Rajaji Read online

  Introduced to literature by Tait, Rajagopalachari was introduced by literature to liberty. A believer in the Raj and one of its finer specimens, Tait had, in retrospect, won Rajagopalachari only in order to lose him. For the moment, however, only the seed had been sown and neither teacher nor pupil seemed aware that it would grow into a thorn of revolt, as Tait would later view it.

  Rajan and Rama Rao ‘knew intimately and loved everything in the college, from the lawn and the cricket field to the venerable trees which bounded them . . . [and] the austere red college building with the gaunt clock tower keeping watch over it.’ Since the college was affiliated at the time to Madras University, Rajan took his B.A. exams in the three subjects English, Science and Tamil at Madras, in January 1896.

  ‘Having left everything until the last minute,’ he sat up most of the night to swot up facts for the statics and dynamics papers the following day. Rajan’s father, who was with him, ordered him to bed after he had finished with statics. Getting high marks in statics and a zero in dynamics, Rajan passed in science as a whole in the second division, with 218 marks out of 400. The periods assigned to Tamil had been devoted to amusement, and Rajan, destined to be acclaimed as a master of Tamil writing, failed his test in it. In English he was ranked fifth in the university. Despite his results in Tamil he was declared a graduate.

  He decided to study law. This could be done in Madras. Though there was no separate law college, law was taught in the university’s showpiece, the seashore Senate House. Completed in 1879, the ornate four-towered edifice with stained-glass windows sported European columns, Islamic minarets and Hindu decorative motifs.

  Rajan’s law course began early in 1896. His attire in class accorded with the rule laid down in ‘The Calendar’ of the university that ‘graduates who are in the habit of wearing native costume shall be clothed in white, and shall wear either a white, red or black turban, which may have a gold border.’ Because he had failed in Tamil, Rajan was also obliged, for the first two terms, to attend lectures in Tamil in the pink-domed Presidency College, 500 yards down the beach from Senate House. In January 1897 he narrowly passed the Tamil test, securing 46 marks out of 120. ‘I am free at last from this Tamil devil,’ he told his father.

  His hostel, kept for students from Mysore by a certain Biligiri Iyengar, was located in an eighteenth century building called Castle Kernan. Also facing the blue sea, about a mile away from Presidency College, Castle Kernan was popularly known as Ice House; ice for chilling the whisky of British residents in Madras used to be brought round the Cape of Good Hope and stored in it.

  Rajan still received occasional assistance from Tait. Sometimes, he would run on the inviting Marina sands for pleasure or exercise. Once he even had a brush with danger when, during a storm, a boat filled with students, including himself, almost capsized in the sea.

  Queen Victoria celebrated her golden jubilee in 1897. The Hindu, founded in Madras two decades earlier, wrote: ‘Everywhere Her Majesty’s name is blessed and cheered to the echo by millions upon millions of voices of Hindus’ (22.6.97).

  The paper had exaggerated. In reality the bonds were not as warm. Formed in 1885 by a group of Indians and Britons, the Indian National Congress had been petitioning the white masters for representative government — with little effect. Wenlock, the Governor of Madras, had admitted injustice. In 1896 he had written to Lord Hamilton, Secretary of State for India in the British cabinet, that it was ‘a monstrous shame that [the textile mills of] Lancashire should rule India’ and that it was difficult ‘to maintain that we rule India for the benefit of the Indians and not of England.’8

  Rajan was attending an evening lecture in 1898 when a friend, G.A. Natesan, rushed in with a poster announcing the release of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who had been sentenced for eighteen months after a trial for sedition that had made him a hero. The poster thrilled Rajan.

  A telegram arrived at Ice House stating that Rajan’s mother was ill. He hastened to join her. The last leg of the journey had to be done in a horse-drawn jutka. While engaging one he heard a Muslim driver say in Urdu to his fellows that the lad’s mother was dead. Fearing confirmation, Rajan asked no questions as the jutka bumped along to the munsiff’s house.

  His ears had not deceived him. Singaramma was dead, a victim of cholera. Rajan accused his father of not taking care of her. ‘In my hurt and shock I rebuked him,’ he would later confess.9

  Following Singaramma’s death, there were marriage proposals for Rajan. Offers came from richer families. The munsiff was tempted but Rajan turned them down. ‘You will end up marrying a poor girl,’ Singaramma’s sister told him. ‘I want to marry a poor girl,’ replied Rajan.

  His mother had been raised in Kuppam, where slow trains between Bangalore and Madras briefly halted. Rajan knew that in a village called Lakshmipuram, two miles from Kuppam, lived Alarmelu Mangammal, Manga for short, whom Singaramma had thought would be suitable for him. The girl’s father, Tirumalai Sampangi Iyengar, an itinerant priest of humble means, desired the match.

  By previous arrangement, Rajan saw Manga offering worship in the Lakshmipuram temple. Charmed, he said he was willing. Sampangi Iyengar declared before guests that he would give Manga to Rajan. Next day, in Kuppam, in a modest courtyard decorated with flowers and plantain branches, while a priest recited ancient texts, the pair, bride behind groom, walked seven steps round the sacred fire, and Rajan took Manga’s little hand in his.

  Manga was just ten years old. The child-wife stayed behind with her parents. The groom returned to Madras for his studies. In January 1900, at the age of twenty-one, Rajan passed the Bachelor of Law exams — in the third division.

  Chakravarti Iyengar hoped to see his son a judge one day. On Rajan’s birth an astrologer had even prophesied a viceroyalty, which sounded absurd,10 but a judgeship, which was big enough, was not impossible. The Bar could lead to the Bench. Father and son decided that the latter should set up practice in Salem, headquarters of the district to which Thorapalli and Hosur belonged, and the seat of the munsiff’s ultimate boss, the Collector.

  Salem town stands in a valley between the sizable Shevaroys in the north and lower hills on the southern horizon. At the turn of the century, when Rajan, soon to be called C.R. by friends and clients, arrived in Salem, it had a population of about 70,000. Coffee had been successfully cultivated on the hills, but there was little industry of any scale in the town or near it. Thousands of Salem’s lowly homes, however, echoed to the whirr of the handloom. Europeans frequented Yercaud, 4,500 feet above sea level in the Shevaroys. The town’s Indian elite consisted of a handful of junior officials — senior posts were British preserves — and advocates.

  Renting a home on the second street of the Agraharam, the Brahmin quarter, Rajan, very much his father’s pride and hope, was soon joined by Chakravarti Iyengar, as he chose to retire and leave Hosur. His older sons were by now attached to the district administration and riding on mules to collect revenue and information.

  Shortly after his arrival in Salem, C.R. was told that the case of his first client was unexpectedly ‘on board.’ Picking up a bicycle, he pedalled as hard as he could to the courtroom, opened with a remark that amused the English judge, and went on to win the case. It was the start of a reputation. Clients, including some accused of major crimes, began to make their way to his doorstep. Before the year ended, he had ‘already defended [his] first murderer.’11

  Navaratna Rama Rao, who had also studied law in Madras, acted for a while as C.R.’s junior. But either he was not suited for the Bar, or the Bar for him, for in about two years he returned to his native Mysore and joined its administrative service.

  Twelve years old when she went to her husband’s home, Manga gave birth to a boy, Krishnaswami, on the day following her thirteenth birthday. In less than two years, another boy, Ramaswami, was born. That Manga had to endure the pains of childbirth at so early an age would embarrass C.R. all his life.

  In 1904-5, Japan inflicted defeats o
n Russia, destroying the notions of European invincibility and Asian impotence. Also in 1905, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, announced that Bengal would be split, one part mainly Hindu and the other with a Muslim majority. Administrative convenience was the reason given, but many Indians saw a design to divide the communities. In protest, a campaign of boycotting British goods was launched.

  C.R. was excited by Japan’s victory and drawn by the stir against Curzon’s step. His feelings were sufficiently strong for him to journey to distant Calcutta for the December 1906 session of the Indian National Congress, the largest political gathering witnessed in India till then.

  Dadabhai Naoroji, India’s Grand Old Man, was presiding. He asked for ‘self-government, or Swaraj.’ The twenty-eight- year-old C.R. glowed, but Pherozeshah Mehta, the ‘Lion of Bombay,’ who could speak with fire but was the leader of the Moderates, was perturbed. A Moderate-Extremist contest became inevitable. Standing with the Extremists, C.R. expressed himself in Patna’s Hindustan Review of July 1907:

  Extremist forms of lawful agitation are . . . necessary to command the attention of the immovable statesmen who control the destinies of this country.

  He added that while reform by instalments need not be opposed, there was ‘a way of throwing crumbs’ which created ‘a debased canine nature of satisfaction without ambition’ and had to be ‘actively resisted and prevented.’

  The trial of strength with the Moderates took place at Surat in western India, where the Congress met in December 1907. A fully involved C.R. took a number of southern delegates to Surat, paying for the journey of some. Steered by Mehta, the Moderates tightly controlled the platform. When Tilak, hero to C.R. and to large numbers of Indians, tried to raise a question, he was asked not to speak. Young Moderate volunteers tried to drag him down when he mounted the platform.

  Unmoved and defiant, Tilak faced the audience with folded arms. Suddenly, a shoe hurtled through the air and hit Mehta. Pandemonium followed. Men rushed about shouting with fury and waving long sticks. C.R. saw the session break up in chaos. The Congress split, and Extremists like himself were ousted. The Moderates were to possess the Congress until 1915.

  For articles in his journal Kesari, Tilak was sentenced to six years rigorous imprisonment. He was to spend the six years in a cell in Mandalay in Burma.

  It was a pale Congress that met in December 1908 in Madras. Only those accepting in writing the Moderate creed could take part. C.R. fought for the right to attend without signing the creed. His bid failed, but so did an attempt by the Moderates to detach Salem from C.R.’s influence.

  Repression was breeding violence. In April 1908 a bomb was thrown at a British judge in Muzaffarpur in Bihar; the judge survived but two Englishwomen were killed. Khudiram Bose was tried and sent to the gallows; in revenge the revolutionaries killed two officials and an approver.

  Yet it did not appear that the bomb would frighten the foreigner away. In the years immediately following 1908, freedom seemed an unrealizable dream to C.R. and many like him. Raised high in 1905-6, their hopes now lay broken around them.

  In 1906 Manga gave birth to a daughter, Namagiri. Their third son, Narasimhan, was born in 1909. Lakshmi, their second daughter and last child, was to come in 1912.

  Wanting his clothes ‘fresh and fine,’ C.R. wore a silver- laced white turban, a white panchakachham (tied in five places) dhoti — the long cloth enclosing each leg separately — a black buttoned-up coat, and black socks and shoes. In a contemporary’s view, ‘from his very first year he had a roaring practice.’12 Clients were paying him a thousand rupees for a case.

  He liked the money, which looked even better when he remembered his boyhood, but his high fees were also a device for saving time, which he wanted for friends, for recreation, for politics, for ‘social reform’ efforts. He and his friends held converse on cultural, scientific and political questions. At a Book Club they formed they dissected new works. Songstress ‘Salem’ Godavari performed at a farewell party for a British judge.

  There was sport: C.R. became a reasonable tennis player, had a shot at billiards and played cards; but after a dispute during a game he gave up cards for good. Buying a dogcart and horse, C.R. learnt to guide the animal. ‘Baby,’ a white horse, was sensitive — C.R. would recall in old age — to ‘the gentlest and most delicate suggestions’ from his fingers. Its hoofs announced to Salem streets that the lawyer was passing by in his dogcart. One day the ‘untouchable’ syce came running to C.R. and announced, ‘Baby is very ill.’ C.R. rushed to the horse. Baby just looked up, saw his master’s face, and dropped dead.

  A friend of C.R.’s during this period, R.V. Krishna Iyer, noticed in him knowledge — ‘If there was any information lacking we used to go to him’ — intelligence, and ‘a tendency to take the opposite side even though inside he agreed with you.’ Krishna Iyer, a lawyer himself, was told by another member of C.R.’s circle of friends, ‘If you have a good case, don’t discuss it with C.R. He will convince you that it is a very bad case.’ Iyer also marked C.R.’s liberality. ‘His hospitality became a byword. Donations to this cause and that cause, endlessly.’13

  Guests often partook of the fare at C.R.’s home, where ‘two very able cooks’ were hired. Iyer adds that at the district court, three miles from the heart of town, the tiffin brought for C.R. was generally sufficient ‘for at least ten persons’ and shared with the advocates present.

  His income growing, C.R. bought a larger house — a yellow dwelling with a margosa tree in front — on the first street of the agraharam, and furnished it with spring beds. A coach too superseded the dogcart.

  Their own children were not the only youngsters in C.R.’s and Manga’s house. Nephews, cousins and Manga’s brother were among the seven others who, over a period, lived under their roof and were educated in Salem. Manga, twenty in 1909, and the older children all played ‘master’ by turns, when they were expected to ensure that the younger children were bathed and fed on time and equipped for school.

  Apparently Manga did not grudge looking after the wards that her husband had taken into the house. One of them, C. Samachar, told this author: ‘I was not her son. I was her husband’s cousin’s son. Yet she treated me the way she treated her children.’

  In a house brimming with youngsters, Manga had to be firm. Namagiri, or Papa as she was called, Manga’s third child, had her breakfast withheld for two hours and more — ‘until I had cleaned my mouth with tooth-powder.’ At times Manga’s patience snapped. Once she brought cinders from the kitchen- fire to threaten the boisterous children. Gripping her hand, C.R. led Manga back into the kitchen.

  It was on a night in this period that a bullet fired by C.R. nearly killed an innocent man. A revolver beside him, C.R. was asleep on a bullock-cart trudging overnight towards Salem from the town of Namakkal, where he had argued a case, when a shout of ‘panam’ (money) woke C.R. Thinking he had been accosted by a highway robber — dacoities were common on the route —, C.R. lifted his gun in the darkness and shot at the voice.

  A man hearing the shot hurried with a lantern and C.R. saw in its light that he had hit someone posted at a toll gate. The bullet had pierced the man’s forehead and come out behind the ear. C.R. took him in his cart to a hospital, found that the bullet had fortunately missed the man’s skull, compensated him, and informed the police. A prosecution that followed resulted in C.R.’s exoneration, but his licence was taken away for a while.

  From his earliest Salem days C.R. was lauded and assailed as a nonconformist. Opposition began with the Narayana Iyer incident. Accepted into the Raj’s prized Indian Civil Service (ICS), Narayana Iyer had crossed the high seas, thereby violating a rule of orthodoxy. Because he had welcomed Narayana Iyer in his home, one of C.R.’s friends, Seshu Iyer, a lecturer, was also deemed guilty. A third offender was a priest called Krishna Sastri, who had performed a rite of absolution for Narayana Iyer.

  Defending all three, and associating publicly with Narayana Iyer, C.R. initiated a monthly subsc
ription for Krishna Sastri, whose income had been slashed by the social boycott.

  Soon he fought for something more radical: the right of two ‘panchama’ or ‘untouchable’ boys to places in Salem’s Municipal School. Despite a threat that the school’s two hundred caste- Hindu boys would leave if the two ‘panchamas’ were admitted, C.R. insisted, and the Principal took the ‘panchama’ boys in. Their schooling paid for by C.R., the two did well, and the way was paved for more mixing.

  Also controversial was a reformist marriage organized by C.R. It was unusual in three ways: one side was Vaishnavite, the other Saivite; the bride was a widow; she was also above the age of puberty. The Press published attacks on C.R., and his father concurred with them. The criticism only strengthened C.R.’s zeal, and at a social reform conference in Kurnool in 1910 he asked for a general acceptance of inter-caste marriages.

  On the journey back from Kurnool, one of C.R.’s friends, Venkatasubba Iyer, accidentally let a valuable watch slip to the ground outside the moving train. While others commiserated or blamed, C.R. stared at the window — counting telegraph posts. At the next stop he gave the stationmaster the number he had counted: the watch was found.

  C.R.’s interests were widening. At his instance, a young man called B.V. Namagiri started a Swadeshi store where only Indian goods were sold. A Hindustani course was arranged by C.R.; he and some of his lawyer friends attended it, and C.R. also learned the Urdu script. ‘He was solicitous about Muslims,’ Krishna Iyer would recall. Not all his friends liked it.

  Slim of figure, light of skin, her height an inch under five feet, her long flowing black hair soft and straight, Manga had a slender attractive face. She looks shy and quaint in the only picture that exists of her, enlarged out of a group photograph taken in the home of her husband’s friend Venkatasubba Iyer. Before leaving their house for Iyer’s place, C.R. had daubed Manga’s forehead with a fresh red tilak, the sign of a married woman. It was the second time that day that her husband had thus marked her forehead; he did it, and liked doing it, every morning, and Manga sought to keep the tilak unsmudged through each day.