Reminding me that tomorrow will be Srinivasa Ramanujan’s 128th birthday, Dr. N. Sreedharan recently sent me a biography of the mathematical genius he had written. And in it, I discovered yet another story of the mathematician I had not heard before.
In The Hindu of September 6, 1905 there had appeared this letter to the Editor under the heading ‘A Missing Boy’. It read:
To the Editor of the “HINDU”.
Sir, — Kindly insert the following in your widely circulated journal:
“A Brahmin boy of the Vaishnava (Thengalai) sect, named Ramanujan, of fair complexion and aged about 18 years was till recently a student of the Kumbakonam College. He left his home on some misunderstanding. His guardian is very solicitous about the boy’s returning home. He stayed at Rajahmundry for about a month, and was last seen there some five days back. Those who happen to see him are kindly requested to persuade him to return home, and to communicate his whereboats to
J. Seenivasa Raghava Ayangar
18, Sarangapani Sannidhi Street,
Kumbakonam.
September 2.
Now why did the prodigy run away from home? “Some misunderstanding” does not tell us anything. And the author’s speculative questions have no answers. All we learn is that Ramanujan was in Vizagapatam and that he returned to Kumbakonam from there that very month, shortly after the letter appeared in The Hindu . The next year he joined Pachaiappa’s College.
Yet another incident that Dr. Sreedharan draws my attention to is one that was recounted in 1968 by Dr. S. Chandrasekhar, the Nobel Laureate, at the National Institute of Sciences in New Delhi. Apparently, two months before he was to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, Ramanujan threw himself on the Underground track in London before an approaching train. Miraculously the train had a sudden electrical failure and stopped short of the person on the track. Ramanujan was lifted off the track and the Police took him to the local police station to be charged with attempted suicide. But before that happened, Prof. G.H. Hardy, Ramanujan’s mentor, turned up on the scene and stated that Ramanujan was a Fellow of the Royal Society and that Fellows were not liable for arrest in England. Years later, Hardy was told by a police officer that they knew his story was a pack of lies but they released Ramanujan because they did not want to embarrass an Indian mathematical genius.
Later, when he went before Trinity College’s examiners for election to the College’s Fellowship, Ramanujan carried a medical certificate saying that he was sane! In the event, he didn’t have to produce it as no one asked him whether his attempt at suicide was an indication of insanity. Ramanujan was thereafter elected to the Fellowship of Trinity College, the first Indian to receive this honour.
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An ‘old fashioned’ journalist, even then....
Ramineni Bhaskarendra, thinking I made a mistake on the date the Indian Patriot was first published (Miscellany, November 23), sent me an item from the Indian Patriot of 17.10.1914, and indicates that Karunakara Menon must have started his paper even before my implied 1917 date (Miscellany, November 23). Indeed he did; he started it in 1905 soon after he left The Hindu.
K. Subba Rao, C. Karunakara Menon and K. Natarajan were the first three staff G. Subramania Aiyar and M. Veeraraghavachariar recruited after producing the paper themselves for a few years. Subba Rao and Natarajan went on to establish the Indian Social Reformer , the latter to edit it, while Menon went on to edit The Hindu when G. Subramania Aiyar and Veeraraghavachariar parted ways in 1898 and the latter took over. Menon, who had been trained by Subramania Aiyar after he had joined the paper as a sub-editor straight from Presidency College, had, as Assistant Editor, once acted as Editor when Subramania Aiyar was in England. When Subramania Aiyar returned he congratulated Menon on his “Excellent editorials... spoken of highly everywhere.” For his part, Menon later described Subramania Aiyar as his “inspirer and guide”.
After an uncertain start, with Veeraraghavachariar and his editor, trying some experiments like dropping content from England, The Hindu picked up when they started in 1896 a Saturday 4-page supplement that proved popular. This was the beginning of a focused features section in The Hindu . But all their efforts proved unsuccessful in the end. On April 1, 1905, Kasturiranga Iyengar, the legal adviser of the paper, and some friends of his, relieved Veeraraghavachariar of his burden. Kasturiranga Iyengar became Proprietor and Editor and Menon was designated Joint Editor. Not particularly happy with the changed designation, Karunakara Menon quit a month later and a few months afterwards brought out his Indian Patriot , the paper thus dating to 1905.
When Karunakara Menon passed away in August 1922, The Hindu wrote, “Dewan Bahadur C. Karunakara Menon... may perhaps be reckoned as the last of the race of those now ‘old-fashioned’ journalists who embraced journalism more in response to a patriotic call than as a profession...When he left this office for fresh fields and pastures new, he had built up such a high reputation that he has never in later life been able to excel it. Mr. Karunakara Menon was reputed as one of the ablest leader writers in those days, when journalistic success depended on one’s ability to combine in oneself the functions of political schoolmaster, agitator and pamphleteer...”
Kasturiranga Iyengar speaking at a condolence meeting later said, “(He was) a very talented writer... master of a very elegant and attractive style. His knowledge of public questions was wide and varied and in the handling of those questions he showed a broad outlook and high-minded tolerance... (He) was offered the post of Joint Editor but he preferred to live a life of absolute independence and he started the Indian Patriot .” The paper for a long time had a good circulation but its popularity began to wane after Menon’s growing support for the Minto-Morley Reforms, and the Dewan Bahadurship that followed. In the end the paper had to be closed.
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...and an activist one
Bringing me up-to-date on P. Kesava Pillai, a leading lawyer in Gooty and President of the Anantapur District Board, (Miscellany, November 23) Ramineni Bhaskarendra tells me Pillai was Deputy President of the Madras Legislative Council in the pre-Reforms days. But what struck me as more interesting was the information that he was a member of the 1921 Indian deputation to investigate the possibilities of Indian colonisation of British Guiana. Now that was news to me — as a person interested in the Diaspora — and off I went to find more information on what that plan was, but along the way I got sidetracked when I discovered that Kesava Pillai had in his youth been a journalist with a reputation for ‘scoops’.
Kesava Pillai was a district correspondent of The Hindu and he played a significant role on two occasions when the paper severely took to task Governor Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff. Of the paper’s criticism of the Governor it was said, “No harsher words have been said of a Governor in the columns of The Hindu before and after his period of office and no greater indictment of the British rule made in any journal in India.” The Governor and his administration were put in the dock for, first, what was known as the Chingleput Ryots Case and, then, the Salem Riots Case.
The Chingleput case dates to 1881 and Kesava Pillai wrote, “European and Indian officials shamelessly exact supplies from their subordinates in the villages...” The villagers were in turn harassed by extorting local officials. In this instance, Kesava Pillai was more a commentator on what was happening in the villages. In the Salem Riots’ Case he was specially assigned by The Hindu to report on the riots and highlight the need to release all prisoners falsely implicated in the case. A minor communal clash was described as a “seditious revolt” by Grant-Duff and led to three days’ rioting, with many innocent — and eminent — people arrested and sentenced by a special judge to transportation to the Andamans. Continuing its campaign to free the innocent, The Hindu, wrote, “Now that he is placed in possession of facts upon which he will have to change his opinion of that ugly affair, its origin, progress and end, we trust he will make up his mind to render sufficient reparation to those innocent, useful and honourable men who have been sacrificed to screen the incompetency of some and to gratify the ambitions of others...” The facts The Hindu was referring to were provided by ‘Special Reporter’ Kesava Pillai.
It was in October 1893 that Kesava Pillai again played a major role in a sensational happening — this time in a murder case that became known as the ‘Guntakal Murder Case’. When some British soldiers passing through Guntakal spotted by their temporary camp a couple of young girls walking home, they had chased them. The girls took shelter in a railway gatekeeper’s cabin. When Gatekeeper Hampanna refused to open the door, two of the soldiers fired at him. He later died of his wounds. Corporal Ashford was arrested, charged with the crime — and acquitted by the Madras High Court!
A suggestion was made to erect a memorial near the railway cabin to mark the bravery of Hampanna. A plaque was prepared and erected. The authorities wanted to demolish it and they also wanted to prosecute Kesava Pillai who had broken the story of the murder and who had also been in the forefront of the campaign to get the memorial erected. Governor Lord Wenlock ordered both journalist and memorial to be left alone.
Years later, towards the end of 1916, when the non-Brahmins began planning to establish the Justice Party, the leaders issued their manifesto. Kesava Pillai, a Rao Bahadur by then and on at least the fence if not on the right side of the Establishment, wrote to The Hindu repudiating the manifesto and The Hindu , which had seen the manifesto as divisive, acclaimed, “Mr. Kesava Pillai has behind him a record of public and patriotic work which is possessed by few and his repudiation of the sentiments contained in the manifesto is especially noteworthy and deserves public attention.” Kesava Pillai went on to found the Madras Presidency Association within the Congress Party of which he was a member.
