Chennai Illai, Madras: Tales from the City

A chapter titled, '"Madras Manade" -- How Chennai remained with Tamil Nadu" by A.R. Venkatachalapathy in a volume edited by him titled, "Chennai Not Madras: Perspectives on the City"

Chennai is now well-entrenched as the capital of the modern state of Tamil Nadu. Not only is it the administrative headquarters but it has also evolved over a century and a half since at least the mid-19th century as the social, political, and cultural capital of the Tamil country. Despite its cosmopolitan nature and a significant minority population, no Tamil could possibly imagine that Chennai could be anything but Tamil. But for some years in the mid-20th century the pre-eminent place of Madras as the Tamil capital came to be challenged by Telugu politicians. "Madras Manade" ("Madras is Ours") captures this controversy in an alliterative Telugu slogan.

Though Telugu speakers, at about 15 per cent of the population compared to about 70 per cent of Tamil speakers, constituted a clear minority in the city of Madras, for a variety of historical reasons they had high visibility. Proximity to Telugu regions, the dominance of the Telugu elite in the early history of Madras, their prominence in early nationalist politics where some of them founded organizations such as the Madras Native Association, and their preponderance in trade and business gave, at least to some, an illusion of Madras as a Telugu city. This was further accentuated by the disproportionate power Telugu speakers wielded in an electoral world where enfranchisement was based on property holding and direct taxation. With the gradual rise of Indian nationalist politics, at the threshold of its mass phase, legitimate demands were voiced for a separate province of Andhra for Telugu speakers. It is said that such demands were articulated as early as 1913. The Andhra Maha Sabha was a major voice in the articulation. By 1920, with its Nagpur session, the Indian National Congress had reorganized itself on linguistic lines and the newly-formed Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee demanded that the city of Madras come under its jurisdiction. Similar claims were made on Madras when a separate Andhra University was formed in 1926. Though such demands were articulated through the subsequent two decades, the issue came to a head only as Indian independence became imminent. The Telugu demand for Madras unfortunately got tied to the formation of a separate Andhra state and consequently became a running sore for over half a decade.

In June 1948 the Constituent Assembly of India appointed a commission headed by S.K.Dar, with Panna Lal and Jagat Narayan Lal as members, to examine the formation of the new provinces of Andhra, Karnataka, Kerala, and Maharashtra. Interestingly no mention was made of Tamil Nadu as it was erroneously assumed that the Madras Presidency was representative of Tamils. In the event the Dar commission recommended reorganization not on "linguistic consideration but rather upon administrative convenience." This was a view that was close to Jawaharlal Nehru's heart despite the many assurances the Congress had made over the years, and especially during the 1937 elections, on linguistic reorganization of provinces.

The Congress in turn, in its Jaipur session (December 1948), appointed a Linguistic Provinces Committee with Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and Pattabhi Sitarammaya (hence commonly known as the JVP Committee after their initials). The committee, which presented its report in April 1949, more or less accepted the Dar Commission's views by recommending the postponement of linguistic reorganization by a few years. But Andhra was an exception. "In some ways," the JVP Committee observed, "the demand for an Andhra Province has a larger measure of consent behind it than other similar demands," and added ominously, "Yet there is a controversy about certain areas as well as about the city of Madras." While the JVP Committee argued that Greater Bombay should not be part of any linguistic province, it placed Madras on a different footing despite its apparent analogous nature:

to a large extent what we have said about Bombay city applies to Madras. At the same time there is a difference in that it is a clear Tamil majority area. It seems impossible to restrict the aspirations of the majority to the confines of the city and as far as we can see its isolated existence would be a perpetual source of conflict between Andhra and Tamilnad.

Therefore the decision of the Congress leadership was clear and unequivocal right from the beginning: "On the whole, therefore, we feel if an Andhra Province is to be formed its protagonists will have to abandon their claim to the city of Madras." But there precisely lay the problem. Inextricably linked with the demand for Madras, the declaration of Andhra province came to be delayed by a few more years. Further, it also occasioned unnecessary and tragic loss of lives and property and caused teething problems for the fledgling nation state.

Pressure began to mount as is clearly recounted in the voluminous Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. By September 1949 Nehru had received at least three deputations: one an Andhra deputation led by P. Ramamurti, another of the Tamil members of the Constituent Assembly, and a third of the Andhra Maha Sabha. Meeting these delegations only further convinced Nehru of his position articulated in the JVP Committee. In November the Congress Working Committee, following the JVP Committee's views, recommended to the Government of India that an Andhra state be formed but without Madras city.

As Nehru wrote shortly later to P.S. Kumarasami Raja, the Chief Minister of Madras Presidency, "it now appears that the way to the formation of the Andhra Province is not as easy or clear as we had thought it was." An eight-member Partition Committee had been formed in November 1949 and the Madras Cabinet had approved its report in January 1950, "based on a large measure of agreement." But this was mired in controversy, with T. Prakasam ("one leading member from Andhra" in the words of Nehru) signing a note of dissent that the apparatus of the new province should reside in Madras city until a new capital was ready, clearly a ploy to subvert the federal decision not to grant Madras to Andhra.

In the ensuing months the movement for Andhra hotted up. In the coastal districts and Rayalaseema, support was welling up for a separate Andhra province. Apart from numerous public meetings, one Swami Sitaram even undertook a fast portending perhaps the subsequent fast of Potti Sriramulu which ended tragically. Given Nehru's view that "Personally I am opposed to bringing in fasting as a method of finding a solution for political problems" and his categorical statement in Parliament that "Government will ... submit to facts and not fasts," the fast was broken only with the intervention of Vinoba Bhave. During the course of this fast it all once again boiled down to one issue: while the protesters demanded a separate Andhra state and the government was more than eager to grant it, the doubtful claim over Madras was what stalled the issue. In Parliament on September 14, 1951 the government said as much when N.G. Ranga, the prominent Andhra Congressman, made an intervention in the debate.

As the agitation for a separate Andhra got protracted, the fault lines within the Andhra Congress began to be more visible. It became obvious that the interests of Rayalaseema and the coastal districts of Andhra were not in tandem. (Here it should be mentioned that, even after the so-called police action in Hyderabad which ensured its integration in the Indian union, its amalgamation with the Telugu state of Andhra was scarcely discussed.) Given their close proximity and other material interests in the city of Madras, Rayalaseema and Nellore could not envisage an Andhra province without it. Further, their people were also apprehensive about due representation to them in the new province and therefore demanded a proportionate share in the new legislature and other government offices. This amounted to putting a spoke in the Andhra wheel. The elite of the coastal districts of Andhra had a far larger stake in the creation of a separate state than in a faraway city. As Nehru observed in a letter to Swami Sitaram on September 29, 1951, "On the Andhra side, there appear to be varying opinions. Some people say that they were prepared to give up the city of Madras wholly; others are not prepared to do so; yet others ... want to reserve consideration of this to a later stage." To this may be added the view that Madras city should become a Chief Commissioner's province, effectively under the control of the Central government.

If this was the political division within the Andhra government, the situation in Tamil Nadu was even more complex. While the Congress was deeply faction-ridden, and the other dominant force, the Dravidian movement (both the Dravida Kazhagam under Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam under C.N. Annadurai), with their commitment to a Dravidian homeland consisting of the whole of southern India, did not divert adequate energy to the issue. The Communists on the other hand, emerging afresh from underground after being weakened by toeing the misconceived B.T. Ranadive line, reflecting the ground strength of their movement, preferred to be led by the Andhra section of the Communist Party. Ultimately it was left to the Tamil Arasu Kazhagam, headed by Ma. Po. Sivagnanam, a pressure group within the Congress, to counteract the Andhra demand. Apart from organizing meetings and conferences, the Tamil Arasu Kazhagam intervened effectively in the Madras Corporation by passing resolutions that thwarted Andhra designs on Chennai. (A particularly tactical move was the defeat of a motion brought forward in the corporation expressing sympathy for the death of Potti Sriramulu in December 1952, which was a moral blow to the Telugu demand.) An important all-party public meeting of Tamil leaders was organized in March 1953 by the Tamil Arasu Kazhagam where Periyar E.V.R., M. Bhaktavatsalam, S.S. Karaiyalar, Meenambal Sivaraj, and others spoke. In subsequent meetings widely respected Tamil cultural figures with no overt political connections also participated.

In this context, with the question of Madras and the interests of Rayalaseema acting as brakes, the struggle for a separate Andhra state went from strength to strength. The situation drove both the state and Central governments to exasperation. Once Nehru was even forced to write to P.S. Kumarasami Raja, "A reference in the Hindu says that your government is apparently waiting for us to do something about the Andhra province or for us to ask you about it. I do not quite know what is meant." By early 1952, Nehru was blaming T. Prakasam and his supporters alone for the stalemate in forming the Andhra province. In a press conference in New Delhi Nehru asserted, referring to Prakasam's dissent note to the partition committee's report where he had insisted that Madras city be the interim capital of the new Andhra province: "As a matter of fact, if Mr Prakasam had accepted that award three years ago, probably there would be an Andhra province now."

By this time however the first general elections of January 1952 had added more variables. The Congress failed to win a majority in the Madras Presidency, weakening the hand of K. Kamaraj, its leader, and paving the way for Rajaji to form a Congress government through a prescient form of horse-trading. On the other hand, T. Prakasam had himself lost his deposit in the North Madras constituency, exposing the weakness of his demand. He headed the United Front, a motley alliance dominated by the Communists, which opposed the Congress. Despite Rajaji's well-advertised view that the demand for linguistic provinces was a "tribal demand", he nevertheless supported the formation of an Andhra province but without conceding the city of Madras. (It was widely believed that Rajaji's support for the immediate creation of Andhra province would give him a reprieve from the relentless attack of the Communists whose legislators mostly came from Andhra.)

Various Andhra leaders such as Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy and V.V. Giri put pressure on the Central government. Even the philosopher Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was not to be left out in this regard. All this only drove Nehru to exasperation. Nehru refused their demand for the appointment of a commission without general agreement: "Even reference to an arbitration means consent of parties." He also ruled out plebiscite, as it would not throw up a clear result. By July 1952 Nehru made it ever more clear that "there has been so much argument on this subject that no one can say anything new or worthwhile."

This, however, was to change with one as-yet-unknown Congressman's fast. In a letter to Rajaji, Nehru had observed that "some kind of fast is going on for the Andhra province .... I am totally unmoved by this and I propose to ignore it completely." But it was not to be. Potti Sriramulu epitomized the demand for Andhra. Actively egged on by T. Prakasam and Bulusu Sambamurthy, he began his fast at the latter's hime on October 19. 1952. Within days Nehru had to sit up and listen: "I do not know how long we can just go on postponing it. If we are clear that sometime or other we shall have to face it, it does little good to go on postponing this and waiting for a more favourable opportunity. The probability is that conditions will deteriorate."

T. Prakasam kept on the pressure by convening an all-Party convention in Madras on December 7, 1952, and dissolved it after calling for immediate formation of Andhra with Madras as capital. It was left to T. Nagi Reddy, the Communist leader, to reconvene the meeting and pass a resolution that left the question of Madras to a plebiscite.

Nehru hoped to seize this psychological moment to the advantage of the nation-state. He feared that otherwise there would be complete frustration. He even suggested the appointment of a one-man commission which was turned down by Rajaji as he feared that it would only help "to keep alive the claims which we wish to be abandoned."

The death of Potti Sriramulu on December 15, 1952 after 57 days of fasting led to violence in Andhra, especially in Nellore, and the looting of Vijayawada railway station. Genuine fears arose about the safety of Tamils in the Telugu districts. Despite Nehru's bold statement in Parliament that "we must not mix up various things because a riotous mob did something", the Government of India appointed in December 1952 a committee under K.N. Wanchoo.

Wanchoo's report, submitted in early February 1952, unequivocally favoured the creation of an Andhra state but equally clearly recommended that Madras should not be included. However he indicated that until a new capital was built the Andhra government could be temporarily (for about five years) lodged in Madras. Understandably Nehru was inclined to accept this recommendation but Rajaji stoutly opposed it on the grounds that the troubles would spread to other Tamil areas where a sizeable Andhra population lived. He even went to the extent of threatening to resign from the chief-ministership. This finally convinced Nehru and he agreed that this move would only result in "unseemly agitation, acrimonious controversies, and administrative conflicts" and would adversely affect the friendly atmosphere.

By 1952 the question of Andhra was pretty much settled, if ever it was in question. Despite the seeming controversy, the Andhra demand for Madras was a rather sectarian one raised by a group of Andhra leaders from the Rayalaseema region. What gave some impetus and nationwide visibility to the agitation was that it was linked to a very popular, genuine, and longstanding demand for a separate Telugu-speaking province of Andhra. But in fact the demand for Madras unnecessarily delayed the formation of this province. The relative quiet with which Tamil Nadu responded to the Telugu demand for Madras was rooted in the certainty that it was most obviously a Tamil city conceded by one and all.

The bitterness between Andhra and Tamil Nadu festered for some years after, with the controversy over the northern borders becoming the subject of further agitation and necessitating yet another commission. That however is a separate story.

SOURCES:
1) Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Volumes 10-22, Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi, 1990-97.
2) Ma. Po. Sivagnanam, Puthiya Tamilagam Padaitha Varalaru, Poonkodi Pathippagam, Chennai, 1986.
3) T. Vasundhara and S. Gopalakrishnan, Sub-Nationalism: A Case Study of Modern India, New Era, Madras, 1996.

Blast from the Past: Accession of Princely States

Here is the account of Durga Das in his book, "India: From Curzon to Nehru and after"

The integration of the Princely states with the rest of India was not planned in advance. Patel told me it was more the result of fortuitous circumstances which were helped by the wave of nationalism in which the Princes were caught up. To this, however, may be added the prestige and authority of Patel himself. The merger of the smaller States began in Orissa by accident and the process spread from there to other areas.

Narrating the story of the first merger, Patel told me that the idea had originated with Hare Krushna Mahatab, who formed in 1938 the State Praja Mandal, an organization of the people living in the States of Orissa. This Orissa Congress leader proposed that the small States be merged with the provinces under British administration, and the States Peoples Conference appointed a committee with Mahatab as its chairman to study the proposal in relation to Orissa. The committee recommended that the States be brought under the provincial Government as reforms in them, while they maintained their separateness, would have no value. Mahatab took up this matter with Cripps when he came to India in 1942. The Political Department agreed that this was the only feasible solution of the problem but did nothing about it. When India became independent, the British departed leaving the States as they were. Mahatab convinced Gandhi and Patel of the soundness of his scheme, and he suggested to Patel in November 1947 that he should set the process in motion in Orissa.

V.P. Menon, on the contrary, proposed to Patel that a system of joint control, leaving some administrative powers in the hands of the Princes, should be evolved. Mahatab objected, saying this would only cause confusion and insisted that complete merger was the only solution. Patel agreed, and when the two leaders met in Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar the entire memorandum relating to the merger of States was redrafted with the help of the Chief Secretary of the provincial Government and, what is more, reprinted overnight.

The next day, when the rulers of Orissa conferred with Patel and Mahatab, they referred to the earlier memorandum of association which had been sent to them. Patel and Mahatab disowned knowledge of it. Patel then told the rulers: "If you do not accept our proposal, I do not take responsibility for law and order in your State. You take care of yourself." As the Praja Mandal leaders were ready to overthrow the Princes and effect merger by force, the rulers accepted the new scheme. Thus the first merger of States went through without a single incident in Orissa, to be followed in Chattisgarh, where the States were merged with the Central Provinces.

The Congress leaders were prepared to consider eighteen States viable and permit them to continue as autonomous units under the Instrument of Accession. These included Alwar and Bharatpur, but Gandhi's assassination set in motion the second wave of integration. The pistol which fired the fatal shot was alleged to have belonged to the Maharaja of Alwar's collection of firearms, and volunteers belonging to the R.S.S. were said to have been trained in the use of arms in the State. Dr. N.B. Khare was then the Chief Minister of Alwar and the suspicion that the ruler had a hand in the shooting grew stronger because Khare was known to bear Gandhi a grudge for getting him ousted from the chief ministership of the Central Provinces.

K.B. Lall, Special Administrator for Alwar, meanwhile, sent to the Home Ministry a report on the basis of available evidence which allowed that the rulers of Alwar and Bharatpur were implicated in a plot to topple the Government. Patel decided that the two Princes should be tried by their peers and five of the leading rulers were summoned to Delhi.

As soon as the Princes arrived, they anxiously sought the reason for the call. They were told that the summons was in connection with Gandhi's assassination. This disclosure caused them much alarm. They were taken to Mountbatten, who told them to their great relief that they were personally not suspected of complicity. They had been called to judge the role of Alwar and Bharatpur. The evidence collected was placed before them and they readily agreed that the two Princes should be punished by depriving them of their powers. Matsya Union thus came to be formed and states considered viable were merged for the first time. Then followed other mergers.

The Maharajas of Alwar and Bharatpur might not have been stripped of their powers and Matsya Union created but for the allegations that they had taken part in the massacre and forcible eviction from their lands of Meos, Muslim peasants. This greatly angered Nehru and he was not willing to show sympathy to the two rulers. In fact, Patel told me that had Nehru not reacted angrily, Mountbatten might not have been as helpful as he was in depriving the Princes of their powers and in effecting the changes.

That, however, was not the end of the story. Later the rulers in the Matsya Union planned a secret meeting to consider joint action to regain their powers. As soon as Lall received the news, he rang up the Maharaja of Dholpur, at whose headquarters the meeting was to be held, and said he would like to join him in a hunt for big game. The Prince invited him over at once and Lall reached Dholpur on the day fixed for the secret meeting. His presence acted as a damper to the princely plotters and rung the curtain on further conspiracy. Incidentally, Congress leaders of the area complained to Delhi that Lall was too fond of the company of the former rulers, with whom he ate and drank frequently. They did not realise, however, that by approaching the Princes at the social level Lall had not only got them to do the things the Government wanted but scotched a major plot.

The Sardar also used the proverbial carrot to persuade the rulers of the larger States to sign instruments transferring their powers to the Union Government. He offered them the prospect of becoming a Raj Pramukh, an office similar to that of Governor and the move worked. Rulers like Jamnagar and Patiala, for instance, saw in this an opportunity to become leaders among the Princes and to extend their authority over larger territories than their own hereditary princedoms, The rulers saw from the fate of Alwar and Bharatpur that the new Government would intervene effectively when law and order were threatened and would encourage the growth of democracy. At the same time, they realised that their best bet for retaining personal status, palaces and privy purses lay in giving up their powers as rulers.