Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar

Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar
(A Sketch)

The stars in our political firmament are of different hues and sizes. Some are dull, some are fixed and constant, some are highly combustible, and some shed a mild, effulgent radiance.

‘C. P.’–as Sachivottama Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar is often called–is a resplendent star, flashing light from many facets and fascinating from different angles.

He scintillates, he sparkles, he dazzles.

He knew that there is no royal road to success. There are those who plod their way through the labyrinth that is called Life, toiling and tumbling about. Some walk on crutches kowtowing and knee-crooking.

C. P. dazzled his way and boldly walked through, covering ten steps in one, leaping over gaps, and reaching the goal, as though by virtue of a right.

He has told us that his early ambition was to become a Professor or English. Thank God, he swung to Law, his father’s profession. What with his brilliant personality and amazing industry, he blazed his way to the top.

He dazzled Dr. Besant, one of the greatest women of this century, when he had to appear against her in a case and soon, in turn, was dazzled by her genius. It was he who wrote a Foreword to her remarkable book, India, a Nation, a book, alas! forgotten in these days of strange notions of nationhood. He later on played a prominent part in her Home Rule organisation, even undertaking the responsibility of Editorship of New India for a short spell of time, in the days of her internment along with B. P. Wadia and George Arundale.

He dazzled Sir John Wallis, then Chief Justice of Madras, who offered him a Judgeship which he declined on the ground that it would be easier to talk nonsense from the Bar for some time than endure it for ever from the Bench.

He dazzled too the Jewish Secretary of State, Mr. Montagu, who came to India in connection with what is known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. Mr. Montagu considered him one of the ablest of men he had come across.

And then he dazzled the Willingdons. He became Advocate-General and then an Executive Councillor in charge of the Department of Law and Order.

The Pykara Scheme and the Mettur Dam may be legitimately claimed as the monuments of his statesmanship and wisdom.

During the tenure of his office as Law Member, he had often to cross swords with the redoubtable Satyamurti on the floor the Legislature and even elsewhere. It is, indeed, a matter for appreciation that C. P. often succeeded in giving knock for knock in those intellectual duels.

Once C. P. was called on to preside over a function organised to consider how best to perpetuate the memory of Sir S. Subrahmania Aiyar. Satyamurti, who was one of the speakers, came to the platform and quoted a line from Subrahmania Aiyar’s speech, first pointing to himself and then the President: “We, the members of the Legislature, are there just to register the acts of the Executive.”

After his tenure of Councillorship in the Madras Cabinet, C.P. was busy with a multitude of activities. Now practising at the Bar, now visiting Britain or Geneva, now engaged in consultation with an Indian Ruler–dazzling some scene or other.

Travancore owes him a debt of gratitude. First, as Constitutional Adviser and then as Dewan, except for a brief interlude as a Member of the Viceroy’s Cabinet, he has brought a century of change and progress in the period of a decade. The Temple Entry Proclamation, the abolition of the Death penalty, the Pallivasal Scheme, the Travancore University, the institution of a broadcasting station–and so many other measures besides.

Yes, like him Travancore has taken big strides.

Critics often remind us that C. P. wherever he went left a trail of political discontent and distemper; that he was ever the limb of the bureaucratic machine; that repression was the order of the day during his regime in Madras; that he uses Machiavellian tactics and so forth.

But they forget that no man under the limitations of service can hope to do even half as much as he has done, even granting C. P.’s vision and drive.

He is head and shoulders above most of the titled favourites of the Government.

Many people may still remember how, during the days of his practice as a lawyer at Madras, he wooed his constituency on one occasion with a revolver in his hand, literally, as he had received threatening letters not to address the meeting. The same courage was also evinced when he drove through hostile crowds in Travancore, never once feeling diffident.

Wherein lies the secret of success of this ‘bottled-up cyclone of a man’? It is manifest in the clear lines of his palm which any palmist would love to read, in the charm of his person, in the slimming lustre of his eyes, in the sharpness of his razor-like intellect, in the industry with which he pursues a subject and masters it, and, lastly, in the dynamic nature of his courage.

Many would like to do what he has done. But only a very few could possess the organic courage that s a decided course of action, overriding difficulties and obstacles in the path.

Man is as old as he feels and woman is as old as she looks, says a tag. C. P. neither seems to feel old nor does he actually look old, in spite of his sixty and odd years. His bearing seems to say with Browning:

“Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be.”