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One Hundred Tamils of
the 20th Century
V.V.S.Aiyar
| "... The noble story of thy life
must for the time being, nay, perhaps for all time
to come, remain untold. For while those who can
recite it are living, the time to tell it may not
come, and when the time comes, when all that is
worth telling will no longer remain suppressed and
will eagerly be listened to, the generation that
could have recounted it might have passed away. Thy
greatness, therefore, must stand undimmed but
unwitnessed by man like the lofty Himalayan peaks.
Thy services and sacrifices must lie buried in
oblivion as do the mighty foundations of a mighty
castle...." Vinayak Damodar Sarvakar in
1925 |
 Varahaneri Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar was born to a
middle class family of Tiruchi on 2 April 1881. He was 44
years old when he died on 3 June 1925. It was a
relatively short life. He will be remembered both as an
early Tamil revolutionary and as the father of the modern
Tamil short story. R.A. Padmanabhan writes in his
biography of V.V.S.Aiyar:
"It has been said that the all round
revival of the Tamil country in the first two decades of
the century owes much to three brilliant sons of Tamil
Nadu, Poet C.Subramania Bharathi,
Scholar-Revolutionary V.V.S.Aiyar and Swadeshi Steamship hero,
V.O.Chidambaram Pillai. They were all dedicated
patriots working with a passion, each in his chosen field
for the liberation of Bharatmata. All the three were
imbued with a strong love of the Tamil
language and the culture of the Tamil people. Each
contributed his own quota to boost the self
esteem of the Tamils... Whilst the names of Bharathi
and Chidambaram Pillai are familiar to present day India,
it cannot be said that it is equally familiar with the
name of V.V.S.Aiyar."
Subramaniam passed the Pleader's Examination in Madras
in the First Grade in 1902 and thereafter practised as a
Pleader in the District Court of Tiruchi. In 1906, he
went to Rangoon, and practised as a junior in the
Chambers of an English Barrister whose clientele included
a number of Tamil businessmen who were resident in Burma.
From Rangoon, he left for London in 1907, enrolled in
Lincoln's Inn with a view to becoming a Barrister at Law.
It was in London, that V.V.S.Aiyar together with Vinayak
Damodar Sarvakar, began to take an active role in the
militant struggle for Indian independence.
In 1910, Aiyar resigned his membership of Lincoln's
Inn. A warrant was issued by the British for his arrest
and Aiyar escaped to Paris. But he had no wish to remain
in Paris as a political exile. He returned to India,
albeit to French Pondicherry, and there met with both
Subramaniya Bharathi and Aurobindo. He
remained in Pondicherry for ten years until after the end
of the first World War. It was during this period that he
translated the whole of the Thirukural into English. In
his Preface to the Second Edition of his 'Maxims of
Thiruvalluvar', Aiyar declares the reasons that led him
to write::
"When, soon after the Great War broke out, the
(German battleship) Emden was scouring the Bay of
Bengal, some members of the secret police force
stationed by the British Indian Government at
Pondicherry to watch the movements of the Indian
refugees thought it a golden opportunity to rise in the
service by connecting the latter with the activities of
the Emden. It is said that as a result of their plot,
the Madras Government desired the then Governor of
Pondicherry to banish the Indian political refugees to
Africa. Anyway, the French police brought several
charges against these refugees among whom was Shriman
Aiyar. These cases, however, failed ignominiously. In
spite of that, the then Governor of Pondicherry wished
to deport them to Algeria. He however, wanted that it
should not appear that he forced them to leave
Pondicherry. He, therefore sent messengers to them who
threatened them unofficially with all sorts of dire
consequences if they did not voluntarily leave for
Algiers. The negotiation lasted for about four or five
months. As soon as the negotiation started, Shriman
Aiyar thought that the French Government might any day
force him out of Pondicherry, and wanted to leave
something behind him which might keep his memory green
among his countrymen even though his body should be
removed by force out of the Tamil land which he loved
so dearly.
He therefore set about to think as to what would be the
best thing for him to do under these circumstances,
taking into consideration the very short and precarious
period of time at his disposal. It did not take him
long to decide that if he could translate into English
the shortest and at the same time the most perfect of
the ancient Tamil classics, he could claim a small
corner in the memory of his countrymen. He therefore
set to work at it at top speed.
It was about the 1st of November, 1914 that he put pen
on paper. Day after day he pounded away at the
translation, every evening thinking that the next
morning he might receive a peremptory order to leave
Pondicherry. This sword of Damocles ever hanging above
his head only made him determined to work at white
heat, so that in case he had to leave India he might
leave as large a number as possible of the maxims
worthily translated. He went on with his translation
with so much ardour that even while his house was being
searched by the French police for discovering if he had
concealed in his house a fugitive from justice, he put
his hand to the translation the moment the police left
his study to search the other parts of his house. He
was a happy man when on the 1st of March 1915 the last
lines of the preface were fair copied and the whole
book was ready for the press..."
After the end of World War I, V.V.S.Aiyar returned to
Chennai and functioned as the Editor of the journal
Desabhaktan. In September 1921 he was arrested for
sedition and sentenced to 9 months imprisonment. And it
was in prison that V.V.S.Aiyar wrote his magnum opus - a study of
Kamban's Ramayana.
V.V.S.Aiyar drowned in the Papanasam Falls in June
1925 in circumstances which remain controversial. On his
death, Vinayak Damodar Sarvakar, Aiyar's comrade in arms,
paid a moving tribute in the journal, Mahratta:
"Heavy griefs have often embittered our life; but
none heavier than what thy sudden death caused, oh
friend, ever taxed our capacity to endure. Memories of
those momentous years and trying days rise in a flood
and, struggling to find a vent, keep knocking at the
gates of our heart. How we wish we could have spoken of
them all and recited our reminiscences. But our lips
must remain sealed. How we long to write of the
goodness and gentleness of disposition - how when
betrayed thou stood unshaken, how thou served them who
owned thee not and how thou suffered when unbeknown and
modest, and made not the slightest mention of it when
thou got known - how we long to write of it all. But
our pen is a broken reed. The noble story of thy life
must for the time being, nay, perhaps for all time to
come, remain untold. For while those who can recite it
are living, the time to tell it may not come, and when
the time comes, when all that is worth telling will no
longer remain suppressed and will eagerly be listened
to, the generation that could have recounted it might
have passed away. Thy greatness, therefore, must stand
undimmed but unwitnessed by man like the lofty
Himalayan peaks. Thy services and sacrifices must lie
buried in oblivion as do the mighty foundations of a
mighty castle.
The news of thy sudden death was bitter enough. But
bitterer by far is this, our inability to relate to
posterity under what heavy obligations thou hast placed
them and to express the fullness of our personal and
public grief.
For indeed he was a pillar of strength, a Hindu of
Hindus, and in him our Hindu race has lost one of the
most exalted representatives and perfect flower of our
Hindu civilisation - ripe in experience, and mellowed
by sufferings and devoted to the service of men and
God, the cause of the Hindu Sanghatan was sure to find
in him one of its best and foremost champions in
Madras.
In 1907 or somewhere there, one day the maid-servant at
the famous India House in London handed a visiting card
to us as we came downstairs to dine and told us a
gentleman was waiting in the drawing room. Presently
the door was flung open and a gentleman, neatly dressed
in European costume and inclined to be fashionable,
warmly shook hands with us. He told us he had been a
pleader at Rangoon and had come over to England to
qualify himself as a full-fledged barrister. He was
past thirty and seemed a bit agreeably surprised to
find us so young. He assured us of his intention to
study English music and even assured us that he was
eager to get a few lessons in dancing as well. We, as
usual, entered our mild protest against thus
dissipating the energy of our youth in light-hearted
pastimes when momentous issues hung in the balance. The
gentleman, unconvinced, though impressed, took our
leave promising to continue to call upon us every now
and then. He was Srijut V.V.S. Aiyar.
In 1910, somewhere in March, we stood as a prisoner,
then only very recently pent up in Brixton, the
formidable prison in London. The warder announced
visits; anxiously we accompany the file of prisoners to
the visiting yard. We stand behind the bars wondering
who could have come to call on us and thus invite the
unpleasant attention of the London Police. For to
acknowledge our acquaintance from the visitor's box in
front of the prison bars was a sure step to eventually
get behind them. Presently one dignified figure enters
the box in front of us. It was V.V.S. Aiyar. His beard
was closely waving on his breast. He was unkempt. He
was no longer the neatly dressed fashionable gentleman.
His whole figure was transformed with some great act of
dedication of life. 'Oh leader !' he feelingly accosted
us, 'Why did you leave Paris at all !' We soothingly
said, 'What is the use of discussing it here? Rightly
or not I am here, pent up in this prison, and the best
way now is to see what is to be done next, how to face
the present.'
While fully discussing the future plans, the bell rang
and the warders came rushing and shouting
unceremoniously, 'Time up !' With a heavy heart we
looked into each other's eyes. We knew it would perhaps
be the last time we ever saw each other in this life.
Tears rose. Suppressing them, we said, 'No ! we are
Hindus. We have read the Gita. We must not weep in the
presence of these unsympathetic crowds.' .. We parted.
I watched till he disappeared and said to my mind,
'Alas ! It is well nigh impossible to see this loving
soul again .' For one of two fates was certain to fall
to my lot, the gallows or the Andamans and neither
could hold any prospect before me of seeing my friends
again.
This was in 1910. Fourteen years rolled by, and the
impossible actually happened. Travelling the most
dangerous and meandering by-paths and by-lanes and
subterranean passages of life, so formidably bordering
the realms of death, I met Srijut Aiyar a couple of
months ago. He had travelled all the distance from
Madras to Bombay to enable us to revel a few hours in
the wine of romantic joy. We forgot for a while the
bitterness and the keen pangs of the afflicted and the
tortured past and lightly gossiped as boys fresh from
school meeting after a long holiday. He took my leave.
I watched him disappear and said to my mind 'Now I can
call him again any time I like.'
Little I knew then that he was to disappear beyond all
human recall. When human wisdom shook its head and
snorted out 'Impossible!', events proved it possible
and when it gaily assured itself, 'At any time,'
Destiny put in a stern 'Never!' Thus our Fate seems to
act with no nobler intention than to mock and humiliate
human calculations!
With Aiyar the politician we cannot concern ourselves
here. It is the loss of Aiyar, the scholar, the friend,
the noblest type of a Hindu gentleman, the author of
Kural (in translation), the saintly soul whose life has
been one continuous sacrifice and worship, that we so
bitterly bewail today and bitterly chafe at our
inability to pay a public tribute to his memory in a
fashion worthy of the noble dead. Oh, the times on
which our generation has fallen! The noblest sink down
and are washed off to the shores of death, while the
unworthy keep gaily swimming on the tides of life.
But thou hast done thy duty, friend! It was for Human
Love that thou lived, and died too for human love as
martyr unto her.
Thou knew no peace in life, oh Soldier of God. But
peace be with thee in Death. Oh friend, peace be with
thee and divine rest!"
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