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Beyond service, in the past
TWO CIVIL servants out of the past who went beyond their daily service and three authors from Madras who discovered their talent abroad were who I caught up with during a very busy ten days in early February. Let's start with those two 19th Century Civilians, one recalled by a grandson, the other by who else but an American professor working on yet another book on yet another little remembered facet of India.
Dr. James Patrick Campbell, architect, Cambridge don and Director of Conservation of the Royal Institute of British Architects who is just finishing a book on brickwork, was here to participate in a celebration during which his grandfather, Sri Archibald Campbell, I.C.S., a former Chief Secretary, was well remembered. According to James Campbell, whose grandfather was married in Madras and whose father Patrick was born in the city, his grandfather had three loves in life. The Indian Civil Service and Freemasonry vied with each for his primary affection while his family came in third. And it was the Freemasonry connection that brought James Campbell to Madras, as the Sir Archibald Campbell Lodge in the city was celebrating its Platinum Jubilee. And the first of the Lodges to bear the Founder's name celebrated that anniversary in the Freemason's Hall that was refurbished last year for its centenary. James Campbell was sure his grandfather would look down with favour on the restoration of the building he had helped raise.
In Sir Archibald's time, I learnt from members of the Lodge, Europeans and Indians had Lodges to themselves, except for the rare exception in either. This was because of problems arising out of inter-dining (lovely anthropological Indianism that!) and the wearing of the panchakacham by many of the Indian elite. Sir Archibald founded the Lodge named after him as the first Lodge in Madras to admit Both Europeans and Indians, provided they had spent at least six months in each other's countries!
The other Civil Servant caught up with was a hundred years earlier and is the subject of Professor Thomas R. Trautmann's research. S.W. Ellis, who came out to India in 1796, was Collector of Madras from 1810 till his death in 1819, when he was only 41. As he had vowed not to publish any of his considerable work till he was a mature 40, there was very little that came out in the year or so left to him. Fortunately, he was a prolific correspondent and large numbers of his letters have survived opening up with windows through which Trautmann is peering. And what he is finding is that Ellis, who was responsible in 1812 for that little-remembered College of Fort St. George in what is now the DPI campus on the road named after this college, was one of the `Madras Orientalists' - the major one being Colin Mackenizie - and might well be considered the one who laid the foundations for what later developed as the Dravidian movement.
The College of Fort St. George was where, during its forty years, the Civilians learnt at least one of the languages of the South. Many of them, their munshis and the Indian Headmasters were responsible for a vast amount of publishing in the four southern languages, including grammars and dictionaries. Ellis himself translated the Thirukkural, but unfortunately only the first part was published in that year he had left. Sadly, all Ellis' considerable work was sold off as so much waste paper - and was "probably used by a cook to light his fire or singe the chicken"!
The lead Ellis set was followed by men like C.P. Brown, A.C. Burnell, Walter Elliott, A.D. Campbell, Vedam Pattabhiraman Sastrigal, Chidambaram Pandaram, Muttusamy Pillai and many others from Britain and India. And the legacy they left, according to Trautmann, is the Dravidian political movement, the renaissance of the root language, Tamil, the pioneering of its publications, and bringing to the fore Hindu law. Sadly, all their efforts were nullified, according to Trautmann, by the anti-Orientalists like Macaulay, Charles Trevelyan and - a listing I challenge - Thomas Munro.
Ellis, it must be added, was responsible for introducing smallpox vaccination not much after Jenner had discovered cow pox. And to promote vaccination, Ellis circulated a Tamil pamphlet of which only an English translation remains. That states that "to the sacred five life-giving contributions of the cow must be added a sixth - cow pox"!
S.MUTHIAH
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