The Role of South India in the Freedom Movement

The Cultural Influence on the Freedom Movement

As mentioned earlier in the chapter on the partition in Bengal, Ramsay Macdonald had exclaimed: 'Bengal is creating India by song and worship; it is clothing her in queenly garments.' In South India too, culture had a very powerful impact. We shall illustrate this phenomenon through two very powerful personalities, Subramaniam Bharati and Kamala Devi Chattopadhay.

Bharati's Literature

On 4 April 1910, a significant event occurred: Sri Aurobindo, poet, patriot and Yogi, arrived in Pondicherry from Bengal. Towards the end of 1910, V. V. S. Aiyar - Barrister Savarkar's comrade-in-arms - also arrived, escaping from the prison that was British India. Pondicherry was fast becoming the refuge of Indian patriots, and also the radiating centre of a new renaissance, offering a new hope for India and the world. Sri Aurobindo and Subramaniam Bharati engaged in Vedic studies, and Bharati too learned to see India - as Sri Aurobindo had seen Her - verily as the Mother, and to sing Her praises.

The murder of Collector Ashe at Maniyachi in 1911 turned the suspicion of the Indian Government to the refugee patriots in Pondicherry. They were harassed in various ways, and every attempt was made to abduct and bring them to India, though, in vain. Meantime Bharati the poet was not idle: actually he worked at white heat during the whole of 1912 and composed in the course of the year some of his greatest poems, viz. the group of poems centred around the personality of Krishna, the remarkable fable known as Kuyil Pattu, and the justly celebrated Panchali's Vow. In 1914 the Great War came, and Bharati's difficulties only increased. He continued to write however, and friends like Parali S. Nellayappar and S. Srinivasachari managed to arrange for the publication of several of his poems in Madras. Of his life at Pondicherry much has been written: among others, his own daughter, Thangammal, and his friend S. Srinivasachari's daughter, Yadugiri Ammal, have published their memories of the poet, touched with tenderness and warm-hearted affection. Bharati was not like other men: he was wayward, impractical and unique. But he had one marvelous human gift: he could inspire affection - even love leading to idolatry - in his close friends and near relations. And he was a superlatively gifted poet, and knew he was one!

The 10 years at Pondicherry, a period no doubt of seeming frustration and inactivity, were really the true flowering time of Bharati the poet. V. V. S. Aiyar was to him a pillar of support, a stimulant, a guardian angel, while Sri Aurobindo was even more - a *spell-binder, an inspiration, a veritable Krishna to this neophyte Arjuna. All three, besides being patriots of the first order, were also lovers of poetry and of Indian culture and philosophy. Their discussions must have been at once vastly interesting and wondrously fruitful, and Bharati's poetry now acquired a depth, an intensity and a range it had not known before. Sri Aurobindo turned Bharati's mind to the Vedas and to Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, and initiated him into the truth of things, the secret of world-existence as the play of Shakti. Under Sri Aurobindo's influence, Bharati translated the Gita and a chapter from Patanjali into Tamil, and hymned the glory and greatness of Mahashakti in poem after poem. Chafing that he had been rusting too long in exile, not shining in patriotic armour on the regular battlefield, Bharati crossed the border on 20 November 1918, and was promptly arrested near Cuddalore. Less than a month later, however, he was released, and he proceeded to his wife's place, Kadayam, in Tinnevelly District. Here he remained for the following 2 years except for brief visits to Ettayapuram, Karaikudi and other places; in March 1919, during a visit to Madras, he met Gandhiji at the residence of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari - a memorable meeting indeed! December 1920 found Bharati in Madras again, this time

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installed as assistant editor of Swadesamitran, a post he had held 15 years earlier. Numerous were his contributions to the press, and there was no flagging of his intellectual energy. It was the commencement of the Gandhi Age - or the Heroic Age, as C. R. Reddy once called it - of modern India. Bharati was in the swim, he was filled with expectancy; he was wonderfully alive. Admirers gathered round him in the evenings, he broke unpredictably into song, he addressed numerous public meetings. And his writings made literary history in Tamil Nadu.

The story draws to a close. In July 1921, Bharati was involved in a cruel and tragic accident: the Triplicane temple elephant seized him with its trunk and cast him on the ground rendering him unconscious, and although he was promptly rescued, the shock impaired his health seriously. He seemed to be recovering, but other ailments intervened, and on 11 September his condition took a turn for the worse, and he died past midnight in the early hours of 12 September 1921. The brave heroic soul that was Subramaniam Bharati had passed away.

Bharati's Poetical Works

The circumstances of Bharati's life were such that he could not - as a Wordsworth or a Tennyson did - pursue the profession of poetry either with security or with steady success. Few lives could have been more chequered, and he had constantly to struggle against poverty at home and Government hostility outside. A lesser man than Bharati would have completely broken under the double strain, but being a Titan, he stood his ground bravely, and he could have said with the poet William Ernest Henley:

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

When his untimely end came in 1921, not all his poems had seen regular or definitive publication. No doubt his name and his songs were on almost every Tamilian's lips; few public meetings began in the twenties and thirties without one or more of his patriotic songs being sung lustily to put the audience in a right receptive frame of mind; and during the last 10 or 15 years, his songs have been rendered on the air by accomplished exponents of Carnatic music such as N. C. Vasanthakokilam, M. S. Subbulakshmi and D. K. Pattammal. Bharati festivals have been organised, books and appreciative articles have been published, and Bharati's position as the pre-eminent poet of the modern Tamil renaissance is now, and has been for over 3 decades, a part of our public opinion, not open to question. However, it was not easy to get Bharati's works - especially the Poems - in handy form. Copyright difficulties stood long in the way of a popular issue of the Poems. This problem was solved by the Madras Government when they secured the copyright of Bharati's writings from their former owner, and published a collected edition of the Poems printed at the Government Press. Government went further and announced that it was open to any private publisher to issue Bharati's writings without paying a copyright fee. In the meantime the phenomenal success of the cheap edition of Rajaji's Mahabharata in Tamil (otherwise known as Vyasar Virundhu) emboldened Mr. V. Govindan of Sakti Karyalayam to issue in April 1957 the Complete Poetical Works of Bharati in a single handy volume of over 600 pages, but priced only Rs. 1.50. Thus at long last it became possible to have all of Bharati's poetry in an inexpensive volume. There could now be no justification whatsoever for ignorance of the full amplitude and

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the high altitudes of Bharati's poetic achievement. In the collected edition referred to above, Bharati's poems are arranged under the following heads and subheads:

Part I - Patriotic Songs

1. Songs on Bharat Land

2. Songs on Tamil Nadu

3. Freedom

4. Songs on the Freedom Movement

5. National Leaders

6. Songs inspired by Freedom Movements in other countries

PART II - Devotional Songs

1. Prayer songs

2. Songs of knowledge (jnana)

PART III - Miscellaneous Songs

1. Ethics

2. Society

3. Unclassified songs

4. Tributes

5. Autobiographical

6. Free verse

There are over 300 individual poems or songs in the collection (53 in Part I, 102 in Part II, and so on) and even the longer poems apparently inspired by a single theme (like the autobiography, Kannan Pattu, and Panchali's Vow) are divided into numerous almost self-sufficient smaller pieces, or jets of song, though the general unity of design too is quite obvious. One thing therefore is clear: Bharati's poetic genius was essentially lyrical, he excelled in short sudden spurts of song, and he was averse to long sustained narratives. Kuyil's Song (Kuyil Pattu) shows that Bharati's powers of mere narration too were of a high order, but he seemed generally to prefer to immortalise moods, emotions, waves of passion and gleams of memory to chronicling laboriously events or linked actions. He was a lord of language too; he both liberated Tamil from the shackles that Punditry had forced upon it and rode the emancipated language as a master horseman, bringing the best out of it. What the living tradition had to give he received as a gift of grace; but his eyes spanned the future no less. English poetry - the great Romantics especially - inspired him to attempt new forms of poetic expression and a variety of metres. From Walt Whitman, to whom probably Sri Aurobindo introduced Bharati, he learnt on the other hand a boldness, freedom and forthrightness of utterance. If Whitman was the prophet of American democracy, Bharati would be the prophet of the new Indian Republic to be, and he would sing its praises unreservedly.

Poet of Freedom and Patriotism

The poet of freedom and patriotism is the Bharati that most people know, and have known for the last few decades. Many of these songs were so immediately effective in the context of the freedom struggle, they were so brilliantly tuned to the temper of the moment, that it is difficult even today, so many years after independence to judge them as mere poetry. To call these songs political or propagandist poetry is surely off the mark: freedom in Bharati's songs is an elemental thirst, a basic aspiration and need of the human soul. Besides, these songs of freedom are often linked up with the concept of India, Bharat, as the Mother. No mere metaphor, this, but - at any rate for Bharati as it was for Sri Aurobindo - a reality, an

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article of religious faith! It is not patriotism but the religion of patriotism that Bharati preached; it is not the geographical entity that he sang about, but India the mother of us all, the sustainer, the saviour. Vande Mataram was the 'mantra' that Rishi Bankim Chandra had given to a weak enslaved people to enable them to wake up and achieve their salvation. Bharati took up the mantric cry and made it resound everywhere in Tamil Nadu. Weaklings became patriots, and cowardice turned into valour. Bharati with his magic verse had waved the wand, and the age of sloth and slavery was ended for ever. As Sarojini Naidu said in her finely worded message sent at the time of the opening of the Bharati Memorial Building at Ettayapuram on 13 October 1947:

'Poet Bharati has fulfilled the true mission of a poet. He has created Beauty, not only through the medium of glowing and lovely words, but has kindled the souls of men and women by the million to a more passionate love of Freedom and a richer dedication to the service of the country.' Bharati saw India as his motherland - Bharat the Divine Mother - in diverse attitudes and situations: he saw her fettered, struggling valiantly to free herself, hoping and despairing alternately; he saw her as a veritable Kamadhenu, unfailing giver of unending bounty; he glimpsed too the resurgent Bharat of the not distant future, active, puissant, prosperous, gay and wise. The fever of freedom raged in Bharati like a fever of the blood, and he transmitted it as a sort of Asian 'Flu' to everybody; but it was a fever that raged only to purify the system in the end - When will this thirst for freedom slake? When will our love of slavery die?

The nectar of freedom was what Bharati wanted most, and nothing else was of any account to him. Would they that have aspired for freedom be satisfied with anything less? Would they that have tasted divine nectar be content with sipping wine? Freedom was the golden bough, it had to be grown by sacrificing - if need be - everything else. Yet the Lord too should view human effort with kindness; without His grace all mere human exertion could not lead us anywhere.

If eternal be your Rule

And the reign of Dharma,

Ere it be too late indeed,

Vouchsafe to us this gift of freedom!

Yet Bharati thought that the attainment of freedom was a foreordained thing, especially after the arrival of Gandhiji upon the political scene, and so he gave this word of cheer:

'Freed thou shalt become soon,

And embrace victory.'

Thus in his dear motherland

Gandhi fosters Revolution.

'Nor heat nor cold affects the soul,

Nor weakness nor rebuff the fighter:

Always wage the dharmic fight!'

Thus exhorts Mahatma Gandhi.

Bharati was confident of the Indians - comprising as they did the freedom-loving Rajputs, Mahrattas, Bengalis, Andhras, Tamils, Kannadigas and the rest - rising successfully to expel the foreigner even at the cost of their lives. In a song which Mr. H. R. Krishnan has described as the 'March Lorraine of India', Bharati sees Indians gathering below

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[t]he flag of Bharat fluttering in the breeze -

See, see thy Mother's darling flag!

Come and bow and sing its praises!

High on a mast

Flutters the silken flag

Rocked by a gentle breeze:

Read 'Vande Mataram' there!

Bharati was not, of course, unaware of the conditions that had to be established if freedom was to come and remain. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the caste system, and he felt bitter that it had brought about the fragmentation of Indian humanity. He therefore affirmed - Religion and caste shan't divide us. We conclude with tributes paid by Shri C Rajagopalchari and Shrimati Sarojini Naidu.

'Just as in ancient days, Vyasa and Valmiki served human progress, Poet Subramania Bharati has served the Tamils in recent times by his writings. There can be no limit to reading Bharati's poems. The more they are read, the more do they bestow sweetness and benefit.'

Bharat Ratna C. Rajagopalachari

'Poet Bharati has fulfilled the true mission of a poet. He has created Beauty not only through the medium of glowing and lovely words, but has kindled the souls of men and women by the million to a more passionate love of Freedom, and a richer dedication to the service of the country. Poets like Bharati cannot be counted as the treasure of any province. He is entitled, by his genius and his work, to rank among those who have transcended all limitation of race, language and continent, and have become the universal possession of mankind.'

Shrimati Sarojini Naidu

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

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Government responsive to the people's basic needs. It involved violating the law against making salt from seawater and touched the heart of millions of Indians.

A succession of tragedies befell Kamaladevi early in life. First, her elder sister, Saguna, whom she adored as a role model, died in her teens soon after an early marriage. Not long after, her father passed away. To compound the tragedy, he did not will his property between his wife and surviving daughter on the one hand and a son by his first marriage on the other. So, according to the prevailing law, the male heir inherited the property leaving Kamaladevi and her mother in the lurch. Even now, nearly seventy years after independence, there is no uniform law in India giving daughters an equal or even a smaller share in ancestral property. In the wake of the tragedy

Kamaladevi was married off at the age of fourteen in 1917 when she was still in high school. Her mother was diffident, bringing up a fatherless teenager single-handedly; especially when she herself was not too well. Kamaladevi's husband died within a year of the marriage. So 15-year-old Kamaladevi became a widow. Her father-in-law was unusually liberal-minded. He enabled Kamaladevi to pursue her studies and also advised her to remarry.

Having finished high school in Mangalore, Kamaladevi joined Queen Mary's College in Madras, where she developed a friendship with Suhasini Chattopadhyay, Sarojini Naidu's younger sister who was also studying there. The Chattopadhyays, a celebrated family of Calcutta, set up an establishment in Madras for Suhasini's education. More members of the family, including Suhasini's elder brother, Harindranath (Harin), gravitated there. Harin, poet, playwright and actor, was handsome and vivacious and it was a matter of time before Kamaladevi and Harin fell in love.

By the time Kamaladevi was twenty, she had married Harin. They had shared interests in the arts, especially theatre and music, and the two also collaborated to produce plays and skits. Their only son, Ramu, was born in the following year. Whether due to the envy of the gods or cupidity of human nature the Harin- Kamaladevi marriage did not endure. After independence while some nationalist leaders assumed the responsibility of running the administration; others, notably the Socialists, opted for an Opposition role to strive for a two-party system and to bring their socialist preference to bear on policy-making. Kamaladevi represented a third category of leaders who took up nongovernmental constructive work. She set out to establish co-operatives. As running cooperatives came naturally to women, she involved herself in the activities of the All-India Women's Conference (AIWC), not however as a fiery feminist. Among specific campaign issues taken up by Kamaladevi and her colleagues was plugging the loopholes in the Sarada Act, as the Prevention of Child Marriage Act was known. Kamaladevi's approach was twofold: to expose and fight against gender injustice of all kinds and simultaneously to strive for the uplift of women. In that context, she planted the seed for what later became the Lady Irwin College in New Delhi by campaigning for improving the quality and practical value of women's education.

Meanwhile, the post-partition situation offered a readymade problem for Kamaladevi to take up. Tens of thousands of refugees from mainly west Punjab were in Delhi looking for shelter and work. Many of them had lost vast property when they fled their hearths and homes in the wake of mass killings. As many as 10,000 refugees were huddled in tents and makeshift shelters in and around Delhi. Pucca buildings like bungalows and homes vacated by Muslims who had migrated to Pakistan were evacuee property to be allotted by the government to the dispossessed from Pakistan. But it was a time-consuming process, whereas the approaching Delhi winter would make miserable the lives of the men, women and children in makeshift habitats. Kamaladevi decided that co-operative house building was the solution. It was a long-term problem, in fact a problem for life as far as the refugees were concerned.

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There was no possibility of their going back to the property that they were forced to abandon in Pakistan. Secondly, it would be callous and inhuman to expect them to live in the makeshift structures until the government was able to rehabilitate them. Running free kitchens and providing doles to them would be an insult to the pride of the Punjabis for whom living on alms was anathema. The result was the Indian Co-operative Union, which established co-operative farms-cum-houses at Chattarpur and Jaitpur in the Mehrauli area off the Qutab Minar. The idea was that the refugees would resume their traditional occupation of farming by growing vegetables and some grain also on land to be given to them on a co-operative basis.

Simultaneously, when the Chattarpur farm was on its feet, Kamaladevi embarked on an industrial township at Faridabad (now in Haryana) where 30,000 refugees were settled. Dr. Rajendra Prasad, future President of India, had agreed to be the Chairman of the Faridabad Development Board set up under the umbrella of the Indian Co-operative Union. This was followed by the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, a government establishment. It included pottery, woodwork, carvings, metal artefacts, jewellery, furniture and accessories, and decorative items besides designer clothes. Through training courses for talent scouted from different parts of the country with the accent on ethnic traditions, the Emporium has grown into a workshop for imparting new skills to artisans, weavers and craftspersons, besides marketing their handiwork.

Concurrently, Kamaladevi launched the Indian National Theatre (INT) as a means for the national movement to find expression through the arts, including theatre, with her natural flair for the theatre as an instrument of educating the people and spreading awareness of values in them while reviving the nation's cultural heritage. The entertainment dimension was an added boon. The INT, which had been confining itself to largely Gujarati plays, made a debut in Delhi with a ballet in English based on Nehru's book, The Discovery of India, highlighting the pan-Asian aspect of Indian Nationalism. It was staged at the 1946 Asian Relations Conference at Purana Qila in Delhi. Overwhelmed, Nehru said the ballet was 'much better than my book'.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya was the early founder of the AIWC. She was one of the greatest protagonists of art in the country. She was an eloquent speaker and an orator that could make audiences spellbound. She was much interested in popularising traditional Indian handicrafts. According to her, Beauty was not the prerogative of the rich or beyond the reach of the ordinary man; in today's mechanised society, it lay unnoticed and disregarded in the cottages of rural India. She has been called the 'Hastkala Ma' or Mother of Handicrafts. A fearless fighter for social equality, she was the first Indian woman to stand for open political election in the mid-twenties. She was the 'supreme romantic heroine' of the Satyagraha Movement, and was the first woman in Bombay Presidency to be arrested for breaking the salt laws. She was the recipient of many national and international awards, including the prestigious Magsaysay Award, and Vishwa Bharati and Deshikotamma, conferred on her by Indira Gandhi in 1970, and the Padma Vibhushan award.

Kamaladevi wanted to revive the age-old crafts from extinction. She found beauty in everything and had an awareness of art and beauty even in the most dubious of places. She was a nature lover like Wordsworth. She had a special love for the rural and rustic life. The Indian embroidery she liked were the trappings for animals, horses, elephants and bullocks. The minute details on the mud walls of cottages attracted her and she would stride through puddles and dung-heaps to take a look. The weavers, potters, metal workers, wood carvers, jewellers, etc. called her the Mother of Handicrafts. She was highly esteemed in the crafts world. She fought for equal rights for women. She wanted women to be free and independent. At the age of 23, she secured for women the right to vote. Her campaign manager was the Irish suffragist rebel, Margaret Cousins.

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Kamaladevi was the founder-member, and later, President and Patron, in shaping AIWC's basic structure and policies. At Gandhiji's call, their focus thereafter was on national service. The turning point in her life was when she met N. S. Hardiker, and later joined the Seva Dal, an organisation that trained volunteers in crowd control, self-protection, first aid and camp life during the freedom struggle.

She became the commander of the Women Volunteers Corps during the Civil Disobedience Movement. She was sentenced four times and she spent a total of five years in jail. After Independence, she refused the political rewards she received. She was the Chairman of the All-India Handicrafts Board for 17 years and Vice-President for some years of the World Crafts Council with its office in New York. The Central Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi was her idea. She was the moving spirit behind the Bharatiya Natya Sangh, the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Theatre Crafts Museum in New Delhi. She alone had the insight and the will to champion a neglected cause. Entire communities of artisans gained recognition and livelihood as a result of her vision and drive. This great saga of patriotism and mother of handicrafts breathed her last in1990.1.

Most of the material on Subramaniam Bharati are taken from a book titled "Bharati" by Prema.

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