‘The Triple Stream’

……he that laboureth right for love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!
THE SONG CELESTIAL

‘THE TRIPLE STREAM’ *

Election Surprises

India is now in the thick of the General Elections. The final picture will emerge towards the middle of February, but meanwhile it is possible for interested spectators to assess the relative strength of the many parties that have entered the lists. As was to be expected, the Congress is leading at the Centre and in most of the States. In the City of Bombay, the elections to the House of the People have resulted in the defeat of leading lights of the Socialist Party like Sri Ashok Mehta and Srimathi Kamaladevi, of the Communist leader Sri Dange, and of Dr. Ambedkar, the top-man of the Scheduled Castes Federation. The much-vaunted alliance between the Federation and the Socialist Party has not been fruitful. New groups like the Ganatantra Parishat of Orissa or the All-India Republican Party of Madras have not made much headway, nor are the chances of the Jana Sangh or the Rama Rajya Parishat any brighter.

In the south of India the Congress has shown signs of weakening. The three groups functioning as the Kisan Majdoor Praja Party under Sri Prakasam, the Krishikar Lok Party under Sri N.G. Ranga, and the official Congress Party under Sri Sanjiva Reddi have come to grips in Andhra. Their rivalry has been as keen and as bitter as that of kinsmen who lived together till yesterday, but have parted in anger. Sri Prakasam’s nominees have unseated important Andhra Ministers like Sri B. Gopala Reddi and Sri Kala Venkata Rao. Apparently, a dead-set has been made against these Ministers by the K. M. P. Party, in informal collaboration with revolutionary groups like the Communists. The cleavage between erstwhile leaders of the Congress, now working as leaders of diverse organisations, has afforded an opportunity to the Communists to regain their lost influence in the countryside. Working as a close-knit body, and preaching that the Congress Governments were the villains of the piece in the tragedy of hunger and nakedness, they took advantage of the multiplicity of the parties opposed to them and of the ineffectiveness of the Independent candidates. They won seats either for themselves or for the K. M. P. Party candidates with whom they entered into electoral arrangements on an individual basis. This has been the greatest surprise in this part of South India. In Hyderabad and Travancore-Cochin, the Leftist groups have returned the largest number of members next to the Congress. The Communists or their sympathisers promise to be the main opposition groups in the States of Madras, Hyderabad and Travancore-Cochin. It is still doubtful whether in all these States the Congress can form stable Ministries. If, however, Pandit Nehru and the leaders of the various Congress Legislature Parties in these southern States can persuade themselves to forget the immediate past and bring about a coalition–if not a coalescence–with the dissident groups and the Independents, it may yet be possible to ensure peaceful and orderly administration during the next five years. But at the moment there seems little likelihood of such a development. As for the small group of Socialists, they will neither throw in their lot with the Congress which is wedded to constitutional methods, nor with the Communists who believe in the capture of power even through violence.

That Nehru will be returned to power is a certainty. It is equally certain that he will make a determined effort to keep reactionary and communal-minded elements away from the seats of power, and to establish friendly relations with the Socialists, the K. M. P. Party and other groups believing in ordered progress. The Communists in South India have taught a lesson, and the Congress ought to profit by it.

The Passing of Abanindranath

It was in Calcutta, and as a student of the School of Art, that Sri Abanindranath started his great career. Pupil, then assistant, and finally co-adjutor of the celebrated E. B. Havell, Abanindranath played a distinguished role in the movement for the revival of Indian Art in the early years of this century. In those days the Schools of Art in Bombay and Calcutta were just replicas of the Art institutions in England, even as the Indian Universities were modelled on the London University. E. B. Havell was among the earliest to hark to the genuine Indian tradition in painting, sculpture and architecture,–to reveal to a philistine public the glories of Ajanta and Ellora, Sanchi and Amaravati. The Ajanta frescoes had already been copied and the pioneer workers in the Archaeological Department had published monographs on the ancient centres of art and architecture. But it was given to Havell to plead that Indian Art was not merely the subject of antiquarian study, the occupation of curators of Museums. Here in modern India, an effort could be successfully made to produce once again, with brush and chisel, things of beauty in the traditional Indian manner. In Abanindranath he found a sharer of his dreams, and, what is more, the actual inheritor of the genius of the ancient masters. Abanindranath was not a ‘revivalist’ in the usual significance of that term; he drew inspiration from the living art of the Far East, as much as from the well-nigh forgotten tradition of the homeland. He gathered round him pupils like Nandalal Bose, Asit Kumar Haldar, Kshitin Majumdar, and K. Venkatappa, the last a lineal descendant of master-craftsmen of Vijayanagara. The greatest of these was Nandalal who later settled at Santiniketan as the head of the Kala-Bhavan and trained a new generation of painters. It is significant of the continuity of Indian Art through the master-pupil tradition, that Ramendranath Chakravarty, a pupil of Nandalal, is now filling the place once held by Abanindranath as Principal of the Calcutta College of Art.

To the people of South India, the message of Indian Art was conveyed by savants like Dr. James H. Cousins of Adyar and Principal Oswald Couldrey of Rajahmundry. And when in 1922, the authorities of the Andhra Jateeya Kalasala of Masulipatam wished to start an art-centre, they requested Dr. Abanindranath Tagore himself to lend the services of an artist. He responded by selecting Sri Promode Chatterjee, and after him Ramendranath Chakravarty.

Today our art-movement is a vital, all-India one, and the Academy of Arts sponsored by the national Government of India is seeking to establish new centres and strengthen the old ones. But all this would have been impossible if Havell and Abanindranath, Coomaraswamy and Cousins, had not educated the Indian intellectuals into a consciousness of their heritage in art. Abanindranath holds in the realm of art a place similar to that of his uncle Rabindranath in the realm of literature. And just as the Poet was also a painter, Abanindranath was a litterateur. India mourns the loss of an eminent son,–a dreamer golden dreams.

Desabhakta on Himself

Autobiographies and books of reminiscence are somewhat rare in the Indian languages. A spirit of self-suppression, a touch of modesty, prevents even our leading personalities in literature and public life from prevailing themselves to their contemporaries or to posterity. But the late ‘Desabhakta’ Konda Venkatappayya overcame this natural shyness during his last days wrote down the story of his life in Telugu. Born in February 1866, nine years after the first great fight for Indian freedom, and passing away on the 15th of August 1949, exactly two years after India achieved Independence, the Desabhakta’s life of “a thousand months” covers the entire period of transition from the old to the new. And it is so intertwined with the history of Andhra and of India that it is a valuable document relating to public affairs, as also a moving narration of domestic incidents and personal friendships.

The Andhra Rashtra Hindi Prachar Sabha, Vijayavada, is bringing out the first part of Desabhakta’s autobiography, covering the period up to 1917. He had by then passed through the formative years of his career, practised the law at MasuIipatam and Guntur, served his apprenticeship in politics as Secretary of the Krishna District Association and founder and first Editor of the weekly Krishna Patrika, presided over conferences, attended several sessions of the Indian National Congress, organised the movement for the formation of linguistic Provinces, given up practice in order to devote his entire time to public life, and entered the Madras Legislative Council. The second part deals with his work in the all-India sphere,–as a lieutenant and esteemed friend of Gandhiji, as a Satyagrahi courting imprisonment time after time, and as a member of the Congress Working Committee, and President of that Committee for a brief period.

Like the late Sri Gopabandhu Das of Orissa–of whom Dr. Mansinha writes in this number of Triveni–Desabhakta Venkatappayya was interested in literature. Among his early friends at college in Madras was Sri N. Kuppuswamiah–father of Justice N. Chandrasekhara Aiyar–who was an erudite Telugu scholar and wrote a commentary on the ‘Parijatapaharanam’ of Timma Kavi, court-poet of Sri Krishnadeva Raya. At Masulipatam he lived in intimate contact with Sri Chennapragada Bhanumurti, poet and scholar, and a professor in the local Noble College. But apart from public speeches and newspaper articles, he found no time for literary production. In 1922, however, as a prisoner in Cuddalore jail, he translated into Telugu ‘The Rise of the Dutch Republic’ by Motley, for he felt drawn to the heroic saga of the Dutch led by William the Silent. Late in life he wrote some poems and a treatise on philosophy. It is the duty of the Sabha to publish all these at an early date, for they are part of Desabhakta’s legacy to Andhra, which he loved passionately and served with devotion through many decades.

‘Malleswari’—A Vision of Beauty

After some years of remarkable achievement in the production of high-class films, with historic or social themes as their basis, the magnates of the cinema world in Andhra drifted into a morass of vulgarity with a view to achieving business success. Scores of ‘popular’ films were let loose on the market, without any literary or artistic merit. The public taste was thus corrupted, and lovers of the Beautiful cast longing eyes on the previous epoch in which Ramabrahmam gave us ‘Mala-Pilla’, B. N. Reddi his ‘Sumangali’ and ‘Swarga Seema’, and Nagiah his ‘Tyagayya’. There was a growing revulsion of feeling against the cinema itself. The thanks of the public are therefore being bestowed in unstinted measure on B. N. Reddi of the Vauhini productions of Madras, for producing a picture of high quality like ‘Malleswari’. With him have been associated D. V. Krishna Sastri, the gifted lyrical poet, Sekhar, the art-director, and Rajeswara Rao who set the songs to music. And Bhanumathi, as the herione, has surpassed himself.

The story is simple, but intensely human. Malli and Nagaraju, cousins and playmates, grow into youth, and their love has the fragrance and purity of the jasmine. In separation, they pine for each other and send soulful messages through the clouds of autumn. Malli comes Malleswari Devi, Maid of Honour to the Empress at Vijayanagara, but she feels like “a parrot in a cage of gold”. Nagaraju is filled with the vision of his early love, and chisels Malli’s form into superb sculptures. The hero tries to rescue Malli from the palace, but is captured and condemned to death. Through the clemency of the Emperor, Sri Krishnadeva Raya, the couple are pardoned, and united in wedlock. It is the atmosphere of refinement and the ground of music, sculpture and dance, rather than any variety of incident, which constitute the glory of this picture. The language of dialogue and song is the simplest ever employed; yet it gives expression to the most exalted of sentiments. The scenes of village life and the pageantry of the palace are alike marked by fine taste and the restraint which is the sign of the culture. The highlights are the moonlit scene on the banks of the Tungabhadra when Nature in one of her benignant moods seems to share the joy of the lovers, and the scene in prison where the heroine attempts to sing a song of old time–believing that it was their last hour together–but her voice breaks and the tears flow in a flood.

‘Malleswari’ is indeed a landmark in Indian films. It could have been shorter: the early scenes in which the cousins played together near the village temple could be abridged. So too the pursuit of the intruder into the palace. But these are matters of individual taste and do not affect the essential charm of the picture.

To Sri B. N. Reddi and to those who have striven with him to create this vision of beauty, I am personally grateful for the aesthetic delight that the picture has given me. It reminds me of the delight of listening years ago to the recitation of the ‘Gita Govinda’ by ‘Andhra Ratna’ Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya, or of witnessing the dance recitals of Srimathi Rukmini Devi and her pupils at the Kalakshetra in Adyar. The poetry of ‘Soundara-Nandam’ of Lakshmikantam and Venkateswara Rao, the music of Venkataswami Naidu’s violin, and the haunting beauty of ‘Malleswari’ are the peaks of achievement in the renaissance of culture in Andhra. ‘Malleswari’ is great in itself; it may be the prelude to even loftier achievement.

The P. E. N. Books: Sanskrit Literature

When a series of books on modern Indian Literatures was planned by Srimathi Sophia Wadia several years ago, there was no intention to include Sanskrit Literature among them. But after the publication of the volmes on Assamese, Bengali and Telugu, Sri K. Chandrasekharan of Madras suggested that, as Sanskrit was still a ‘live’ language and influenced the thought and expression of writers in all our languages, an attempt might be made to bring out a concise survey of this literature down to modern times, together with an anthology of renderings into English which had formed a valuable feature of the previous monographs. With her usual insight Srimathi Wadia requested Sri Chandrasekharan himself to accomplish this task. The ground to be covered was so vast, and the bewildering variety of contributions covering many spheres of artistic expression and many regions of India so baffling, that Sri Chandrasekharan sought the assistance of a distinguished Sanskrit scholar, Sri V. H. Subrahmania Sastri, Professor in the Mylapore Sanskrit College, whose critical acumen was equalled by his wealth of learning. Between them they have managed to give a remarkably lucid account of the growth of Sanskrit Literature and an intimate, scholarly appraisal of the more important of the epics, kavyas, dramas, and the treatises on Poetics. This is the first attempt so far made in India to produce a work which appeals to the very learned and to others who, without being ‘pamaras’, are yet lacking in the scholarship needed to appreciate highly technical discussions on literary problems. Belonging as I do to this latter category, I have wisely chosen to entrust the work of reviewing the book to a competent student of Sanskrit Literature. That detailed review can appear only in the next issue of Triveni. But I cannot deny myself the pleasure of commending this volume to all those who seek skilful guidance in their study of a great literature like Sanskrit.

The book, like other publications of the P. E. N., is well-produced, though some errors have crept in, due to careless reading of proofs. The Publishers might, with advantage, have bestowed greater attention on this aspect of their otherwise excellent work.

Sri Chandrasekharan has written books on subjects as diverse as Administrative Law and Indian Art. He has made notable contributions to biography, the short-story and literary criticism. He is one of the very few who can write with equal ease in English and Tamil. I am glad to think that he belongs to the ‘Old Guard’ of Triveni.

* Jan. 17