Mr. P. KODANDA RAO: A PROFILE

DR G. V. L. N. SARMA

Mr. P. Kodanda Rao, who passed away peacefully at the ripe of 86 in Bangalore, was one of the few and fast dwindling band of sauave, scholarly and dedicated ‘soldiers of national righteousness’ of the earlier generation, who unostentatiously fought for social, political and educational reform. They always did what duty and honour required, and were admired for their integrity, both in the official and private lives. They were like so many lodestars that indicated direction to ‘many a wandering bark’.

Born in Visakhapatnam in 1889 in affluent circumstances, he developed early in life a liberal outlook, self-reliance and a passion to serve our motherland. In his school days he happened to read some of the speeches of Swami Vivekananda and was impressed profoundly by the inspiring episode in which the Swami, when asked by some memorable Pandits to adduce authority for one of his statements, replied that he was himself its authority. This episode fostered in Mr. Rao self-reliance.

Mr. Rao went up to Madras for his higher studies and took his B.A. (Hons.) and M.A. (Hons.) degrees from the Madras University in 1915 and 1917 respectively. An important event during his student days in Madras determined the course of his life. Mr. Gokhale delivered in 1913 a public lecture in which he made a fervent appeal to Indian graduates to give up the ordinary ambitions a life and dedicate themselves to ‘spiritualising’ the public life of India. Mr. Rao immediately registered a secret vow to join servants of India Society of which Mr. Gokhale was then the president. True to his vow he went immediately after his graduation to the Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri, who by then succeeded Mr. Gokhale as the Society’s President, seeking admission into the society. With fatherly concern Mr. Sastri informed the young supplicant that he was too fresh from the college to take such a life-long step and that, as he had nothing yet to lose, advised him to make good elsewhere for some years and then return to him. Accordingly Mr. Rao joined the Central-College, Bangalore, in 1915 as lecturer in Botany and served the college for six years. When in 1921 he desired to give up his job, Dr Brajendranath Seal, Vice-Chancellor of the Mysore University, assured him that one could serve India as well through the university as through the Servants of India Society, and held up bright prospects for the young man. However, Mr. Rao pleaded with Dr Seal to let him go in view of his ‘secret and binding’ vow. After some stringent testing, Mr. Sastri admitted him in the Society, and for ten long yeas thereafter, he served Mr. Sastri as his personal secretary in India, England and Africa, specially when the latter was a member of the Indian Councel of State, of the Indian Round Table Conference, London, and of the two Round Table Conferences between India and South Africa in Cape Town, and again when Mr. Sastri was Agent-General of the Government of India in South Africa. Mr. Rao enjoyed his master’s confident and was bound to him, as Mr. Sastri put it, “by the close ties of an affection that nothing can dim and many dear memories of journeys, anxieties, trials and enjoyments in common.’ No wonder he adored Mr. Sastri, this side idolatry.

Under Mr. Sastri’s astute tutelage, Mr. Rao developed an uncanny grasp of the subtle ties of international affairs and participated in a number of international seminars and colloquia. He spent an year (1934-35) as Cornegie Scholar making a special study of race relations at the Yale University. He stated that his study of the influence of Western civilization on the Eastern at Yale convinced him that the traditional division of civilization into Eastern and Western had no rational foundation. A seminar which he attended in Honolulu in 1936 gave a happy turn to the course of his bachelor life. Mr. Arthur Mayhew made a scathing criticism of India at the seminar. Hurt by the ill-informed and vile criticism of Mr. Mayhew, Mr. Rao sought permission to suitable reply, but permission to do so was bluntly refused much to the chagrin and disappointment of Mr. Rao, Miss Mary Louise Campbell, a teacher from Ohio taking some summer courses at the University of Hawaii, then came upon him as an angel of mercy and offered him sympathy and moral support. This lissome American lady was destined to become later Mr. Rao’s life-partner. Brushing aside Mr. Rao’s strong objections that he was not a Raja, although with his gold-laced turban he looked like one, that she would be virtually in exile if she married him and that she would have to do all household chores herself as he could not afford even a sweeper, she came to India on a ‘honey-silent’ day in 1937 and married him cheerfully in Poona. She had been his constant companion ever since, making him grow into a world citizen, enabling him to live, by her thrift, trust and devotion, “a champagne life on a beer income.” As a matter of fact, Mr. Rao admitted that their lives had roses, roses all the way, “but with just a few thorns, which, by contrast, only heightened their appreciation of the roses.”

It is noteworthy that in marrying Mary, he followed one of the important tenets of the Servants of India Society. In an autobiographical radio talk he observed with legitimate pride:

One of the solemn vows which were administered to me when I joined the Servants of India Society was that I would regard all Indians as brothers and without distinction of caste or creed. As the most effective implementation of the policy, I have all along advocated inter-caste, inter-racial and international marriages to promote national and international integration, and practised it. My marriage is inter-racial, international, inter-religious and casteless.

There were three distinctive features which marked the illustrious life of Mr. Kodanda Rao: his abiding trust in friends, his deep love of intellectuals and men of letters, and his compassion towards dumb animals. He was fortunate in his rich and varied associations, and he could count among his friends intellectuals like Dr S. Radhakrishnan and Professor Ross, administrators like Sir Mirza Ismail and Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, and men of letters like Dr D. V. Gundappa and ‘Vighneswara’ (Sri N. Raghunathan). Being a scholar and thinker himself, he took to intellectuals as a fish takes to water. He was supremely happy when he was referred to as the modern Boswell to his mentor, Rt. Hon’ble Srinivasa Sastri. As Carlyle rightly says, “the history of the world is but the biography of great men,” and in dealing with the ideas, ideals, liberation currents, episodes and missions of Mr. Sastri, the biographer was giving us a small genuine picture of the cultural history of a significant part of the globe at a time when the flames of imperialism were being extinguished by several engines of independence. It is history of absorbing interest because, as John Ruskin averred, “the only history worth reading is the history of what was done and seen, heard out of the mouths of the men who did and saw.” Mr. Rao’s biography of Sastri set right some gross misconceptions about a genuine patriot. For example, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was highly critical of Mr. Sastri in his Autobiography. Edward Thompson, a great friend of Nehru, candidly stated in his review of Panditji’s Autobiography:

“And to Srinivasa Sastry in particular, he (Nehruji) is consistently and grossly unjust. I would ask him one question on a matter dear to him. How many congressmen have shown Sastri’s concern for the Indian Princes’ subjects? Some kinds of courage are cheaper than others in India as elsewhere, and Sastri’s courage has not been of the cheap kind.”

Mr. Rao succeeded in projecting the true personality of Sastri, his political Guru and in reconciling conflicting views so well that Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar said in admiration that the biography gave us “not only a full, but also a colourful and intrinsically faithful narrative of a rare type of scholar, orator, and patriot.” It was indeed an exquisite cameo. It won the G. I. Watumull Prize for 1964 ranking as it is with the outstanding English biographies such as Trevelyan’s Macaulay, Andre Maurois Disraeli. Its value increased by the biographer’s lucid and forceful exposition; his delicate wit and graceful style.

Mr. Rao delivered a number of special lectures at several universities, notable among which is the series on Gokhale and Sastri given under the auspices of the Mysore University. He was a prolific writer propelled with the passion of calling a spade a spade He contributed a number of articles advocating bilingualism in the Indian educational system; ‘mother-tongue for literature and English for science and for government and commercial uses.’ He coined the slogan “English ever, Hindi never” and championed the cause of English. As a Sahridaya pointed out, “the cause of English which suffered a great blow in the death of Rajaji, now stands orphaned in the passing away of Mr. Kodanda Rao.” It was perhaps, his unflinching stand on the primacy of English that cost him his membership in the Servants of India Society, which joined at no small sacrifice. After thirty-seven years of service, this loyal servant was rather peremptorily ‘requested to resign’ from the Society in 1958. The Society, which was to him a very unique institution in the whole world, stands indeed impoverished by his leaving it because, had he continued, he would have written its full history as he knew it longest, almost right from its inception and loved it with his whole heart. It is, however, gratifying that the Government of Mysore was pleased to sanction him an honorarium of Rs. 500 per month and for life in June 1971 recognition of his ‘outstanding public service.’

Mr. Rao was a rationalist, and his temple did not stand on Mount Moriah or Mount Abu, or for that matter, on any mount, but rose from the reasoning mind. His heart was firmly set against unconstitutional methods for achieving political ends, however lofty and laudable the goal might be. In a recent interview with a professor, he affirmed that he did not support the ominous movement of Jaya Prakash Narayan. His argument was plain and simple. Even in the British days, he and his friends were stoutly opposed to the agitational approach even for winning political independence for our country and for ventilating citizens’ grievances. How could he accept a violent movement now when a popular government is in power? It was not difficult, he said, to disrupt public life in India; it had been our portion for centuries. It is imperative that one social or political system should be substituted by a better system through constitutional means alone as no progress is possible without order.

Endowed with winning manners, Mr. Rao was one of Nature’s gentlemen, who possessed a delicate sense of humour. Those who visited ‘Aloha’ (his residence) in Bangalore were invariably shown his ‘laboratory’, a name given to his kitchen. It would be no exaggeration to state that it would be hard to find a simpler, purer man of principle in contemporary India than Mr. Rao. According to his close friend Dr D. V. Gundappa, his characteristic qualities were, besides frankness, “a fine balancing of the opposites in argument and opinion and good humouredness in dealing with men.” Mr. Rao was “never sour or harsh in temper and never hurried in judgment” so that one might say in the words of Shakespeare, “There was a Caesar! When comes such another?”

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