Our ‘Happy Birthday’ to Fort St George is a few days early. But I don’t have a column on Thursdays, so I hope others will do the wishing on April 23 (Miscellany, January 5). Among them I hope will be the Government of Tamil Nadu which had been so keen to move into its rightful place, where governance as we know it today had put down roots 375 years ago, instead of into what looked like a rock fort or a set of oil tanks.
But to make that ‘Happy Birthday’ meaningful, I hope that Government uses the next few days to make the Fort look like what a proud seat of governance should be. Today, it is an eyesore. It hosts posters and banners, heaps of garbage, the debris of demolition and reconstruction, numerous makeshift structures that house filthy, unhygienic toilets, a host of canteens with neither safety hazards addressed nor waste disposal provided for, even an informal bazaar, and hazardous parking of Government vehicles any which way, wherever the drivers want to. It is ugly chaos in much of the precinct, with little attention paid to it. Certainly it does not look like a historic acreage deserving of attention for being the place from where much of modern India began and, therefore, worthy of being recognised as a World Heritage Site.
It was here that municipal governance began. It was here that the education system we are heirs to first put down roots. It was here that with a pioneering hospital and technical school that the seeds were sown for the spread of medicare and engineering throughout the country. It was here in 1921 that the Justice Party took office and paved the way for the Dravidian movement to hold the fort unchallenged from 1967. In the Assembly here were enacted the first legislations in the country providing for Reservations (1921), midday meals for children, and industrial estates. In it sat the first women legislator in India, Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, in 1927, and some of the finest orators in the country.
There is a shocking lack of awareness about all this and more, about what Fort St. George and the Legislature it hosts have contributed to the country, not only among the public but, even more sadly, among those who live and work in the Fort, be it politicians and bureaucrats, military personnel and archaeologists. How is such awareness to be created? Perhaps it’s time the Information Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu brought out a weekly journal titled The Fort St. George Record, relating the past and providing the latest updates on the present. But more importantly, it is time the history of Madras, once the capital of a Presidency that was virtually all South India and now, as its capital, responsible for making Tamil Nadu the top State in the country, was taught as a compulsory subject in the schools of the State. Could there be a better birthday gift for the Fort at 375?!
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An author who deserved better
The road from Madras Christian College, Tambaram, to Madras runs past what was once TT Maps and Atlases in Pallavaram. And there one afternoon in the early 1970s, a slim, middle-aged man, trimly bearded and looking like someone out of the Old Testament, strolled into my room — and so began a friendship that was to last 40 years.
Abraham Eraly introduced himself as a history lecturer at MCC who, getting bored with the monotony of teaching, was thinking of starting an editorial unit to help corporates with their publications. Would I help him print his output? And so came out a house journal for MRF to be followed by a few others.
By the mid-1970s, Abe, as I knew him, was getting a bit bored with house journals, teaching history was not proving any more interesting, and he wanted to do something more creative. What kind of magazine should I do, he asked me one day. And I had wondered aloud, “Why not a city magazine?” and told him about one I had been associated with in Colombo, the Ceylon Fortnightly Review . And so was born Aside in November 1977, a magazine quite unlike my suggestion, which had been a magazine of record, but one that was pure Eraly.
The first city magazine in India, in its heyday it nurtured a galaxy of new and youngish writers, Abe himself, Janaki Venkatraman, Aditi De, Sandhya Rao, Kavitha Shetty and many others. The supporting cast included an older team of writers, authoritative on fact but more matter of fact in their writing styles, people like Theodore Baskaran, Randor Guy, and your columnist who began his writings on Madras with a column titled ‘Once Upon a City’. Together, it was a team that produced an outstanding monthly, even if the magazine had a circulation limited only to a small discerning audience.
That he was producing some of the best reading material in the city, but one for which appreciation was not being reflected in the numbers disappointed Abe. He decided to start his own printing press, then make Aside a South Indian-focused magazine with a greater political content. The writing was on the wall — and he said goodbye to Aside .
That was when Abe decided it was time for him to put his writing talent and enormous knowledge of history to good use, writing ‘popular’ history for the general reader. And that’s when he began to become reclusive, first in Madras and then, a few years ago, in Pondicherry. “That’s the only way I can focus on my writing,” he once told me.
Thus began the phase which led to nine histories and one novel. The Last Spring: The Life and Times of the Great Mughals , (2000), Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilisation (2002), and The First Spring: The Golden Age of India (2011) were an impressive trilogy that told India’s history like a story. He had once promised me a fourth part, on the European era in India, but that, sadly, never came to pass, though he had done much research on it. But what he had published never received in India the appreciation — and the numbers – they deserved. He always was happier with the appreciation his books received in the West. Which was sad, because to many of us, Abraham Eraly was an outstanding writer who could bring history alive, tell it like a story which kept you enthralled.
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The Saint’s last resting place
A recent interview that appeared in this paper had Ian Caldwell, the author of The Fifth Gospel , a recent best-seller stating that Thomas Dydimus (Thomas the Twin), the Apostle of India, is buried in Edessa (in Iraq). Questioning an author who has done 10 years research for a book is not the done thing, but that burial location does raise a question or two if you go by the traditional view.
That story has Thomas being killed in 72 C.E. on the mount that’s since been named after him and buried on the Mylapore (later San Thomé) Beach. His remains were later re-buried a little inland by the Portuguese in the early 16th Century and over them was built the church which grew into what is now the Basilica of St. Thomas.
From there, the remains were taken to a shrine in Edessa and buried there. Here a great festival celebrating the Saint is held every July and a 4th Century hymn is sung, its words beginning: “Thou the great lamp, one among the Twelve, with oil from thy cross replenished India’s night, floodest with light…” Then, the narration goes, the remains were moved from Edessa to Chios, one of the Grecian islands, before being finally moved to the town of Ortona in Italy where they now rest.
Why all these moves took place and when is not known — at least to me — but relics of Thomas are to be found preserved and worshipped in all these places – St. Thomas’ Mount, Mylapore, Edessa, Chios, and Ortona. For years I’ve had an American sadhu telling me in the rudest language how wrong I am about the Apostle of India. Obviously there are many others in different parts of the world who are equally wrong — including Caldwell, no doubt — but then much in life considered as true are articles of faith.
