Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 46
Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
46
V Ramasamy Ayyangar hit upon an idea. ‘India’ could not run without financial support. The subscription base was not sufficient. And advertisements were hard to come by, as association with Swadeshis and their platform would be ‘devastatingly detrimental to the physical health of the individuals and the financial health of the ‘India’ press’ as a comment ran. Va.Ra began the business of trading in ghee.
He entered into a contract with suppliers in Madras Presidency. Supply of ghee would be made periodically. And it would be sold in Pondy and the difference in sale/purchase price would be the margin of profit. Excuse Me. That sounds naive. What is big or new or novel in the idea? It is straight and simple. But that was not what Va. Ra’s plan was.
The ‘contract’ with suppliers in Madras Presidency was to place rupees in well sealed plastic envelopes inside the ghee tins. And pack them at the bottom of the ghee barrels. Ghee was the camouflage . And the money sent in them was for running ‘India’. And even in respect of other items traded by the firm and in respect of publications received by the magazine, inside of the cover pages, duly sealed, monies were packed in. There was no limit to the ingenuity of these noble sons to pursue the Swadeshi cause notwithstanding the hurdles they faced. And the kind of selfless acts they indulged in, at the risk of their safety, security and liberty, make fascinating reading
The troubles, travails and tribulations of Bharathi were endless. Within a couple of years, he became a ‘Puducherrywasi’ as he called himself. And notwithstanding the logistics and financial issues ‘India’ was running well and message of Swadeshi spirit consistently spread. The Britishers were kept out of reach by French Indian territory. But the Britishers were not fiddling their thumbs. They were making strenuous efforts to ‘fix’ Bharathi in some tangle to get him ‘deported’ if they could.
They sent ‘spies’. But there was no breakthrough. Britishers sent out a quarry to seek a placement in the office of ‘India’. He made repeated forays and attempts. He even met Bharathi a few times pleading for employment. Bharathi and Co were apologetic that they could not accommodate as they could not afford to offer a placement. But, his repeated attempts and doubtful antecedents when confronted were a give away. They found him a slippery character. The stranger got wind of the exposure and stopped coming. Bharathi would not be Bharathi if he did not write a stinging editorial in ‘India’ on the happenings. And promptly he did on Feb 10,1910.
So the Britishers breached the security blanket of friends around Bharathi to reach out to an ‘informer’ inside ‘India’ office itself. Britishers were surprised when he played along. But it was not long before that the Britishers were seen to have been taken for a ride and royally hoodwinked. The so called insider wrote a detailed piece in ‘India’ as “The Travails of a Spy’ recounting his experience. He exposed the British efforts to park a spy and how he ‘played’ footsie but never obliged in substance. It was a huge slap on the efforts of the British face and ‘India’ gained prominence and Swadeshis in and around Bharathi got a huge leg up.
‘India’ became ‘India’ thanks to the touch and brilliance of Bharathi. He literally made it shine. Subscribers rose and readership became significant. But in Bharathi’s life there was no question of calm and peace reigning and surely not for long. It was during the stewardship of Thirumalachariar that ‘India’ got stability. And Bharathi provided traction by writing about French affairs from France and about intellectuals of the Renaissance era. So, the readership in Pondy rose. Out of the blue, Thirmalachariar chose to move to Europe. ‘India’ came under Mandayam Srinivasachariar. And things and changes happened too fast. Bharathi was feeling the heat from the ‘management’.
If these changes were not sufficient, M Srinivasachariar too left to Madras. ‘India’ was rudderless for a while. Bharathi was a writing man. A creative thinker. He was no manager. He always had a hands off approach , in the running of the paper. He simply wrote and wrote, when in office. Then when at home. And then ‘thought’ over what to write, while on the way to the office. And while on the way back home. And while at the beach. And sleep he did very little, costing his health. But Bharathi lived and breathed his words in ‘India’.
It was when Bharathi needed most help, entered P T Ramgachariar to take over, literally lock,stock and barrel of ‘India’. He claimed to be a strict disciplinarian. He behaved like a stern school master and treated the employees like ‘school children’. Looking over their shoulders all the time. Not trusting and leaving them to their schedules. The friendly and amiable environs of ‘India’ went for a toss. Bharathi and friends who were enjoying their stint and delivering the goods or the news, found themselves stifled by the new regime of D Rangachariar. They even suspected whether the Britishers had planted this irritable soul to wind up ‘India’.
Things became so unbearable that one Subbiah left ‘India’. And then Harihara Sharma,Bharathi’s lieutenant, so to say, literally took to his heels and never stopped to look back until he had crossed several borders to reach North India. Bharathi found it tough to carry on. Bharathi could not be ‘disciplined’ to work during scheduled hours. He was not a ‘working journalist’ with fixed working hours to abide by. He was a ‘creative writer’ who would come when it took his fancy. And left when his fancy took him away. He was not the kind thinking of writing at appointed hours. He was thinking and writing ‘all the time’.
It was often said of R K Laxman the legendary cartoonist that he was never confined to any ‘office time’ or ‘working hours’. He use to walk in and keep reading newspapers, magazines, books and journals all the time. And deliver just one cartoon for the next day morning. The Jains running Times of India issued a circular of ‘timings to be adhered to by staff and working journalists’. R K Laxman declined to keep time. The management realised the creative genius of Laxman and yielded to exempt him from such disciplined timings of work. That meant that Laxman walked in ‘any’ or his time. And if the idea struck him within minutes, he would deliver and walk out. At times, it was close to deadline of the day, that he would/could deliver. He would be in continuous ‘labour strain’ until he delivered late, at times. That is always true of creative geniuses. One can ever give them a time schedule and ask them to deliver. ‘Neither practical nor sensible nor advisable. They thought when they thought what they thought. And poured out in droplets or a fusillade as ‘it’ happened. They cannot be asked or told to deliver at our convenience. For creative geniuses ‘it’ had to happen. And ‘it’ happened when ‘it’ happened. They cannot be dictated to or should be’ writes Walter Isacson, the biographer on the life & times of innovators Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. So it was with Bharathi the Mahakavi.
What a stormy relationship between D Rangachariar and Bharathi it turned out to be. A lovely or a sad vignette or an anecdote, as we shall see.
(Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)
