RAMAKOTISWARA RAU:

A RARE AND GENTLE SPIRIT

N. RAGHUNATHAN

In the early twenties Gokhale Hall (Armenian Street, Madras) was the centre of the intellectual ferment which caught up most of the aspiring youth of the day. Rabindranath, Mrs. Besant and Mahatma Gandhi had all in their different ways contributed to the stirrings of a new life. The coffee parlour of the Y. M. I. A. was the favourite resort of budding lawyers and gentlemen-journalists who, as K. S. Venkataramani (who was very much in it) used to say, could be found at all hours of the day delightedly blowing air-bubbles over steaming cups of excellent coffee. They debated all things under the sun in a cosy little club, and some of their energy spilled over into a manuscript magazine. Everybody felt that a renaissance was round the corner. The years to come were to bring much disillusionment, as well as a sad thinning of the ranks of the pilgrims of the new life. But Ramakotiswara Rau, who like myself, was a journeyman journalist, and unlike me a habitue of the Y. M. I. A., was one of those rare spirits who managed to keep the flame of idealism undimmed in their hearts against the assaults of time and circumstance. Triveni, so happily inspired in its name, has for nearly fifty years now testified to the refinement of feeling, the broad humanism and the unshakable faith in values, as well as the burning patriotism that sustained its editor over long years of travail and disappointment.

He had many good friends and loyal aides. Men of the most diverse dispositions were drawn to him by his engaging simplicity and sincerity and the single-mindedness with which he stuck to his vision. So far as serious monthly journalism devoted to literature, art, culture and politics was concerned, we of the Edwardian era had been brought up on the solid and prosperous Fortnightly, Nineteenth Century and English Review, which published Meredith’s novels, Masefield’s poems and Frank Harris’s short stories, to mention a cross-section of their varied fare. But thanks to the hectic pace of post-war life and the advent of the radio and television, the days of the monthly and the quarterly have long been over. Ramakotiswara- Rau, however, would not lower his sights in order to gain popularity. He gave his readers the best he could get, and that best was very good indeed. Triveni has published at some time or other something memorable from every writer of our time who has made good, and in every department of humane letters. And in its quiet way it has been furthering the cause of national integration by publishing good translations of creative work done in all the different national languages of India, and reviewing books covering a wide linguistic spectrum.

In doing this it has truly reflected Ramakotiswara Rau’s personality, his broad-mindedness and catholicity of outlook. No man was freer from narrow provincialism. Though unlike most intellectuals, who make a beeline for the metropolis, he stuck to his home-town Narasaraopet. He was a true citizen of India. He had suffered early in his life for his political convictions. And he looked on journalism as a national service. But he was not made for the chronic hurry and worry of daily journalism. He got out of it after a few years. And he resisted wisely, as it seems to me now, the attempts of friends (including this writer) who at various times sought to persuade him to take up work on some daily paper. His was a hard life; but the hardships were gracefully borne. He had no use for what was cheap or tawdry whether in life or in art. He had none of the purposeful insistence of the man who is born to conquer. But his gentle memory will be cherished by his friends. And Triveni will, one hopes, grow and flourish in the devoted hands to which he has entrusted it.

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