Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar: A Sketch

Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar:

A Sketch

We are fortunate in having an admirable lesson in Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar. Times may change, persons of significance may pass through crises of experience, and may know thorough-transforming vicissitudes of opinion, but Sivaswamy Aiyar stands there, and has stood, supremely sensible, like a vessel with unshakable ballast. In any society, in any land, he would shine, though not with stupendous brilliance, at least with wholesome brightness. It is the fault of the many that they are content to remain poorly average, and nothing more than badly mediocre, before outstanding eminences. The mind of multitudes lies. Low; and hence they turn their gaze upward to dash, to exhibitions of energy and power, to gifts for sensation-making. That is nothing new. History has elucidated the fact that crowds cease to admire, the moment they cease to be dazzled, pooh-poohed, whipped, outshone. But Sivaswamy Aiyar is a total disdainer of gestures, and for this he has had to pay a heavy penalty. For the tendency is too visible ever to underrate him.

Addison has spoken of a variety of minds, as different from one another as the several instruments of music. The drum, the trumpet, the violin, the flute, the lute, the cymbal, each has its own importance, but the best of them all is easily drowned in the relative noise of the Worst. This is true of persons also. For, where among Sir V. Bhashyam Aiyangar, with his well-known genius for the law, Sir T. Muthuswamy Aiyar, the beau-ideal of a judge, with a tirelessly judicious conscience, Sir S. Subrahmania Aiyar, who invariably was charged with intellectual electricity, Mr. P. R, Sundaram Aiyar, stentorian both of voice and pleading, and massive in erudition, and Mr. V. Krishnaswamy Aiyar, with his reverberating sense and strokes, and his fine, infectious sensibilities,–where among them has Sivaswamy Aiyar ever stood a chance of being justly appraised, with his quiet accurate learning, rare unwearied elegance, and sense of faultless execution? He was outdone somewhat by such contemporaries; his figure, at any rate, rather seemed to shift into a ground. But all along it has been impossible to overlook him, because, as we may gather from what he has performed elsewhere, as in his appreciations of his colleagues at the Bar, he appears to have possessed something precious in him, the endowment to perceive sympathetically their qualities of both head and heart. Could they now be called to this life, we do not think that they would object to his pronounced judgments on themselves. Probably, in his portraitures of them, each would only find the chief lineaments of his nature truly mirrored up, not a shade projected out of its proper place and perspective, not one feature lapsing, at his hands, into exaggeration or caricature. Rather they should all feel agreeably flattered to find themselves so charitably weighed, not without due allowances for their temporary, superficial defects, yet with no improper indulgence, which they themselves could not have approved. This is no small achievement, and to have been so discerningly capable of it bespeaks faculties which must be highly prized. It should be an ordinary thing, and as such it cannot be cavilled at, if you happen to estimate your opponents of a lifetime with something that is near to severity. They might have dealt you good blows, a good number of them below the belt. The pugnacious proclivity of an advocate, that is attended with the forgetting of both oneself and the laws of the combat, may bear characterising as too Indian, and few, as it is said, have yet learned to plead with any measure of detachment. The Indian counsel, warm by nature, and nervous by make, allows himself readily into identification with clients and points at issue, so that he is too apt to be obsessed, and his vision becomes too clouded for anything like a fair fight. It needs gigantic control to rein in such temptation, as to shout down your learned friend on the other side, to suppress the true and to suggest the false, and if the occasion be propitious, to take both your friend and the presiding deity off their guard. Undoubtedly, it means principles, if you should never wish to stoop; and principles, not unoften, involve risks. Anyhow, one will have to be distinctly courageous to let oneself be swayed by handsome motives alone. On this ground, which remains honorable and supreme, though often losing, one cannot hesitate to say that Sivaswamy Aiyar has always been a fair fighter, par excellence. And that can be presumed to comprise manifold excellences.

First and foremost, Sivaswamy Aiyar is at once an industrious and fastidious scholar. By ‘scholar’ we mean its mediaeval sense. He is a model of a learner, and it is his quality that he seldom persuades himself into believing that he has learned it all. This simple difference creates all the gulf that exists between him and other radiant figures. Like the best of students, whose motto is humility, in point of acquisition of learning–indeed, to be perpetually poor in spirit,–he willingly hypnotises himself into the faith that knowledge is not only vast, but boundless, and therefore it should be almost impossible to reach its shores. As an explorer, Sivaswamy Aiyar, we believe, would go on exploring till the very last day, and when judgment is delivering, he would modestly confess to much that he considers he has yet to explore. This is characteristic of him, above all other things. He is, as it were, a mariner sailing endlessly on an ocean of intellect, indefatigably all the while at the oar, and out of his fundamental notion that perfection must remain as far off as ever, he adheres, as to an article of religion, to the following lines of Tennyson:

"Yet all experience is an arch, where through
Gleams that un traveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."

Learning is to Sivaswamy Aiyar what experience was to the immortal Greek. It is not only surprising to see him still work very hard, but it is so beneficial a lesson to us, especially in these days when a kind of heroism has usurped the throne of public recognition, and when verbal. dithyrambic outbursts seem to have jostled hard, honest work out of any place in the sun.

One may be led far afield; nevertheless, an enlargement of this will be of service in illuminating a part at least of Sivaswamy Aiyar's nature and character. He is, as we have said, steady and steadfast. It is not that he is afraid of taking a step, or steps, forward; but he is instinctively distrustful of what may be called rapid strides. Like a distinguished Englishman, as a Conservative, he prefers to be content with pitfalls, with the topographical minutiae of which we are fully supplied; and by scruples of discretion, he is deterred from braving a jump forward in the un chartered dark. It was Mr. Lloyd George who once sought to outwit an audience by the following kind of wordy legerdemain. He said, "The world has gone at a giddy pace, covering the track of many centuries." One might be inclined to remain wholly impervious to this sort of not self-deception only, if indeed it can possibly be, but to the unconscionable desire of the magician from Wales to take in unthinking people. If the world did, according to the orator, go at a giddy pace, then it certainly turned almost everybody notoriously giddy, who was expected to preserve his wits, and the grand pilot at the wheel, Mr. Lloyd George, was not himself an exception. And one may frankly question if the way in which the track of centuries is alleged to have been covered, ever was in a progressive or in quite the opposite direction. This bubble of an assurance, which was blown so grandiloquently, has now been pricked, and the Welsh wizard, who used to make fools of peoples by conjuring up visions with words after the war, that is, when his term of usefulness was over, is now relegated somewhat to a precious limbo. Events have demolished Mr. Lloyd George's pretensions as to super-accelerated achievement. Let this, however, be; the fact cannot be blinked that progress refuses to be forced into more than the snail's pace, and whoever advertises his having accomplished wonders with her will one day be exploded for his un veracity, if not charlatanry.

By either of these Sivaswamy Aiyar has staunchly declined to be tainted, and what we wish to point out is his remarkable inclination to feel sure of his whole ground before he ventures further. As it were, he seeks to profit also by the experiences of others. But that is not the world's way, and hence they challenge his wisdom that is piously built up of the wisdoms of others. Why, we may take a singularly pertinent case. That is the Satyagraha and the Non-co-operation movement, begun under the leadership of the Mahatma. Now, Sivaswamy Aiyar has consistently been an implacable opponent to both the movement and its immortal head. We cannot for a moment gainsay an awakening for which it has been largely responsible, among the masses in the country. But apart from this, what are the net tangible, the net palpable results that could be assessed? To use the Mahatma's own words, he was as a broken reed; he had little faith in politics; his influence on the Indian National Congress had waned; etcetera. Most candid and most pessimistic as these confessions of his were, yet woe to him, who would be credulous enough to take them at what they apparently are. We must remember,–why, we must say we are aware of, the fact that, like his own spirituality and unassailable will to do, to develop, to do good and to evolve, these words of his are capable of an extraordinary compass of interpretation. For, as he never owns to final discomfiture and defeat, his worst failures he can at will turn into starting points for yet braver programmes, because his personality is boundless, and far more vitalising than his colleagues’; and like the fabled bird, the spiritual resister that he is, he can rise, in awful resurrection, out of his own ashes. Nevertheless, granting for a minute that these confessions represent certain net results, do we not notice that the entire movement was, judging from such avowed consequences, mistaken, and that all the fretful stir and the fever which followed in its wake could have been

sagaciously avoided? Well, that is the position of Sir. P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar, and let that be taken for what it is worth. Anyway, here we must observe one unforgettable aspect of all our political agony. We may observe, too, that Sivaswamy Aiyar has been inveterately condemned for his disapproval of this most popular agitation in Modern India. To those who disparage and decry him, it is no argument to demonstrate that, after all, Sivaswamy Aiyar is proved to have been wiser than the Mahatma is now wise, after a considerable political earthquake. It seems an unpardonable, nay, a deadly insult to human intelligence to be told, "Be thou wise with my wisdom, and with the wisdom of others." A strong passionate human soul, being strong and passionate for want of thorough-going discipline and disillusionment, yearns for its own experiences, despite fire, despite death. Is it one in a million who can have the profound humility to assimilate on trust what has been garnered in others’ books of judgment? It is an exceptional exception, perhaps, and the general rule runs, "Strive, struggle, and become wise ."

Here, again, as everywhere, it is all a matter of temperament, and we do not think that Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar has ever acted by this rule, for his is a purely self-conquered nature, and he never has let himself be over-powered by upheavals of emotions. We should imagine that he has a constitutional dislike and distrust of un subdued emotions, and considering what a waste they mean, whether that waste be huge or little, to those who indulge them in this hard, if not harshly-disposed world, we must give the palm, as far as judiciousness goes, unreservedly, to Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar. One must know, it one should know him well, that he hardly entertains the patriot's hopes as to the feasibility of amending or of regenerating the world within a short while. For sooth, what standard of comparison can be common to a householder, to whom stability and possessions mean so much, and to a bold experimenter, like the Mahatma, who adjures people to repent, to give up everything, to take up the cross for the Motherland and to follow him?

When the Right Hon’ble Lord Sinha was appointed Under-Secretary of State for India, there appeared many estimates of him. According to one critic, Lord Sinha merited appreciation for his unique culture, wherein emphasis was notably absent. One, surely, takes an incredibly long time to perceive what underlies this remark. It is just this sort of sublimated culture that Siva Swamy Aiyar has constantly sought, and we think, not unoften, in others in vain. In the midst of all this rough and tumble, he alone escapes uncomplimentary censure, who takes things just as they are, and as they come to him, without setting up any standard to which he wants them to conform. The world is, as a rule, mad after throwing everybody into its own mould, and if you will not surrender to its shaping, glad to be a piece of its own handiwork, it behoves you to be well on your guard, lest, the stronger as you choose to resist, you should be overwhelmed all the more violently by the stones it hurls upon your face. Sivaswamy Aiyar is commonly supposed to lack a personality, that is so-called. This is merely an indication of the popular mode, of judgment, which is too amorphous to apprehend definitions of character, simply because they do not happen to possess poignancy, and because they do not show the colour and the heat of fire upon the surface. For ourselves, we are not at all sure that he is deficient in it. On the contrary, is he not too personal in his silent insistence on his canons of conduct and of taste? If they fail to recognise that he has remained the same all through, notwithstanding a public opinion disposed by no means to be kind to him, then, assuredly, it is not his fault. It only proves the level and caliber of the mass-mind.

We are now-a-days strangely liable to be transported with fashionable gestures, and the most perilous of them all is indiscipline. Not many appear to be impressed with the efficacy of obedience exacted until an age, which alone may be said to prepare the giver of implicit obedience for the responsible task of receiving it afterwards from others. There is a growing distaste for discipline, with all its rigors, everywhere, and it seems generally conceded that, if the elders would only take care .of their own self-respect, their children will automatically take care of themselves! Such a thing has been the root-cause of a great many tragedies of youth at the present day, in this transitional period, when every essential value is so freely questioned, and none conclusively dealt with, or finally accepted, for functioning in a work-a-day world. It should be excessively difficult to bring oneself to countenance this, and, to our mind, a secret of Sivaswamy Aiyar's want of popularity lies in his adoration of discipline and self-restraint. No on-looker would be pleased with the sight of those who scarcely commit themselves to indelicate or awkward situations, of those who walk too warily to be caught in a trap or to precipitate themselves into a pit. It is an intellectual discipline to know Sivaswamy Aiyar. Verily is self-discipline inexorably writ large on his whole work, and it is palpable in the correctness and precision of whatever he has done and expressed. Not on the side of tall-talkers and gormandizing speechifiers, but on the side of unremitting and quiet action, Sivaswamy Aiyar nobly reposes on the ever-rejuvenating gospel of work. Till the other day, though past sixty, he sat at his arduous preparations for the Legislative Assembly sessions, like a specialist who had devoted his lifetime to one subject exclusjvely. On military questions, which bristle with complexities, he is a recognised authority. For, the intelligent officialdom in India knows its powerful critics only too well, who have reconnoitered all its weak centers. Of all living men, Sivaswamy Aiyar is reputed to be a master of two life-giving literatures. His style is limpid, and its limpidness comes from his exacting accuracy of thought and of expression. He knows no compromise with faint-heartedness in the matter of work. With his tastes so sustaining, and so varied, can he ever be, even when all his occupations have gone, at his wits’ end as to how he may spend his time with profit? To the outside world, probably, it might not be well-known with what decision he rejected a brief, though tempting, when his Cabinet term was over, in the Tanjore Palace Appeal Case. As an apostle of exactness, as a garnerer of all that is pure, informing, and lovely, as one whose worship of necessary calmness, composure and restraint it is impossible to disturb, Sir P. S. Sivaswamy Aiyar remains for us an admirable lesson, even in our sensational times. It is a joke to be able to shriek with sentimentalists. But it requires self-possession to keep an open mind, in order that we may do ourselves the justice of seeing points of charm about this rare, accomplished, scholar and gentleman. We cannot be walking perpetually on stilts, and when our legs crave for the touch of mother earth, then, with the feet on terra firma, we think we are certain to find in him a most benign, healthy, salutary force, notwithstanding his irrefragable placidity and unostentatiousness.