The Andhras: Character And Consequences

After forty long years Andhra has come into being, into its own. Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. Particularly the last few years have been marked by hope and frustration, the goal dangling tantalizingly on the horizon, so near yet so far away. In the meanwhile such a lot of dust has been kicked about that people’s vision is distorted, feelings embittered; and all this rounded off by Nature’s fury. Are they what are called ‘birth pangs’? Perhaps when all is said and done, the reward is commensurate with the toil it entailed (the Andhra has not got it like a shot) for the greater the toil the dearer the reward. In this exuberance, however, he should not forget any of those to whom no sacrifice was too exacting. Homage to them, the homage of a tear!

He should also not forget that the whole country is watching his step with an eye more critical than sympathetic. Should he falter and fail, the words “I told you so,” would blare forth from the lips of the critic who glibly says that more States spell disintegration, forgetting at the same moment that in Nature unity and diversity are never incompatible. Hence this is the hour of his trial, the supreme testing time, compared with which his past trials were nothing but noise. Now, what is there in Andhra character which gives one the hope (or despair) that he will come out of the test unscathed and hold his own?

Our country is a veritable bag of races–perhaps happily so, because the variegation lends richness to the fabric of our national life–a bag of races as different from one another as the races of Europe, barring of course their bloody internecine wars. Each race has its own characteristics, and it is such a fascinating study for any student of racial psychology that it is worth a doctoral thesis or even a treatise. It would be an instructive pastime to probe into the Andhra character and all that, partly in a mood of light-heartedness, Light-heartedness, did I say? Well, that is one characteristic,–as light-hearted as the French.

A peep into his literature should guide one in an honest analysis. Who is his national poet, Potana or Srinadha? I should be inclined to say, Srinadha. The ‘Rasa’ they plump in for is the ‘Sringara Rasa’, the champagne among the ‘navarasas’. Who is the heroine, the ‘Prima Donna’ to whom you would fain present the bouquet? Not the meekly devoted Rukmini, nor the selflessly surrendering Radha, but the imperious, compelling, possessing ‘proudha’, Satyabhama, just a woman, but how human! And who are the typical Andhra couple? The choice falls on none other than Kantham and her consort, ¹ whose homely and sunny sense of humour lightens the load of domestic life and cheers the cheerless. And, how about the ideal lovers? Are they not that peerless idyllic pair, Yenki and her Nayudu-bava, the creation of Sri Nanduri Subba Rao? Lastly, who is the most lovable character in modern Andhra Drama? Here one must pause, lest one should scandalise the reader by suggesting such an apparently scandalous character as Girisam.² I wonder if that will pass muster without loud protestations. A scamp and scalliwag, a bounder, a shiftless never-do-well, to many Girisam is. But pray, scratch him and see what lies beneath that happy-go-lucky bohemian exterior. For all his faults and foibles, for all his wildly wild sowing of wild oats, for all his being constantly in and out of the soup, how lovable, how human and, if I make bold to suggest, how innocuous! A unique character in that none comes anywhere near him but, perhaps, Pickwick. And lo, only the other day we have heard on Dr. G. V. Subbarao’s ‘indubitable’ authority that Girisam re-visited ‘Bonkula-Dibba’ in Vizianagaram!

Besides his literature, his food also will give us a glimpse of his character. Chillies, the nightmare of the chicken-hearted, the bugbear of all the races of the world, are the thing–the ‘IT’ to use an Americanism. Without that ‘IT’ there is no ‘kick in the grub’. And then there is that inimitable ‘Avakaya,’ ³ a dish for the gods themselves. Who cares if chillies mean short temperand ‘Avakaya’ means ‘Avesam’? ⁴ Conjure up before your mind’s eye the Andhra ‘Pedda-manishi’, (‘Gentleman’ or ‘Bhadralok’), after a hearty meal and a grateful and frank belching or two, squatting on his ‘Arugu’,⁵ rolling himself a cigar with golden weed ‘Lanka Pogaku’⁶ (of whose ambrosial qualities Girisam has sung such praises) sticking the cigar in his mouth at a nonchalant angle, with the blue smoke going up in graceful wreaths putting him in touch with the Infinite itself!

Here are some strands with which one might weave the Andhra character. Hail-fellow-well-met, he goes out of his way to be agreeable. But he can also be disagreeable, play the porcupine when rubbed on the wrong side. Where another (be he his parent!) is overbearing and bossy, he would sooner snap his fingers at him and ask him to go to the devil than submit himself to needless humiliation. Does not matter even if he has to pay dearly for his defiance. Brutally frank, he has an uncanny gift of telling to your face the most unsavoury truths and possibly offending you. Want of tact, but candid. There is an overdose, a drop too much of effervescent emotionalism, hyper individualism and mawkish sentimentalism in his mixture. Any new-fangled idea, provided it sounds grandiose, is good enough to sweep him off his feet. Burning his boats behind him, he rides on the crest of a brainwave, floating like a cork, till he finds himself eventually cast ashore miles away from his original moorings, the lone fighter of lost causes. He is politically artless, lacks cunning, a quality which alone has a survival value in the contentious world of today,–a fact which explains why he goes so often to the wall in the competitive race that is life. He has the capacity to work hard and he does work hard, provided only the occasion demands, but then not more than what is enough. He does not believe in wearing himself out, perhaps because he knows, the value of leisure. If at all he wears himself out, it is only in the beginning–a new broom par excellence. He is less an ant than a grass-hopper, more an epicurean than a go-getter or a hustler.

II

Here is a rough sketch of the type (need he blush?) on which rests the future of the frail ship of State. Will it serve to pilot the vessel through the rocks and shoals across ‘the sullen waters of Human Destiny’? It all depends. Thriftless and easy-going disposition, milk-and-water idealism, bellicose propensities, are qualities which have had no pragmatic value anywhere in the long adventure of life that is evolution. The Andhra can no longer afford to be a sky-blue idealist unless, watching the stars, he wants to risk his step. In his long contact with his southern, neighbour; who is acclaimed to be the apotheosis of success, has he a lesson? If so, might he not take a leaf out of his book? The Tamil’s will to wear himself out in work is colossal. And that, reinforced by tactfulness, has put him in the vanguard of our national life. What will save the loquacious Andhra from becoming the laughing-stock is work–hard, harder, hardest. Chauvinistic and sentimental invocations to the Andhra-mata, which are at best lip-homage and at worst maudlin sentimentality, ‘cut no ice’. A sure sign of decadence.

“He wants wit who wants resolved will
To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better.”

In the wake of freedom there is a temptation to feel sang-froid, to rest on one’s oars and take things easy. It is a folly in human affairs to forget that the solution of every problem gives rise to a plurality of problems which in turn need one’s careful attention. One need only to look at India before and after 1947 to be convinced. Perhaps what is true of the macrocosm is also true of the microcosm. “That progress means the establishment of equilibrium of ever higher and more differentiated functions in society and the individual is undoubted; but it is equally undoubted that in each case the equilibrium is established only to be broken into by new forces which have again to be equilibriated, new differences that have to be reconciled...Of an absolute and final equilibrium...evolution knows nothing.” This should warn us against any possible complacency.

As one connected with students, I am tempted to say a word about students, and politicians, with whom I am happily unconnected. When I look at the Andhra political scene I am reminded of what Churchill observes about the Greeks in his Closing the Ring: “The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most politically minded race in the world. No matter how forlorn their circumstances or how grave the peril to their country, they are always divided into many parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves with desperate vigour. It has been well said that wherever there are three Jews it will be found that there are two Prime Ministers and one Leader of the Opposition.” The Andhra politician must do two things if he does not want to betray the nation’s trust. One is negative. He must keep his hands of the gullible student who has been wrongly used for ends into inconsistent with his purpose. “Get to your studies and make a good job of them,” should be the message on the lips of every politics whenever he happens to address the student–and how eager he is to address him! The Andhra youth is so wrong-headed that he aspires, as Mr. D. V. Rama Rao suggests,⁷ to be no more than a politician, a District Board President, or a poet. The shameful paucity of administrators is due to this perverse bent of mind. It is a psychological problem in motivation, the right motives have got to be tapped. He should be urged to follow the hard path, to qualify himself to be an administrator, rather than the facile one, to be jerked into being a Minister whose dependence on the administrator is as ironical as it is piteous. This scandalous shortage of administrative personnel can be offset only when each college in Andhra–and there are so many today–takes a solemn pledge to train up religiously at least a couple of their alumni every year for the All-India examinations. And this is not asking too much of the Andhra teacher, and even of the Andhra parent. But alas, their influence is dubious, if not cipher. And that is because it has become customary with the college youth to exalt freedom to the skies and deride studies as God’s curse. The love of freedom has become a kind of mania with them, Eleutheromania as Irving Babbit calls it. That there are welcome exceptions cannot, of course, be gainsaid. But it pays to impress upon them that true freedom arises from “progressive union and stability, progressive co-operation, organisation, service and discipline–the very secret of the evolutionary process.” Freedom belongs to the original chaos, while discipline and co-operation characterise all growth and organisation.

On the positive side let the politician pause and reflect if the criss-cross differences among his tribe are not more temperamental than ideological, if there is not something essentially petty beneath them all, if they cannot be subordinated to a larger end, the common weal. Says William Patten: “It is always the investment of self in a purpose beyond self which determines the evolutionary movement–that is, progress...An atom, an organic body, an animal or a State, is essentially a co-operative system, which endures only so long as an inner co-operation endures and so long as co-operation with the environment endures.”

If all this smells like lavender platitudes, tastes like opiate and sounds like lullabies which, more often than not, put the problems to sleep, I plead guilty. But truths they are; and when did Truth suffer for its being repeated? “Truth,” says Plato, “is beautiful and enduring.” If so, why not we tuck up our sleeves and gird up our loins and get down to business?

“I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”

¹ In the stories and sketches of Sri Munimanikyam Narasimha Rao
² In Sri Gurajada Appa Rao’s ‘Kanya-sulkam’
³ ‘Mango pickles
⁴ Emotion
⁵ Pial
⁶ Tobacco grown in delta areas.