RAMAKOTISWARA
RAU: A MISSIONARY
R.
P. IYER
I
beg leave of the readers to express in public my private grief at the death of Kolavennu Ramakotiswara Rau which took place at Narasaraopet on May 19. The seventy-six year old veteran
was held in high esteem by the leaders of the country. Gurudeva
called him the Ramananda Chatterji
of the South and compared his Triveni to the Modern Review. Gandhijee had a soft corner for him; and confessed to N. S.
Varadachari that Triveni was on a par with the
Indian Review of G. A. Natesan who befriended
the Mahatma when he first came to
The
Rt. Hon’ble Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru compared the Triveni
to the Review of Reviews; Sir C. P. Ramaswami
Aiyar called him the W. T. Stead of
When
I mentioned his death this morning to a senior colleague he asked me with some
asperity who this Rau was, much in the manner of Dhawan wanting to know who was Ishwar
Chandra Vidyasagar. I
murmured that he was the founder of Triveni; but the confrere dismissed
the name with a shrug of his shoulders. Anyway, I was thankful that he did not
ask whether the departed had anything to do with the Triveni, Hotel near
Rani Bagh (in
Ramakotiswara
Rau was drawn into the vortex of journalism in a missionary and visionary
spirit. He did not belong to the class of progressive mercenaries who hide
their professional in-competence behind the facade of socialist slogans and
communist camouflages. Rightly has Kasu Brahmananda Reddy hailed him as “an editor of a rare kind.” Nothing but the best was good enough for the Triveni,
whose contributors used to receive twenty-five reprints of their articles.
Ramakotiswara
Rau was among the earliest to join the freedom fight inaugurated by Gandhiji and he suffered for the cause. Meeting me a year
or so after the advent of freedom, he complimented me on having refused to
become a five-acre Tyagi. (The Madras Government was
then offering five acres to freedom fighters and I had refused to accept it.)
When
Ramakotiswara Rau decided to start the Triveni, journalism in
The
Madras Mail had got out of the hard-hitting tradition of Scott Bremner and settled down to the oil-and-water editorials of
A. A. Hayles. Ramaseshan
had ceased to write his stentorian pieces in the Daily Express (next to
P. Orr & Sons) which had folded up by that time, good old R. W. Brock
having become the editor of the
The
Swarajya of Tanguturi
Prakasam Pantulu Garu was the sick man of the Fourth Estate; it would
neither get well nor vacate the bed. Khasa Subba Rau was still the star attraction in the sheet coming
out of Broadway. Others came and went, but Khasa
ruled the editorial roost.
Ramakotiswara
Rau had already collected around him a bunch of the finest intellectuals: M. Chalapathi Rau (now Editor of the National Herald), Manjeri S. Isvaran (the poet and
short story writer), K. R. Srinivasa Aiyangar (who shone as the Vice-Chancellor of the
Chalapathi Rau was then
being wooed by the Justice Ministry with the post of Deputy Superintendent of
Police, because he was a B.A., B.L. belonging to the Naidu
community. Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened, if Chalapathi
had joined the Madras Police; I don’t think he would have lasted a month.
I
remember a very provocative article which Chalapathi
contributed to Triveni entitled: “Wanted a Fascist Phase for
Sri
man S. Srinivasa Aiyangar liked that article. But I wrote a vitriolic
rejoinder which was published in Triveni, though the editor pruned some
of my verbal excesses.
Well,
Ramakotiswara Rau has gone to the bourne from which
no traveller returns:
Oft
in the stilly night,
Ere
slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond
memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
–From ‘Free Press Journal’,
“I
greatly appreciate your self-sacrificing labours for
conducting your periodical, Triveni. It is,
what you call it, really a journal of Indian Renaissance. It is a fine specimen
of our cultural enterprise.”
1932
–Ramananda Chatterjee