The Andhras: Character and Consequences
By ‘MARCUS’
After
forty long years Andhra has come into being, into its own. Even the weariest
river winds somewhere safe to sea. Particularly the last few years have been
marked by hope and frustration, the goal dangling tantalizingly on the horizon,
so near yet so far away. In the meanwhile such a lot of dust has been kicked
about that people’s vision is distorted, feelings embittered; and all this
rounded off by Nature’s fury. Are they what are called ‘birth pangs’? Perhaps
when all is said and done, the reward is commensurate with the toil it entailed
(the Andhra has not got it like a shot) for the greater the toil the dearer the
reward. In this exuberance, however, he should not forget any of those to whom
no sacrifice was too exacting. Homage to them, the homage of a tear!
He
should also not forget that the whole country is watching his step with an eye
more critical than sympathetic. Should he falter and fail, the words “I told
you so,” would blare forth from the lips of the critic who glibly says that
more States spell disintegration, forgetting at the same moment that in Nature
unity and diversity are never incompatible. Hence this is the hour of his
trial, the supreme testing time, compared with which his past trials were
nothing but noise. Now, what is there in Andhra character which gives one the
hope (or despair) that he will come out of the test unscathed and hold his own?
Our
country is a veritable bag of races–perhaps happily so, because the variegation
lends richness to the fabric of our national life–a bag of races as different
from one another as the races of Europe, barring of course their bloody
internecine wars. Each race has its own characteristics, and it is such a
fascinating study for any student of racial psychology that it is worth a
doctoral thesis or even a treatise. It would be an instructive pastime to probe
into the Andhra character and all that, partly in a mood of light-heartedness,
Light-heartedness, did I say? Well, that is one characteristic,–as
light-hearted as the French.
A
peep into his literature should guide one in an honest analysis. Who is his
national poet, Potana or Srinadha? I should be inclined to say, Srinadha. The
‘Rasa’ they plump in for is the ‘Sringara Rasa’, the champagne among the
‘navarasas’. Who is the heroine, the ‘Prima Donna’ to whom you would fain
present the bouquet? Not the meekly devoted Rukmini, nor the selflessly
surrendering Radha, but the imperious, compelling, possessing ‘proudha’,
Satyabhama, just a woman, but how human! And who are the typical Andhra couple?
The choice falls on none other than Kantham and her consort, 1 whose
homely and sunny sense of humour lightens the load of domestic life and cheers
the cheerless. And, how about the ideal lovers? Are they not that peerless
idyllic pair, Yenki and her Nayudu-bava, the creation of Sri Nanduri Subba Rao?
Lastly, who is the most lovable character in modern Andhra Drama? Here one must
pause, lest one should scandalise the reader by suggesting such an apparently
scandalous character as Girisam.2 I wonder if that will pass muster
without loud protestations. A scamp and scalliwag, a bounder, a shiftless
never-do-well, to many Girisam is. But pray, scratch him and see what lies
beneath that happy-go-lucky bohemian exterior. For all his faults and foibles,
for all his wildly wild sowing of wild oats, for all his being constantly in
and out of the soup, how lovable, how human and, if I make bold to suggest, how
innocuous! A unique character in that none comes anywhere near him but,
perhaps, Pickwick. And lo, only the other day we have heard on Dr. G. V.
Subbarao’s ‘indubitable’ authority that Girisam re-visited ‘Bonkula-Dibba’ in
Vizianagaram!
Besides
his literature, his food also will give us a glimpse of his character.
Chillies, the nightmare of the chicken-hearted, the bugbear of all the races of
the world, are the thing–the ‘IT’ to use an Americanism. Without that
‘IT’ there is no ‘kick in the grub’. And then there is that inimitable
‘Avakaya,’ 3 a dish for the gods themselves. Who cares if chillies
mean short temper and ‘Avakaya’ means ‘Avesam’? 4 Conjure up
before your mind’s eye the Andhra ‘Pedda-manishi’, (‘Gentleman’ or
‘Bhadralok’), after a hearty meal and a grateful and frank belching or two,
squatting on his ‘Arugu’,5 rolling himself a cigar with golden weed
‘Lanka Pogaku’6 (of whose ambrosial qualities Girisam has sung such
praises) sticking the cigar in his mouth at a nonchalant angle, with the blue
smoke going up in graceful wreaths putting him in touch with the Infinite
itself!
Here
are some strands with which one might weave the Andhra character.
Hail-fellow-well-met, he goes out of his way to be agreeable. But he can also
be disagreeable, play the porcupine when rubbed on the wrong side. Where another
(be he his parent!) is overbearing and bossy, he would sooner snap his fingers
at him and ask him to go to the devil than submit himself to needless
humiliation. Does not matter even if he has to pay dearly for his defiance.
Brutally frank, he has an uncanny gift of telling to your face the most
unsavoury truths and possibly offending you. Want of tact, but candid. There is
an overdose, a drop too much of effervescent emotionalism, hyper individualism
and mawkish sentimentalism in his mixture. Any new-fangled idea, provided it
sounds grandiose, is good enough to sweep him off his feet. Burning his boats
behind him, he rides on the crest of a brainwave, floating like a cork, till he
finds himself eventually cast ashore miles away from his original moorings, the
lone fighter of lost causes. He is politically artless, lacks cunning, a
quality which alone has a survival value in the contentious world of today,–a
fact which explains why he goes so often to the wall in the competitive race
that is life. He has the capacity to work hard and he does work hard,
provided only the occasion demands, but then not more than what is enough. He
does not believe in wearing himself out, perhaps because he knows, the value of
leisure. If at all he wears himself out, it is only in the beginning–a new
broom par excellence. He is less an ant than a grass-hopper, more an
epicurean than a go-getter or a hustler.
Here
is a rough sketch of the type (need he blush?) on which rests the future of the
frail ship of State. Will it serve to pilot the vessel through the rocks and
shoals across ‘the sullen waters of Human Destiny’? It all depends. Thriftless
and easy-going disposition, milk-and-water idealism, bellicose propensities,
are qualities which have had no pragmatic value anywhere in the long adventure
of life that is evolution. The Andhra can no longer afford to be a sky-blue
idealist unless, watching the stars, he wants to risk his step. In his long
contact with his southern, neighbour; who is acclaimed to be the apotheosis of
success, has he a lesson? If so, might he not take a leaf out of his book? The
Tamil’s will to wear himself out in work is colossal. And that, reinforced by
tactfulness, has put him in the vanguard of our national life. What will save
the loquacious Andhra from becoming the laughing-stock is work–hard, harder,
hardest. Chauvinistic and sentimental invocations to the Andhra-mata, which are
at best lip-homage and at worst maudlin sentimentality, ‘cut no ice’. A sure
sign of decadence.
“He
wants wit who wants resolved will
To
learn his wit to exchange the bad for better.”
In
the wake of freedom there is a temptation to feel sang-froid, to rest on one’s
oars and take things easy. It is a folly in human affairs to forget that the
solution of every problem gives rise to a plurality of problems which in turn
need one’s careful attention. One need only to look at India before and after
1947 to be convinced. Perhaps what is true of the macrocosm is also true of the
microcosm. “That progress means the establishment of equilibrium of ever higher
and more differentiated functions in society and the individual is undoubted;
but it is equally undoubted that in each case the equilibrium is established
only to be broken into by new forces which have again to be equilibriated, new
differences that have to be reconciled...Of an absolute and final
equilibrium...evolution knows nothing.” This should warn us against any possible
complacency.
As
one connected with students, I am tempted to say a word about students, and
politicians, with whom I am happily unconnected. When I look at the Andhra
political scene I am reminded of what Churchill observes about the Greeks in
his Closing the Ring: “The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most
politically minded race in the world. No matter how forlorn their circumstances
or how grave the peril to their country, they are always divided into many
parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves with desperate vigour. It
has been well said that wherever there are three Jews it will be found that
there are two Prime Ministers and one Leader of the Opposition.” The Andhra
politician must do two things if he does not want to betray the nation’s trust.
One is negative. He must keep his hands of the gullible student who has been
wrongly used for ends into inconsistent with his purpose. “Get back to your
studies and make a good job of them,” should be the message on the lips of
every politics whenever he happens to address the student–and how eager he is
to address him! The Andhra youth is so wrong-headed that he aspires, as Mr. D.
V. Rama Rao suggests,7 to be no more than a politician, a District
Board President, or a poet. The shameful paucity of administrators is due to
this perverse bent of mind. It is a psychological problem in motivation, the
right motives have got to be tapped. He should be urged to follow the hard
path, to qualify himself to be an administrator, rather than the facile one, to
be jerked into being a Minister whose dependence on the administrator is as
ironical as it is piteous. This scandalous shortage of administrative personnel
can be offset only when each college in Andhra–and there are so many
today–takes a solemn pledge to train up religiously at least a couple of their
alumni every year for the All-India examinations. And this is not asking too
much of the Andhra teacher, and even of the Andhra parent. But alas, their
influence is dubious, if not cipher. And that is because it has become
customary with the college youth to exalt freedom to the skies and deride studies
as God’s curse. The love of freedom has become a kind of mania with them, Eleutheromania
as Irving Babbit calls it. That there are welcome exceptions cannot, of
course, be gainsaid. But it pays to impress upon them that true freedom arises
from “progressive union and stability, progressive co-operation, organisation,
service and discipline–the very secret of the evolutionary process.” Freedom
belongs to the original chaos, while discipline and co-operation characterise
all growth and organisation.
On
the positive side let the politician pause and reflect if the criss-cross
differences among his tribe are not more temperamental than ideological, if
there is not something essentially petty beneath them all, if they cannot be
subordinated to a larger end, the common weal. Says William Patten: “It is
always the investment of self in a purpose beyond self which determines the
evolutionary movement–that is, progress...An atom, an organic body, an animal
or a State, is essentially a co-operative system, which endures only so long as
an inner co-operation endures and so long as co-operation with the environment
endures.”
If
all this smells like lavender platitudes, tastes like opiate and sounds like
lullabies which, more often than not, put the problems to sleep, I plead
guilty. But truths they are; and when did Truth suffer for its being repeated?
“Truth,” says Plato, “is beautiful and enduring.” If so, why not we tuck up our
sleeves and gird up our loins and get down to business?
“I
will not cease from mental fight,
Nor
shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till
we have built Jerusalem
In
England’s green and pleasant land.”
1
In the stories and sketches of Sri Munimanikyam Narasimha Rao
2
In Sri Gurajada Appa Rao’s ‘Kanya-sulkam’
3
‘Mango pickles
4
Emotion
5
Pial
6 Tobacco
grown in delta areas.