Interview: AR Venkatachalapathy, author, Swadeshi Steam

Hindustan Times

12 hours ago

Tell us about your new Tamil book, Tirunelveeli Ezucciyum Vaa.Vuu.Vi.yum 1908.This particular book is focused on one day in the life of VOC. At the height of the Swadeshi movement, for about two years from 1906, VOC ran a shipping company directly challenging the British India Steam Navigation Company. He was opening new fronts in the anticolonial struggle and mobilising people for the nationalist movement. He also led a major strike in the British-owned cotton mills. He was traveling all over south India and even further to propagate Swadeshi ideals. Author AR Venkatachalapathy (Courtesy the subject)
He was arrested on March 12, 1908. The day after, in Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi, people took to the streets, burnt government buildings, challenged the police, burnt the records, set fire to a kerosene oil depot. For a day, it was like a liberated zone. The British government crushed the movement, shot some protesters, convicted many of them, and punished people by stationing a punitive police force.
By focusing on this dramatic event, I go back and forth narrating the causes and consequences of this uprising. And I end with a very tragic aspect of this story —why and how it got erased from public memory. I really hope that this will become part of the national discourse.
National Maritime Day is celebrated on April 5, which commemorates the voyage of SS Loyalty from Bombay to London in 1919. I would urge the government to also consider the arrival of the first Swadeshi ship to Bombay from Marseilles, France, in 1907, so that the great sacrifices of VOC are remembered. I think it is more fitting.
514pp, ₹599; Penguin
How did you decide to explore the life of Pillai?
I began my research when I was in class X. With no training, I wrote in notebooks and on pieces of paper. I made photocopies, though it was expensive in those days. If there were four pages, and the fourth page only had a few lines, I would photocopy the three full pages and then manually copy down those few lines. I gathered materials from all over the world. Finally, during the pandemic, I decided I could not postpone organising this material any longer. So, I started organising everything and writing.
In Tamil Nadu, VOC is a household figure. You can write a full book, a short book, or focus on just one part of his life in Tamil. But how do you pitch the story of VOC in English? I thought I would focus on his crowning achievement, the most dramatic part of his life – the setting up of a Swadeshi shipping company. A David versus Goliath story. It has all the narrative elements for a good story: an underdog, a powerful villain backed by an even more powerful state, betrayal, and tragedy -- everything.
VOC may be a household figure in Tamil Nadu, but in the so-called national consciousness of the freedom struggle, figures like him are often seen as regional. How do you see this?
The rise of Gandhi transformed everything. He was India's first truly national leader. Whatever Gandhi said had an effect everywhere -- the Pathan tribes in Peshawar would listen to him, people in Assam followed him, and he had a following in Tamil Nadu as well. That kind of figure's influence was unprecedented.
VOC was so committed to Tilak that he refused to accept anybody else as his leader. For instance, Subramania Bharati and Subramania Siva, VOC's associates during the Swadeshi movement, accepted Gandhi's leadership. They were reconciled to the fact that Tilak's time had passed. Some others, such as GS Khaparde and BS Moonje moved to the Hindu Mahasabha. But VOC kept away from both paths, and remained steadfast. VOC also played a part in the non-Brahmin (Dravidian) movement. As a result, he was sidelined by the Indian National Congress. But in public memory, he is remembered as the symbol of selfless sacrifice, one of the audacious dreamers.
Given the long history of Tamil Nadu's attempt to maintain its distinct identity, the trajectory of the national movement in Tamil Nadu was different. So, even when the Indian national movement was growing in Tamil Nadu, it also had fault lines that should not be missed. The non-Brahmin movement emerged parallelly with it.
Why did this erasure happen? Why is he not better known outside Tamil Nadu
The humanities and social sciences, especially history, are rather weak in south India. If you don't have good historians, who will tell the story? For instance, can you offhand think of a good book on, say, Sri Narayana Guru? On the other hand, we have such a rich clutch of books on Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj. We know so much about the peasant movements in Bihar. This is because historians in north India working from institutions such as Delhi University, Calcutta University, and JNU have studied these issues extensively. The Tamil elite, with their focus on science and technology, ignored the social sciences. Combined with the north Indian indifference towards the south, this lack has meant that major south Indian personalities remain unknown outside their states.
South India is also a land of big linguistic movements. How does that juxtapose with what you're saying?
Yes, it's true. The first anti-Hindi agitation dates to the late 1930s. But the way to influence discourse at the national level is through English. It is the elite who will need to take the first swing. The Bengal bhadralok come immediately to mind. In the case of Tamil Nadu, the elite were the Brahmins. But for many historical reasons, they forsook the humanities.
Unfortunately, intellectuals of the Dravidian movement too did not write as much in English. For instance, even though CN Annadurai edited an English journal, Homeland, not until he was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1962, did he express his views extensively in English. As we know, his Rajya Sabha speeches made a big impact.
I want to ask a more contemporary question about language and the Hindi debate. How different is this moment from the 1950s and 1960s?
As a Tamil scholar and a historian, I see one common thread running through the centuries – the Tamils have always wanted to maintain their distinct identity. If you look at Tamil literary history, while always being in conversation with the north and Sanskrit, Tamil has still maintained its identity. Even the Bhakti movement, which originates in the 7th century in Tamil Nadu, is a reaction to developments in North India.
In modern times, linguistic pride and linguistic identity are playing out in the realm of democratic politics. Gandhi and the Congress, while organising the party structure in linguistic terms, believed that free India needed a national language and that could only be Hindi – whether it was an accommodative Hindustani or a Sanskritised Hindi. The anti-Hindi agitation of 1937–39 is a response to this.
In post-Independence India, it was argued that south Indians needed to learn Hindi for employment. With economic and social development in south India outpacing the north that argument has been junked. The democratisation of society in south India is deeper than elsewhere. Young people from across the social spectrum in Tamil Nadu have taken to technical education through English and have left for better pastures abroad.
Tamil people are not convinced that there is good faith in the argument of Hindi enthusiasts. You call it a three-language policy. In which part of north India is anybody learning Telugu or Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada?
Regarding the Dravidian movement, is there a weakening of the roots?
If anything, rather than weakening, I think the Dravidian movement is only gaining in strength. But it is uneven. Some social classes which have already gained and moved up through the movement are flirting with the muscular, ascendant Hindutva identity. But many other sections of people still have much to gain from the Dravidian movement. And this love for Tamil culture, for language, for identity - that is not weakening. When I began my writing career, talking about Periyar in academic forums, talking about Tamil identity was not the done thing. Now, younger people are reading more and more of Periyar and Anna. The history of these movements is being rediscovered. The amount of literature that is being generated, the number of books that have been published on Periyar, Anna, Dravidian movement and Tamil culture in the last 20 years is mind-boggling. It is difficult to keep track of it.
Your book on VOC, Swadeshi Steam, is also an economic history of the freedom struggle. What does an economic understanding of the movement add to our understanding of India?
The aspiration of every historian is to write a total history, to present a comprehensive picture. A story that leaves out economics would be incomplete, especially when colonialism was basically about exploiting the wealth of its colonies.
How can a story which only covers some regions present the full story? How will it explain what happened? We have to look into all parts of the country. In the current histories of the nationalist movement, there is a big lacuna in relation to the south. My book is one attempt to redress it.
You are a bilingual historian. Do you think, in the context of bilingualism and trilingualism in Indian languages, we are losing some of that richness?
Bilingualism and trilingualism within the Indian languages is a big issue receiving too little attention. In focusing excessively on Hindi, we are missing the long history of this issue. If it can be encouraged – this is what the Union government should be doing – India will become a stronger knowledge society. It will integrate India and make national bonds even stronger. And it will make Indians more self-confident.
While keeping this in mind, we should not lose sight of the global importance of English – a point completely missed by the Hindi zealots. With every passing day, English is growing stronger and stronger. 30 or 40 years ago, we used to say, 'Look at the Japanese, look at the French, look at the Germans.' Now, even German universities are teaching in English.
Why doesn't the government spend the same amount of money on other Indian languages that it spends on Hindi and Sanskrit? Why not encourage young people to learn the language of their adjacent states? Please teach Malayalam and Tamil in Thiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari district. Teach Marathi and Kannada in the border districts. But unfortunately, these are the places where there is a great amount of strife.
Isn't that a consequence of linguistic division of states?
Linguistic division of states has strengthened India, there is no doubt about it. But it has also created enmity between neighbouring languages. The level of acrimony is unbelievable. We have failed in trying to address it. It calls for more understanding.