Mother's Chronicles - Book Six

24

The Tamil Bard

"That very first day when I was resting after lunch, a gentleman, chewing paan [betel leaf] came to Shri Achari's house" wrote Moni in his Smritikatha. "Of an average height, around the age of thirty.... Neither fair-skinned nor black—typical 'brown race.' Beard shaven, but with an impressive moustache. Trimmed hair.... He wore his dhoti in Tamilian style. But he did not give the impression of a Tamil, he rather looked like a North Indian. But in reality he was a Tamil and a Brahmin. Indeed he was the famous poet and litterateur of Tamil Nadu: Srijukta Subramania Bharati."

Subramania Bharati. The very name makes a Tamil heart swell with pride. Here was a poet of the first water. A diamond of a Tamil poet. Under his pen this ancient language took on a new vigour, a new suppleness; he enriched the language, made it adaptable to modern thought. New thoughts could be expressed with flowing ease. And power. In a word, Subramania Bharati's writings infused a new life into the old language.

Bharati's parents were Chinnaswamy Iyer and Lakshmi.¹

' The material facts in the life of Bharati are based on Yvonne Gaebele's Bharathi (in French) and Prema Nandakumar's Bharati and Subramania Bharati.

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They were cousins. She was sweet-natured and kind-hearted. He had a keen intellect and a dream in his mind. He was proficient in Tamil and English, in mathematics and logic. From a nearby village Iyer had come to Ettayapuram in Tirunelveli district of the then Madras State. Ettayapuram was a small estate ruled by a zamindar (landholder), who liked to be addressed as Raja. As the Raja was quick to recognize the sterling quality of the man, Chinnaswamy rose rapidly in Ettayapuram court. He then began to translate his dream into reality. Impassioned by western technology, Iyer set up a textile mill at Ettayapuram in 1880. It was one of the first such ventures in South India.

Out of the happy union was born a child. The graceful Lakshmi gave birth to a son on 11 December 1882. The child was named Subramanyam, which is another name for the handsome god Kartik; the month was also Kartik. The constellation under which he was born was Mula and the year was Chitrabhanu.

The handsome child—pet name Subbiah—was encompassed in love and affection. His grandfather Ramaswamy Iyer doted on him. His maternal grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins made up a large family in Ettayapuram. He was growing into a lively boy.

But life seems incapable of keeping intact its cup of happiness. The cup breaks soon enough. When he was barely five

1 According to North Indian astrology:

a)Kartik is the seventh month of the year, starting from Baisakh.

b)Mula is one of the 27 Nakshatras or lunar constellations. It is ruled by Ketu, and its deity is Nirriti (catastrophe). It forms the first part of Sagittarius. One lunar Nakshatra covers an arc of 13°20'.

c)Chitrabhanu is the name of a year in a cycle of sixty years.

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years old, Subbiah's mother died. Father Chinnaswamy was grief-stricken at the sudden loss of his beloved cousin-wife. His grief faded in a few years and he married again. It was Subbiah who never overcame the loss of his mother. He carried the grief in his heart till the end of his own life. Pain inflicted on the heart very early in life seems to be the lot of almost all extraordinary beings. For our Subbiah was no ordinary child. He seems to have come with a special blessing from Saraswati, the goddess of Art and Learning.

Even before his thread ceremony—he came from a high-caste Brahmin stock—he composed verses in Tamil.

At school he was the headache of his teachers. If any word uttered by his teacher caught the attention of the boy, he would stand up and begin reciting a poem he had made up then and there. His classmates were hugely delighted—the interruptions were welcome in the monotony of their classes. They may have enjoyed the poems too, who knows! But luckily for the teachers Subbiah was apt to play truant. Whenever he could, which was quite often, he would go roaming around the village, or hide himself in a corner of some temple or the other, and get completely lost to the world, so engrossed would he become in Tamil literature. Subbiah's grandfather it was who had introduced the boy to Tamil classical poetry. He even arranged for the boy to study Kamban's Ramayana under a Tamil pandit.

But Subbiah's father, who had other ideas for his son, was not at all pleased with the situation. He made it quite clear to his son. Very often Subbiah's stepmother had to shield the wayward boy from his father's sternness. Finally Chinnaswamy got his son admitted to the Hindu College at Tirunelveli. The

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three-year high school grind was odious to the Tamil lover, for he had to study English and the sciences, which he did not like. But later on the studies were to stand him in good stead. In the event, Subbiah failed to get selected for the Matriculation examinations. Relieved, he returned to Ettayapuram. Seeing that he could not cure his son of his folly, Chinnaswamy put Subbiah in the service of the Raja. The Raja was charmed to have such a clever boy as a companion, who knew Tamil and English classics, and who made brilliant observations in an amusing way.

When Subbiah was just fourteen and a half, in June 1897, he was married to a child bride of seven, Chellammal. She later described the event. "My husband," said Chellammal, "would go on singing love songs unabashedly to the delight of all present. But I felt very embarrassed at not having been blessed with a normal husband for my life mate." Which in no way stopped her giving him her lifelong love and support. Soft spoken Chellammal may never have become an erudite, but coming as she did from a distinguished family—her father was Chellappa Ayer of Tirunelveli—she drew attention by her exquisite education, her extraordinary dedication and the dignified way she bore herself.

Being a favorite at any court awakens jealousy in other breasts. Subbiah's case was no exception. He was taunted often enough. One day his patience—not that he was a patient man! —ran out, and he flared up when a man affronted him publicly. Subbiah challenged the man to an open debate, which duly took place in the Raja's presence. Knowing himself to be no match for Subbiah's tongue, the courtier engaged a learned

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Pandit to represent him. After the Pandit finished his sophisticated arguments, Subbiah took the floor. He countered with telling arguments. His speech was brilliant, eloquent, and filled with rainbow-hued humour. The audience listened with rapt attention. When Subbiah finished, an elderly Pandit, very respected, very learned, rose and extolled Subbiah for his sagacity, his eloquence and his felicitous delivery. He conferred on Subbiah the title 'Bharati,' which is another name of Saraswati. From then on we got our Bharati.

But dark clouds were gathering over Bharati's life. The textile mill at Ettayapuram had to be closed down owing to heavy losses. Misfortune, as is well known, never visits singly, a host of other disasters are misfortune's companions. Chinnaswamy Iyer was heartbroken and penniless. He died in 1898. His second wife took her young children and went to live with her parents. Bharati was left alone to fend for himself and his family. It was then that his aunt and uncle, Kuppammal and Krishna Sivan, who were in Benares, invited him. They lived and looked after a Saiva Math, where Sivan had installed Nataraj. The couple also cared for the visiting pilgrims.

At Benares Bharati joined the Central Hindu College, affiliated to the Allahabad University. Here the young man learned both Sanskrit and Hindi, apart from fine-tuning his English. And this time there was no restraining him. Triumphantly he passed the Entrance Examination in first division.

It was during his student days, there in Benares, that Bharati began to dress in the way now familiar to us. He cut his hair to the dismay of his uncle, grew a moustache, dressed in the North Indian fashion, and adopted his classic turban. His

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Subramania Bharati and his wife at Pondicherry around 1918.

uncle and aunt were worried at all this change of style, but were relieved when they found that the young man's heart was in the right place, and he did not mean any disrespect to his Hindu Dharma. Their own hearts melted when they heard his emotional rendering of some famous hymns. He was a good singer with a melodious voice.

Once again, it was there in Benares that Bharati learned to call everything into question. He questioned the British rule in India. He questioned India's social structure. He wanted to change the social bias against women and bring about an equality of the sexes, and became deeply interested in women's education. Once he even assembled a goodly audience on a Saraswati Puja day, and delivered a lecture in Tamil on women's education.

After completing his studies, Bharati managed to get a teaching job ... at Rs. 20 a month! Remember that he was not living alone, his wife Chellammal was there too. But as chance would have it, just at that time the Raja of Ettayapuram came to Benares for a few days. He was on his way back from the Delhi Coronation Durbar held by Lord Curzon on 1^st January 1903, to celebrate the ascension to the throne of Edward VII after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. The Raja invited his Subbiah back to Ettayapuram.

For the next eighteen months Bharati again became the companion of the Raja and lived comfortably. In his spare time, he soaked himself at the founts of English and Tamil poetry, Shelley, Kamban, and others. But the almost useless life at the court was too stifling for a poet like him. Came a day when he could no longer bear it. He left. His first stop was Madurai. He took a job as a teacher of Tamil in the Setupati High School, a

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job he held for about three months. Then his destiny intervened. It was in the person of G. Subramania Iyer, the then editor of Swadesamitran, a leading Tamil newspaper. It was November 1904. Bharati, as subeditor, began earning Rs. 30 a month. His main work was to translate into Tamil the news published in English dailies. That is how Bharati came to translate speeches of Swami Vivekananda, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and other Nationalists. Gripped by the messages of these men, Bharati became a sympathizer of the Nationalists. This work gave him good training in the art of writing. His language gained in a power of expression till then unknown in Tamil.

As the subeditor of Swadesamitran Bharati went to attend the twenty-first All-India Congress Session at Benares. There he met Sister Nivedita. His two volumes of poetry, Swadesa Gitangal (1908) and Janma Bhoomi (1909), were to be dedicated to Sister Nivedita, "who without words, in a split second, taught me the nature of true service to the Mother and the greatness of sacrifice."

Swadesamitran was a moderate paper. Bharati was chafing under its harness as his views became more and more radical. Tirumalchariar and Srinivasachariar, the Mandayam brothers, were hardy patriots, and did not see why they should not spend their inherited fortune for the Motherland. Thus was born a new Tamil weekly, India, based in Madras. It was begun in 1906, at around the same time as the Bande Mataram at Calcutta. Bharati became its editor. He was also the editor of an English magazine Bala Bharati, another Tamil magazine Chakravartini, and a Tamil daily, Vijaya. In India Bharati poured out his flaming heart in poems of fire. His prose targeted the Moderates,

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Front page of Vijaya, the Tamil daily edited by Bharati

and poured scorn on the Indians who did not join the freedom struggle. In a cartoon published in India in 1908 the Moderates are portrayed as dogs eager for the bones Lord Morley is throwing to them while the British wished to loot the mansion of India; and sadly looking on is the caged Lion, Balgangadhar Tilak. Naturally enough, the British administration got his pen-lashings in full measure. The intrepid Bharati spared no one. The Government was ready to crack its whip.

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