NILAKANTA SRI RAM–A TRIBUTE

S. NARAYANASWAMY

[Sri N. Sri R am, International President, Theosophical Society, passed away on April 8, 1973, at Adyar, Madras. He was gentle and unassuming and was never guilty of a harsh word or thought, however provocative the circumstances. He gave a silent message and a benediction to all who were in his presence. One gets a feeling that he belongs to the line of Bodhisatvas and Buddhas. Such men are very rare. –Editor]

With the passing away of N. Sri Ram, the Besant tradition in the Theosophical Society might be said to have faded away. The only residual link with the Besant era still active in the Theosophical arena, is Sri Ram’s talented sister, Srimati Rukmini Devi. The other associates or Dr. Besant who are happily with us, but are not very much in the Theosophical fold, though active elsewhere, are Sri B. Shiva Rao and Sri V. K. Krishna Menon, each of whom has achieved eminence in his chosen field of activity.

Sri Ram was just another name for consecration, dedication and self-abnegation. It is perhaps all right to be loyal to an individual leader in his or her life-time–but being loyal to the memory of even a noble leader, like Dr. Annie Besant and to cherish and nourish the ideals she stood for, are rather different cups of tea. History, and more particularly Indian History, is replete with instances of disciples who spent the span of their residual lives, keeping the lamp of their preceptor’s or leader’s memory burning–and in most instances, they were otherwise inconspicuous as to their qualities of leadership or dynamism. Indeed when you had praised such a person’s capacity for personal loyalty to a leader and after the leader had departed the scene of his earthly labours, to his memory, you had by and large said all there was to be said about him.

In the case of Sri Ram, he was a man of rare mental calibre, wide reading and ineffable personal charm. He could speak faultlessly and without a propensity to thump the table to drive his point home or drawing on other such accessories out of a demogogue’s tool-bag. He depended on the effectiveness of his logic to drive his point home and spoke softly and without the slightest perturbation or excitement. He was by upbringing modest and unobtrusive and almost instinctively inclined to take a rear seat at functions–till somebody felt guilty enough to get the anomaly rectified.

He was a great journalist and could have held the editorship of a paper with conspicuous competence–though he was not a hard-hitter–being mentally absorbed with principles rather than personalities. Of course, he would have been perfectly at sea in the world of modern sensation-mongers and pornography-purveyors and those who would allow salacious or malicious paragraphs to go into print–in order that the paper may sell a few more copies.

His world was an island of gentleness, decency and good fellowship–where faith in man’s evolution through the constant exercise of rectitude and self-abnegation into the higher man, was a deep one. His elevation to presidentship of the Theosophical Society and his re-election twice to that office, seemed to those who knew him and the Theosophical Society a matter of course. He let the mantle of office of International Presidentship sit lightly on him.

I first heard of Sri Ram in my own adolescence, when as head of the family (his esteemed father Nilakanta Sastri had passed away by then) he had to face the fierce blast of public criticism over his sister Smt. Rukmini Devi’s marriage to Dr. George S. Arundale. A premier South Indian newspaper, renowned for its sobriety, wrote a succession of editorials which bespoke religious obscurantism, bigotry and intolerance–under the heading “Adyar’s Ways”. This was way back in 1920–fifty-three years ago. Dr. Besant, the born fighter that she was, wrote in the columns of her popular Daily New India counter-editorials, rebuking the paper for its intrusiveness and its perverse editorials. Sri Ram, who was in his early thirties, stood up with forbearance and fortitude against the almost cyclonic remonstrances at the time. I am aware that a later Editor of the paper which wrote these critical editorials, used to express his remorse over these editorial impertinences of an earlier era.

Sri Ram’s oratorical abilities were seen in their fulness, when Dr. Besant launched her “Commonwealth of India Bill”. Indeed it must be within the recollection of the elder generation that hers was the first concrete reply to an insolent challenge thrown by the then Secretary of State for India, Lord Birkenhead, that India had not spelt out what she wanted in preference to the Montague Chelmsford Reforms of progressive realization of responsible Government, of which the country was critical. The Commonwealth of India Bill came in for criticism that it did not go far enough, that the system of graded franchise spelt out therein failed to reckon with the needs of the masses and so on. I remember Sri Ram going about his campaign with all the fervour and sincerity of an apostle or crusader and speaking with rare lucidity and eloquence. If he had been spurred by personal ambition to seek a career in public life, his valuable equipment would have hoisted him on the pedestal of political affairs without great effort. But his distaste for the lime-light and the total absence of careerist motivation in his build-up, made the philosophical seclusion of the Theosophical Society his clear personal choice. It is true he was thrice elected President of the world body, but he never asked as it were, to get the feel of the sceptre or the bauble of the exalted office.

He was a devoted son to his centenarian mother, whom he visited almost daily, when in Adyar and he spent time with her. He was a no less devoted husband and father. His wife, Srimati Bhagirathi Sri Ram who pre-deceased him by a few years, left a vacuum, which his daughter, Srimati Radha, worked strenuously to fill up. Srimati Radha looked after her father Sri Ram in his advanced years with diligence and deep understanding. Sri Ram’s passing has left an ominous vacuum in Srimati Radha’s life.

We have lost in Sri Ram a great Karma Yogin, a man of culture and probity and one who had deep consideration for his fellow human beings and for their opinions. He was an example of the graciousness that emanates from restraint. That is why though he died full of years, we all feel we did not have enough of him.

Sir Mirza Ismail wrote a short book on his public life and his preface gave the reason for its shortness. He said he had been taught early in life that he should leave a reader with the impression that the author should have said more, rather than that he could have said less. By the same token, some of us who knew Sri Ram felt we could have had more of Sri Ram rather than less of the gracious presence which was Sri Ram.

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