The Cooum River and the Historical Geography of Old Madras

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The two maps from two different centuries, the one above from the eighteenth century and the one below from the nineteenth century illustrates the phenomenal trasformation in the form, character and morphology of the City of Madras from a Port town serving essentially the needs of the East India Company to an Imperial city, a visible symbol of the British Empire. And between the two lies an important 

historical fact: the city had changed to such an extent that we can hardly recognise the contours of change today. We attempt herein, to study the cartographic representions of Madras to uncover the Historical Geography of the City. We are particularly interested in seeing how the River Cooum has fared in all these momentous changes. Our focus therefore is on the River Cooum, today a dreary sewer trudging placidly through the city. The Map below shows that even in the late nineteenth century there were water bodies like the LOng Tank in Nungambakkam which were drained to fulfill the growing demand for space and the consquences were borne by the people of the city in 2015.

The Cooum is one of the shortest rivers in the region, a mere 75 kms from its source in Tiruvalluvar District and a recent Cultural Heritage study has mapped out nearly 100 temples all along its banks. Three important Saivite Temples are located near the source of the River: Tiruvikolam, IlambaiyanKottur and Tiruverkadu. All these temple are sung in the Tevaram and are therefore Padal Petrra Stalam. The water from the Kosatalaiyar River flowed into the Cooum assuring it a steady inflow. In 1868 the Tamaraipakkam check dam was built which restricted the flow from the Kosatalaiyar River to the Cooum and an open channel was cut to gring, by gravity surplus water to the Red Hills Reservoir located in the outskirts of Madras. Human intervention has played a major role in changing the flow and direction of the river. 

Early Map of Madras

A part of an early Map of Madras

The River as we know from the description left behind by John Lockyer flowed right into Fort Saint George, almost dividing the trapezium shaped settlement into two sections. From the very start of the English settlement, the East India Company sought to change the course of the River and they Company brought with it the onsiderable experience in draining swamps and building dams and canals which had started in England during the reign of the Stuarts. For nearly half a century the East India Company could do little as idt did not have full control over the  northern and western parts of the Plains. Only after the acquisition of the three villages of Pususuvakkam, Egmore and Ningambakkam was it possible to diver the course of the river from the Fort and make the Triplicane River and the Egmore River join so as to create an island. This island can still be recognized as Statue of Sir Thomas Munroe stands on the Island and in the toponyms of Madras Island Ground is sometimes mentioned.

A feature of Company life, and it is unfortunate that this is being destroyed, is the existence of Country Houses built by the important members of the company, the writers, the factors, the military officers etc. It is difficult to believe butthe River Cooum was considered attractive enough for them to builsd huge Bunglows. The large eighteenth century mansion in Nugmbakkam built by Dr Anderson, the successor of William Roxburgh, still exists and I hope I am permitted to visit it some day. His house was known as Pycroft Garden. There was until thirty years back, a Country House just below the Nugambakkam overbridge that connected Spur Tank Road with Poonamalli High Road. A early visitor to Madras in the eighteenth century wrote: "It is a surprise to find a handsome stream winding through the town and suburbs, and presenting broad stretches of silvery water at various points". The Adyar River, also a tributary of the Cooum was separated from the original river due to the interventions made by the Company in the early eightenth century when for reason of security they evicted the Indian settlers from the Fort and settled them in what is called in the Records as (a) Mutialpetai and (b) Peddanaikkenpetai. We have already described these Indian settlements wearlier.

The River was the life line of Madras and it provided a means for communication and transport We still have photographs of the River providing the route through which firewood and rice as delivered from the suburbs to residential areas inSouth Madras. The Buckingham Canal which was the Cochrane Canal of 1806 was the starting point of the decline of a once gentle and clean river.

A Boat on the Cooum in the early Twentieth Century

We can look for the traces of the river by follwing the Old Maps of Madras. The River no longer flows close to the Fort and even the Adyar River has lost its discharge into the Ocean as the sand bar stops the river from entering the By of Bengal. The construction of the Harbour at Madras in the first decade of the twentietn century, as the military and naval rivalry between Britain and Imperial Germany was building up was the last straw. The Cooum was redued to an urban slush pipe. 

We can infer from the records left behind by visitors tht as late as the eighteenth century, that boats plied on the Cooum near the Thomas Gate. The establishment of the settlement of Chidadripettai was amde possible by changing the course of the River and reclaiming land. The area where the General Hospital and the Medical College stands today extending up to the Southern Railway Headquarters and Central Station were part of the land drained by the River.After the French were forced to leave Madras in 1749, this area was levelled and all the Country Houses shifted to Nugambakkam or further up to Saint Thomas Mount. The bridge over the river is still called Garden Bridge and this harkens back to the days when the river provided nourishment to Garden Houses in that area,

The Buckingham Canal whose construction began in 1806 and ended in 1867 stretched from Markanam near Pondicherry to Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. Begun as a famine relief project this Canal disrupted the inflow of water into the River ans the river was diverted into a temporary basin in order to facilitate the construction. The Canal was 750 kilometers long and was an excellt, indeed marvellous feat of engineering/

Culture Wars in Tamil Nadu A New Beginning?

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

It is still too early to say whether the few swallows fluttering against the dead morbid skies of Dravidianist parties marks the beginning of a New Spring. Neverhteless the fact that the master narrative of Dravidianism is being challenged on its own turf by ther likes of Maridas and Kishore K Swamy. The dravidianist master narrative was founded on three pillars all of which remained essentially unchallenged which led to dravidianism becoming the dominant hegemonic ideology of the Tamil society. Though there have been bitter personal and political battled between thr three factions of dravidianist political formations--DK, AIADMK and the DMK--there was no challenge at the level of ideology. All three were quite content arguing with each other within the margins set by the dominant ideology.

In the mid nineteeth century, a Protestant cleric called Rober Cauldwell propouded the racial theory of Dravidian exclusivism based on his study of the Tamil Language. In his bookComparative  Grammar of Dravidian Languages he argued that (a) Tamil and Snaskrit do not share any common heitage and Tamil language arose independent of Sanskrit (b) from this he went on to identify the Tamil speaking population as Dravidian and (c) Tamil Race with its exclusive culture is opposed to other Cultures/World Views/Social and Political Formations. To execute this exclusive ideology based on a contrived misreading of History politcal actors like E V Ramasamy Naikkar and his group launched a vicious violent and ferocious campaign against Brahmins who were identified as (a) Aryans therefore not Dravidian (b) Sankritic Culture which they allegedy upheld was ant Tamil therfore anti Dravidian and (c) their Religion is uncivilized and barbaric. Ramasamy's deranged rhetoric did not end with these three propositions. But they form the cornerstone of Dravidianism and that has been the ruling ideology of Tamil Nadu for nearly a century and with the DMK coming to power in 1967 was in a position to translate them into policy and the Brahmins and the SC Population bore the brunt of this sort of political fascism.

The 67% Reservation in medical, engeneering and other professional courses, including jobs essentially excluded the Brahmins from employment in Tamil Nadu and they migrated to the North leaving the field open for depradation. The few who were left, like the Kasturi Group which runs the Hindu m,ade their peace with Dravidianism and were quite content to lend the weight of their Newspaper for the propogation ofthe Dravidian ideology. Any dissent from the dominant ideas was branded "castetist" "fascist" and more recently "anti subaltern". There was no space fo dissent from the dominant ideology. History was distorted to subserve this end. The SangamAge was valorized as a "pristine age" before the fall brought about by the advent of Hindu religion. The fact that many Vedic deities are mentioned is conveniently ignored. The role of Sanskrit in shaping the culture and civilization of Tamil Society is often ignore. The fact that medieval dynasties like the Cholas and the Pandyas issued their inscriptions  in bothe Tamil and Sanskrit is suppressed and only the meykritis of the Cholas were regarded as historical evidence ignoring the large volume of Sanskrit Inscriptions. Medieval Inscriptions were written in Grantha, the true script of the Tamil Language. The Temple and its ramifications around the historical space of Tamil region was quite falsely and in a way tragically misrepresented as "sinful" "irrational" "savage" a line of thught derived from the early sixteenth century Europeans who visited India and were quite shocked at the open and exuberant dispaly of sensuality in Temples. E V Ramasamy Naikkar in fact advocated a sort of iconoclasm against the Vaishnava tradition and is best seen in positioning a statue of this man in his iconic squatting posture with beard and upper cloth smack outside the Great Srirangam Temple. Tamil language and script was mutilated by the removal of what they thought were varga letters or symbols
from the writing system altogether and today that mutilation is celebrated as liberation. The Tamil Printing Presses were forced to aboandon the grantha letters and a strange script without the intermediate vowels was thrust down in the name of Pure Tamil.

The Brahmins bore the brunt of the fascist attack just as the Jews bore the brunt of the attack in the German incarnation of fascism, the Nazi Party. And as long as the target of attck was the Brahmin community, tgheir values, their religion and culture the domiant backward castes which formed the backbone of the dravidianist movement did not stir. Of late the attack has shifted to a general attack on the indigenous faith and its culture by a group that calls itself Karpagu Kootam. A few months back a vulgar "poet" Vairamuthu made some obscne comments on the Vaishnava Saint, Andal who was revered even by Krishnadevaraya who composed the Amuktamalyada in her honour, the Giver of Worn Garlands. The son of the dead Patriarch of the dravidianist polical faction, DMK, one misnamed, Ayyadurai aks Stalin, made some nasty remarks about Hindu wedding rituals and when the beloved God of the Tamil region Skanda/ Muruga/Subramania was attcked the worm turned. Now the culture war was on.

The Tamil Media has been a handmaid of the dravidianist parites and there are credible accounts that news broadcast is based on ideology and money. The narrative was exclusively one sided: the dravidianist side and no other voice was heard. Against this hegemony of Sun TV, Jaya TV, Vijay TV,Makkal TV etc each an arm of a particular dravidianist faction, two youn men Maridass and Kishore Swamy have emerged as credible voices of dissent. Using Social Media Platform like UTube and Twitter they have raised certain vital issues that hit at the very root of the dravidianist ideologies. First, while they attck Hind faith in general and Vaishnava faith in particular, do the dravidianist have the courage to call out the Semetic religions. The answer is No. They have questioned the legitimacy of E V Ramasamy Naikkar being given the honour of being a "Socretes" that is "teacher" and "philosopher". The land scams of his followers stand exposed. They have enen questioned whether Ayyadurai aka Stalin, the son of Karunanidhi was ever a MISA detainee. It has been an article of faith that this misnamed man was in jail as a political prisoner during the Emergency. The challenge is to prove that he was in prison for political and not crimianl reasons. And the response of the DMK has been pathetic. When Dr Subramaniam Swamy raised the 2G Scam, Karubnanidhi tried in vain to turb it into a brahmin vs high caste non brahmin issue and he failed and his daughter spent 11 months in jail and the case is still going on.

This time around the attck is happening where it hurts. And the attackeras are from within the tradition and hence we must take this counter narrative that is slowly being crafted seriously.