It was to prove costly during the next four years for her relationship with USA became acrimonious and opinions vastly divided. The Americans threat of ‘you are either with us or against us’ was bandied about every now and then, as India sought to position itself as a neutral, nonaligned and Commonwealth member in the new world order. Nehru’s anti-imperialist views were viewed by America as communist, especially Delhi’s support for the PRC during the Korean War years. Over and above all that Nehru believed in the UN and its mediatory powers, more than war and with his efficient representation at the UN, sought to build up an important role as an educated mediator for sticky situations.

As Mac Arthur’s forces were poised to enter the North, the world feared that the Chinese would enter the conflict in support of the North Koreans. In Oct 1950 the Zhou Enlai summoned Panikkar and asked him to convey to the West that if the US forces did cross the 38^th, China would consider it an act of aggression and would come to the assistance of the North. The Americans at that time thought that the Chinese were bluffing and that Panikkar was panicking. Mc Arthur was tasked with destroying N Korean armed forces, but to stay clear of Soviet border or Manchuria. For a few days the UN forces advanced without resistance and the Americans believed that the Chinese had bluffed, they even jokingly called KM Panikkar as ‘panicky’. It would be “sheer madness” for Mao to take on America, Acheson said, and the Indian warning was the “mere vaporings of a panicky Panikkar.”

But they were wrong and the Chinese who entered through Manchuria inflicted heavy damages on the US led troops. This now resulted in the UN allowing a Chinese representation to debate the issue at the UN and the Chinese called for sanction on the US for occupation of Formosa and armed intervention in Korea. As the debate became acrimonious and heated, the then US president Truman decided to force the issue by issuing a nuclear threat. Nehru conveyed through Atlee visiting Washington that an Atom Bomb drop in Korea was a no-no and requested that Gen Mc Arthur’s powers be clipped.

India then tried to pressure China into declaring a ceasefire, but did not succeed for the Chinese wanted full US withdrawal. As the matter deadlocked, Truman declared a national emergency in the US, driving up mass hysteria and panic, and China were now convinced that the Americans were now preparing for a full scale war in Korea. As the permanent powers seemed to be unable to do anything at the UN in these matters, the ‘little six’ as they were called, India, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Norway, Egypt and Ecuador tried to bring about a solution, but that effort did not take off. Eventually the commonwealth ministers met in London in Jan 1951 to discuss a fresh set of proposals agreeing to return of Formosa to China, entry of China into the UN and a cease fire in Korea.

The Chinese seemed amenable to most of the terms but the Americans did not agree and fighting continued. The 60^th Indian Parachute Field Ambulance provided the medical cover for the operations, dropping an ADS and a surgical team and treating over 400 battle casualties apart from the civilian casualties that formed the core of their humanitarian objective. But the fighting also moved into a stalemate stage by July which resulted in the US finally requesting Soviet involvement for negotiations. During the interim Mac Arthur was relieved of his powers by an incensed Truman who later said“I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President ... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail”.

The war itself, especially the battles at Pusan, Unsan and Incheon, the involvement of USSR and China and their leaders Stalin and Mao, and the leadership of Mac Arthur etc is a subject which would involve a huge amount of text, so I will not get into the same here. The negotiations started with the first liaison meeting on 8 July 1951. The Americans considered the negotiations to be very difficult with the UN according to the US being unduly influenced by India and other neutrals. In 1952 the negotiations ground to a halt with the issue of the POW’s.

The next rounds were actually fought at the UN and involved India to a large extent. In China, Panikkar had been replaced by KN Raghavan (I hope you recall him from my previous article on the IIL in Penang). At the UN, the impeccable ‘saint’ KN Rau had been replaced by a suave Vijayalakshmi Pandit supported by the mercurial and highly impetuous VK Krishna Menon. While the Chinese insisted on the 1949 Geneva Convention implementation where the prisoner would be returned to the country of his origin, the Americans wanted the principle of voluntary repatriation to be enforced (after a preliminary screening it was determined that only 73,000 of the 170,000 wanted to return home). It was soon a matter of egos and neither side would budge. The American bombing of the power stations at Yalu, Poyang and Antung complicated the issue further and the Chinese did not back off.

And with the arrival of ‘Formula’ Menon, the so called ‘Menon Plan’ took shape whereby a special commission took into custody the non-repatriate prisoners and decided later on their disposition. The unhappy Americans launched the 21 Power draft resolution when they saw that the Menon plan found support with other commonwealth members. Meanwhile, a new US president Ike Eisenhower was elected, based mainly on his assurances to end the Korean War quickly. The various drafts of the POW plan, the acrimonious relations between Menon and Vijayalakshmi, the tough exchanges between Menon and Acheson, the mentions of the existence of a Menon Cabal, the mediation by Canadas Lester Pearson, Menon’s secretiveness, all add color to the larger story. Without doubt, it was a tense affair, but in the end things worked out.

Menon revised his plan to create a repatriation commission to take custody of all prisoners, repatriating immediately willing prisoners and persuade over the next 90 days the rest to return home. After 90 days the fate of unwilling prisoners would be decided by the UN after discussions. India upped the ante by summarily submitting the draft without an US approval as Acheson continued to persuade members to accept the US draft. Acheson was furious when he found little support for his plan and obtained Truman’s approval to vote against Menon’s. But matters took a different course as the Soviets seemed against the Indian proposal. The US now decided to support the Indian resolution, hoping that the communist states would vote against it. Nehru was aghast at all this and was considering to step out of the whole Korean business. When the UN members now saw a vacillating Nehru, they put their weight behind Menon’s plan which had huge support and in Dec 1952 adopted it despite a lack of support from the Soviets and the Chinese.

Truman was formally succeeded by Eisenhower in USA and Dulles replaced Acheson as secretary of state. During the 20^th May NSC meeting Eisenhower concluded that if the truce talks failed, the United States would have no choice but to initiate a greatly expanded military offensive into North Korea, Manchuria and China using nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower went so far as setting a tentative D-day for May 1954. He directed Secretary Dulles to relay that threat through Nehru and Raghavan to the Chinese.

On 5^th March 1953, Soviet leader Josef Stalin died and was replaced by Georgi M. Malenkov. Malenkov and his advisors were facing unrest in Eastern Europe, wanted to ease the tensions with the West, and saw the Korean War as a growing burden. They, as is believed, consequently relaxed Stalin's previous opposition to a negotiated truce announcing a ‘peace offensive’ at Stalin’s funeral. The Chinese and North Koreans facing huge expenses and losses also agreed to negotiation concessions and with it the Korean War came to an end in 1953. The Chinese in the end did not achieve much from this foray, for neither did they obtain UN membership nor Taiwan.

Krishna Menon however saw no connection between the death of Stalin and the softening of Soviet policy toward the West. "Unlike most Americans," he said. "Indians have no terror or phobia of the Communists. In India we don't say. "Thank God the man is dead." After six years in the United Nations, Menon has come to the conclusion that "effective diplomacy is the capacity to keep quiet."

The Chinese signaled that they were willing to exchange sick prisoners and accepted the rest of the Menon plan. After some differences of opinion with the Americans were ironed out, the Menon plan was finally executed. The resolution as submitted by Brazil and received unanimous support. Meanwhile South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee unilaterally released 27,000 prisoners allowing them to escape into S Korea and threatened to kick out the Americans from S Korea if they entered into an armistice. But an armistice was completed on July 27^th 1953, with the South Koreans not signing it.

The person in charge of the POW transfer operations was none other than Lt Gen Thimayya, assisted by Maj Gen Thorat. India helped with the repatriation of captured prisoners to each side, a very delicate issue because thousands of North Korean and Chinese prisoners wanted to be free to stay in the South and not go home. The Indian custodian force located at the DMZ called ‘Camp Nagar’ and ‘Shanti Nagar’, despite severe criticism and lack of support from the Rhee (they forbid the Indian forces to land in S Korea) regime, supervised a careful process that ensured they were able to defect, but without too much humiliation for the communist regimes. The UNC held 132,000 prisoners while the Communists held 12,773 prisoners. All of these prisoners had the choice of whether or not they wanted to be repatriated. The vast majority of prisoners wanted to return home and each side had 60 days to hand the prisoners over. Statistics shows that under the operations Little Switch and Big Switch eventually around 83,000 POWs were repatriated to the north, while around 22,000 preferred to remain in the south. Nehru decided to bring the 88 left to India.

Interestingly of the 88 prisoners who were brought to India, 5 were sent to N Korea, 2 to China, 55 to Brazil, 11 to Argentina and 9 to Mexico. Two returned to S Korea while the remaining five who elected to stay in India namely Ji gi cheol, Hyun Dong hwa, Jang Gi Hwa, Cho in Cheol, and Ji Sin young lived out the rest of their lives in India. Four died in India and the last went back to S Korea with his son.

On 27 April 2018 the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula was signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un which commited the two countries to denuclearization and talks to bring a formal end to conflict. The two leaders agreed to, later in the year, convert the Korean Armistice Agreement into a full peace treaty, formally ending the Korean War after 65 years.

The broad canvas of geopolitics that played in the background is a great study for those interested. The Soviets pulled the cords at key moments, the Chinese were goaded on by the Soviets, the North Koreans perhaps got the nod and support from both in varying amounts, the South Koreans and Syngman Rhee (who himself had been raising the war bogey to prop his regime) were supported by America who was fighting a war against communism and hoping to arrest its spread into Asia’s southern regions. The global cold war played its part as a backdrop to the various acts and sub acts and it was into this heady mix that Nehru and Menon stepped in, perhaps attempting to project the intellectual might of a young India authoritatively in the world arena, for the first and last time. The Korean War bruised many a leader and India earned the distrust of America and S Korea due to her firm stance. When India refused to call China an aggressor, Truman is said to have stated – ‘Nehru has sold us down the Hudson. His attitude has been responsible for our losing the war in Korea’. It is believed by academics that Truman resented India’s socialist stance and her being right about potential Chinese intervention.

The Canadians proved to be a bridge between India and US throughout the play of events wanting India’s direct involvement while at the same time pointing out that America resented public Indian criticism of any US stance or policy. In addition, this was also to prove an important point to the Americans that the general assembly and not the UN Security Council would prove decisive in thwarting war and attaining peace.

Tragically most historians and strategists agree- if only the Americans had listened to KM Panikkar, the situation may have been different. Panikkar himself wrote in his diary later in 1950 that “America has knowingly elected for war, with Britain following. The Chinese armies now concentrated on the Yalu will intervene decisively in the fight. Probably some of the Americans want that. They probably feel that this is an opportunity to have a show down with China. In any case MacArthur’s dream has come true. I only hope it does not turn into a nightmare.” It did eventually when in Tokyo, MacArthur and Willoughby completely dismissed the Indian warning as merely communist propaganda delivered by an untrustworthy source. Over 2.5 million people were to die during the Korean War, including 30,000 Americans.

References

Military armistice in Korea: a case study for strategic leaders –lieutenant colonel William T. Harrison

Between the Blocs: India, the United Nations, and Ending the Korean War - Robert Barnes

India’s Diplomatic Entrepreneurism: Revisiting India’s Role in the Korean Crisis, 1950–52 - Vineet Thakur

How Did the Korean War Begin? Karunakar Gupta

Conflicting visions – Canada and India in the cold war world 1946-1976 - Ryan M. Touhey

Explaining the origins and evolution of India’s Korean policy - Rajiv Kumar

The Role of India in the Korean War-Kim ChanWahn

Ending the Korean War: Reconsidering the Importance of Eisenhower's Election - Robert Barnes

Heroes of the Korean War: Lieutenant General Subayya Kadenera Thimayya – See link

Sept 6^th 1945, Singapore – A small crowd is gathered in front of an Azad Hind monument at Connaught Drive. As Indian Engineers position guncotton charges, Major Donald Brunt (Royal Engineers) is seen checking the fuses. The fuse is lit and the charges explode. Troops of the 17^th Dogra Regiment push over the monument (marked ‘Itmad’ on its larger face) with poles; a civilian crowd claps and cheers enthusiastically; while a Malay policeman observes. The clock of the nearby tower, shows 6pm. A burly Indian Naik (corporal) of the 5^th Indian Division, with an Mk 5 Sten gun with a bayonet fitted, is standing together with two other soldiers, looking on. A guard of honor of the 17^th Dogra Regiment is dressing back a few paces as a brigadier in a kilt (Is it Brigadier Patrick McKerron?) approaches and takes the salute. The brigadier spoke later, perhaps with enthusiasm after this important symbol in the memory of INA soldiers, built by one Col C J Stracey, had been finally demolished.

But Pat McKerron or Mountbatten, who ordered the demolition, could not have predicted their own flight out of India, just two years later. Now, who could this Stracey be? To get to his story, we have to traverse a long road back in time, to the last stages of the 2^ndWorld War and the years preceding Indian Independence.

Sometimes you just stumble on the beginnings of a story while researching another and that is how I came across the tale of a fascinating character, an Anglo Indian named Cyril John Stracey, who served as a senior officer in the INA. That itself should evoke some curiosity, an Anglo Indian in a nationalist Indian outfit? It was not easy to unearth details of his life, but as it emerged gradually, bit by bit, it turned out to be a heartwarming tale, sandwiched and hidden between better known stalwarts in the INA and those of his other illustrious brothers, the two who served in the British bureaucracy - the ICS, the Forest Service and the third who rose to occupy the apex position in the Madras Police.

I have always admired the Anglo Indian community, a community which just happened. Some in British India reviled them for their leanings to things and thoughts West, many pitied or ridiculed their dual existence but others watched enviously from afar at their trysts with music and dance, their connections with the railways and their lighter outlook on life. Many said ‘but naturally’, when they moved off to Britain and Australia, seeking easier acceptance from the paternal races that created them, moving off after feeling a certain animosity in Independent India. There were a few though, who made India their home fighting through and shining as brilliant diamonds.

Eric Stracey did just that as he rose through the ranks to become the first DGP of Police in erstwhile Madras. His books on his Anglo Indian upbringing in Bangalore and his life in the police forces are interesting, but this is not his story, it is the story of his lesser known elder brother Cyril John Stracey. The Stracey progeny were in all 11 (four died as infants), four boys and three girls who lived their lives mostly in India and each of them were examples of how one could serve on public services. The eldest Patrick started the wildlife preservation society of India, Ralph became an ICS officer, Eric joined the police, Doreen became a doctor, Margaret a nurse and Winnifred, a teacher.

The Stracey’s affair with India actually started from the early days of the EIC when John and Edward from Cork came to India. Interestingly John worked at the offices of Hyder Ali as the British commercial agent representing the Bombay factory while Edward worked for the EIC at Madras, a bunch who were fighting Hyder. Both married Portuguese Indian girls, perhaps from Cochin and later worked for the Nizam of Hyderabad while their children continued working for the British who had by then started to govern India.

Their father Daniel a Catholic a district forest officer (mother Ethel a protestant), had a connection to Malabar, for he was born in Chittoor Palghat. Many other family connections can be seen with Malabar, Eric spent a couple of terms with the MSP at Malappuram, post the Moplah revolts. Ralph’s daughter married a Malayali, Pat married Peace Mammen a Syrian catholic from Kerala, Pat’s best friend was Ramabhadran, related to the Kollengode Raja’s.

The Stracey children moved from Andhra and grew up in Richmond town Bangalore, then a quiet and cool town with a cantonment and an Anglo Indian minority. Cyril who was born in 1915 at Kurnool, turned out to be quite different, one who chased adventure and traversed the world. He did his schooling in St Joseph’s Bangalore, but did not complete his intermediate and went on to join the Indian Military Academy in 1935 as a gentleman cadet. Eric records the difficulties the family had to endure in meeting Cyril’s 2 ½ year course expenses at Dehradun (Pat deferred his marriage to help pay for his younger brother and their mother had to give up their home in Bangalore and move to Rangoon as a house guest with her brother in law) after their father passed away in 1932. Other family friends also chipped in with support as Cyril was not granted a scholarship which he deserved, for that was awarded instead to the son of a well-placed ICS officer. Eric recalls that Cyril as a youngster was actually more artistically inclined than soldierly, could draw and paint well, and could play the piano with some proficiency.

The IMA’s newly graduated officers were not considered on par with the Sandhurst graduated ones for they were Indian commissioned officers, not the king’s commissioned officers, who were treated highly. ICO’s had a lower pay and were only supposed to replace the VCO’s such as Risaldars, Jamedars and Subedars. The first two terms made them physically fit, adept in English, accounting and in the next three terms, they were provided strategic and tactical training. Camps in the plains and mountains provided them exposure to difficult terrains and tactics. After graduation (Gen Bewoor, Army Chief was his batch mate), Cyril was attached to the West Kent’s at Lucknow (This posting, according to Eric Stracey, with a British battalion was a compulsory part of his initiation to regimental life before he joined his regular Indian battalion). His formal posting was with the 1^st battalion of the 14^thPunjab regiment at Bannu at the North West frontier.

In Feb 1941 the battalion was deputed to Burma. This battalion later became part of the 11^th Indian division’s 15^thbrigade and was in Sept 1941 tasked with preparing the defenses at Jitra on the Malay-Thai border anticipating a potential Japanese invasion.

On Dec 7^th, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging America into the 2^nd World War. The Japanese attack was intended to destroy the pacific fleet, thereby preventing it from interfering with an intended Japanese conquest of key SE Asian countries such as Malaya, Thailand and Burma, the latter for oil and food resources. On Dec 8^th, the Japanese invasion forces landed at Kota Baru (actually 70 minutes before Pearl Harbor was hit, so that was the place where the first attack occurred). Despite their heavy initial resistance, British forces were eventually forced to retreat to their defenses in front of the airfield. On 11^th December 1941, the Japanese started bombing Penang. Jitra and then Alor Star fell into Japanese hands on 12^th December 1941. The British had to retreat to the south. On 16^th December 1941, the British left Penang to the Japanese, who occupied it on 19^th December. By 31^st January 1942, the whole of Malaya had fallen into Japanese hands.

In the meantime the conquest of Burma was underway. On Dec 14^th the Japanese bombed Victoria point airbase, the southernmost British airfield in Burma and commenced the land based operations. Another Japanese aim was to destroy of the new Lashio Burma Road link to China. An attack or foray into India was never intended, originally.

As we saw parts of the 1^st division of the 14^thPunjab regiment were at Jitra. Mohan Singh and Cyril Stracey were part of separate but incomplete defensive positions laid around Jitra. When the Japanese arrived on the 8^th, they had solid air support and tanks. Barbed wire lines had been partially erected and some anti-tank mines laid but heavy rains had flooded the shallow trenches and gun pits. Many of the field telephone cables laid across the waterlogged ground failed to work, resulting in a lack of communication during the battle. In the Jitra attack, the Japanese decimated the under equipped British Indians who had little answer for the Japanese tanks supported from the air. The remaining British forces fled into the rubber plantations and hid. Both Mohan Singh’s and Stracey’s teams were hiding and while the former was contemplating his future, the latter was forced to assume leadership of a motely group of officers, soldiers, Gurkhas and so on, in the jungle.

C.J. Stracey

According to Stracey the ferocity of the Japanese attack forced the men to take refuge in the rubber plantations and as the lone road was taken by the Japanese, they could not venture back. The locals gave no shelter or support and eventually when the Japanese reached the location on 16^thwhere these men were hiding, the hungry and battered men had no choice but to surrender. They were taken to the police HQ at Alor Setar where the Japanese started to separate the Indians from the English. Stracey was initially left with the British, but when his orderly piped in that Stracey was Indian, he was moved with the Indians. It was here that Stracey met his old pal Mohan Singh and Mohan Singh updated him of the INA activities and his newfound involvement together with Pritam Singh and Fujiwara. He explained that Rash Behari Bose had arrived there from Japan and agreed on a potential tie up with the captured Indian soldiers to fight the British. Stracey was asked by Singh to explain all this to the new crowd after a cleanup operation of the town and exhort them to join the IIL as it was called.

Stracey was confused and torn, wondering what to do, for his heart was not set on cooperating with the enemy. He also noticed that some junior officers were now being awarded senior positions in the INA organization, and was a bit miffed about it. Anyway as matters took their course, Stracey did not join Mohan Singh and so was confined with other British officers in the Alor Setar jail. As the number of prisoners increased, they were moved to Taiping, then to Kuala Lumpur and finally to Singapore, which had fallen to the Japanese, in Nov 1942.

During this year of confinement, Stracey was getting disillusioned. He caught up with Mohan Singh who had by then become a general, who had after the Farrer park meeting created the first INA and recruited a great many soldiers, totaling to 16,000 or so. Stracey decided to volunteer to the INA, sick of the discriminatory attitude shown by his fellow British officers and noting that they had anyway washed their hands off the Indian soldiers and thrown them to the mercy of the Japanese. Another reason was that he saw a number of his old colleagues already serving in the INA. Stracey was tasked with leading the 10,000 odd new volunteers which included Jawans, JCO’s, Subedar majors, Subedars and Jamadars. He had to start a new army career as a 2^ndlieutenant once again!

Stracey in fact had a unique position, he in his own words ‘was the only officer who saw the INA as a germ, a mere idea and who eventually participated in its obsequies’. Not only was he with Mohan Singh at the start of the INA conceptual discussions, but was also a witness to its disbanding and the first officer to be formally picked up and arrested after the retaking of Singapore, by the Allies.

But things were not going well for Mohan Singh. The Fujiwara Kikan which was behind him had given way to the Iwakuro and Hikari Kikan’s which did not think much of Indians (or rate Indians as equals) and had other ideas. Mohan Singh had by then many other festering issues (INA recognition, use of Indians for manual labor, managing of Japanese misappropriation of Indian assets in Burma) with the Japanese over the INA recognition and issues about the tasks of the IIL. Mohan Singh’s relationship with the I Kikan as well as Rash Behari Bose turned sour resulting in him getting sidelined, dismissed and arrested and transported to Pulau Ubin, an island off Changi point.

A terminally ill Rash Behari Bose had by now decided on appointing fresh blood to lead the large INA organization, which was somewhat rudderless. It was into this vacuum that Subhas Chandra Bose stepped in, coming in from Germany. SC Bose thus took over as the new Supreme commander and recreated the so called ‘Second INA’. Stracey remained in Singapore as INA’s adjutant general (Singapore was the rear HQ while Rangoon where Bose lived, was the front HQ) and was the person responsible for the ‘A’ branch.

Accounts of his life in the INA hierarchy during the Bose days is very scarce (his family considered him lost or dead!) and Eric agrees - It was at this stage that Cyril played a prominent part as its Adjutant-General. We never questioned him about his motives, for as a family we respected each other’s personal privacy, and what notes he left behind about his INA days were only brief and purely descriptive. He rose through the ranks to become a colonel. Dr RM Kasliwal, who was Netaji’s physician states – Stracey was a smart Anglo Indian officer, a staunch nationalist, who joined the INA and became the adjutant general and Quarter master General with a rank as Colonel. He was a great organizer and a good friend and he and I shared a bungalow in Singapore. Stracey met Bose a few times and interacted with him personally. On a lighter side, he once arranged a football match where Bose kicked the ball off to start the match. He was also involved with the design of some air raid shelters.

Two incidents relate to him, one indirectly and one directly. The first is the case of the MK Durrani, an Indian POW who later turned out to be a British agent. Durrani was implicated in manipulating the newly trained spies from the Penang spy schools (they were trained and inserted in India by submarines, but as it turned out, they gave themselves up to the British, influenced by Durrani’s covert actions) and were eventually caught. Bose who was furious with this, sentenced Durrani to death. Dr Kasliwal and a few other Indians asked Bose to show some mercy and finally Bose agreed that Durrani’s life would be spared if he confessed and provided details of his mission. Durrani was thus arrested in 1944 and tortured (finger press and water boarding are mentioned), and some British investigators felt that Stracey and Kasliwal knew about this and perhaps condoned it (the case at the Red Fort involving them was dropped due to political reasons) as it was under Stracey’s watch. Incidentally, the Bidadari camp where Durrani was interred in was administered by others.

Original INA Monument Singapore

The second was in the construction of the Shaheed Smarak or INA martyr’s monument in Singapore where INA officers and contractors led by Stracey built a marble memorial on the Connaught drive, an obelisk 25 feet high, honoring the INA personnel who died. As is quoted often, C.J. Stracey, Quarter-Master General of INA produced a number of models for the memorial. Bose approved one of the models and asked Col. Stracey if he would be able to complete a sea facing structure before the British forces landed in Singapore. He built it in a record 3 weeks, racing against time to finish it before the allied forces retook Singapore from the Japanese, in 1945. The words inscribed were the motto of the INA: Unity (Etihaad), Faith (Itmad) and Sacrifice (Kurbani). The monument was built at the Esplanade just before the Japanese surrender. On 8^thJuly 1945, Bose laid its foundation stone. Perhaps it was an act too late, for the morale of the INA had gone down, what with the Japanese reverses, general lack of food and resources, Japanese utilization of Indians for other purposes (to fight MPAJA and at the death railway) and the INA and Jap failures at the Indian front. But as soon as British troops re-occupied Singapore in early September 1945, they blew it up upon instructions from Mountbatten.

Stracey has this to say about the Japanese and the INA. The Japanese found in the Indian army POW’s a very useful weapon to help them achieve what they were setting out to do: the greater co-prosperity sphere of Asia. They were of course very tactful and they always quoted Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian freedom movement under the great and recognized leaders. He implies that on the ground, where it mattered the Japanese never really treated the INA as equals and that Mohan Singh was perhaps right in breaking up the first INA.

As adjutant and quarter master general, Stracey then reporting to Gen Kiani in the INA, was also responsible to coordinate the INA surrender to the British. By this time, Col CJ Stracey was, in British parlance, a JIFF (Japanese Indian or Japanese inspired fifth column). After the British had routed the INA and the Japanese, their task was to round up the JIFF’s and prosecute them to the extent possible.

Interestingly, Cyril’s brother Eric was at that time partly responsible for interrogation of JIFF suspects! He explains - By a twist of fate, I myself was engaged towards the end of the war with security intelligence at our Main Forward Interrogation Centre in East Bengal, where there was a large camp for INA prisoners captured during the fighting in Burma. Though Cyril was flown direct to Delhi from Singapore, and so did not pass through my hands as a prisoner as did some of the other INA officers after Japan surrendered, I had access to his file and classification before that, followed his latter INA career up to the time he was retaken, and was personally the subject of considerable interest to my Intelligence colleagues..

Stracey was taken to Delhi in Jan 1946 and together with a number of others were put on trial. It is a long and convoluted story with all kinds of people involved, Congress, Nehru, Patel, Bulabhai Desai, Gandhiji and so on. Proof was hard to come by, much of the documentation had been destroyed or lost and large communities including the Anglo-Indian applied pressure on the administration to disband the INA trials. Most of the INA officers were dismissed from service or de-mobbed. Colonel Prem Sahgal, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan were court-martialed. Many others were charged for torture and murder or abetment of murder. These trials attracted huge publicity, and public sympathy for the defendants who were considered patriots of India and fought for the freedom of India from the British Empire, ran high. Outcry over the grounds of the trial, as well as a general emerging unease and unrest within the British, ultimately forced the then Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck to commute the sentences of the three defendants in the first trial.

Cyril, was dismissed from the army and upon release from the Red Fort, worked for a year as Secretary of the INA Relief and Rehabilitation Committee in New Delhi, which proved of help to many refugees during the large-scale carnage at the time of partition. It was during the trials and this work that Cyril caught the eye of Nehru who impressed with the officer and his bearing, stated that he could provide him a job in the Indian Foreign Service IFS.

Perusing the Nehru papers, I came across substantial correspondence between Stracey and Nehru during the 1946-48 period. Nehru mentions about him to Patel, about Stracey’s request to archive all collected INA material, of Stracey’s request to induct all INA officers for training in the IMA ( Nehru replied that that would not be advisable as they were over age, but that he would recommend to Patel and Baldev Singh that they be appointed into state forces). He was involved with the refugee relief operations connected with the disasters of the Indian partition. Stracey was also the secretary of the goodwill mission to Ethiopia under Ammu Swaminathan (Lakshmi Menon’s mother).

Stracey repaid his debts to his family and friends from the back-pay he received after the war for his army services and POW period, and he even had a little extra which he lent to Eric so he could buy his first second hand car (a 1937 model Chevrolet released by the Air Raids Precautions service after the danger to Madras city ceased!).

Interestingly, in a fitting end, Nehru gifted Stracey a marble fragment, a part of the demolished INA monument which read ‘Subhas Ch’ after the dust had settled and India was free. This had been retrieved by a local Indian in Singapore. What happened to it later, is not known.

As promised, Nehru gave him a position in the IFS where Cyril did very well. His diplomatic career spanned through postings in Karachi, Bonn, Jakarta, as Consul-General at San Francisco, First Secretary at Washington and Chancellor in Paris, finishing with spells as ambassador to Finland and Madagascar. Reports mention him as being considered a ‘most eligible bachelor’ while in San Francisco and also of his amusing complaints about his lodgings and landlady while in Washington DC.

Eric and Cyril had purchased a small retirement home ‘Charleston” in Coonoor, where Cyril moved to after retirement from the IFS. He continued with philanthropic work and was an active member of the Coonoor branch of the AIS. His 78 rpm records, his piano and his garden gave him the solace he sought.

Eric’s retelling of his brothers last days is sad and poignant. Cyril lived on at “Charleston” until his death in November 1988, enjoying his music and his books, but keeping much to himself. Apart from a bachelor friend or two, his only company was a Marwari family, the Simrathmulls, who lived near-by. They were generous and open-hearted friends - husband, wife and five bright sons, who had him over for dinner every Sunday night and ran errands for him. (He did not keep a car in his later years and did not like going down to the bazaar in person). As a humorous sidelight, when their business ran into trouble, Cyril helped them with a loan which they duly repaid - a strange case of an Anglo-Indian, a member of a notoriously prodigal community not known for its wealth, lending money to one whose people constituted the traditional bankers and money-lenders of the north! When Cyril had a sudden and fatal heart attack, it was they who rushed him to hospital and later helped carry his coffin in a last gesture of friendship.

Eric had by then retired from his IPS position in Madras and moved off to Australia. In 1989, he returned to India to sell off their house, ‘Charleston’ in Coonoor and with that the last link the Stracey’s had to India was broken. A few educational scholarships and the Stracey Memorial School in Bangalore, provide trace memories of that family.

That my friends is the story of a very interesting man, one who stood at a very difficult crossroad and decided his direction only after much soul searching. One path would perhaps have led him to England or Australia to live there as a second class citizen, the other, the path he chose, led him to remain an Indian, in the country he lived for, and died in!

Notes

1 While Cyril states – I decided that I will join the INA, this thing has become a reality and why should not an Anglo Indian be part of it as well? Eric explains it differently - In Cyril’s case, predilection would have been reinforced by the pressure of his regimental peers. He was not the sort of person mindlessly to follow the natural course expected of Anglo-Indians and side automatically with the British, nor would he have wanted to incur the sneers and contempt of his other Indian colleagues for a member of a community they already regarded as lackeys of the Raj. It was these factors rather than any special feeling of nationalism that would have moved him to join the INA along with most of the other Indian officers of his battalion.
2. Stracey was interrogated after he was picked up in Singapore. Kevin Noles who studied the files states - His interrogator considered that he joined in August 1942 ‘from motives of greed, ambition and pleasure-seeking’ although he conceded his ‘thorough ideological conversion’. The comments reveal more about the attitude of the interrogator attempting to comprehend the actions of an Anglo-Indian than they do about Captain Stracey himself, who seems to have been genuinely enthused by Indian nationalism and became a senior staff officer in the INA.
3. The first battalion, 14^th regiment had a number of other well-known Indian origin officers. Ayub Khan, SPP Thorat, MH Kiani, Shah Nawaz Khan, Habib Ur Rahman, AIS Dara, GS Dhillon, Inayat Hassan, Mohan Singh etc.
4. A number of Mohan Singh’s first INA followers who did not join the Second INA were transported by the Japanese to New Guinea and Solomon island labor camps. That is another story, for another day!
5. One could ask if the Congress and Gandhiji won independence for India or was the decision by the British to leave a result of the INA movement? There are certainly many arguments supporting the latter, for the INA movement, the Red Fort trials and so on had a substantial influence on the Indian soldier in the Raj’s army and the general public. The British Empire, which was fully based on the unquestioning loyalty of the Indian armed forces, had finally been undermined by the INA trials. Once Auchinleck and the administration felt that they had lost their complete grip on and loyalty of the Indian army, they knew their cause was lost.

References

The late Cyril Stracey – A remarkable soldier and diplomat (The Review Vol 88, Feb 1989)

How I came to join the INA (Oracle Volume 4, Jan 1982) CJ Stracey

Odd man in: my years in the Indian police - Eric Stracey

Growing up in Anglo India: Eric Stracey

Interviews with Ralph, Eric and Cyril Stracey– The Centre of South Asian Studies

Netaji, Azad Hind Fauz, and After – RM Kasliwal

A remarkable family– S Muthiah Hindu April 16, 2012

Anglo Indians – S Muthiah, Harry Mcalure

Shades of white, brown and black - CVG The Hindu

The Indian national Army & Japan – JC Lebra

The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942-1945 -Peter Ward Fay

Waging War against the King’: Recruitment and Motivation of the Indian National Army, 1942-1945 – Kevin Noles

Pics – Azad Hind Monument courtesy EM Kasliwal, Cyril Stracey picture Courtesy S Muthiah, Harry Maclure

And the role of Hanuman in it……

What if I told you that there was a time when many a person believed Englishmen were the descendants of Hanuman and his ape friends? And If I continued to state that this was serious stuff, not words of sarcasm, ridicule or any kind of contempt for the white man? Well, it was so and as I got deeper and deeper into the story, I saw that it stretched into the performing arts of Kerala, the Kathakali, where its effect remains to this day. But to get to the origins, you have to go to the days when the Ramayana epic was embedded deep in the psyche of the common man.

Before we do that, we have to visit Malabar in the 15^ththrough 17^th century. Those days were turbulent alright with the Portuguese sometimes embedded in the wars between the Zamorin and Cochin, as well as a few fought in the seas involving the Portuguese and the marakkars. But the man on the street was not really affected and Malabar went on with its merry ways as a feudal society with the Nambuthiris, the educated lot at the apex, then the Nairs and following them all the other classes, castes and tribes. Sanskrit was the language of the learned, and Malayalam was just starting to evolve from Tamil and Sanskrit. The white men from the West was making his presence felt, and of course, the local populace observed them and their habits keenly. The foreigners - both men and women dressed differently, covering much of their body, compared to the barely clad locals, they ate food which the locals never ate, such as the meat of the cow and they drank liquor in the evenings. They were strong and courageous in the battle field and well, people asked questions.

If they were doing things which were against the prescribed norm, how was it that they were strong and victorious? The Nambudiri’s came up with a theory and the scribes recorded it faithfully. But naturally, it had to fit with the epics and holy books for popular acceptance. As time went by, more white men appeared, the Dutch and later the French and the English. The last of the lot manifested themselves even more closely with the locals and soon displaced the local chiefs and titular heads. I must also hasten to add that while I am focusing on the Malabar side of the story, similar accounts popped up from other parts of the land around the same time and we will get into a couple of those later on. The brief conclusion was that these foreigners had something to do with a strong and warlike lot such as the monkeys who fought for Rama against Ravana, in Lanka and that the Englishmen, could be their progeny, naturally complete with a tail in the rear.

The thought that Englishmen have tails existed even before that and is ascribed to a Scottish belief from the 16^th century. A version reported in BBC went thus - In his chronicle, 'The Scotichronicon' (c. 1440), Walter Bower relates the story of how some of the English acquired their tails. Apparently, in 597, when St Augustine came to preach the word of God to the West Saxons in Dorset, he came to the village of Muglington where the people distorted and contradicted what he said, or simply wouldn’t listen to him. They even had the audacity to hang fish tails from his clothing. The story goes that God decided to punish these Saxons, along with their descendants and the rest of their country, for this insult to one of his anointed messengers. As Bower relates: ‘For God smote them in their hinder parts, giving them everlasting shame so that in the private parts both of themselves and their descendants all alike were born with a tail.’ The Scots said it of the English, the English said it of the French, and it seemed to be a common insult to hurl at one's opponents.

Medieval Frenchmen had a tradition, which survived even to the nineteenth century, implying that Englishmen had tails, which they cunningly concealed. Other nations were also sure of it, the Greeks of Sicily, as it appears - when forced to entertain British crusaders in 1190 termed them as ‘tailed Englishmen’. At the end of the 13^th century, the besieged Scots at Dunbar castle shouted ‘ye English dogs with long tails! We will kill you and cut off your tails’ (Peter Ackroyd). A few shouted after a battle that they would make ropes for themselves from the Englishmen's tails to tie them up on the following day. Some academics mention that the inference was due to the long hair English men sported, worn down like a tail. But all that were for different reasons and did not involve the monkey brigade which went to Lanka.

But let us return to the Namboodiri in Malabar, and he chose to do exactly that, which was to pin a tail on the Englishman. The epic they chose to associate the Englishman was the Ramayana. It is difficult to point out exactly when and how this was done, but what we do know is that Englishmen of repute heard of it from their associates in Malabar. One JF Logan had to prove he did not have one and others wrote their opinions about it. The version reported in The Academy-July 1893 was the version provided by a Namboothiri to Edward Nicholson. Edward incidentally was an Army doctor who authored one of the first works on tropical snakes and spent a while in Malabar.

He recounts: I have just come across the same charge (English have tails) in a Malyalam legend grafted on to the Ramayanam. It was in an old notebook, which I had forgotten at the time of the correspondence. I give the story as it was told me in Malabar, many years ago; I spell the proper names as they are pronounced in Malyalam.

The legend of Belal Kitia: When Ramen's army of monkeys were building the bridge from Rameshwaram to Lanka, they were hindered by Värunen (the sea-god), and the monkeys came to Ramen complaining of the rough sea produced by Varunen. So Ramen prayed to the sea to let him build the bridge, but Varunen paid no attention. Then Ramen became angry, and took his bow and arrows to destroy the sea. But as soon as his arrow was fixed, Varunen got frightened and came out of the sea; and he came to Ramen, bringing a present of a bright gold colored cucumber, and begged Ramen's pardon. But Ramen said, having fixed his arrow he must discharge it - at what? Then Varunen said there is a country over there where Rakshashas live; destroy that country. So Ramen shot the arrow, and it killed everyone in the country, and then came back after washing itself in the sea. And then Ramen, having finished the bridge, went over to Lanka and destroyed Ravanen and his Rakshasha army. And after he had made Ravanen's brother king, the Rakshashis came and complained that they were all pregnant by Ramen's monkeys. What to do? So Ramen bid them all get into a ship and go to the country, Belal-kitia, the inhabitants of which he had destroyed with his arrow. But they said, how shall we live there? And he gave them a palm-leaf (writing-leaf) and a broom-twig (for a pen) and told them they should live by that. So they went into the boat and rowed to that country, and had children who became very clever. The English people are descendants of them, and being of monkey ancestry they have tails. And being descended from Dévas [monkey-gods] and Rákshashis [female demons] they partake of both natures, the men being like Dévas and the women like Rákshashis. And they breakfast in the morning like Dévas, on proper simple food, but they dine like Rákshashas on meat and strong drink.” This explanation of the “valakaren’’ nature by simple Hindu country folk is singular. And the general Indian dislike of Englishwomen, a feeling not unreciprocated, shows itself in a very uncomplimentary form.

The origin of this story however dates back to the Portuguese times when as it appears the Alvancheri Thrampakkal narrated this to the Zamorin of Calicut (Keralodaya – KN Ezhuthachan) and suggested that the Zamorin carry out a number of yaga’s and rites to counter the white man’s strength. Now all that was certainly interesting, and believe it or not, this story has many other corollaries and localized versions, as we shall soon see. But one question to be asked was did they men Vaal Karen – man with a tail or Vella Karen - white man when the term was coined? Could it have been the former? And did the term belal kitia mean bilayet? I think valkaren was hardly used and the connection to Bilati shows a potential link to the Bhavishya Purana about which we will talk later.

Another account in the Indian review (Vol 57, 1956) is even more amazing and I quote - A Nambudripad of Malabar declared that all Europeans are descendants of Hanuman and are furnished with a tail. Mr. J. F. Logan, I. C. S., undressed himself before a Parishad and demonstrated that he had no tail. The Parishad duly passed a resolution "This Englishman apparently is an exception and has no tail."I am at a loss as to who this JF Logan is, for we did have William Logan (Malabar Collector) and he does not mention this anywhere, but it is stated so in the above publication.

All this was debated for some time in various English meetings, which sometimes involved learned Indians too. The Journal of the Royal society of arts provides examples of how common spread this belief was. RA Leslie Moore mentions: The Hindu belief in Bombay is that the English are descended from Hanuman, the Monkey King. After all, Hanuman was a good fighter, and apparently a cheery soul, to judge from the red-leaded images of him adorning every Deccan village.

One Mr KG Gupta C.S.I replied that this was not prevalent in Bengal but he agreed on its possibility and stated ‘Having regard to the extreme energy, of the average Englishman, his agility in the tennis- court, or cricket-field, or in the ball-room, it was possible that in some parts of India he might be considered as being descended from the ape. He also thought that the Hindus actually gave the Englishman very great credit, because he did not regard him as a descendant from an ordinary ape (like the rest of us), but from Hanuman, the Lord of Monkeys.

The discussion became serious and Gupta added his thoughts - Hanuman was the ally and friend of Rama, one of the great Indian deities; he assisted Rama in civilizing and Aryanising Ceylon, and he was a loyal, thoroughly good and kind ape. He was so loyal that when his loyalty was once questioned he tore open his breast for everybody to see that on his heart was written the name of his friend and patron Rama. If they (English) had to admit that they were descended from apes, surely the best thing that could possibly happen was to be descended from the best of the apes, so that there was nothing discreditable about it at all. Coming to the question of superstitions, what were superstitions? Did not they represent the exercise of that faculty which had brought all human knowledge, i.e., the inductive faculty? All the highest achievements of science were due to that process. Superstition was an inference drawn from one or two coincidences. It was faulty in that sense, but was the result of the same process.

Sir George Birdwood charmingly opined thus in reply - whether it was to be regarded as implying compliment or contempt would depend on the feeling and thought of the person at the time of giving expression to it: for the Hindus, like all the quick-witted people of Southern Eurasia, from Greece to India, have a wonderful way of conveying praise and blame, blessing and cursing, in the same words. So, he concluded, ‘spoken by a Hindu, in the plain sense of the words, the tradition referred to by Mr. Leslie Moore could have been repeated to him only in the spirit of the sincerest praise’. A common Hindu saying in Bombay is: - "Even the High Gods themselves delight in flattery."

But the story does not end there, for this tale can possibly be seen to be part of a work called the Bhavishya Purana (Pratisarga Parva) and perceived to have been written or modified sometime after the English settled in Calcutta, narrates the origin of Harikhanda (Europe) and the Gurundas (white bodied). The Gurundas are connected to the monkeys of Ramayana. Those which died were brought to life by Ravana and consorted with the women in Ravanas’s harem. The Gurundas came for trade and started it at the city of Kalikata by the order of their queen Vikatavati (Queen Victoria). This myth also, as the myth from Malabar, connects the origin of the Gurundas who are evidently the British, to the monkeys of the Ramayana.

I could not get a hold of the original verses, but I got to the Kanchi kamakoti translations, and this is what it states - Shri Rama of Ramayana after vanquishing Ravana made possible many of dead vanara soldiers who fought valiantly to get back to life, the important ones being Vikata, Vrujil, Jaal, Burleen, Simhal, Jawa (Jaawa), Sumaatra (Sumatra), etc. He gave the boon to these Vanaras that quite a few Dwipas (Islands) far and near Lanka be occupied and that they would be Kings of these Islands and that Architect Jaalandhara would help construct and even their wives would be procured from among those Devakanyas liberated after Ravana’s death. The Vanaras were delighted at the happening and in course of time, the habitants of the Islands developed trade contacts with Garunds (British) of the Western World, especially with Isha Putras (Khishtha, Ishu or Isamasiha). The inhabitants were Surya Deva worshippers and virtuous and honest people worthy of promoting overseas business and the King of the Western Dwipa of England called Vikata and later on by his wife Vikatavatior Victoria ruled over there by Ashta Koushala Marg (under the Counsel of Parliament). The British Raj witnessed high prosperity by executing overseas business generation after generation with democracy (Rule of Citizens) with the hereditary Queen or King elected by a Prime Minister; the ninth Chief Representative of Gurunds was Mekal (Lord Macaulay) who administered the Raj with honesty for twelve years; he was followed by Laurdel (Lord Wavel) who ruled for thirty two years.

In the above, you will find that the islanders conducted trade with the gurundas. Nevertheless, the monkey connection may have been deduced by the Nambudiri from the Bhavishya Purana and these special divine powers of the monkey brigade also seem to account for the capacity of Europeans for sea voyage and oceanic adventures, all which were taboo for the common man in Malabar.

Later, and funnily enough, some lent flight to their imagination and connected the tail of Hanuman to the tail coat worn by the Englishman, maybe that was the image which got them the Hanuman link. On the other hand, some opine that the concept of a tail went from Hanuman Ram Leela stage shows to the dressing of gentry in England, during formal occasions!

Then there is the associated account as related to Trijata, the daughter of Vibhishana and one who was friendly to Sita during her period of confinement in Lanka. She (in other versions it is Mandodari) is considered to be Queen Victoria, in a rebirth, according to Upasni Baba (Meher baba’s guru and Shirdi Saibaba’s pupil). The Baba narrates (early 20^th century) - Trijata was a Brahmana, and loved the Kshatriya Rama. The duty of the Kshatriyas is to rule. Being a Brahmana and being intensely devoted to Rama, Trijata should have attained the real state of Rama. But she was devoted to the ruler Rama and hence her progeny, though Brahmana by class, came forth as the rulers on this earth. Once the progeny was brought into being the atma of Trijata joined the real state of Rama. The punya accumulated by Trijata in serving Sita forced her Jiva to have a body to enjoy and expend that punya, and she came forth as Queen Victoria. Since the state of Sita was ever existent in her heart (due to which she had desired to have Rama as her husband) the Kingdom of the Queen Victoria was virtually the Kingdom of Sita. Just as the Ramarupa that satisfied the desire of Trijata returned to its original state on satiating her desire, in the same way, the husband of Queen Victoria after the birth of their progeny returned to the state of Sat. All this explains why Queen Victoria loved this country.

Now this was all interesting, perhaps still accepted by some and scoffed by others, but what is important is that the many of the learned accepted all these hypotheses gladly during a three to four hundred year period as a possibility, and allowed it to direct their actions!

But what connection does this have with our revered art form Kathakali? Ah! My father would have gone on and on about that art itself for he was very fond of the art. I understood very little of it and have never had the patience to savor the lengthy performances, being the dimwitted fool I was, and slept off as it went on into the wee hours of the morning in our temples.

If you observe the headgear of Hanuman in Kathakali carefully, you will find that it is very different from that of other characters. You will find that it is styled somewhat after a pike helmet oft used by the British, but one with a wider than normal brim and a majestic brass spike. The origin of this white and silver trimmed ‘vattamuti’ is ascribed to the Kadathanad Raja (d 1727)in North Malabar during the 18^th century, and the story is that he styled it after French military hats from Mahe (some others say Christian priest style hats modified to have double domes and a spike). I am more inclined to connect it with the Pike helmet since the French wore flat topped hats in Malabar, but maybe I am wrong, perhaps the French did wear such a hat. The white man was sometimes termed the ‘red monkey’ and you will also note that Hanuman’s Kathakali facial getup is made up with a black top half and a red bottom half, replete with a white sideburns / beard or vellathaadi. He wears a woolen hairy coat, completing the European monkey connection.

That brings us to an end and well, now you know how it all came about, right? But then again, all these are myths or events bound by myths, and the question is, should one spend time trying to figure it all out? Romila Thaper answers the question interestingly - Myth is at one level a straight forward story, a narrative: at another level it reflects the integrating values around which the societies are organized. It codifies belief, safeguards morality, vouches for efficiency of the ritual and provides social norms. In a historical tradition therefore the themes of myths act as factors of continuity…….

You can perhaps recount this story to a friendly Brit over a pint of bitter (maybe better after two or three), but I would not guarantee that the results would always be accompanied with much bonhomie!

References

The Academy – Vol 43, 1103, June 24, 1893

Journal of the Royal Society of arts – Vol. 59, No. 3040 Indian Superstitions E. A. Leslie Moore

Essence of Bhavishya Purana VDN Rao

The Talks of Sadguru Upasni-Baba Maharaja Volume II Part B

South Indian History Congress Jan 1999, The Myth of the origin of White People and its Role in Resistance to Europeans in Malabar - Dr. T. Vasudevan

Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations - Romila Thapar

BBC article – Englishmen and tails

Pics Hanuman – Courtesy Hindu and photographer named.

India’s PNE at Pokhran 1974

A number of you would have seen the recent film ‘Paramanu’ and have assumed that the tests of 1998 was the seminal event signaling India’s nuclear journey, but many of you would not have heard of Smiling Buddha, a PNE (peaceful nuclear explosion) which was conducted some 24 years before the 1998 Pokhran II tests. I am not surprised because so little is written about that first test and if you did want to try and unearth that story, you would have to scour all around to find a rare copy of Raj Chengappa’s magnum opus “Weapons of peace’. I do not promise to provide you much more, but I can give a decent overview for those interested in perusing the matter further. Those aware will know the reason for the difficulties, a decision was taken early by the team, to commit nothing to paper in the interest of national security, and so you will discover no paper trail. But naturally, memories of those involved did conflict here and there, so their own accounts differ slightly.

So friends, it is time to visit the deserts of Rajasthan, the stratospheres where satellites traversed, the musty South block offices in Delhi, the tiny hamlet of Thumba in Trivandrum, the atomic energy city in Trombay and get to know the select few involved in this project and what they did preceding the test itself.

Remotely located, near Jaisalmer, on the arid Thar Desert and some 50 miles from the Pakistan border, Pokhran was once the seat of the Champawats, a sub-clan of the Marwar-Jodhpur Rathores. The name Pokhran means land of five mirages, connected to the five salt ranges. The Rajput Marwari Thakur’s titled Pradhan’s, were premier nobles of the Jodhpur fort, and ruled from Balagarh. Of the eight Sirayats, or premier nobles of Marwar, two are Champawats, the Thakurs of Pokhran and Auwa. Their abode is barren, dry and hostile, with scanty and erratic rainfall. Typical of deserts, it was evidenced by vast expanses of sparse vegetation with little grass to provide fodder for cattle, sheep and goats. Camels could be seen often, providing a means of transport. Rolling sand dunes separated by sandy plains and punctuated by low, barren hills –bhakars complete the scenery. In some areas the sand dunes are in continual motion, but older and taller dunes are quite stable and as high as 150 meters. These dunes would figure in intelligence assessment much later, during the 98 tests, and so were always very important for the planners. In the 60’s Pokhran was used as a conventional weapon test range. It again came into consideration only because that was just about the only place where the government and the bomb planners could sequester some 40 sq miles of land and where the water table was acceptably low for digging deep test shafts.

As time went by only their mud forts remained and the populace cultivating millet hardly saw anything foreign. Their life centered on their small havelis, the camels, the colorfully clad women and their small festivals. They were certainly not prepared when government officials came to acquire large tracts of land at a pittance, Rs 4 per bhiga(1/4 acre) during the early 70’s.

Let me now take you back a little back and refer you to that story of the listening device in Nandadevi when the world was snooping on China’s nuclear tests and missile development from the top of the Himalayas and India’s role in it. Two years after the disastrous skirmishes at the Indian borders, a hostile China had tested its atom bomb and signaled a bigger threat from the Northern borders. By now the nuclear club had five members, US, Britain, France, China and Russia.

Even though the intent to develop a nuclear device and test it dated back to the tail years of Nehru, Homi Bhaba, the dynamic head of AEC and Raja Ramanna found the going tough especially after Nehru’s death in 1964. The RAW was set up with help from CIA and the Nandadevi caper followed to cement that cooperation.

Pakistan gravitated towards China as India strengthened its Russian bear hug. The 1965 war with Pakistan showed a decisive Shastri taking on a Chinese threat, but he passed away in the midst of a peace discussion at Tashkent. Days later Homi Bhaba died mysteriously in a plane crash in Switzerland. Indira Gandhi took on the mantle as India’s PM. India was deep in debt at that time. Vikram Sarabhai was appointed as the chairman of the AEC, overlooking Bhaba’s understudy Homi Sethna. But by then the Nuclear haves had formed a club and decided to restrict any new entrant with their combined immense power. The BARC enterprise in Trombay was growing and the Punrnima reactor was set up additionally to assist with special experiments. Even a PNE was frowned upon and the western powers would offer no support to India’s request for assistance. India eventually pulled out of the NPT in 1968.

Sethna explained much later about the reasoning in a 1996 interview: There were pressures on India
Homi Sethna
to sign the NPT around 1967. There were two schools of thought. One said, "Forget it," we should give up and sign the treaty. This school tried to put pressure on the other school which wanted to develop the nuclear option, but it did not succeed. You see, something else had happened recently. We were told (in 1966) to devalue the rupee, which we did. We were told that money would flow once we devalued, and it would be all milk and honey. But money did not flow in. So that was when we became extremely suspicious of the US advice about what was in our interest.

A decision to prepare for the test was taken by Sarabhai in Trivandrum in April 1970. Sarabhai informed R Chidambaram that he could talk to Abdul Kalam (interestingly Kalam was nicknamed Hanuman – for he was sincere and dedicated, was a celibate bachelor and liked bananas) at Thumba since they had expertise making detonators for the soundiung rockets at TERLS. By 1970 China were ready with their ballistic missile technology as well and administrators feared that those rockets would reach any state in India.

Close to follow was the 1971 war with Pakistan where a victorious India had to face a nuclear threat from the Nixon Kissinger combine (see my article on Ghazi) and their 7^th fleet sailing in to the Indian Ocean. The treaty with the Soviets helped counter that challenge. In 1972 Indira visiting Trombay, gave a verbal authorization to Sethna to go ahead and build a nuclear device. Bhaba wanted 18 months to prepare for a test.

Again, tragedy struck with Sarabhai’s mysterious death in a Trivandrum hotel. In any case he had been told that Sethna would take over and that he was being considered to head the space program. By 1972, Sethna was thus in command of the AEC. But perhaps it was better for the team who had always wanted to go full steam, and Sarabhai tended to be an impediment to their efforts.

The biggest issue was the economic situation and the non-availability of Plutonium to carry out a test. Some 15-20 kilos of the material was needed, but the Phoenix reprocessing plant was not operating efficiently and the Purnima research reactor was still to start working. Thus the situation in 1973 was that almost all other constituents of the test were in place, but for the plutonium sphere and the initiator. If they had to test in 1973 or 74, the only way was to take out the 20 kg of plutonium from Purnima after shutting it down. Ramanna gave that order. As days progressed, the ball started to take its shape, a perfect sphere of layered plutonium with a protective coating. Secrecy was paramount and so all this was done after office hours.

Raja Ramanna

The Indian army had the next task, to dig a shaft at least 107 meters into the ground at Pokhran. The 61 regiment at Jodhpur who only knew how to build bridges and bunkers, were tasked to do it, the purpose vaguely stated to them to be seismic experiments. As the local army commander dithered, stating that such mundane tasks were not to his liking, the Army chief Bewoor had to personally intervene and give him an oral command to do it. The outside world was given to understand that the ONGC were digging for gas wells, while locally the story was that they were digging for water to supply the army contingents.

In January 1974 the diggers stuck water and were overjoyed, but the top brass were mortified since what they wanted was a bone dry shaft for the test. After all the effort, that first shaft had to be abandoned (so also the test which was originally scheduled for 15^th Feb 1974), and a local a water diviner had to be summoned to identify a previously abandoned dry well in the village of Malki. Digging started again and progressed smoothly.

It was later in April 1974 that India’s PM Indira Gandhi summoned Homi Sethna (Chairman AEC), Raja Ramanna (Director BARC), Nagachaudhuri (DRDO chief) PN Dhar principal secretary and PN Haskar (principal advisor to the PM) for a final discussion. The BARC were to prepare the plutonium core and DRDO to pack the conventional explosive cover around it. The army were to sink and get the shafts ready. Dhar after going through the economic situation India was in and the debt situation warned against testing. Haskar also agreed stating that the time was not right. Ramanna argued that much effort had been made to get everything ready and that it was not the time to cap it. As was her norm of listening more and talking less, Indira sat quietly and at the end stated that she agreed to go for the tests. No minutes were recorded.

Back in Trombay the plutonium ball and the trigger (flower) were readied in time. The trigger was flown out in a commercial flight by Iyengar and Murthy. Chitambaram and Roy carried the ball and other instruments by road accompanied by a military convoy, travelling all of 900km. Ramanna, Sethna and Nagachaudhuri flew in via Jodhpur. The core team had reached Pokhran with all the required paraphernalia as well as the casing and the explosives. Issues with lenses and final assembly of a fat man style bomb presented some difficulties, but were ironed out in the nick of time.

R Chitambaram

A sandstorm potentially helped the scientists prepare for the final acts of the test, under cover. Soni and Venkatesan went down the shaft in a crane to place the sputnik shaped device and all the power cabling in the L section. After some minor issues, the shaft was filled with cement, sand and a wooden replica of the bomb. There was no going back now. It was 16^thMay. The villagers were asked to remain outdoors. Sethna flew back to Delhi to get Indira’s final OK. Indira was nonchalant and even asked Sethna, if he was getting scared.

18^th May, it was an intensely hot day. Ramanna, Sethna, Nagachaudhuri, Iyengar and Subherwal waited behind a trenched shelter 5 km away from the shaft. Chitambaram and Sikka were in another, near the control room. Srinivasan and Dastidar were in the control room, pottering over the instruments. The button was to be depressed at 8AM.

Just before the test was planned, a problem arose when Virendra Singh Sethi’s jeep refused to start. Sethi hiked back and another army jeep had to tow away the stalled one. It was 805 AM, a five minute delay.

Dastidar pushed the red button and waited, nothing seemed to happen. Venkateshan who had been muttering the Vishnu Sahasranamam, to invoke Lord Vishnu, had gone mum.

And then the earth rose. A mini mountain of sand rose up, followed by the aftershock which sent Ramanna who was trying to stand up, tumbling down, to the earth. Sikka too fell down. Soon they were all jubilantly celebrating. The wooden model survived the blast and was tossed back to the surface.

Sethna later rushed to a field telephone to call Dhar in Delhi but could not get a clear line. However Dhar had already heard from Gen Bewoor moments earlier the cryptic message ‘anand hai’ (it is joyous). Sethna eventually got to Dhar in Delhi a little later from an army phone exchange in the nearby Pokhran village and informed him that the test had gone well with a yield over 10 kilotons, and no venting at the site. Sethna maintained that he had not uttered the so called code message ‘the Buddha is smiling’ as is stated in many a report.

As the ground quaked, the swami in the village square explained to the perturbed lot around him - You see, the world is balanced on the horn of the celestial cow (or bull). Sometimes it gets tired and tosses the earth from one horn to the other. That is when a quake occurs (This was a popular belief in Asia as well as the Middle East) and that is what you just felt. Don’t worry!!

The 9AM, AIR announcement was terse “At 805 AM India conducted an underground nuclear explosion for peaceful purposes at a carefully chosen site in western India”.

Jagjivan Ram, the defense minister was formally notified only after the tests. A disgruntled Ram muttered, ‘what is the point in telling me now’?

Ramanna and Sethna flew to Delhi to meet Indira and were congratulated by the PM. She said – ‘Wonderful job, but now the program is over, Pack up’. That they were disappointed would be an understatement, but for now, it was a time to celebrate. The entire gang did just that, they had a huge beer party at the army mess in Pokhran.

Indira Gandhi with the scientists at the site

Criticism and recriminations followed instantly from around the world. Canada was angry since they knew it was their plutonium which had been used for the tests. Only France congratulated India. The US response was muted for two reasons, one Nixon was beleaguered by the Watergate affair, and of course, even though they had not predicted it, they could not state they knew nothing - it was not that they had no inkling, they had already been tipped by S Krishnaswami in 1971 informally. Cananda were also aware that something was in the offing. Pakistan as expected, were bound to follow, and their defense budget was quickly increased by Bhutto, to work on developing a Pak bomb. The race was on.

Even today people wonder what made India carry out that explosion, was it due to the Chinese atomic threat? Was it due to the anger at the arrival of a nuclear threat from the US in the Indian Ocean? Was it due to NPT pressure and threat of sanctions? Was it because Pakistan was to get atomic weapon support from China? Or was it a politically motivated and timed test? Most indications point to the last reasoning mainly because India went dormant for 25 years after that test. There is one technical aspect though to be considered. The Beryllium polonium initiator had polonium with a 138 day half-life. It had to be used within that time. So that could have been a possible reasoning for the scientists to hurry through with a test, having completed the initiator in Jan 1974.

Following this PNE, the next would be Pokhran 2 in 1998, though scientists maintain there was a need to generate more plutonium reserves and so on.

Even though the press went gaga with the reporting and exclaimed that Indira had the real balls (George Reedy, a long-time aide of President Lyndon Johnson went on to state “My God, that woman had a will of iron. You talked to her and you realized immediately that she was tough.” (Reedy, 1985)), the political situation went downhill soon after. As it transpired, an insecure Indira fearing many things and even a CIA led topple, clamped an emergency and censorship. It was soon time up for the Congress. In 1977 the Janata party swept into power. The swing in Delhi moved back and forth between the congress and the opposition as time passed. The western nuclear haves flexed their muscles and threatened sanctions. Goverments came and went.

Raj Chengappa mentions that one reason for doing the tests in Pokhran was to remind people of the once glorious Indus valley civilization in those regions, nurtured by the Saraswati River. The once great and unrivalled civilization had vanished with the drying up of the river and what better way to remind the people with this huge event at that very location? As it appears, later tests on the well water in Pokhran provided an interesting aspect that the water originated from Himalayan glaciers.

What was it with the ‘Buddha smiling’ code concocted by Dhar? It is believed that when Buddha has that serene smile, any situation is peaceful. Chengappa provides an explanation by detailing the Anguli mala story where the fearsome dacoit met his match with an ever smiling Buddha. Others say it was because the test was on a Buddha Pournami day.

Vinay Sitapati demurs - It seems Raja Ramanna was also aware of the history of Vaishali’s destruction by Magadha. The legend is, Buddha was upset about it and thought the war could have been avoided if Vaishali too had deterrent military power rather than its so-called direct democracy so nobody would take hard decisions. “You can only have peace between equally strong or equally weak nations,” he is supposed to have said; that’s why Ramanna told Indira Gandhi “Buddha is smiling” as India had acquired its deterrence. But then again, it was supposedly Sethna who said Buddha is smiling, not Ramanna.

It was not that the area was not under watch from the skies by US satellites in 1974. In fact Corona, Gambit and Hexagon satellites did make sporadic fly through’s during the 60’s and 70’s photographing Trombay and other locales but the scientists were worried that they might get picked up by chance, at Pokhran. In the 90’s however, the US reconnaissance was more pronounced as they were expecting India to test any time. Curiously a Japanese paper had even reported details in 1971 about where the test was being planned and that Plutonium would be used. But nobody took India or her scientists seriously those days, I guess.

Perkovich has an interesting theory. He explains that the 1974 PNE was conceived and executed by a group of South Indian Brahmins primarily to exhibit their brilliance, but they had no interest in weapon-zing, as well as dealing with or sullying their hands with the nitty gritty of military affairs. That is possibly one reason according to him, why the program languished.

Did it? In reality the scientists were hard at work in going to the next phase which was compacting the bomb, making a delivery mechanism, mating it with aircraft and developing missile technology.

Ramanna was always clear about the intentions and it was far from peaceful, he said (Oct 97) - The Pokhran test was a bomb, I can tell you now... An explosion is an explosion, a gun is a gun, whether you shoot at someone or shoot at the ground... I just want to make clear that the test was not all that peaceful.”

Krishna Menon, a person who stood firm for total disarmament, the one who had started the DRDO, was mortified when he heard about the 1974 tests. He was seriously ill and hospitalized in Delhi. Madhavan Kutty wrote - When Menon saw the newspaper report, he started shivering with anger. He asked the nurse to get the Prime Minister on the telephone forthwith. When she came back and told that the Prime Minister was not available, he shouted at her and ordered that Homi Sethna, the Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, be asked to see him immediately. The nurse reported that he too was not available. Tearing his hair Krishna Menon was heard saying that he was on the consultative committee of Parliament for Atomic Energy and that Sethna had no authority to do this behind his back. He was seen grasping for breath…..

The many players are no longer alive today. Indira Gandhi, Homi Bhaba and Vikram Sarabhai met untimely deaths. Raja Ramanna and Homi Sethna passed away some years ago. Abdul Kalam parented the missile program, then went on to become India’s president and he too passed away recently. But their memories and efforts would always be remembered.

The villagers at Pokhran know all about tests these days. Land value has gone up and they are even trying their hands at cultivating Quinoa. There is much interest in the Saraswati River. Some villagers complain of skin and genetic disorders.

Tests continue - Recently the cruise missile BrahMos was tested at the Pokhran range and VIP’s continue to come and go.

References

Weapons of peace – Raj Chengappa

India’s Nuclear Bomb – George Perkovich

The making of India’s atom bomb – Itty Abraham

Years of Pilgrimage – Raja Ramanna

Spying on the bomb – Jeffrey T. Richelson

Explosion in the desert – Kushwant Singh

BBC podcast

The Nanda Devi Episode

An immaculate deception

Pics - Google images, Wiki- acknowledged with thanks

When Alexander dived into the depths

Alexander or Iskandar the great warrior from Macedonia was a very interesting person to say the least, mainly for having stoked the imaginations of so many over centuries. So many books have been written about him, about his wars, about his loves and about his death. Mystery continues to linger around him, and the search for his tomb continues to this very day. Alexander as you would all know, spent most of his life on various military campaigns far across his borders, through Asia and northeast Africa, going on to create one of the largest empires of the ancient world by the age of thirty, stretching from Greece to northwestern India between 334 BC and 324 BC.

I still recall that he was known as Iskandar in Turkey, they have a city there called Iskenderun and a famous and tasty kakab dish with yogurt splashed over it is called the Iskandar Kebab (I found out later that it had nothing to do with the king, and that its real inventor was from the İskenderoğlu restaurant family belonging to the 19^th century!).

The long campaigns made his troops weary and homesick, so much so they rebelled and Alexander had to return from India. It is said that fearing the prospect of facing larger Indian armies and exhausted by years of campaigning, Alexander's army finally mutinied at Beas, and refused to march farther east. Their huge army had almost been defeated by Porus and his army comprising just 20,000 and a number of war elephants. Now faced with a prospect of crossing the dreaded Ganges River and facing an enemy with over 80,000 soldiers, they decided wisely to disobey their young master. I wrote about the earlypart of that retreat and the person who accompanied him, the Indian gymnosophist Guru Calanus.

The rest of the young kings days were filled with treachery, rebellion, mutiny and finally perhaps mysterious death in 323 BC by poisoning or disease. This story however, goes back to the beginning years of his campaigns, and to the tiring and testing time he had in the siege of Tyre during 331BC. It was particularly difficult as the island of New Tyre was well fortified with strong 150’ high walls and unapproachable to a land army. For the Phoenicians an ancient civilization later controlled by the Persians, and which included the coastal areas of today's Lebanon, northern Israel and southern Syria reaching as far north as Arwad, it was an important harbor base. Alexander had requested that he wished to make a sacrifice at the temple of Heracles in New Tyre. The Tyreians seeing through the ploy replied that he could do the same at the temple in Old Tyre on the mainland.

Alexander was aware of Tyre's fortifications and impregnability and convened his council, explaining to his generals the strategic importance of securing all Phoenician cities before moving on to Egypt. Tyre was considered a stronghold for the Persian fleet and he could not afford to have it threaten from the rear. The story of the 7 month long siege is interesting reading for those interested in such matters, but not something we will retell. Alexander did not have his navy initially to support him in this campaign and so it was proving to be very difficult to make a breakthrough. Suffice to note that Alexander had to work on unconventional methods (you can read more details here) o figure out how to breach the Tyrian defenses and eventually blockaded the island completely (I have also to add a cautionary note that there are conflicting opinions about this long battle). Anyway much of the time was spent how to get through some of the underwater defenses built by the Tyreans. He also managed to rebuild a mile long causeway over the ancient sand bridge a few feet underwater, in this process.

It was during this siege that Alexander used demolition divers to remove underwater obstacles from the harbor. He also observed that Tyrean divers remaining underwater for long durations and cut anchor ropes on his ships resulting in them crashing on the rocks. As time went by, he supposedly made several dives in a crude bell to observe all this, first hand. This was stated to have been reconfirmed by Aristotle when he mentioned of such diving devices in his Problematum ( but more connected to sponge divers where the diving bell actually has an open bottom like an inverted bell or a kettle and is lowered upright) and popular with sponge divers in the Aegean.

Numerous books and accounts appeared connecting Alexander to the siege of Tyre, and underwater explorations during the siege. In fact Alexander some even consider Alexander to be a submarine inventor, following this incident! All this is regrettably not seemingly correct and the whole story of Alexander going underwater appears elsewhere, in different fashion, though one could of course claim links to Tyre as the location where it happened.

The exploits of Alexander underwater comes from an anonymous work with came out in the 3^rd century AD. This then got translated into so many versions, second only to the Bible and is titled the Alexander Romance, initially attributed to Aristotle’s nephew (Pseudo because it was wrongly attributed) Pseudo Callisthenes. Now many people dealing with the Macedonian king’s exploits have written about Alexander’s legends with 2-16 griffin power flying machines, but his ventures underwater are less talked about. In the Alexander romance, the king writing to his mother Queen Olympias talks about his adventures. In the story where the submarine or bathysphere comes up, he had been chasing a giant crab, which was finally killed off, and in it they come across six magnificent pearls. This according to the story was the reason for his foray underwater, in order to find more pearls (not for any attack or study of the Tyrean defenses).

And that was why the great king Iskandar decided to go underwater to check things himself, in the fable. The version of the bathysphere used by Alexander was named the Colimpha and he did this under guidance from his astrologer Ethicus. The design remained as such for another 21 centuries. Let us now take a look at the design of the bell used by him. It was a very fine barrel made entirely of white glass, which kept its occupants dry and admitted light. That proved the bottom was closed but according to the story, it also had a hatch which could be opened through which Alexander could insert his hand and draw pearls from the ocean floor (that water would gush up through the opening is not considered, but then again a story is a story!). It had to be towed out into the sea and was then lowered with a long chain.

Let’s take a look at some differing versions of the fable. In the first dealing with the crab, Alexander asks his men (350 of them up above in 4 ships) to lower his bell into the ocean holding on to a long chain with the order that is he twitched the chain, they should haul him up. Twice this signal was generated when fishes brushed against the chain resulting in his men prematurely drawing the bell up, in alarm. In the third attempt he goes all the way down 308 cubits. Once he hit the bottom, a giant fish, perhaps a whale comes by. This fish swallows the bell and drags it (and the 4 ships up above) on with his chain for a mile or so, after which I guess it got tired of the caper and spat the barrel out on the shores. Alexander is left thanking his gods and providence for a lucky escape.

As time went by, succeeding authors brought about subtle or for that matter even large changes to the story.

In the so called French prose version, he had the barrel bound with chains and with burning lamps inside. He saw various types of fishes underwater, whales and fish (which looked like men and women) which walked about like humans on the ocean floor, plucking fruits of trees which grew underwater. The whales it appears, were frightened of the bright light inside the bell. Alexander also saw more wonders which he never mentioned for fear that they would sound incredible to humans. Upon reaching ashore, his men castigated him for having taken such a huge risk, but Alexander brushed it off saying that he had learnt a lot of tactics watching fish battles.

Other versions mention of his men abandoning him by letting go of the chain. Floundering on the ocean floor, Alexander hit upon the idea of letting some blood into the ocean, for there is a saying that water does not like blood pollution and thus it quickly returned the clever king ashore with a mighty wave. This version was also altered over time, with Alexander carrying a dog, a cat and a fowl with him and in some versions, the fowl is killed for the blood, by the stricken Alexander. The lantern is replaced by a bright light emitting stone in some books, the abandoning part is changed to the men getting into trouble during a huge storm. In versions which came out closer to the 15^thcentury, Roxanne, his wife and a lover are seen on illustrations of the boat over water. Stories of deceit now creep in the Enikel version, with Roxanne (or another mistress) letting go of the chain so that she could go and live with her lover. Authors who felt this was stretching fact too far (Ulrich) made the mistress let go of the chain as she was too weak to hold on to it.

Some curious persons would ask about the significance of the cat, dog and cock. Well, like the tale which itself was fantastic, the cat was meant to be an air purifier (how, nobody knew), the cock told Alexander when it was day by crowing and the dog (until then acting as a scavenger) to be sacrificed in order to spill blood so that the sea would cast them back ashore.

In yet another version, two companions accompanied Alexander and all were stunned by what they saw by the bright lights emanating from the diving machine. Alexander is quoted as observing, from what he had seen underwater, that "...the world is damned and lost. The large and powerful fish devour the small fry."

A number of illustrations appeared showing differing types of bells, lowered vertically or horizontally, men holding its chain or in later versions the queen Roxanne and her lover.

And well, it also appeared in the Moghul collection based on the texts of the Alexander Romance, replete with an exquisitely illustrated Khamsa, authored by none other than the great Amir Khusru Dilhavi (this sixteenth-century manuscript of the Khamsa of Amir Khusraw Dihlavi containing eight paintings). The Khamsa of the poet Amir Khusrau includes a section Aina I Sikandari on Alexander the Great, who in Khusrau’s telling of his life, led expeditions to China, Russia, and the Western Isles. In this copy of the Khamsa, Alexander is shown being lowered into the sea in a glass diving bell. While underwater, he receives a visit from an angel who foretells his death.

Khusrau’s poem was a response to the great poet Nizami’s similar work on Alexander in his Khamza, where the final poem called the Sikandar-nama, which again covers many events in the life of Alexander the Great. The illustrations show Alexander with headgear very much like those worn by the Mughal emperor Humayun, whom he also resembles. Alexander is seen wearing a vermilion robe over a somber green jama as he receives the devotion of violently saluting courtiers, who have brought him golden vessels, a hunting cheetah, and a hawk.

According to Khusraw, Alexander embarks on a long sea voyage toward the Western Isles with Khizr, Elias, and Aristotle, pausing once to send his son Iskandar a letter bequeathing him the empire. So many other events are retold. Meanwhile, a curious Alexander presses on with his study of the world and its mysteries, and as we now know, he also decides to descend into the sea in a glass diving bell to examine submarine mysteries. In Khusrau’s version, once beneath the waters he meets an angel who reveals the infinite scope of all experience and informs him of the little time remaining to him. Alexander is relieved by this revelation and brings his journey to a close. Soon the aged (but he was just 32!) king dies, and his death is kept secret for a time….

The painting is by the Mughal period artist Mukunda. As expected, this minor pictorial tradition is occasioned by the position of the illustration in the text, which provides a description of the crew fastening ropes to the pearly glass vessel and setting it onto the water like a bubble.

If one were to wonder if others had tried these types of diving bells before Alexander, there are but brief mentions in History. Herodotus writes of a Persian diver Sycillias in 500BC who traveled eighty furlongs in his contraption and there are mentions of a sphere developed later in China during 200BC. Many centuries later, bells were reinvented in 1240 and 1535 after which came the instance of a submersible vessel which was built around 1620 by the Dutchman Cornelius Van Drebbel. A wooden watertight boat carrying 12 rowers and a total of 20 men made successful dives in the Thames River to a depth of some 20 meters. Tin this invention, oarsmen rowed one oar each, each oar protruding from the side of the boat through waterproofed leather seals.

Air was supplied through snorkel-like tubes that were held above the water's surface by flotation devices, and this allowed the submarine to remain underwater for long periods. Some reports of the time suggest that King James I actually rode in the third submarine for a trip under the Thames in 1626. He must have been the first monarch to have gone underwater, after Alexander’s feat, many thousands of years earlier.

And that brings up a question. We talked of Alexander and diving bells. What connection could it have to the inventor Alexander Graham Bell? Well, none whatsoever….

References

The Alexander Romance in the east and west – John Andrew Boyle

Studies in the Alexander Romance – DJA Ross

Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Walters Art Museum "Khamsa" of Amīr Khusraw of Delhi - John Seyller

Pics - Internet sources, wiki etc acknowledged with thanks

The Spencer’s of the Raj

This is yet another name that in theory belongs to previous generations. There was a time when the name was synonymous to quality thus justifying the high prices quality sometimes commanded. It also signified association to a wealthier elite in the India between the late 19^th century and the mid-20^th. The company or its skeletons still exist, owned by others, operated with a new ethos, but the Spencer’s I will write about is the Spencer’s from the times of the Raj. It was different really, perhaps a period when luxury was defined differently, when everything was relaxed and more attention paid to detail. One thing always kept Spencer’s apart, its higher prices, so much so that people used the term ‘Spencer prices’ to describe a well-marked up figure.

The story starts with two assistants in a general merchandise shop called Oaks and Co in Madras. The year, 1857. The young fellas were named Charles Durrant and John William Spencer. Durrant left Oaks in 1863 and started a new company named Durrant & Co at Mount Road Madras. Soon to join him was his previous colleague John Spencer. By 1864, the company was renamed Durrant & Spencer and for a couple of years, they were auction agents for a variety of ‘fresh and new’ imported goods. Things looked up and around 1867, Durrant vanished from the scene, to leave behind a new company JW Spencer & Co. At this juncture, Spencer was joined by a hotshot salesman named Eugene Oakshott and their business morphed into a regular shop selling wares. Eugene Phillip Oakshott incidentally was born in Cork, Ireland in 1839 and later worked around Liverpool in the linen and woolen trades. By 1871 he had moved to India and joined Charles Durrant at Spencer & Co. as noted above.

As business expanded, the offices and shop moved to various locations and the most talked about was the original unit near the D’Angeli’s hotel on Mount road. Spencer however, and most people may not know this, decided to leave India for by 1882, he was soon back in Britain. It was Oakshott who carried on the company’s business as sole proprietor and it was he who decided out of great regard, never to change the Company name. Whatever we now know as Spencer’s achievements should therefore be attributed to the energetic Oakshott, his manager Alfred Oakes and his partner HG Conner. By 1884 it was Spencer’s and Co and traded in teas, many fine goods and they were agents for many English firms. They had opened a branch in Bangalore and in quick succession another in Ooty.

Within no time, it had become a retail department store with multiple sections, had started bottling whiskey and started a Dindigul Trichinopoly cigar unit under the name Shah and Hous. That unit would become famous some decades later, and we will soon get to it. By 1887, Spencers had hit sales close to Rs 10 lakhs and they now planned a new building befitting its stature in the market, and went on to build one which survived well past the 20^thcentury. It was in 1891 that Oakshott purchased the land titled under 153 Mount road from one Ruthnavelu Mudaliar of Triplicane. With WN Pogson as architect he built an imposing building, though a bit scaled back from original plans, to house the ‘finest shop of the east’ which housed everything one could possibly want.

Oakshott moved back to Britain by 1892, while other partners and the company continued to thrive. He held the chairmanship until 1910. In 1897, the company went public having doubled the turnover again. JO Oakshott, his nephew who had first apprenticed in the Madras unit during 1886, returned with British experience to take over the reins of the new firm. Oaks and Co was another big name which did well, though competing with Spencer’s. Soon they ventured into hitherto new areas such as railway catering, cigar manufacturing, bottling of aerated waters and finally the prestigious hotel business. JO proved to be an adept manager soon rising up to the chairman position until he too left in 1913, to look after the affairs of the London Branch.

Quoting S Muthiah,‘J O,’ as he was known, gradually not only took over the management of Spencer’s but, through a series of takeovers, made it an all-India retailing, hoteliering and catering empire, the biggest in Asia in the early 20th Century. ‘JO’, working his way up, step by step, became Director in 1905 and de facto in- charge of the Company when Eugene Oakshott died in 1911 – his successor Alfred Oakes happy to live a quiet life. In 1913, ‘J.O’ became Chairman, a seat he was to adorn till his death in 1932. Between 1923 and 1928, ‘J.O’ spearheaded the takeover of Oakes & Co., Madras (Spencer’s nearest rivals), H.S. Smith & Co in Bombay, Jamasjee & Sons in Rawalpindi, G.F. Kellner’s in Calcutta, and W.E. Smith’s in Madras besides several other smaller companies.

On a side note, JO was also involved with the press, presenting through his paper, a European mindset in Madras. The Madras Times was started by the Gantz brothers in the year 1858, was followed by the Hindu newspaper started by Subramania Aiyar and M. Veeraghavachariar, together with four law students. In 1905, the Indian patriot was started by C. Karunakara Menon, who had experience from his Hindu days. The Madras Times was acquired by JO Robinson in 1921 who merged with The Mail to bring out the first morning paper of Madras, The Daily Express (In fact he also brought up the Higginbotham’s paper and published it under the banner of Associated Publishers). The Indian Express came in later, started in 1932 by an Ayurvedic doctor Varadarajulu Naidu. All in all, JO was a well-regarded citizen of Madras, serving in many positions, including the war office, the Bank of Madras, Madras traders association, the Madras port trust, the Madras Corporation, the SPCA, The Pasteur institute at Coonoor and so on…

Between 1920 and 1932 when he died, John is shown to be living at Bramley Croft, Tower Road, Hindhead and that was when he built the house Grayshott in Madras. John O Robinson’s eldest daughter Esther married Stanley Wilson. Esther and husband Stanley moved into the property in 1930 when Stanley, a Chartered Accountant, became a director of Spencer & Co. Later, Stanley was to become Chairman of the company and see it through the period of changes in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s resulting from India’s independence.

During this period and later, Eugene Oakshott’s sons Roy & Percy also served for the company, but mainly from the London offices. Roy’s son Philip or PG served as an MD for a while, until 1936. Many years passed by and eventually another Oakshott, John sailed to India in 1952, but his involvement though appreciated was in an environment which was rapidly changing after India had become independent.

From the Oakshott archives - Stanley Edwards was a racing man and ‘Grayshott’ was the center of many extravagant parties and Sunday ‘open’ houses for the racing fraternity and personalities of the Madras society. The couple continued to live there until 1957 and later the property was taken over by Spencer & Co. However, the fortunes of the company were in decline throughout the 1970/80s and what was left of a once great empire was the subject of a takeover, although the name Spencer remained. ‘Grayshott’ was put up for sale in 1994 and was then ‘purchased’ by the Tax Department in 1995.

So much about the key British individuals. While there were a number of Indians in the hierarchy, the company was strictly British, with a decent amount of segregation within its environs, such as the bathrooms. The management was British, the sales and customer support were handled by Anglo Indians and the clerical and labor pool handled by Indians. It projected somewhat of an uppity behavior, with the stores handling customers purely based on their looks and perceived status. Branch managers were usually locals, for example we had C Narayana Menon at the Calicut beach Spencer’s. Personnel were mostly loyal to the company and considered part of the extended Spencer’s family. Honesty was paramount and any kind of theft meant dismissal. Pensions were paid to key staff and branches were taken to task enmasse if something wrong happened at any outpost.

Spencer’s association with the railways in providing railway refreshments was an affair which resulted in a virtual monopoly. There are so many stories mentioning the white uniformed railway waiter with his turban and the green and gold cummerbund and the legendary passing of trays on a running train without any running boards (this was before the vestibule came about). The picture below shows you roughly how it was done.

Catering started quite early, somewhere around 1898 or a little later under its own name to the M&SM (Madras & Southern Maratha Railway) co. and the S.I.R. (Southern Indian Railway), under the name Brandon & co, to the G.I.T.R. (Great Indian Peninsula Railways) headquartered in Bombay and under the name GF Kellner’s for the BNR (Bengal Nagpur Rail), the Nizam’s railway and finally also the N.W.F.R. (North West Frontier railway) running between Delhi, Amritsar & Lahore.

The stories are abundant, of the omelets and toast, bacon and eggs, imported cheese’s, the ever famous roast chicken, the oft remembered railway mutton, crisp and thin fried fish and what not. Cutlery, ceramic plates and so on were a norm for the upper class dining experience. They were the first to start the concept of taking an order at the previous stations for delivery down the line after telegraphing the orders. M&SM refreshment rooms started as early as 1903 and it is believed that this fine five decade relationship with the railways was perhaps due to the personal friendship between Edward Waller Stoney, the SIR Chief Engineer (his daughter Ethel was the mother of Alan Turing, the person involved in making one of the earliest computers and the breaking of the enigma cipher) one of Spencer’s first shareholders and who became later, a director of Spencer’s.

The refreshment rooms by contract were to be staffed by men of good character, fit, well behaved, in good health, well dressed and skillful! While furniture and space was provided by SIR, the cutlery, and upkeep was Spencer’s responsibility. They also ran restaurant cars on important trains such as the Ceylon boat mail and the link ships at Dhanushkodi. Spencer’s provided a canteen facility for the Tamil labor transit camp at Mandapam. Interestingly they also served at wedding parties, POW camps (2^ndworld war) and army canteens!

As the WWII progressed the food business was severely affected and quality dropped due to lack of supplies and after India became independent, austerity rules and lack of foreign visitors affected the business drastically with occasional visitors finding their food terrible and unpalatable. In the late 50’s western style catering was out of place and the business eventually ground to a halt.

The area of business which rose its profile much higher was the hotel business. Connemara in Madras, the Savoy in Ooty, the Sylks in Coonoor, The Metropole in Mysore, The Blue Mountain in Kothagiri, the Malabar hotel in Cochin and The State hotel in Jaipur were all once managed or set up by Spencers. They then branched into aerated waters and as they say, Spencer’s Soda but naturally helped many an alcohol consumer drift to the clouds. Don’t be surprised, they also branched out into stocking premium wines and spirits.

But what I did not really know about at all was their connections with manufacture of cigars. Their brand was the Gold Mohur Havana shaped cigars made from the finest sun dried Dindigul tobacco. A number of versions were made with different tobaccos, imported and local, from plants at Trichy and Dindigul. And yes, cigars in those days were rolled on one’s thigh! The little Randolph proved to be very popular. The Dindigul factory chugged on until the late sixties.

We did have a Spencer’s at Calicut beach and I recollect many visits to this shop. It is said that KB Menon a freedom fighter, used Spencer’s as his hideout for a while when he was sent to Calicut in 1942 to organize the Quit India movement. In 1942, Dr. K.B. Menon and a few other patriots had planned to destroy the Feroke Bridge, as a token protest against the British rule. However, the conspiracy was discovered and defused, and the"culprits" were punished in the so called Keezhariyur Bomb Conspiracy Case which CHF has written about,earlier.

S Muthiah explains - After independence came the gradual decline of the company, the first signs seen during the stewardship of Robinson's son-in-law, S.W. Edwards, who became Chairman in 1950. He was faced with a ban on imports, an exodus of the firm's best customers, most of whom had ensured occupancy in its hotels, the nationalization of the railways with the resultant loss of railway business, and a tight money situation in a strangled marketplace. He saw Indianisation - and a different outlook that might result - as the way out. And Cooverji Hormasji Bhabha, a wealthy Bombay businessman who'd been a minister in Nehru's first cabinet, got the nod over Anantha Ramakrishnan of Amalgamations, mainly because of Zal Rustom Irani who had joined the company in 1937 as its first senior Indian executive. Irani became a Director in 1943 - and his were thewords that mattered with Edwards.

During the late 50’s after the first Indian director Irani joined its ranks, the Spencer’s group tried to diversify into pharmaceuticals and consumer durables. This never worked out but the fortunes were stabilized with their decision to lease the Connemara, West End and Savoy to the Taj Group in the 1970s. But the scene slipped into a disaster when a major fire in 1981 destroyed the main showroom.

Eventually the new owners sold the Company in 1989 to the R.P. Goenka Group of Calcutta who were involved with many other chains such as the Food World, Health & Glow and Music World. Spencer’s as an institution still remains - and so do a few stores. As Muthiah put it - In fact, the main store in Madras has a liquor counter no second to the one in Spencer's heyday. But no Spencer's store today, is what it was; the ambience has gone, together with the building. The Spencers Plaza mall has taken its place, housing over 700 shops.

At one time, the Spencer's Empire according to their website stretched from Peshawar to Cochin, from Karachi to Chittagong, spanning the length and breadth of undivided India. Today it has passed hands, changed in culture and outlook though still remaining in name. Anybody who wants to study the group in more detail has only to lay their hands on Muthiah’s wonderful retelling of that story.

References

The Spencer legend – S Muthiah

The many articles in ‘The Hindu’ by S Muthiah

Pics –

Waiter passing trays –Steve McCurry Pakistan

Spencers – PB Mani

Others - google pics - owners acknowledged with thanks

From the Ravanhasta to the Indian violin

Some people get irritated when I conjure up a story connecting something from the present to its past origins in India. They equate it to the pater in “my fat Greek wedding’ who would connect everything great to Greek history. But I guess it has to be accepted, for the flow of ideas, business and goods from the East to the West has origins going back to times before the advent of the Gregorian calendar. Look at a recent discovery, they found prehistoric rock art (petroglyphs) in a Konkan village, going back tens of thousands of years depicting hunting, sea creatures like whales and sharks, and animals not local such as the Hippo and the Rhino. But well, I will not get into all that, this is an article on a musical instrument and its journey from India through China, Lanka, the west and finally back to India, the instrument being the Violin.

So many great names are associated with this stringed instrument played with a bow. Names of those who made the best violins such as Stradivarius, Amati and Stainer are frequently mentioned together with virtuosos who played it like Vivaldi, Yehudi Menuhin and those who composed violin pieces such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. But not listed in this western ensemble is the person credited with the invention of the first stringed instrument played with a bow, the legendary king of Lanka named Ravana.

Well, one could of course question his existence and state that the tales of Ravana were just an orally retold epics. Nevertheless, let us take a look at that story and proceed on. Most historians and musicians agree that the Ravanhatta (Ravanostron, ravana hasta or Ravan hatha – Ravan’s hand) is one of the early stringed instruments played with a bow. F J Fetis, in his 1856 work " Notice d'Antoine Stradivari " explains this succinctly “If we would trace a bow-instrument to its source we must assume the most simple form in which it could appear, and as such required no assistance from an art brought to perfection, and such a form we shall find in the Ravanastron, made of a cylinder of sycamore wood hollowed out from one end to the other.

Let’s figure out the connections between Ravana and this instrument. Its birth is believed to have taken place under traumatic circumstances. According to a legend which goes thus, Ravana’s mother Kaikasi, an ardent devotee of Shiva, was eager to go and live in the god’s abode on Mount Kailash at the Himalayas. Ravana opposed the plan vehemently, but to please his mother he promised to bring Mount Kailash to Sri Lanka. As Ravana was lifting the mountain, an angry Shiva trapped his 10 heads and 20 arms. Writhing in pain, Ravana prayed for mercy. When Shiva let him off, Ravana wisely decided to sing his praise and instantly made an accompanying instrument using one of his heads, an arm and some of his hair. The soulful music emanating from Ravana’s instrument is said to have moved Shiva, who bestowed immortality on him.

Another account states that Ravana, the 10-headed king of demons was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva. He played the veena for Siva and pleased him with his beautiful recitals so much that Shiva started his ‘Anandatandav’ dance to the music. As the veena recital grew intense, so did the lord’s dance. Suddenly the ‘siras’ (head) of the veena broke. Without thinking twice, Ravan cut one of his heads and attached it to the veena and continued his performance. And when the veena’s ‘ambhana’ (sound board) broke, Ravana cut one of his 20 hands and replaced it. The folklore further goes like this. The strings broke next. Ravana plucked out some of his veins and attached it to the veena. Neither did the music stop nor did the Lord’s dance.

Herrod –Allen explains - The violin in its present form was not perfected until about 1500. One reads of no instruments played with a bow in Egypt, Assyria or Greece, but in India there is the legend of a king named Ravana who lived five thousand years ago and was such a good musician that the gods themselves listened to his songs. He invented an instrument called the Ravanastron, consisting simply of a little hollow cylinder of wood. The two strings stretched across were played with a bow. From the monochord, the violin acquired its bridge, supporting the strain of the strings, and its finger board, which helps to mark the places of the tones.

But that was all in Lanka. Hanuman is credited with bringing it to the mainland, where it is still played in Rajasthan and in Agra area, and locally known as the Ravanahatha. From India, the Ravanahatha travelled westwards to the Middle East and Europe, where in the 9th century, it came to be called the Ravanastron. But we should clarify the description above a little bit too - The instrument is made up of a bowl-shaped resonator fashioned from a cut coconut shell that is covered with goat hide. A long bamboo body, the Dandi, is attached to the bowl. The principal strings are made of steel and horsehair.

It would not be unwise to introduce a little diversion here, if one chose to disbelieve the legends detailed previously. The Ancient Pulluva caste of Malabar were players of the Pulluva Veena, a form of the Ravanstron described above. The Pulluvan Veena, also known as 'Veena kunju', is a typical single stringed musical instrument used by these iterant musicians of Kerala. This basic instrument, shaped somewhat like a violin, is made from arrali (teak), jackfruit and coconut shell. Its string is made from a plant known as naagachitaamradaa. The string is stretched across a dish-shaped kinnam (resonator), which has a wooden stem attached to it. There are some wooden bangles at the end of the bow, used to provide rhythms while playing. Was that how the instrument came into being eons ago? Food for thought, I guess!

If one were to disregard legends and look for more leads, you will still find them in India. Herron-Allen quotes Engels “However this may be, there is a great probability that the fiddle originated in Hindustan, for Sanskrit scholars inform us that there are names for the bow which cannot be less than 1500 to 2000 years old. These names are Kona, Garika, and Parivadas. Moreover, it is remarkable that the most simple form of Ravanastron - there are nowadays some varieties of this instrument—is almost identical with the Chinese fiddle called Ur-heen. This species has only two strings, and consists of a small block of wood hollowed out and covered with the skin of a serpent. The Ur-heen has not been mentioned among the most ancient instruments of the Chinese, since there is no evidence of its having been known in China before the introduction of the Buddhist religion into that country from India. From indications, which to point out would lead too far here, it would seem that several instruments found in China originated in Hindustan."

Another form of modern instrument almost identical with the Ravanastron is the Indian Omerti and, coming a step westwards, almost identical with the Omerti is the modern Turkish and Arabian Kemangeh a'gouz. In one of his earlier works M. Fetis derived the origin of bow instruments from the Goudok of the Russian peasantry, but in a later work he corrects this, and ascribes the Goudok to its proper source, viz., the Rebab, and thence through the Kemangeh and Omerti to the Ravanastron of ancient and modern India.

So perhaps it was prevalent in the Northern parts of India, played by the nath bavas, from where it traveled to China with iterant Buddhists, and came down with them to SE Asia (Burma) and simultaneously with the spice trade, spread westwards into Arabia. It went on to develop into the Rehab, then the Kermangeh, the goudock, and the Anglo Saxon Rote (Chrotta, Crwth). From the Rotta it developed into the 6 string Viol and later to the 4 stringed, hair bow played instruments developed by Gasparo Salo or Amati Violin, which we know of today. And there it rested for many hundred years as musicians tuned and perfected it.

It is clear that the Portuguese, French and the Dutch colonials who made India their home between the 15^th and 19^thcentury brought Violins with them, but the instrument did not cross the musical borders between Western and Carnatic music.

One should note here that the Portuguese and the French musicians did use the violin and kapri music included use of the Portuguese rebequo / rabaeca / ravukinnai. Mentions can be found in communications - Georg Pock, the Nuremberg merchant, writing on January 1st, 1522, from Cochin to his countryman, Michael Behaim, draws an ugly picture of the Portuguese character. He writes of them plainly: "The Portuguese, who are born Portuguese, poison the air with their pride. Should one of them possess ten ducats, he must have a velvet coat, a silver dagger, polished boots, and a violin with which to steal about the streets at nights and serenade the ladies”. The observation of Bishop Joseph Sebastiani that“There is no town or village of Christians which does not have in its church an organ, harp and a viola and a good choir of musicians who sing for festivities and for holidays, vespers, masses and litanies and with much cooperation and devotion” shows the background of Luso-Indians concerning their love for music.Catholicchildren were taught to play violin and to sing hymns, Psalms and ladinhas.

Other violin like instruments were developed in India over time, but did not really form part of formal music vocal concerts as they came about. The usual accompaniments were the Veena, Nadaswaram, Mridangam, Ghatam and so on, until the king of the instruments - the fiddle or Violin appeared on the scene. But it is also possible that dance performances such as Dasiyattam had the violin as an accompaniment, before the advent of vocal concerts. A mural in Tipu’s Seringapatanam shows a violin player accompanying a dance performance, indicating a French link. All these are pre 19^thcentury.

The crossover to Carnatic music had to wait until missionaries during the British period established a better rapport with a southern monarch Serfoji II. Let us now see how that happened.

Some months ago, we discussed the origins and development of Carnatic music. We noted that the golden age was the period when the Trinity of Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and Syama Sastri ruled at Tiruvavur in the late 18^thcentury. During this period the Violin quietly entered the Carnatic scene. Unlike the harmonium, it found patrons and never got banned, though purists may have raised eyebrows. One could always ask - why a western instrument? Experts opine that there was a desire to make Carnatic music modern, but I would assume that it was mainly due to the influence of leading musicians such as the Dikishitar’s, the Tanjavur Quartet and Varahapayyar as well as their proximity and dealings with some friendly British patrons who demonstrated to them the superiority of the instrument and its suitability as a bridge instrument to the vocal. The Sarangi though closer to the human voice, lost out as it was considered socially unacceptable by Tamil Brahmins due to its associations with North Indian courtesans.

Three stories make their rounds with the violin’s or fiddle’s entry into Carnatic.

The first of course deals with Baluswamy Dikshitar and his connections to Ft St George. Muddukrishna Mudaliyar a Zamindar in Manali and a Dubash (translator and interpreter) was well connected with the East India Company. He was also a patron of art and once happened to visit Tiruvavur. Here he listened to Ramaswamy Dikshitar singing and was so captivated that he invited him to Manali. Ramaswamy Dikshitar agreed and shifted to Manali with his family. He was succeeded by his son Venkatakrishna Mudaliar, who continued the patronage to the Dikshitar family. Venkatakrishna Mudaliar (also referred to as Chinnaswami) was also a Dubash of the East India Company and was invited now and then to Fort St George. Chinnaswami would often take Muthuswami and his brother to Fort St. George, to listen to what is known as ‘airs’- Western Music played by Irish men in the British band.

The bands played simple Celtic marching tunes, lilting melodies, easy on the drums and bagpipes and flutes. One the sidelines or in the audience, two young men watched and listened and took it all in. They were not yet bound by the strictures of temple music, and were for that period, affected by melody, rhythm of these alien sounds. Since Muthuswamy had already taken to the Veena, it was decided that Baluswamy should learn playing on the violin. Chinnaswamy Mudaliar engaged a European tutor for this purpose. Three years of practice allowed Balu to play Carnatic ragas and tunes on the newfound instrument, effectively. It is said that he then moved to Thiruvavur, where his performances with the violin were appreciated by all. It also impressed the Rajah of nearby Ettayapuram, a well-known patron of Carnatic music. He appointed Balu as his principal court musician in 1824.

The second relates to the entry of the Tanjavur quartet into the musical scene and the court of Tanjavur king Serfoji II. Serfoji inherited a great musical tradition in his courts from his ancestors, great contributors to the schools of Sadir and Carnatic music (see my previous article). Serfoji was not only trained in local arts but was also schooled in the western fashion by CF Schwarz and even though the English rulers were in full control, they allowed him to continue as a titular monarch thus providing him the time to scholarly pursuits. The musical department of his court was headed by Varahappa Dikshitar of Varahapayyar. The four brothers who served in the court reported to Varahapayyar. The brothers or the quartet as they came to be known as, were Ponnaiah a composer and vocalist, Chinnaiah a choreographer, Sivanandam who excelled as a mridangist and nattuvanar, and lastly Vadivelu a composer and violinist. Vadivelu, an accomplished vocalist, composer and violinist was the youngest and is said to have accompanied himself on the violin, which by itself is a rare accomplishment at those high levels.

Vadivelu who initially studied the violin under his teacher Schwarz (some others say that Varahapayyar chose the violin over the piano and later taught Vadivelu). Vadivelu later became a disciple of Muthuswami Dikshitar when he spent four years in Tanjore. He mastered the instrument and became so proficient that Thaygaraja, it is said, would summon Vadivelu often to listen to the new instrument. Vadivelu eventually had a tiff with Serfoji and moved to neighboring Travancore. Vadivelu’s skills as a vocalist, dance expert and violinist had caught the fancy of Swathi Thirunal and the young genius, aged just 22 years of age, was appointed as Asthanavidwan of Travancore court. Vadivelu was a scholar in Tamil and Telugu and his violin mastery is said to have been unmatched. Swathi was convinced of the importance of violin to Carnatic music and he ordered it be used in concerts after gifting a rare violin made of ivory to Vadivelu, in 1834. Examples of vadivelu’s input can I believe be seen in Swati Tirunals varnam (Shankarabharanam) where the pitch intervals match the western scale and the end tapers to a marching beat.

The third story is connected to Varahappayar, the head of the music department in Serfoji’s court. It appears that Varahapayyar who spoke English, would usually be sent to speak to the British governor in Madras. During one such visit, the British musicians impressed with Varahapayyars abilities taught him bits on the violin, and Varahapayyar demonstrated what he had learnt by playing a few Carnatic tunes to the governor. The pleased administrator presented him with a violin. Returning to Tanjavur, Varahapayyar played the instrument for Serfoji, and as it went on to help the entry of the violin into Carnatic music performances in Tanjore.

A fourth possibility is that Vedanayagam picked up Violin notes from Fr Schwartz and trained Vadivelu. There is also a mention that Schwartz was deputed for a while to Tirunelveli and he had trained Travancore’s king Dharma Raja, a mention which is however not yet substantiated.

When music then left the majestic court halls and moved to the concert halls, it is explained that the violin proved to be a perfect accompaniment to the vocalist. It could set itself above the noisy environment of a crowded Madras and proved to be a good match for the vocalist as it tracked him through the tune or in between in repetition. The instrument was flexible, it could be tuned to any pitch that the vocalist chooses while the bow lends continuity, a necessary ingredient for vocal music. The tonal quality and the volume that it produced enable it to blend with the human voice. Experts opine that it can play at any speed or tempo, to match the vocalist or other instruments as its range covers 3 octaves, the normal range for a decent vocalist. Not only that, it can reproduce most of the subtle nuances, gamakas, modulations, and match all the srutis which are dominant characteristics of Carnatic music.

The South Indian violinist typically sits cross-legged on the floor and balances the instrument between his chest and the ankle bone of his right foot, on which rests the scroll of the violin. This posture facilitates the free movement of the left hand along the fingerboard, particularly in producing the gamakas (graces) integral to the Carnatic mode. It also necessitated appropriate changes in bowing and fingering techniques. Comparing with western music, the significant difference is in the way Carnatic violinists play their instruments, rather than the instrument itself. Indian violinists place an emphasis on continuity, as opposed to western violinists who prefer to focus on the notes. Philip Peter explains - The Indian style of playing the violin closely imitates the human voice. Hence there is a lot of ornamentation. Indian violinists use varying heights of bridges in order to control the string tension. For example, the violin maybe tuned low in order to match a male vocalist. This would result in low string tension resulting in the use of a high bridge. Conversely, an instrument tuned high has a low bridge height.

During its development in South India, subtle changes occurred as the violin was being adapted to the vocalist. Experts tell us that in the Western system, the four strings are tuned in the order E A D G from right to left, each five tones apart. However, in the Carnatic system, the tuning is not absolute but relative. Initially the tuning was in the order of Sa Pa Sa Pa from right to left (higher octave to lower octave). Annaswami Sastri is said to have followed this mode. Subsequently the tuning was changed to Pa Sa Pa Sa - the first two strings from the right are aligned to the middle octave while the third and fourth to the lower octaves.

And thus the violin started to get used as a mimic to the human voice, following the vocalist, sometimes surpassing it, sometimes being subservient, but becoming an acceptable and dependable companion to the lead singer, in the hands of a trained violinist.

After the introduction of the violin by Baluswami Dikshitar and others, the efforts of the next generation of violinists, like Tanjavur Sivaramakrishna Iyer, Annaswamy Sastri (grandson of Shyama Sastri), Fiddle Subbarayar etc. helped the role of the violin to grow. Gradually the violin took precedence over all others as the main melodic accompanying instrument to vocal music and has come to stay. Newer maestros like Kunnankudi Vaidyanathan, TN Krishnan, Lalgudi Jayaraman, L Shankar, L Subramaniam, U Srinivas and so on set the future standards. 200 years later, we can see that the violin is these days a standard part and parcel of South Indian classical music. The Bangalore style and specific hardware modifications were the handiwork of a great Kannada violinist Chowdiah, and the Chowdiah hall, shaped like an Indian 7 stringed violin is a famed concert hall in Bangalore. The violin developed further. As time went by, electric pickups were added, then the entire instrument got modified during the mid-20^th century to a solid body, duly integrated with electronics and 5 strings.

Some might wonder why the Harmonium, ever a part of Hindustani and even film music in the south, never found popularity in Carnatic music. Why was it banned on the AIR and continues to be banned for solo performances? A future article will provide answers to those interested.

The Ravanahatta or Ravanastron is still played in India, played by the bards and minstrels of the Nayaka community in Rajasthan and Gujarat. These Bhopas play it in honor of Pabuji, their folk deity in a 36 hour recitation of The Epic of Pabuji.

Getting back to the violin, we had a maestro in Kerala whom we all so adored and I had the opportunity and good fortune to watch one of his livewire performances, 11 years ago, in California. Alas! Balabhaskar, a virtuoso on the violin is no more, he passed away a few weeks ago. As they said - Wielding his electric violin, he was a favorite with the hip crowd, but he was also equally loved by the classical music buffs….

This is dedicated to his memory.

References

Music and music makers- Constance Morse

Violin making – As it was and is - Edward Heron-Allen

Listening to the Violin in South Indian Classical Music – Amanda Weidman (Theorizing the Local: Music, Practice, and Experience in South Asia and Beyond - Ed Richard K. Wolf)

Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of music in South India – Amanda Weidman

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin - Gordon N. Swift

The violin in Carnatic music: by Subhadra Vijaykumar (Showtime March 23, 2007)

The Tanjavur Quartet

Tanjore and its Carnatic music legacy

pic – Balabhasker 3dvarius

Note:

One or two readers had queried me on the famed ivory violin gifted to Vadivelu by Swati Tirunal. The ivory violin with an engraved Travancore state emblem, the eagle, gifted by Swathi in 1934, apparently made by a local craftsman is these days, is kept at the Tanjavur quartet’s ancestral home (1818, West Main Street, Behind Brihadeswara Temple, Thanjavoor).

This violin yellowed with age and a bow with worn out strings is can be seen in a glass case in the house. Though it is said that Vadivelu left Thanjavur and never returned, his descendants mention that he did come just once, to leave this violin back in his ancestral home. Some Stella Mary’s students who visited the home in 1954, played the violin and commented thus “The original bow is lost; the violin, now yellow with age, emits a strange tone, due perhaps to the fact that it is made of ivory.”

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The Spencer Saga

The Violin in Carnatic music

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