C. P. ON HIMSELF

[This article originally appeared in the Illustrated Weekly of India of Nov. 1, 1959 under the title “Diwali, some memories” is reproduced in this special number by kind courtesy of the editor of the journal.]

It so chances that I was born on the Deepavali day in 1879 and thus, on the occasion of this year’s Deepavali, I shall complete eighty years of my life. The editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India has suggested that I should contribute an article which may embody some memories or reflections on my birthday.

The Deepavali festival (or Diwali, as it is colloquially known) is surrounded by many traditions. It marks the day on which ma was crowned on his victorious return with Sita from Lanka. It is also associated by some with the day on which Maha Vishnu, in His Vamana Avatara, conquered Balichakravarti. It is with reference to this traditions that, in all probability, Vikramaditya had himself crowned on this day. It is also supposed, in some parts of the country, to signalise the marriage of Vishnu with Mahalakshmi. In Bengal, this day is sacred to Kali. In any event, in all parts of India where the Vikramaditya Era is observed, it is the New Year Day when fresh accounts are opened by businessmen; and people who celebrate this festival with illuminations and feasts, pray for a new year of prosperity and happiness.

On such an occasion, a person who has completed 80 years of his existence may be excused for including in some retrospects and reflections. But before descending into details, I may indicate generally that the main lessons that life has taught me may be summed up in the following conclusions. In the language of Kalidasa, the wheel of life turns low and high. In other words, life, if it has its handicaps and struggles, has also its undeniable compensations. Sita justly remarked to Hanuman that if a man continues to live, he is bound to enjoy some happiness sometime or other.

Also, it is a fact that many of the achievements or successes in life which we regard as due to our own efforts or talents, are, very often, the results of obscure or unrecognised accidents. The Chapter of Accidents is the longest in the Book of Life, as John Wilkes declared:

There is a Divinity that shapes our ends

Rough hew them how we will.

Further, the longer I live the more am I convinced that of all the qualities that one has to cherish in this world, the most significant are courage and loyalty, loyalty albeit to unpopular men and to the losing side. Among the characters portrayed by Milton in his Paradise Lost, I have specially appreciated the Seraph Abdiel:

Unshaken, Unseduced, Unterrified

His Loyalty He Kept.

My father, Sri C. R. Pattabhirama Aiyar, who ultimately became a judge of the Madras City Civil Court, was one of the distinguished alumni of the Kumbhakonam College and his character was formed by those great educationists, Porter and Gopala Rao. He was an earnest and catholic student of English literature and, about the time of my birth, he was passing through a period of agnosticism which he finally shed becoming, at the end of his life, a rigidly orthodox Hindu. His career and development were parallel to those of his brother-in-law, Prof. Sundararama Aiyar who, again starting as an atheist or agnostic, finally became a devout Vedantin. The times were such and the impact of Western civilisation was so marked that my father’s generation believed in the basic importance of Western literature and Western philosophy. It was, therefore, not remarkable that the first language I learnt was English and that, side by side with that language, I was taught French by a Padre who instilled into me a love for painting and sculpture and the fine arts, in addition to a passion for French prose style.

It must be remembered that the ’eighties of the last century witnessed a great turmoil of ideas. Tyndall and Huxley who followed Mill and Darwin and Herbert Spencer were protagonists not only of the doctrines of evolution, but of the insolubility of the ultimate riddle of the Universe. At the same time, my father was a passionate student of Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth and he could literally repeat 400 or 500 lines from the The Prelude without a mistake. I was nurtured on these poets and on Tennyson. About that time precociously, I was taught to read Schopenhauer who spoke of the world as an illusion and of asceticism as the chief duty of man. As against him, Nietzche published in 1891 Thus Spake Zarathushtra. My father made me memorise passages from all these poets and philosophers. The combined effect of these diversified messages was to lead me to a state of suspended belief; but necessarily I became a devoted student of Western literatures and institutions. This phase continued until the close of my college career when I began to devote considerable attention to Indian philosophy, at the instance of Mr. A. Ramachandra Aiyar who was the Chief Justice successively of Travancore and Mysore and who, like my father of whom he was an intimate friend, began with agnostic beliefs and ended as the founder of the Kalady temple and Ashram and a devotee of the Sringeri Sankaracharya.

During my school days at the Wesley College, I was introduced by the Rev. Mr Cooling to a study of the Bible and I obtained several prizes and scholarship for proficiency in Bible and western theology. Almost equal to the influence exercised by my father was that brought to bear on me by Sir Seshadri Iyer, Dewan of Mysore, as well as the Chief Justice of Mysore, Mr. A. Ramachandra Aiyar, already referred to. I used to spend most of my college vacation in Bangalore in Sir Seshadri Iyer’s house (Kumara Park). During my stay with him, Sir Seshadri Iyer, whose eyesight prevented him from much reading, insisted on my reading to him long passages from British poets and from the work of Mill, Darwin, Huxley and Schopenhauer. Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia which appeared in 1884 was another favourite work, passages from which I read more than once in the presence of Sir Seshadri Iyer and Mr. A. Ramachandra Aiyar, and the Buddhist philosophy enunciated in it has remained an abiding possession. Also subconsciously, I became imbued with the desire to emulate the achievements of Sir Seshadri Iyer who originated hydro-electric, irrigation and industrial projects in Mysore.

Coming to the Presidency College and starting on an intensive course of Sanskrit, English and lawn tennis, I came under the influence of Principal Stuart whose gentle cynicism and marvellous analytic faculties strengthened my agnostic outlook. I became a devout follower of Western habits, customs, dress and food. The above outline may be said to mark the general development of the people of my generation.

My father who was a very successful lawyer before he became a judge insisted on my joining the legal profession. I was however not a willing student of the law and preferred the position of a professor of English literature. In fact, I applied for an assistant professorship but my father declined to second my efforts. I also sought to join Gokhale’s Servants of India Society and stayed for sometime in Poona. One of the things that I can never forget it, on my first introduction to Gokhale when he tentatively agreed to take me as a member of his organisation, his advice that I should, on no occasion, speak without adequate preparation and he added that even when he had to propose a formal vote of thanks, he devoted considerable thought both to the content and phraseology of what he was about to say. My father was so distressed by my decision to join Gokhale that I came back to the law. This was the first of a series of accidents.

I was apprenticed to Mr. V. Krishnaswami Aiyar, a forceful advocate and a well-known philanthropist who greatly influenced my mental outlook. But in 1903 after my father’s death, I started practice with no outside help or encouragement, Sir V. Bashyam Iyengar, a family friend of my father’s, not being in a position to take me in his office as originally contemplated. My first year’s income was Rs. 104; my second year’s, on account of a windfall, was Rs. 560. But during these years, I made the friendship of two persons whom I can never forget–Eardley Norton and J. L. Rozario. Norton was a profound scholar both in English and in French and a splendid cross-examiner. He was incurably lazy and never prepared his cases adequately, but by the force of his native wit and his surpassing knowledge of human nature, he made a great name as an advocate. I used to browse in his library reading his French and English books and he taught me to love horses and dogs and French literature. His sense of humour was acute and sometimes devastating. One of the judges before whom he practised fancied himself a Latin scholar. Norton knew that his knowledge of Latin was rudimentary. On a historic occasion in court dealing with a problem in Private International Law, the Judge referred to Grotius and Puffendorf, both of them well-known jurists of international renown. Norton went on fluently quoting in French an obscene passage from Voltaire’s Candide. The judge did not want to conceal his ignorance and began to nod his head violently and Norton won his case. It was he who made it clear to me that success in law is at least as dependent on wide and diversified reading and a profound knowledge of human nature in all its bearings as on a knowledge of case-law. Mr. Rozario was an unapproachable model of rectitude and of the highest professional integrity. The example of these two men and of Sir P. S. Sivaswami Aiyar were formative influences in my life.

I have already referred to the many accidents in a man’s career. My father was not willing that I should work with my brother-in-law, Kumaraswami Sastri, who afterwards became a Judge of the High Court, because he thought that it would be an embarrassing situation; but it so happened that Kumaraswami Sastri was attacked by diabetes and he asked me to be of assistance to him and I agreed. Within a few years thereafter, he made up his mind to retire from the bar and became a judge of the Small Causes Court. It therefore happened that having appeared in not more than a dozen cases until then, one morning in 1907 I had a file of 300 cases and a clientele of all leading commercial men and landed magnates in the City of Madras. A senior lawyer whom I used to engage was very often absent and I had, with considerable nervousness, to undertake the task of argument myself. At the same time, it so chanced that Norton underwent a domestic crisis and three other leaders on the original side of the High Court either retired or succumbed to illness. Within six or seven years of my entry into the bar, I thus became, quite by accident, one of the leaders of the profession, helped undoubtedly by the fostering encouragement of judges like Justice Boddam, Chief Justice Sir Arnold White and Chief Justice Wallis and the comradeship of colleagues like V. V. Srinivasa Iyengar and V. Masilamani Pillai. Very early in my professional career I was offered and declined a judgeship in the High Court. My letter to the Chief Justice on that occasion has become historic or notorious: “I prefer, Mr. Chief Justice, to talk nonsense for a few hours each day than to hear nonsense everyday and all day long.”

In 1912 a celebrated litigation was initiated in respect of the guardianship of J. Krishnamurti and his brother entrusted to Dr. Besant by the boys’ father, G. Narayaniah, who sought to revoke his consent. Dr. Besant had, after a lifetime of heroic battles in court in vindication of freedom of opinion and conduct and of formative social work and agitation along with the Webbs and Bradlaugh for human rights, became a devout believer in Hindu doctrines and started her career in the Theosophical Society. As during her earlier days in England, so during the hearing of this case, she conducted her own defence and I was pitted against an orator of world-wide renown. In the course this litigation, she deliberately disobeyed an order of court and so was guilty of contempt. My client insisted on my taking proceedings against her, but I declined to do so emphasising that while I was willing to conduct the case to its logical termination, I would not encourage vindictiveness. As often happens, this particular episode, though I thought it was confidential, became public property and one day I was surprised to receive a letter from Dr. Besant in which, while praising what she called my chivalry, said that I was wrong in not having put her in prison in accordance with the wishes of my client though she appreciated my motive. She made an appeal to me, after the case was over, to join her in her political and educational work. So began my connection with Dr. Besant, with the Home Rule League and the National Education Movement. So also began my opposition to Lord Pentland, Governor of Madras, who later was responsible for interning Dr. Besant. However, on the advice of his colleague, Sir P. Rajagopalachariar, a family friend of mine, Lord Pentland began to develop an affection for me born out of, what he termed, my fighting spirit.

The history of the Home Rule League forms part of the history of the Indian Freedom Movement and I do not wish to recount it here and now. I may however mention that the Prime Minister Shri Jawaharlal and myself were both secretaries of the League. But it was during its progress that I became acquainted with Sarojini Naidu with whom I worked in close co-operation until we parted company during the Non-co-operation Movement inaugurated by Gandhiji. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a member of the Home Rule League in Bombay and I had also worked with him in a case in which Sir Seshadri Iyer engaged Jinnah and myself in the Ootacamund Sub-court. It was again the Home Rule League that brought me into close contact with Pandit Motilal Nehru, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Hasan Imam, the Raja of Muhammadabad, Narottam and the Dwarakdas family as well as with that generous and reckless fighter, Umar Sobani.

During the progress of this political movement, I went to England quite often until finally Montague and Chelmsford began, their well-known tour round India. Montague became an intimate friend of mine after we had engaged in a stand-up fight over Indian political problems. His was a tragic life. He was himself a member of an oppressed community. He was anxious to do his best for India but he was frustrated by circumstances though he was partially successful in introducing the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms. One of the truest friendships which I ever formed was with Montague and it was this friendship and his advice that led me to contest the election in 1920 against the then powerful Justice Party. It was against the advice of my friends that I joined Dr. Besant in her campaigns. It was also against the unanimous counsel of friends that I gave up my practice during the Home Rule agitation as it was against their advice that I fought my election against severe odds. During the course of that election, I was threatened with physical violence and in a fit of bravado I threatened at a meeting to shoot down persons who were trying to throw at me broken bottles and shoes. This led to a great controversy at that time, but the meeting however went on and I was elected.

After the elections, there came to me an offer from Lord Willingdon who had then become Governor of Madras, of the Advocate-Generalship, an offer which was largely due to the influence of Sir P. Rajagopalachariar. My friendship with Lord Willingdon which afterwards became very intimate began with my defiance of his order in Bombay while he was Governor of that Province, when he put a ban on my speaking at a meeting and I disobeyed the order. He invited me for an interview and somehow we got to like each other and our friendship which began in hostility, continued in unbroken intimacy until his death.

I had met Ramsay McDonald when he visited India as a member of the Public Services Commission and, on a particular occasion, I invited him to a meal in my house and gave him a Dhoti to wear. He squatted on the floor awkwardly but, as he later said in Parliament, he was a Brahmin for a day! Himself and Lansbury were associated with Dr. Besant in her earlier days and they proved to be staunch friends of mine.

Soon after my ejection, I was offered the Advocate-Generalship of Madras and almost everyone insisted that I should not take it up; but I accepted the offer on the advice of Dr. Besant and of Montague. This advice was tendered because along with Dr. Besant I had differed from Gandhiji’s policy of non-co-operation and it was obvious that even Dr. Besant could not make herself heard nor exert any influence on public affairs due to the overwhelming popular sentiment in favour of the non-co-operation campaign. As Advocate-General, it was possible for me to regain the practice which I had practically suspended during the Home Rule agitation and my income at the Bar reached a level which very few had attained in India.

Just about this time, Lord Willingdon, with his unfailing affection for and loyalty to me, offered me the membership of the Executive Council. On this occasion also everyone of my acquaintance dissuaded me from accepting it as I had to give up a high income at the bar. Dr Besant took the line that, as a Member of Council, I could be of more use to the Country by inaugurating constructive schemes; and, in loyalty to her, I accepted her advice. It so luckily chanced that the opportunity came to me of initiating some momentous irrigation and power projects like Mettur and Pykara and of inaugurating many industrial schemes and port developments in Cochin, Vizagapatam and Tuticorin. My acceptance of the membership was seemingly an accident, but it proved to be a formative part of my career. Later on, I became a member of the Central Cabinet on three several occasions in charge of Law, Commerce and Railways and information, but I was not attracted by bureaucratic work with no possibility of personal initiative.

At the close of my tenure of office as Member of Council, I reverted to the bar and also attended the meetings of the Round Table Conference along with Dr. Besant and made lasting friendships with men like Lord Birkenhead, Sir Stafford Cripps, the Earl of Selborne and Mr. Attlee and cemented my old comradeship with Mr. Ramsay McDonald. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru also attended these conferences and his continued loyalty and friendship was instrumental in asking me to preside over the first All-India Lawyers’ Conference at Allahabad in 1928 when I outlined a scheme for a benevolent fund for lawyers.

It was about this time that a curious incident took place that ledd to my giving up active practice at the bar. It so chanced that I was a Member of the Council in charge of Law and Order and Police in addition to Irrigation and Hydro-electricity. As such, most of the judges and many members of the subordinate judiciary were appointed by the Government at my instance and on my recommendation. The result was that most of the judges before whom I had to appear were persons who owed their appointment to me and this was a most embarrassing position. For this reason, I gave up my practice at the bar.

Again, by a series of historic accidents, a large number of Indian rulers developed problems of their own which required legal consultation. Tej Bahadur Sapru, Chimanlal Setalvad. N, N. Sircar and myself appeared for many Indian rulers including the Nawab of Bhopal, the Maharaja of Patiala, the Maharaja of Darbhanga, the Maharaja of Kolhapur, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Raja of Sandur and others. In the events that happened, my relinquishing active practice at the bar and taking to consultation work proved to be of the greatest pecuniary advantage.

It was during this period that I undertook to help the Maharaja of Travancore who encountered some difficulties, on account of family quarrels, with reference to the period of hi accession. I went to England on his behalf and finally Lord Willingdon when he became Governor-General, had to deal with the case. He insisted that I should formally be appointed Legal and Constitutional Adviser when the Maharaja’s right to accession was recognised and implemented. This was in 1931 and in 1936 the vacancy in the dewanship of Travancore was offered to me. Again, on this occasion, most of my friends were against my giving up a phenomenal income at the bar and taking up the Chief Ministership. But I accepted the position mainly with a view to dealing with the question of the industrialisation of the State and the uplift of the depressed classes whose deplorable position a matter of notoriety. I had to encounter organised opposition when I inaugurated the Temple Entry Proclamation as I had encountered opposition when I started the Madras schemes. But, fortunately, the higher communities to whom Gandhiji had been preaching for a long time, were then willing to accept the reformation It is remarkable that after temple entry was granted to the backward communities, Gandhiji was doubtful as to the motive and the likely results of the reform and he opposed my policy in a letter which will be published in due course. I invited him to Travancore and emphasised that he should see things for himself. He did so and, like the great man that he was, he, after travelling throughout the State in company with me and having addressed numerous meetings, accepted the timeliness and success of the reform. He openly resiled from his previous statement and asked his disciple, Mahadev Desai, to write the book, The Epic of Travancore, praising and recounting the effects of the reforms. I may remark incidentally that my first Contacts with Gandhiji were established through the intervention of Sarojini Naidu who was the only person who dared to joke with and about him.

Gandhiji and myself differed from each other at the time when he inaugurated the Non-co-operation Movement. He differed from me at the time of the Temple Entry Proclamation and we had open divergences of views later on, on many matters. Nevertheless, we continued to be basically good friends right to the end. Indeed, about three weeks before his assassination, I met him in Delhi when I was proceeding to North and South America and he entrusted me with the task of conferring with the Brazilian Cabinet for the purpose of securing, if possible, an asylum for the refugees from Pakistan. He, like Dr. Besant, belonged to that rare type of personages who could retain personal friendships and loyalties in spite of differences of opinion, however pronounced and fundamental.

Long after the Temple Entry Proclamation and after I had introduced adult suffrage in Travancore and also drafted a fairly Democratic Constitution for the State, that Stale felt the full impact of the Indian political movement and the Communists and the Congress joined hands in demanding immediate and complete rights of self-government. In spite of my political antecedents, I felt bound in loyalty to the Ruling Dynasty to point out the necessity for gradualness and a conflict thereupon arose in which I had to take strong action against some Communist groups and others. Looking back, I now feel that I took up an extreme political position which subsequent events have proved to be unwarranted and which, doubtless, produced needless hostility. It is, however, noteworthy that the so-called excesses of my regime did not amount, in the matter of imprisonment and police firings, even to a hundredth of what has been seen in recent times in Kerala, in Bengal and elsewhere.

It was during my tenure as Chief Minister of Travancore that I came into close contact with two great spiritual leaders, the late Sankarachari Swamigal of Sringeri and the late Ramana Maharshi, both of whom produced a profound modification of my outlook on life’s problems and who completed a changeover from an attitude of suspense or agnosticism to that of a convinced believer in the essential doctrines of the Vedanta, although I have very little faith in formal rituals or open manifestations of devotion. Such equilibrium of mind as I possess, notwithstanding the many struggles and obstacles that I have had to encounter, I attribute to the vita nuova of which the Swami of Sringeri and Ramana Maharshi were the creators.

After I was seriously wounded during an organised attempt at assassination, I relinquished the Chief Ministership of Travancore and thereafter, I have been travelling round the world speaking on economic, philosophic and religious subjects at various universities, public gatherings and addressing small groups. Having no political or personal ambitions and having several years ago deliberately divested myself of the bulk of my properties, I feel that fulness of life can be attained as much in solitude and in communion with great thinkers as in outer activities, whether political or social. The basic principle that has sustained me has been my realisation of the importance of courage and loyalty both with regard to inner faith and outer contacts.

Highest level of Patriotism

“It was not given to Ramaswami Aiyar to be for long a free politician. For he was soon pitch forked into the Advocate-Generalship thereafter in the Government of Madras as Member of the Executive Council. But whether in office or outside, Ramaswami Aiyar forever worked for the uplift of India and for our country’s freedom according to his own independent ideas. He would not join the Non-co-operation Movement despite our best attempts to entangle him in it–“our” efforts being Mahatma Gandhi’s and mine.

“At Tirunelveli, we had a Provincial Congress Conference. And for the first time he spoke in Tamil while addressing a public meeting. He was diffident about it, but I told him (although I was on the opposite side and against him over the boycott resolutions, we were on such friendly relations that I could talk to himon such an intimate matter) that Tamil being his mother-tongue, he could beat me in that game because his spoken Tamil was much superior to mine which was a Western brogue. He took my advice and spoke beautiful Tamil to his own surprise!

“He has ever maintained the highest level of courage, administrative ability, scholarship and patriotism.”

–RAJAJI

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