Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 35

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
35

Chellamma alluded to the killing of Collector Ashedurai as a shocking development which had a huge on the lives of Tamilians and the impact on her family was immediate. Escourt Ashe and his wife left Tirunelveli Junction by the 9.30 a.m. train to board Boat Mail at Maniyachi Junction. As the couple waited for the train to arrive, a youth, Vanchinathan, dressed in green coat and white dhoti, entered the first class compartment and shot Ashe point-blank. After accomplishing the act, he ran into a toilet on the platform and shot himself. Sankara Iyer, who had accompanied him, quietly left the station.

According to documents of the British police, Vanchinathan used a Browning automatic pistol made in Belgium and sent by Madam Cama, a member of Abinava Bharat Samiti, a revolutionary organisation, from Paris. Vanchinathan, a native of Shencottah (then in Travancore State), was the son of Regupathy Iyer.

In January 1908, he joined the durbar service as temple accountant at Ariankavu and a few months later was appointed forest ranger at Punalur. In April 1910, Neelakanta Brahmachari formed a branch of Bharatmatha Association in Punalur in which Vanchinathan became a member. Vanchinathan was influenced by Neelakantan and the revolutionary literature from Pondicherry. He also visited Pondicherry to meet V.V.S. Iyer and in 1911 learnt to shoot under his expert guidance.

We already noted that the Mahakavi did not appreciate Vanchinathan’s act. It called it ‘dastardly and unthinking ‘ and condemned it. And Chellamma followed her husband. It may be instructive to stick to her words than tamper with it, of course, assuming the translation did not lack integrity.

“The sudden killing of Collector sent shock waves which was not confined to the Tirunelveli District. Its impact went viral across the Presidency. In Tirunelveli and its villages serious notice was taken of youth. As it is, there were many CID spies watching our home at Kadayam 24×7. It multiplied manifold and ordinary people were put to huge inconvenience as their freedom and movements were curtailed and came under constant surveillance. Right to privacy was invaded thanks to the mistake committed by an irrationally exuberant youth without thinking over the consequences of his action, which he assumed were patriotic. It was a week after the Ashe assassination that I was taken to Pondicherry from Kadayam.

It seemed as though the whole of Madras Presidency and tamils were in mourning. The Swadeshi movement which had picked up steam in the wake of Calcutta Congress and inspired by Bharathi’s writings in Swadesamitharan and India , suffered a huge set back. Any one and everyone who were seemingly associated with the Swadeshi movement, ever as admiring passerbys were visited by security forces and sternly warned. What we had all anticipated or feared actually happened. The British forces got to act violently and there were raids galore. Everyone it seemed had become a guest of the civil administration.

My elder brother Appadurai had moved to Rangoon even Bharathi began his stint with ‘Karmayogi’ newspaper. It so happened that he came visiting Kadayam at this very in opportune moment. He was graciously welcomed by the British and lodged in the Palayamkottai prison only because he was brother in law of Bharathiyar . What a privilege! Things did not stop with this. The colonists showed their visceral hatred and anger by stretching their arms well beyond and arrested my sister’s husband Sivaramakrishnan who was in Bombay studying electrical engineering course.

The arrest of my brother Appadurai simply swept the family off its bearings. My father felt handicapped. My mother the ever patient Mahalakshmi endured it all in silence by visiting long distance temples of empty stomach. My father too engaged in Sundara Kandam recitation from Ramayanam and fasting beyond one meal a day. The killing of Collector Ashe skewed the lives of many an unconnected and its immediacy on our family was thanks to Bharathi’s public persona as an ‘extremist’ adhering to Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s philosophy.

On me aspect in our cultural and community lives has always bewildered me. Why is it that we cannot naturally be emphatic to those who are suffering and ever engaged in prayers to get over their predicaments. At least we can keep off in silence and not interfere. But we are then more than willing to use harsh words to wound, hurt and inflict more wounds to the afflicted. Why?

To the hearing of my father, the community shouted not whispered- one son in law is in exile in Pondicherry. And son has been parked in jail. Possibly the fate of another son in law may be no different. It was excruciating for my parents to endure such cutting remarks and I knew but how they managed it.

Events followed one after another and even my innocent mother, a homemaker and a housewife, was followed by policemen. She felt humiliated. Commoners were scared to spell the word Swadeshi leave alone engaged in it. Friends, relatives and neighbours dreaded visiting each other. And if they met accidentally, they wished each other and walked of, as speaking to each in hushed tones may be construed as a conspiracy. It was nothing but terror raj we witnessed, all because an innocent man Vanchinathan in a fit of stupidity and foolhardiness murdered a collector.

Even as the family was settling down Pondicherry, a family necessity brought me to Kadayam . It was then it happened in Puducherry of which Bharathi put me on notice.

( Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)

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