……he that laboureth right for
love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in
this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me
thy failure!
THE SONG CELESTIAL
‘THE
TRIPLE STREAM’ *
By K. Ramakotiswara Rau
Election Surprises
India is now in the thick of the General Elections. The final picture will emerge towards the middle of February, but meanwhile it is possible for interested spectators to assess the relative strength of the many parties that have entered the lists. As was to be expected, the Congress is leading at the Centre and in most of the States. In the City of Bombay, the elections to the House of the People have resulted in the defeat of leading lights of the Socialist Party like Sri Ashok Mehta and Srimathi Kamaladevi, of the Communist leader Sri Dange, and of Dr. Ambedkar, the top-man of the Scheduled Castes Federation. The much-vaunted alliance between the Federation and the Socialist Party has not been fruitful. New groups like the Ganatantra Parishat of Orissa or the All-India Republican Party of Madras have not made much headway, nor are the chances of the Jana Sangh or the Rama Rajya Parishat any brighter.
In
the south of India the Congress has shown signs of weakening. The three groups
functioning as the Kisan Majdoor Praja Party under Sri Prakasam, the Krishikar
Lok Party under Sri N.G. Ranga, and the official Congress Party under Sri
Sanjiva Reddi have come to grips in Andhra. Their rivalry has been as keen and
as bitter as that of kinsmen who lived together till yesterday, but have parted
in anger. Sri Prakasam’s nominees have unseated important Andhra Ministers like
Sri B. Gopala Reddi and Sri Kala Venkata Rao. Apparently, a dead-set has been
made against these Ministers by the K. M. P. Party, in informal collaboration
with revolutionary groups like the Communists. The cleavage between erstwhile
leaders of the Congress, now working as leaders of diverse organisations, has
afforded an opportunity to the Communists to regain their lost influence in the
countryside. Working as a close-knit body, and preaching that the Congress
Governments were the villains of the piece in the tragedy of hunger and
nakedness, they took advantage of the multiplicity of the parties opposed to
them and of the ineffectiveness of the Independent candidates. They won seats
either for themselves or for the K. M. P. Party candidates with whom they
entered into electoral arrangements on an individual basis. This has been the
greatest surprise in this part of South India. In Hyderabad and
Travancore-Cochin, the Leftist groups have returned the largest number of
members next to the Congress. The Communists or their sympathisers promise to
be the main opposition groups in the States of Madras, Hyderabad and
Travancore-Cochin. It is still doubtful whether in all these States the Congress
can form stable Ministries. If, however, Pandit Nehru and the leaders of the
various Congress Legislature Parties in these southern States can persuade
themselves to forget the immediate past and bring about a coalition–if not a
coalescence–with the dissident groups and the Independents, it may yet be
possible to ensure peaceful and orderly administration during the next five
years. But at the moment there seems little likelihood of such a development.
As for the small group of Socialists, they will neither throw in their lot with
the Congress which is wedded to constitutional methods, nor with the Communists
who believe in the capture of power even through violence.
That
Nehru will be returned to power is a certainty. It is equally certain that he
will make a determined effort to keep reactionary and communal-minded elements
away from the seats of power, and to establish friendly relations with the
Socialists, the K. M. P. Party and other groups believing in ordered progress.
The Communists in South India have taught a lesson, and the Congress ought to
profit by it.
The Passing of
Abanindranath
It
was in Calcutta, and as a student of the School of Art, that Sri Abanindranath
started his great career. Pupil, then assistant, and finally co-adjutor of the
celebrated E. B. Havell, Abanindranath played a distinguished role in the
movement for the revival of Indian Art in the early years of this century. In
those days the Schools of Art in Bombay and Calcutta were just replicas of the
Art institutions in England, even as the Indian Universities were modelled on
the London University. E. B. Havell was among the earliest to hark back to the
genuine Indian tradition in painting, sculpture and architecture,–to reveal to
a philistine public the glories of Ajanta and Ellora, Sanchi and Amaravati. The
Ajanta frescoes had already been copied and the pioneer workers in the
Archaeological Department had published monographs on the ancient centres of
art and architecture. But it was given to Havell to plead that Indian Art was
not merely the subject of antiquarian study, the occupation of curators of
Museums. Here in modern India, an effort could be successfully made to produce
once again, with brush and chisel, things of beauty in the traditional Indian
manner. In Abanindranath he found a sharer of his dreams, and, what is more,
the actual inheritor of the genius of the ancient masters. Abanindranath was
not a ‘revivalist’ in the usual significance of that term; he drew inspiration
from the living art of the Far East, as much as from the well-nigh forgotten
tradition of the homeland. He gathered round him pupils like Nandalal Bose,
Asit Kumar Haldar, Kshitin Majumdar, and K. Venkatappa, the last a lineal
descendant of master-craftsmen of Vijayanagara. The greatest of these was
Nandalal who later settled at Santiniketan as the head of the Kala-Bhavan and
trained a new generation of painters. It is significant of the continuity of
Indian Art through the master-pupil tradition, that Ramendranath Chakravarty, a
pupil of Nandalal, is now filling the place once held by Abanindranath as
Principal of the Calcutta College of Art.
To
the people of South India, the message of Indian Art was conveyed by savants
like Dr. James H. Cousins of Adyar and Principal Oswald Couldrey of Rajahmundry.
And when in 1922, the authorities of the Andhra Jateeya Kalasala of Masulipatam
wished to start an art-centre, they requested Dr. Abanindranath Tagore himself
to lend the services of an artist. He responded by selecting Sri Promode
Chatterjee, and after him Ramendranath Chakravarty.
Today
our art-movement is a vital, all-India one, and the Academy of
Arts sponsored by the national Government of India is seeking to establish new
centres and strengthen the old ones. But all this would have been impossible if
Havell and Abanindranath, Coomaraswamy and Cousins, had not educated the Indian
intellectuals into a consciousness of their heritage in art. Abanindranath
holds in the realm of art a place similar to that of his uncle Rabindranath in
the realm of literature. And just as the Poet was also a painter, Abanindranath
was a litterateur. India mourns the loss of an eminent son,–a dreamer golden
dreams.
Desabhakta on Himself
Autobiographies
and books of reminiscence are somewhat rare in the Indian languages. A spirit
of self-suppression, a touch of modesty, prevents even our leading
personalities in literature and public life from prevailing themselves to their
contemporaries or to posterity. But the late ‘Desabhakta’ Konda Venkatappayya
overcame this natural shyness during his last days wrote down the story of his
life in Telugu. Born in February 1866, nine years after the first great fight
for Indian freedom, and passing away on the 15th of August 1949, exactly two
years after India achieved Independence, the Desabhakta’s life of “a thousand
months” covers the entire period of transition from the old to the new. And it
is so intertwined with the history of Andhra and of India that it is a valuable
document relating to public affairs, as also a moving narration of domestic
incidents and personal friendships.
The
Andhra Rashtra Hindi Prachar Sabha, Vijayavada, is bringing out the first part
of Desabhakta’s autobiography, covering the period up to 1917. He had by then
passed through the formative years of his career, practised the law at
MasuIipatam and Guntur, served his apprenticeship in politics as Secretary of
the Krishna District Association and founder and first Editor of the weekly Krishna
Patrika, presided over conferences, attended several sessions of the Indian
National Congress, organised the movement for the formation of linguistic
Provinces, given up practice in order to devote his entire time to public life,
and entered the Madras Legislative Council. The second part deals with his work
in the all-India sphere,–as a lieutenant and esteemed friend of Gandhiji, as a
Satyagrahi courting imprisonment time after time, and as a member of the
Congress Working Committee, and President of that Committee for a brief period.
Like
the late Sri Gopabandhu Das of Orissa–of whom Dr. Mansinha writes in this
number of Triveni–Desabhakta Venkatappayya was interested in literature.
Among his early friends at college in Madras was Sri N. Kuppuswamiah–father of
Justice N. Chandrasekhara Aiyar–who was an erudite Telugu scholar and wrote a
commentary on the ‘Parijatapaharanam’ of Timma Kavi, court-poet of Sri
Krishnadeva Raya. At Masulipatam he lived in intimate contact with Sri
Chennapragada Bhanumurti, poet and scholar, and a professor in the local Noble
College. But apart from public speeches and newspaper articles, he found no
time for literary production. In 1922, however, as a prisoner in Cuddalore
jail, he translated into Telugu ‘The Rise of the Dutch Republic’ by Motley, for
he felt drawn to the heroic saga of the Dutch led by William the Silent. Late
in life he wrote some poems and a treatise on philosophy. It is the duty of the
Sabha to publish all these at an early date, for they are part of Desabhakta’s
legacy to Andhra, which he loved passionately and served with devotion through
many decades.
‘Malleswari’—A Vision
of Beauty
After
some years of remarkable achievement in the production of high-class films,
with historic or social themes as their basis, the magnates of the cinema world
in Andhra drifted into a morass of vulgarity with a view to achieving business
success. Scores of ‘popular’ films were let loose on the market, without any
literary or artistic merit. The public taste was thus corrupted, and lovers of
the Beautiful cast longing eyes on the previous epoch in which Ramabrahmam gave
us ‘Mala-Pilla’, B. N. Reddi his ‘Sumangali’ and ‘Swarga Seema’, and Nagiah his
‘Tyagayya’. There was a growing revulsion of feeling against the cinema itself.
The thanks of the public are therefore being bestowed in unstinted measure on
B. N. Reddi of the Vauhini productions of Madras, for producing a picture of
high quality like ‘Malleswari’. With him have been associated D. V. Krishna
Sastri, the gifted lyrical poet, Sekhar, the art-director, and Rajeswara Rao
who set the songs to music. And Bhanumathi, as the herione, has surpassed
himself.
The
story is simple, but intensely human. Malli and Nagaraju, cousins and
playmates, grow into youth, and their love has the fragrance and purity of the
jasmine. In separation, they pine for each other and send soulful messages
through the clouds of autumn. Malli comes Malleswari Devi, Maid of Honour to
the Empress at Vijayanagara, but she feels like “a parrot in a cage of gold”.
Nagaraju is filled with the vision of his early love, and chisels Malli’s form
into superb sculptures. The hero tries to rescue Malli from the palace, but is
captured and condemned to death. Through the clemency of the Emperor, Sri
Krishnadeva Raya, the couple are pardoned, and united in wedlock. It is the
atmosphere of refinement and the background of music, sculpture and dance,
rather than any variety of incident, which constitute the glory of this
picture. The language of dialogue and song is the simplest ever employed; yet
it gives expression to the most exalted of sentiments. The scenes of village
life and the pageantry of the palace are alike marked by fine taste and the
restraint which is the sign of the culture. The highlights are the moonlit
scene on the banks of the Tungabhadra when Nature in one of her benignant moods
seems to share the joy of the lovers, and the scene in prison where the heroine
attempts to sing a song of old time–believing that it was their last hour
together–but her voice breaks and the tears flow in a flood.
‘Malleswari’
is indeed a landmark in Indian films. It could have been shorter: the early
scenes in which the cousins played together near the village temple could be
abridged. So too the pursuit of the intruder into the palace. But these are
matters of individual taste and do not affect the essential charm of the
picture.
To
Sri B. N. Reddi and to those who have striven with him to create this vision of
beauty, I am personally grateful for the aesthetic delight that the picture has
given me. It reminds me of the delight of listening years ago to the recitation
of the ‘Gita Govinda’ by ‘Andhra Ratna’ Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya, or of
witnessing the dance recitals of Srimathi Rukmini Devi and her pupils at the
Kalakshetra in Adyar. The poetry of ‘Soundara-Nandam’ of Lakshmikantam and Venkateswara
Rao, the music of Venkataswami Naidu’s violin, and the haunting beauty of
‘Malleswari’ are the peaks of achievement in the renaissance of culture in
Andhra. ‘Malleswari’ is great in itself; it may be the prelude to even loftier
achievement.
When
a series of books on modern Indian Literatures was planned by Srimathi Sophia
Wadia several years ago, there was no intention to include Sanskrit Literature
among them. But after the publication of the volmes on Assamese, Bengali and
Telugu, Sri K. Chandrasekharan of Madras suggested that, as Sanskrit was still
a ‘live’ language and influenced the thought and expression of writers in all
our languages, an attempt might be made to bring out a concise survey of this
literature down to modern times, together with an anthology of renderings into
English which had formed a valuable feature of the previous monographs. With
her usual insight Srimathi Wadia requested Sri Chandrasekharan himself to
accomplish this task. The ground to be covered was so vast, and the bewildering
variety of contributions covering many spheres of artistic expression and many
regions of India so baffling, that Sri Chandrasekharan sought the assistance of
a distinguished Sanskrit scholar, Sri V. H. Subrahmania Sastri, Professor in
the Mylapore Sanskrit College, whose critical acumen was equalled by his wealth
of learning. Between them they have managed to give a remarkably lucid account
of the growth of Sanskrit Literature and an intimate, scholarly appraisal of
the more important of the epics, kavyas, dramas, and the treatises on Poetics.
This is the first attempt so far made in India to produce a work which appeals
to the very learned and to others who, without being ‘pamaras’, are yet lacking
in the scholarship needed to appreciate highly technical discussions on
literary problems. Belonging as I do to this latter category, I have wisely
chosen to entrust the work of reviewing the book to a competent student of
Sanskrit Literature. That detailed review can appear only in the next issue of Triveni.
But I cannot deny myself the pleasure of commending this volume to all
those who seek skilful guidance in their study of a great literature like
Sanskrit.
The
book, like other publications of the P. E. N., is well-produced, though some
errors have crept in, due to careless reading of proofs. The Publishers might,
with advantage, have bestowed greater attention on this aspect of their
otherwise excellent work.
Sri
Chandrasekharan has written books on subjects as diverse as Administrative Law
and Indian Art. He has made notable contributions to biography, the short-story
and literary criticism. He is one of the very few who can write with equal ease
in English and Tamil. I am glad to think that he belongs to the ‘Old Guard’ of Triveni.
* Jan. 17