Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 39

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
39

Va.Ve.Su Iyer, Bharathi and Aurobindo Ghosh formed an intellectual trio that only V Ramasamy Ayyangar was privy to , if at all, to their exchanges. And even he bemoaned at his lack of stenography skills to record them. It is strange that ‘a lot of those in and around Bharathi all died in mysterious circumstances and at least in unnatural ones’, as a commentator recalled.

Collector Ashe died from a bullet; Vanchi died from another bullet from the same gun that Madame Cama perhaps sent from Paris, Bharatiyar died some years later in Triplicane, Sir CP Ramasamy Iyer was stabbed by another Iyer Mani after the Punnapra Vaylar episode. VVS Iyer died mysteriously while saving his daughter from drowning at the Papanasam falls. Madame Cama lived in Paris until 1935 and after a stroke, returned to Bombay and died soon after. All tragedies that befell people who should have been leading peaceful lives.

To this day, there is mystery surrounding the death of V V S Iyer. On June 3, 1925 Iyer died at Papanasam falls. It is suggested that he jumped in, regardless of the dangers as he found his little Subadra, dear daughter, in trouble, to save her. Contemporaneous news reports are not sure or clear. Iyer’s followers and friends refused to accept the version. It is a pity that in India we do not have the tradition of ‘thoroughly investigating such historical characters and piece together the nearest approximation to what their lives were made up of. They stand as brilliant stories for the present to plan our future’ says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote about Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelts.The lives and times of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and likes are still being dissected and debated with historical records readily collected and available in US Library of Congress. We can only sigh that it is left to the incompetent likes of yours truly, even to dance around the edges as it were. As for a deep dive,we should be happy to even know their names!

The least that this writer can do is to read and report from better qualified, quoting or not quoting them all, as they come, with due apologies allied with gracefulness for their fast food variant on the table. In his stay of over a decade in Pondicherry, Bharati used to have many visitors. Some of them were spies sent by the Government of India with the connivance of the French authorities. The British thought that Nilakanta Brahmachari and Madaswami, two of the accused in the Ashe murder case who had fled to Pondicherry, were being harboured by Bharati or V.V.S. Aiyar, both equally noted freedom fighters.
Once, in a well outside the house where V.V.S. Aiyar lived, a jar with its mouth sealed was found. It had been placed there by the agents of the Crown. V.V.S. Aiyar, smelling a rat, took the jar to the police station, where it was opened in front of the police officials. The jar contained leaflets, asking his countrymen to rise in revolt against the British. If V.V.S. Aiyar had not found it and handed it over to the police, he would have faced charges of treason. On another occasion, the police searched the house of Aurobindo and found on his table books in Greek. The young police officer asked Aurobindo if he knew Greek and Latin and, when the answer was in the affirmative, he left rather abashed.
V. Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar (April 2, 1881 – June 3, 1925), popularly known as Va Ve Su Aiyar, was a close associate of Bharati. Aiyar studied law and qualified as a pleader (junior lawyer) from Madras University in 1902. After a stint as lawyer in Tiruchi, he moved to Rangoon in 1906. He worked there as a junior to a British lawyer. He left for London in 1907 and enrolled in Lincoln’s Inn to become a Barrister. In London, he came in contact with V.D. Savarkar and began taking an active part in the freedom movement, which resulted in an arrest warrant being issued against him. Fearing arrest, he fled to Paris.
From there, Aiyar sailed to Pondicherry. En route, from Rome, he sent a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy by post to Mandayam Srinivasachari in Pondy. In due course, Aiyar, disguised as a bearded Muslim, landed up in Srinivasachari’s house and asked if he had received a copy of the Divine Comedy. The name of the book was the password!
In Pondy, Aiyar became close to both Aurobindo and Bharati. The Government of India, looking for a case against Aiyar, blamed him for the shelling of Madras by the Emden and urged the French Government to deport him to South Africa. This, however, did not materialise and Aiyar on the other hand, became a littérateur, writing several Tamil articles, translating the Thirukkural into English, etc. Later, he moved to Madras and edited Desabhaktan, a Tamil journal He was arrested in 1921 and given a nine months’ sentence. It was then that he wrote A study of Kamba Ramayana.
Aiyar died in 1925 by drowning at the Papanasam falls, while trying to save his daughter Subhadra who was struggling in the water. However, many people believed that his death was not natural!
After the episode in Aurobindo’s residence, the police searched Bharati’s house in Dharmaraja Koil Street. The officer found only poems by Bharati, and left without any further ado. But the matter did not end there. All three, Aurobindo, V.V.S. Aiyar and Bharati, had to go to the police station for interrogation.
Once, Bharati had a strange visitor, a sanyasi! Replete with matted locks, staff, bowl and saffron robes, the caller looked quite venerable. The mistake he made was greeting Bharati with folded hands. Bharati knew the custom, according to which the sanyasi had to be first greeted with respect, and then the sanyasi would bless the host. Bharati knew at once that he was a fake sanyasi, actually an agent of the CID. Bharati was in fact more amused than bewildered. He admonished the person for stooping to such low levels for the sake of a livelihood. On another occasion it was a diamond merchant who called on him. Bharati knew instantly that the person was also from the CID. The person started saying that he had come to sell precious stones, whereupon Bharati told him, “I agree, but I too have some gems of immense value and would like to show them to you.” The visitor was perplexed. Bharati showed him drafts of his poetry and said, “Each of these is a priceless gem of all nine varieties.” The bogus merchant left in a hurry. Others came as budding poets seeking Bharati’s blessings! But there were also many who were good friends.
While in Pondy, one Ethirajulu Naidu (popularly known as Surendranath Arya) called on Bharati. V. Ramaswami Iyengar was present when this meeting took place. VaRaa records: “One day in the morning at about 7, a gentleman came into the house shouting ‘Bharati’. I was wondering who could call this great man by name! As soon as Bharati saw him, both were moved and they embraced each other. The visitor said that he had been released from jail only a couple of weeks earlier. When Bharati’s friend went to have a wash, Bharati told me that the visitor was Surendranath Arya, who was released after six years’ R.I. When they sat down later to have something to eat, the stranger informed Bharati that he had converted to Christianity. ‘You may not know, but I was helped both inside and outside the prison by Danish Christian Missionaries. Because of their help I became a Christian myself’.”
Bharati remarked; ‘I can’t blame you; our Hindu society is to blame! But at the same time if every Hindu out of frustration becomes a Christian, what shall happen to our religion? For the fault of a husband, a wife committing suicide, or a husband seeking sanyasa because of the fault of the wife, will not help either; hereafter you will be acting according to what priests ordain for you; your great patriotism will also disappear!’ I did not know what to do! As I had never seen Bharati in tears, I was shocked!”
Then Arya replied that he was leaving for the U.S. where he was to study religion (later he became a Doctor of Divinity).
When Bharati passed away in 1911, Arya was present at the funeral and sang in Telugu Sakkarai Chettiar, the other person to speak at the funeral, was also with Bharati in Pondy. He too was a Christian convert. He has recorded that Bharati wanted to translate The Bible in verse form into Tamil

Deprived of an outlet for his political writings, Bharati turned inwards. The years of exile in Pondicherry from 1908-1918 that constituted the third main phase of his life define Bharati for posterity; when his genius burst forth in song, poetry and prose. Some of the greatest works to flow from his pen happened between 1911 and 1913. …Despite days filled with activity, it seems likely that his confinement within Pondicherry, the ever-present surveillance by British agents, gnawing poverty and also ostracism from the orthodox sections of his own community combined to place enormous psychological stress on Bharati. He had always possessed a latent ascetic streak, and he now began to keep company with local siddhars—mendicants. From them he took to the habit of using psychotropic substances that weakened his already frail constitution.

In November 1918, in an act of final desperation, he broke exile and entered British India at Cuddalore. He was promptly arrested and lodged in Cuddalore jail from where he wrote to Lord Pentland, the Governor of Madras, seeking his release: “I once again assure your Excellency that I have renounced every form of politics and I shall ever be loyal to British Government and law abiding.” He was imprisoned in the Central prison in Cuddalore in custody for three weeks from 20 November to 14 December.

It is at this juncture that CP Ramaswamy Iyer intervened together with A Rangaswamy Iyer and Annie Besant and got Bharatiyar released from jail on 14th December. He had spent less than a month in custody, but the collective events of the previous decade had impacted the poet. He returned to Tirunelveli and spent his next years in Kadayam. From a letter that he wrote to Iyengar soon after his arrival, it is clear that Mrs. Annie Besant, Dr. Subramania Iyer, and CP Ramaswamy Iyer had helped to secure Bharati’s release. It was a few days after the end of the First World War.

Why should we fight shy or run away from alluding to ‘tales/stories or gossip lines’ to this day, on characters who may belong here. Merely because it may have a community of communal angle.

( Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)

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