A Purposeful Life Span

Dr. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar: A Centenary Assessment

To span even the major doings and sayings of an octogenarian statesman, who bestrode the chessboard of Indian public life for a period exceeding sixty years, in a broadcast talk, is to put under severe strain one’s capacity for abbreviation. When the person dwelt on, had been in telescoping succession a practising advocate, Advocate-General, Member of the State and Viceroy’s Executive Councils, Dewan of a State, Vice-Chancellor of three universities, Visiting Professor in a remote American university, delegate to scores of international conferences, initiator of pioneering projects and of intrepid measures of social reform, writer and reviewer, it is difficult to choose any facet of such a life for special emphasis.

He was the product of a well-ordered and affluent home–minus its suffocation and smug self-satisfaction. Indeed the world over, an environment of sustained affluence breeds the escapist notion that all must be well with the world: because all is well within the quadrangle of one’s own elegant mansion. This usually smothers initiative and rarely generates either the determination or the energy in any person, to break out of the cocoon of physical comfort and economic security–and fight the world’s battles and confront its grim challenges.

In the case of Dr C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, he had those precious personal endowments–the will, the moral earnestness and intrinsic capability needed to surmount the psychological disadvantages of a well-advantaged home. These constituted the ingredients of his fighting spirit–or rather the tools that enabled him to carry out the innumerable projects which constitute the substance of today’s infra-structure–in the contiguous States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The secret of Dr Ramaswami Aiyar’s eminence was his basic magnanimity, his robust vision and his multiple mindedness.

Many do not know that Dr C. P. was a Mathematics graduate and medalist of the Presidency College in that subject. He later took his degree in English literature, thus becoming a double graduate. By reason of his staggering erudition and his uncanny mastery over the English language, to which a delighted public was often treated in his discourses, his articles and convocation addresses, it was widely assumed that his sole academic interest was literature. His capacity for speedy intake of the contents of books made him a prodigious reader of books both in his early and his late years. It was a measure of his humility that he cheerfully reviewed books by obscure authors and sometimes, literary modiocres–because of his interest in assorted subjects. He had built up a home-library of books on Literature, Art, Philosophy and History–which was among the largest of Mylapore’s private libraries–and qualitatively perhaps the best among them.

Dr C. P. made a promising start as a lawyer, his father Sri Pattabhirama Aiyar having adorned that profession before him, setting a sublime example of professional probity. Dr C. P. handled his cases with the confidence that stems from capacity for concentration, ahead for detail and basic clarity of thinking. We talk often of dialectical skill and forensic abilities, which brought success to many distinguished lawyers in recent history, down from Sir John Simon, Sir Edward Garson and the Earl of Birkenhead at the British bar to people nearer home, like late M. A. Jinnah, M. C. Setalvad, Bulabhai Desai, S. Srinivasa Aiyangar and Dr Alladi Krishnaswami Aiyar. Dr C. P. brought logic and felicity of presentation to his legal work and was professionally pitted against practically and his distinguished contemporaries at one time or another. His skilled handling of the Jiddu Narayanaih case way in 1911, for a wonder, captivated the loser in that case, Dr. Annie Besant, who later chose to harness Dr. C. P.’s exceptional gifts in conducting the Home Rule campaign. The friendship between the two became a life-long one–till Dr. Besant passed away in 1933. This was a function of Dr. C. P.’s great genius for friendship.

It is not often that a leading lawyer is tempted to give up his bulging practice at the bar, to become an administrator, at all times a less lucrative profession. But in his case, his eminence at the bar brought him while still young, to the position of Advocate-General. This position was at the time regarded as the bottom of the escalator that took people either to High Court judgeship or to purposeful political office. Little wonder Dr. C. P. preferred to accept the office of Law Member to the Madras Government–under the then diarchic system of Government–when we had Reserved and Transferred halves. The Reserved half consisted of Government appointed Members of Council and the Transferred half of Ministers chosen by an elected Legislature. It was as Law Member in the Madras Executive Council, that Dr. C. P’s superb statesmanship and parliamentary abilities came as a stunner even to close friends. His debating skills and his capacity for repartee came to be highlighted and the exchanges between him and late S. Satyamurti and C. R. Reddy were samples of his scintillating dialectics and wit. But these were less important than the fact, that he had not only to fight a highly-skilled Congress opposition in the open, but a phalanx of Ministers in the Transferred half in private, because they were determined to thwart his Pykara and Mettur and Lower Bhawani Projects–presumably because they did not want him in particular, a Member of the Reserved half of the Cabinet, to get the credit for such spectacular projects. Personal equations in those spacious days determined the character of political support or opposition–and the merit of a proposal did not always come in for objective scrutiny. Indeed it required tact, determination and a degree of political sapience for Dr. C. P. to bulldoze his way through numerous road-blocks. In his characteristic way, he rode the storm. Somewhere in the archives of Whitehall must be letters exchanged on the subject, expressing misgivings as to the wisdom of the project and the probability of misinvestment of public funds–prophecies that the economic history of Tamil Nadu has since so eloquently belied.

It was at a later stage that his unique talents as top administrator began to unfold–in the State of Travancore. He was Constitutional Adviser in the early years of the Regency termination, when the last of the Maharajahs was regarded by India Government as too young to ascend the Gadi. Later, in 1936/37, when Dr. C. P. assumed Dewanship of the State, he made a close study of the State’s immense potential for development. It is said that a politician looks at the next election, while a statesman looks at the next generation, as the shaper of his programmes. That he was par excellence a statesman is clear from the fact that he decided to make a start with establishing the infrastructure in Travancore in the form of electric power development as a top priority assignment, and initiated the Pallivasal hydro-electric project, followed by others. He then went about setting up industries in the State, several of them the first of their kind in India. The fertilizer project at Alwaye was started in 1942-43.The first ever Aluminium Cable Plant was started in an obscure village fringing Ashtamudi Lake in 1946. The first Indian Rayon Plant was started in 1945-46at Perumbavoor. When he found he could get no local entrepreneur to start an industry, he did not hesitate to invite outsiders to start it. He induced the Indian wing of a Canadian conglomerate to establish an Aluminium Reduction Plant at Alwaye. He started the Titanium Dioxide Plant as a joint venture, which today fills the ocean skyline at Veli, near the Trivandrum airport. He caused the first Cement Plant to come up in the State, utilizing shell-lime from Vembanad Lake.

On the social justice front, he advised an enlightened Maharajah Sir Rama Varma Padmanabha Dasa to throw open Sri Padmanabhaswami Temple to Harijans through a Proclamation and thus Harijan Temple Entry made its beginning in an obscure South-West corner of India, that induced late Mahadev Desai write his book “The Epic of Travancore” with a foreword by Mahatma Gandhi. During his Dewanship, he appointed the first woman District judge and the first woman Surgeon General, which made Travancore a trail-blazer in the placement of women in the hierarchy of civil servants. He was the first to abolish capital punishment–which again as a criminal law reform measure was an All-India first. He also toned up the general State administration. He improved the revenues of the State in a spectacular manner and all wings of governance got shots in the arm, The administration of a State by a Dewan however contained the inevitable in-built elements of autarchy and provoked the predictable criticisms of such a form of administration. He took them all in the stride – as men of action tend to do. However, 32 years after he left that State and 13 years after his passing, the many enduring monuments to his far-sightedness and economic insight are functioning as large employers of labour, generators of revenue, instruments of import substitution and producers of much-needed goods and are appreciated.

Dr C. P’s interest in education is an important facet of his achievement-filled life. As Dewan of Travancore, he piloted the Travancore University Bill and established the first university in the State. He was Vice-Chancellor of the Annamalai University twice, of the Benares Hindu University, apart from having been Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Travancore University. His convocation addresses–which have all been brought out in a separate volume – bear testimony to his robust approach to the problems of education no less the problems of young career-seekers. His knowledge of and interest in art led to a wide array of collections that filled his elegant homes both in Madras and Ootacamund. His knowledge of Indian philosophy and scriptures was deep. He often made brief speeches in Sanskrit, to the delight of Sanskrit-loving Patasala students.

Late in life, he took up a Visiting Professor’s assignment in the Stanford University on the West Coast of U. S. He lectured in a number of other American universities. He delivered a monumental address on Hindu religion and Upanishadic wisdom at the East-West Philosophical Congress in Honolulu in 1949.

His last assignment was a project to write the history of his times. In that context, he was on a visit to London to get authentic references from the British Museum Library and the India Office archives. It was here that, on his return from a week-end visit of the Isle of Wight, that he passed away at the National Liberal Club, London–at the age of 87–in September 1966, while literally seated in a chair.

He was one of the handsomest men of his time–and age did little to furrow his countenance or dim the lustre in his eyes, any more than it whittled down his springy and youthful gait. The number of people he helped in numerous ways over a half century of undiminished generosity is legion.

There were assorted slips and errors in his life. These are far outweighed by his major acts of public policy and the projects he sponsored have been proved in perspective, as being of immense benefit to posterity. What he said and wrote will prove to be equally cherished treasures of a scholar-statesman for the newer generation, that could not have seen him in person. It is good, arrangements are under way to publish the more important of his utterances, his letters and writings during the Centenary Year. His alcove in the corridor of Indian history as a man of letters no less as a man of action is secure.

Those of us who came under his magnetic spell ask for no more than that his footprints in the sands of time impart a sense of direction to the doings of a new generation of economic leaders and administrators.
–By Courtesy: All India Radio, Madras

Sir C. P. and Sir Tej

“Comparisons are invidious, yet they alone enable us to assess correctly multi-faceted diamond like C. P. Intellectually not less alert, yet the “C. P. finish” is different from “Gandhian angularity.” More apposite is it to compare him with dignified Sir Tej. If Sir Tej excelled in Urdu, C. P. is at home in Sanskrit; 19, Albert Road, Allahabad, was a miniature Moghul Court; the “Grove”, Teynampet, is equally cultured and hospitable. When “Sapru” and “C. P.” entered a library, the Court or an Art Gallery, the gathering felt the presence of finished elegance. There again one has to stop; for where “C. P.” rises to heights amidst controversy, the other almost retired from the heat and dust.”
–K. R. R. SASTRY