Sir
C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar
(A Sketch)
The stars in our political firmament are of
different hues and sizes. Some are dull, some are fixed and constant, some are
highly combustible, and some shed a mild, effulgent radiance.
‘C. P.’–as Sachivottama Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar
is often called–is a resplendent star, flashing light from many facets and
fascinating from different angles.
He scintillates, he sparkles, he dazzles.
He knew that there is no royal road to success.
There are those who plod their way through the labyrinth that is called Life,
toiling and tumbling about. Some walk on crutches kowtowing and knee-crooking.
C. P. dazzled his way and boldly walked through,
covering ten steps in one, leaping over gaps, and reaching the goal, as though
by virtue of a right.
He has told us that his early ambition was to
become a Professor or English. Thank God, he swung to Law, his father’s
profession. What with his brilliant personality and amazing industry, he blazed
his way to the top.
He dazzled Dr. Besant, one of the greatest women of
this century, when he had to appear against her in a case and soon, in turn,
was dazzled by her genius. It was he who wrote a Foreword to her remarkable
book, India, a Nation, a book, alas! forgotten in these days of strange
notions of nationhood. He later on played a prominent part in her Home Rule
organisation, even undertaking the responsibility of Editorship of New India
for a short spell of time, in the days of her internment along with B. P. Wadia
and George Arundale.
He dazzled Sir John Wallis, then Chief Justice of
Madras, who offered him a Judgeship which he declined on the ground that it
would be easier to talk nonsense from the Bar for some time than endure it for
ever from the Bench.
He dazzled too the Jewish Secretary of State, Mr.
Montagu, who came to India in connection with what is known as the
Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. Mr. Montagu considered him one of the ablest of men
he had come across.
And then he dazzled the Willingdons. He became
Advocate-General and then an Executive Councillor in charge of the Department
of Law and Order.
The Pykara Scheme and the Mettur Dam may be
legitimately claimed as the monuments of his statesmanship and wisdom.
During the tenure of his office as Law Member, he
had often to cross swords with the redoubtable Satyamurti on the floor the
Legislature and even elsewhere. It is, indeed, a matter for appreciation that
C. P. often succeeded in giving knock for knock in those intellectual duels.
Once C. P. was called on to preside over a function
organised to consider how best to perpetuate the memory of Sir S. Subrahmania
Aiyar. Satyamurti, who was one of the speakers, came to the platform and quoted
a line from Subrahmania Aiyar’s speech, first pointing to himself and then the
President: “We, the members of the Legislature, are there just to register the
acts of the Executive.”
After his tenure of Councillorship in the Madras
Cabinet, C.P. was busy with a multitude of activities. Now practising at the
Bar, now visiting Britain or Geneva, now engaged in consultation with an Indian
Ruler–dazzling some scene or other.
Travancore owes him a debt of gratitude. First, as
Constitutional Adviser and then as Dewan, except for a brief interlude as a
Member of the Viceroy’s Cabinet, he has brought a century of change and
progress in the period of a decade. The Temple Entry Proclamation, the
abolition of the Death penalty, the Pallivasal Scheme, the Travancore
University, the institution of a broadcasting station–and so many other
measures besides.
Yes, like him Travancore has taken big strides.
Critics often remind us that C. P. wherever he went
left a trail of political discontent and distemper; that he was ever the limb
of the bureaucratic machine; that repression was the order of the day during
his regime in Madras; that he uses Machiavellian tactics and so forth.
But they forget that no man under the limitations
of service can hope to do even half as much as he has done, even granting C.
P.’s vision and drive.
He is head and shoulders above most of the titled
favourites of the Government.
Many people may still remember how, during the days
of his practice as a lawyer at Madras, he wooed his constituency on one
occasion with a revolver in his hand, literally, as he had received threatening
letters not to address the meeting. The same courage was also evinced when he
drove through hostile crowds in Travancore, never once feeling diffident.
Wherein lies the secret of success of this
‘bottled-up cyclone of a man’? It is manifest in the clear lines of his palm
which any palmist would love to read, in the charm of his person, in the
slimming lustre of his eyes, in the sharpness of his razor-like intellect, in
the industry with which he pursues a subject and masters it, and, lastly, in
the dynamic nature of his courage.
Many would like to do what he has done. But only a
very few could possess the organic courage that backs a decided course of
action, overriding difficulties and obstacles in the path.
Man is as old as he feels and woman is as old as
she looks, says a tag. C. P. neither seems to feel old nor does he actually
look old, in spite of his sixty and odd years. His bearing seems to say with
Browning:
“Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be.”