S S Indus, India's Claims over "Cultural Property" and UN Conventions

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

The Departure of the Prince

The Steam Ship Indus set sail from Calcatta Port with a priceless treasure of Indian Sculptures from the Buddhist site of Bharut, near Nagod in today's Madhya Pradesh in India. Sir Alexander Cunningham had chosen the finest pieces for the Exhibition in London. Since the [lace of origin was India and the ship registered in the Capital of the Indian Empire, London, India has certainly rights over the ship. From the point of view of Cultural Property Conventions too India has definitie claims.

There is sharp difference between scholars on Heritage whether Successor States have rights over the "Cultural Property" removed from its terrotory, legally, illegally or by any other means. The 1954 UNESCO Convention reognised movable and immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people". The terms used herein are extrmely vague and are open to different interpretation. For example what constitutes the "people". The 1954 Convention recognized the role of the State in protecting the heritage. However, this Convention remined silent over legal claims over Cultural Property and its restitution to the "people" who could legitimately claim such property as being vital to their identity as a people or culture, The legal lacunae in this instrument of 1954 was sought to be addressed in 3 subsequent conventions: 1970 Convention on the illegal Import, Export and Ownership of Cultural Property, 1972 World Heritage Convention which embodied the idea or concept of cultural or natural sites possessing outstanding universal value and finally the 2001 Convention on Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. Indian authorities, if they choose to stake a claim to the Sculptures in S S Indus must make their claims under the four corners of these conventions. And how?

The 1970 deadline is important as it freezes claims of theft or illegal transfer prior to that date. This date also recognises the participation of the newly independent countries in the proptection of their cultural property and also to set aside the niggling and contentious claims made by Greece for  the return of the Parthenon Marbles. Changes in Sovereignty impinge in the manner in which all these Conventions are invoked to claim restitution of Cultural Property. In the case of India Culture/ Cultural Property/ Protection/ Conservation is in the hands of two Constitutionally defined agencies: Central Government with the Archaeological Survey of India as its primary arm and State Departments of Archaeology and Culture. This dual responibility is due to Archaeology being on the concurrent List of the Indian Constitution. Obviously this confusion over roles has to be removed. The UN Convention defines sites of Cultural value and importance as res sacre which include (a) monuments of art (b) sites of architectural and archaeological significane representing both the tangible and intangible heritage of Mankind (c) sites, structures objects, artifacts, that are important for national or a group's identity and memory. These conditions make a realistic case under existing Conventions difficult and hence India must stree certain unique features about the particular site of Bharut.

Firstly, the sculptures were removed from the Stupa and most of the sculptures that were detached were from the railings that went right round the stupa and were votiv gifts from donors who wanted their gifts to be remembered in perpetuity. Culture ans the European Courts have repeatedly argued is too important to be understood only in terms of "legal technicalities". Buddha has a living presence in India as he is a divine entity for a large number of indegenous people and therefore dismantling or tearing down a structure deeply wounds the feeling s of the indegenous people and now International Law is beginning to define "indigenous people" as those who live on the land before Invasions or  colonial settlement. Thus a specific claim on behalf of Heritage of a Living People has to be made in order to make a case for the repatriation as per existing Conventions. Secondly, there is also the question of counter claims. Sri Lanka is a practising Buddhist Country and there is no doubt that Sri Lanka will not treat the Sculptures the way Muslim Afghanistan treated the Banyam Buddhas. And Sri Lanka can make an equally strong case for the retention of the sculpture on the grounds that Buddha is part of their Cultural Tradition and the wreck of S S Indus lies within the territorial limits of Sri Lanka, close to Mullaithivu, where the last battles of the Sri Lnakan Civil War were faught. 

India has not yet made any formal claim and this is disturbing as the more it ignores the less pursuvasive its claims become. First, the Government must formally recognise that a part of its Cultural Property has been removed and lost in the sea. A bi lateral agreement with Sri Lanka on an equitable distribution of the sculptures must be worked out and this agreement will further enhance the International Jurisprudence of historic wrecks.

A large number of Bharut Scultures are found in Museums all across the world. If these pieces were acquired by the Museuls prior to 1970 as perhaps is the case with the Freeer Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York the Government must set in motion the process of restitution of such pieces as were smuggled out illegally after 1970. In the present scenario the documentation maynnot be too difficult as Captain Waterhouse has photographed the monuments in sit situ.

The unfortunate wreck must be reclaimed and the incredible treasure brought back to India where they belong.

Sir Alexander Cunningham, the Bharhut Sculptures and the Law: Can India get back the Bharhut Sculptures

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

Sir Alexander Cunningham, the son of the Scottish poet Alan Cunningham now all but forgotten, was an incredible archaeologist. As the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, he excavated several important Buddhist sites in Northern India in the decades following the mutiny of 1857 and his Reports are still the most authentic Excavation Report/ Documentation.

The S S Indus

The visit of Sir Alexander Cunningham to the dusty plains of Nagod in today's Madhya Pradesh in November 1873 was a fateful one. For some years past, Sir Alexander Cunningham was reaing the travels of the Chinese traveller Xuan Zang in India, He probably read Beal's translation of the famous monk's account of his visits to various Buddhist Monatries in quest of the Pitakas, the Texts of Buddha's teachings. The purpose was to use the description of places in order to locate stupas constructed by the great king Ashoka after he converted to Buddhism. In Nagod Cunningham discovered the ruins of the Bharhut Stupa which he dated to the period from 250 to 200 BC. The unique feature of this Stupa was the detailed sculptures all along the Vedika or Pilgrim's Path illustrating the birth stories of Gautama the Buddha. Known as the Jatakas, the Barhut Stupa offers an almost complete corpus of Jataka tales,  Below I have illustrated two panels taken from the railings of the Stupa, now held in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington DC. The panel is a unique example of narrative art and these narrative panels Cunningham determined were the most unique feature of the Stupa. The newly invented art of photography was deployed with full vigour to make a visual record of the Stupa and the Military Photographer Captain Waterhouse was deputed for the purpose. Unfortunately the Archaeological Survey of India has neither confirmed nor published this unique set of records and the ASI must take the visual evidence seriously of it hopes to make a case for the repatriation of the Bahrut Sculptures. After the task of photographing the antiquities which included statues, railings, figurines, pillars, votive objects, terrocotta fifures and sandstone sculptures of Yakshas, Nagas and Devatas Cunningham decided to shift the antiquities to the Indian Museum at Calcatta now Kolkotta. His assistant Belgar protested saying that the "scheme carries with it a certain aroma of vandalism" and likened Cunningham's decision to carting away the Stonehenge. Over the protests of his field Assistant, the Director General had the entire lot shifted to the Museum built by the East India Company at Calcutta. He decided against the Asiatic Society of Bengal as the Society had not cared to display an earlier gift of a sculpture of Sravasti in an appropriate manner. The Raja of Nagod, of course was  gracious enough to present the entire lot to "Government" meaning the Imperial Government at 

Calcutta. A question that arises is: Was Sir Alexander Cunningham acting on his own or did he have the conset of the Secretary of State for India to relocate the sculptures. THe Museum in Calcutta still houses a large number of the Barhut Sculptures and Majumdhar has published a detailed monograph. Apart from Calcutta, Allahabad, Lucknow and the National Museum at New Delhi have a fe pieces taken from the "collection" of Cunningham. It must be stated that some of the pieces selected by Cunningham are extraordinarily valuable in that they carry in Kharoshti script the marks of the artisans who worked at the site. 

Sir Alexander Cunnigham reponding to Belgar's criticism about the "aroma of vandalism" justified his actions saying that he had "saved all the important sculptures'. He may have been right as the site of the Stupa was being raided for bricks and nearly 200 houses in and around Bahrut including the residence of the local raka yeilded traces of bricks, or spolia extracted from the Buddhist Stupa. But Cunningham was not done with the Sculptures yet. In 1886 he decided to send the best pieces to London and had them packed on SS Indus, an Ocean going Steamer registered with Lyods Shipping and Insurance. This copany had its headquarters in London. Wether the consignment of Sculpture was insured or taken as ballast weight is not known.

On November 9, 1885 S S Indus sank off the coast of Sri Lanka taking with it a rich treasure of Indian Cultural Property in the form of Buddhist Sculptures of unique cultural importance. Shri S M Nandadasa a Sri Lankan marine archaeologist has located the wreck and has published his priliminary findings. My point is: Does ndia have a claim on these Antiquities.

To be Continued in Part II

Sir Alexander Cunningham 1814-1893

The Politics of Memory and Remembrance: The Relocation of the Statue of Dupleix (1697-1763)

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

"The voices are kinda garbled. Can't make sense  out of it.

"Probably a bunch of post medernist theorists"

Add caption

Adrian Praetzeliis, Death by Theory,London: Rowman and Littlefied Bublishers INC, 2011.

The Statue of Dulpleix in its original form and location,Pondicherry
               

The world is haunted by the spectre of the past. Statues are tumbling faster than the rate at which COVID infection is spreading. In USA alone 12 major Sites of Memory have been torn apart and the Blaack Lives Matter has another list of "heores" to knock down from their marble pedestals. So far the targets have been Confederate Statues and it is only a matter of time before other slaveowners like Thomas  Jefferson face the same fate.   In Richmond, Virginia, th statue of Jefferson Davis was pulled down on the grunds that memoralizing the Confederate leaders is a nod towards the Jim Crow Laws by which the Blacks/ African Americans were deprived their their basic Civil and Constitutional Rights. Fort Bragg another controversial name will be removed and American soldiers will not be permitted to display Confederate symbols on Army bases. Good. The Civil War was over more than 150 years ago, but the political and ideological heat it generated has been rekindled, all over again.

Public Memory is extremely volatile and can be made malleable to any hegemonic political or ideological agenda and both in UK and in USA we are seeing increasing evidence of Public Memory being recast in the image of a new political and ideological gloss of woke liberalism. Destroy the statues. The Past is rewritten. The injustice of the past, especially of Racism and Colonialism, was not borne by the citizens of the countries that are out on the streets protesting. The cost of Racism and its conjoined twin, Colonial Rule, was borne by non whites, Asians and Africans all over the world. Until we learn to write our own History, the agenda will always be set elsewhere. Like the Africanproverb that Wole Soyinka quoted: Until the lion writes its own Hstory, the Hunter will represnt the Hunt in his own terms. Historians are now leding their voices to the cacophony on the streets. The American Historical Association even said that the removal of statues "is not to erase History but rather to call attention to a previous interpretation of History". As society changes and new questions are asked of the past new perspectives emerge which as E J Hobsbawm states in his autobiography, Interesting Times  is the stuff of historical research/ Inquiry. That said: Is it possible to eradicate the Memory of the Holocaust on the grounds that th memory is too painful for an oversensitive people to carry. Is History a Nightmare from which we have to awake. No History is the painful, turgid, monotonous quest for a slice of time and therefore statues, books, documents and other artifacts all have a place in recreating the lieux de Memoire, Places of Memory, as Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff argued. And a Place of Memory, is a site of rememberance both good and evil which come with the human condition. With this background I want to examine the politics which led to the removal of the Statue of Dupleix from its proud site facing the sea in Pondicherry. And let us start with the statue itself.

Dupleix was the Govrnor General of the Frech Territories Outre Mer that included Pondicherry, Chandranagore and a few other parcels of land along the two coasts of India. He served in India from 1742 to 1754 as Governor and it was during his regime that Madras, the city of the English East India Company was captured in 1746. Much against his will the city was returned when the War ended.His regime, like that of the English East India Company, was notorious for its corruption. His dubash, Anand Ranga Pillai has left a detailed account of his Administration is the first record of scripted consciousness in India, in his Diary which has been published in 13 volumes. When Pondicherry was beseiged by the East India Company and its troops, Dupleix ordered the pulling down of a famous temple, the Veda Purisvara Temple, perhaps at the instigation of the Jesuit Priest, Croeduex. This fact is recorded in the Diary of Anand Ranga Pillai and not a "discuscive statement" as post colonialist would say. Unfortunately a cloud of amnesia has settled and no one remembers where the temple stood. However, Dupleix was the Governor at the time and that fact was seared in the public memory or Collective Memory. And it was waiting for an opportunity. The removal of Dupleix was over certain allegations of Corruption and he was led into the ship. t is said in chains.

How dis Duleix become such a hero to the French that a bronze statue was commissioned and installed near the Beach (we have provided a photo of the statue). The short lived Second Empire of Napoleon III, (first time a tragedy second time a farce, in the words of the bearded prophet) that came to power in 1848 after the collapse of the Revolutions that swept across Europe in that year, wanted to proclaim its status as a "Great Power" by high lighting the imperial conquests and Pondicherry was natrually the choice for commemoration as it was in French hands and after the Peace Settlement of Vienna in 1815, Pondic herry was returned subject to the condition that it would not be fortified. And Napoleon III launched an ambitious programme of beautification and in fact almost all the major buildings and public places in Pondicherry were the result of Napoleon III and his policy.

The statue of Dupleix was installed on July 16, 1870. It was a bronze statue depecting Dupleix as a warrior with a sword, a map rolled up in his hand and behind him rather incongruously, a bag of money. While the statue itseld was not very controversial, the pedestal was a site of intense opposition. Pillars from vandalized temples of the indigenous people were broken and those depeicting Gods were shosen to form the rectangular base on which Dupleix stood. A European conqueror standing on a base consisting of granite pillars vandalized from temples was intended as a monument of racial pride and arrogance. And no wonder, the indigenous people demanded that it be removed. After the merger of French terrotories with India, the statue was removed and exiled to the far end of the beach where it was reinstalled with the back to the sea. No longer striking the heroic pose as he did in his earlier avatar atop a pile of Indigenous gods and deities.

Another important public space decorated with and created with spolia taken from Temples of indigenous people was the Place de la Republique, a name given after the Third Republic began after the Fraco Prussian War of 1870-71 which resulted in the collapse of the regime of Napoleon III.

Thus in Pondicherry too there is a story to recount. The fall of a statue and the politics surrounding it.

                                                                                                                                                                       

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.

Puritans and Royalists in seventeenth century Madras: The Sir Edward Winter Coup 1665

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

The Company Building in Fort St. George

Old Madras was turbulent. The coup against Lord George Pigot in 1776 was preceded nearly a century earlier by an extraordinary set  of events whose place in the history of Old Madras has not been appreciated or understood. They seem to defy understanding and interpretation. The East India Copany has had an implacable record of "good goverance" in that its employees did not usurp the authority of the "Government" and stray beyon the limits of the Charter governing its corporate structure. Yet in the decades following the estblishment of fort St George we find a series of events unfolding, which even in hind sight defy comprehension. In this essay we deal with one such event.

Sir Edward Winter was Governor of Fort St George twice: 1661 to 1665 by right and from 1665 to 1688 by usurpation and force. This event remains singularly difficult for historians to understand as records are few and the protagonists of the unseemly sequence of events were less than savory. Sir Edward Winter was partonizing a set of Cloth Merchants whose names are, Timanna and Verona Kasi. It was the system of arbitrary purchase that Pitt tried to stop by allowing the merchants to bring their wares directly to the Sea Gate Market for sales. This system essentially by passed vested interests and made he procurement more transparent. And we have already witnessed the back lash in the form of Left and Right hand castes, in an earlier blog. These two Chief Merchants close to Edward Winter were given the authority to buy cloth on behalf of the company and these two in turn outsourced the contract to 16 weavers thereby making enormous profits and obviously Winter and his two agents became enormously wealthy. The East India company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was an elaborate set of intricate relationships that nested between social grioups, individual ties of clientelle and professional associations. While prosopographical details do suggest such a pattern in London, the same is the case in George Town and research into this aspect has not yet begun. When compaints about these two particular merchants reached London and suspicions of rent seeking and corrupt dealings were made public, the Company decided to recall Sir Edward Winter and replace him with George Foxcroft. Foxcroft had faught in the armies of Oliver Cromwell and perhaps carried his Puritan ideology with him.

The time line against which the events in Madras played themselves out is significant. The Civil War had ended with the beheading of Charles I on January 30, 1649, the short lived experiment of God's Englishman, Oliver Cromwell had ended and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 was mere five years in the past. John Milton another Puritan said: What stirs as Englishman sooner to rebellion is violent heavy hands upon their goods and purses". Foxcroft had set out from England with explicit orders to curtail the notorious Private Trade carried out by Interlopers and he was even authorised to seize them and consficicate their goods. And from the records it appears he intended to do just that and men like Sir Edward Winter were obviously going to be hard hit. In fact the Company sent out Nicholas Buckeridge to investigate Sir Edward Winter and his trading activities. However, nothing came of this venture as Buckeridge hmself was guilty of similar misconduct both at Surat and Persia, So the Inquiry was discretely scuttled. A sign of weakness that Sir Edward Winter did not hesitate to exploit.

If George Foxcroft was a Leveller, Edward Winter was a Royalists and given the charged political climate, a Puritan Governor and a Royalist second in command would find the going tough. A peculiar decision taken by the Board was to retain Sir Edward Winter as the Second in Council which essentially made him, a former Governor, as powerful as the incumbent one. What happened in Fort St George within the span of three short months is not quite clear. A clear factional division solidified in the Council which consisted of William Blake, William Jearsey, Charles Proby, John Neclaks, and Jeremy Sambrooke with Winter as Second in Council. In addition there was another man whose role even in death was significant, William Dawes. This Dawes was the husband of Ascentia Dawes whose murder of an Indian woman was one of the first trial by jury brought before the Mayor's Court and in the previous essay on the Mayor's Court we dealt with this issue. An interesting set of men on a collision course is how we can see the train of events as they unfolded.

The early chronicler, John Bruce saw the conflict in terms of personality traits: the intemperance of Sir Edward Winter and the imprudence of Mr Foxcroft were driving the conflict. The immediate provocation was an exchange of words between Winter and Nathaniel Foxcroft the son of the Governor and an appointed Factor of the company. He declared much to the chagrin of the Royalists assembled around the Company Table that no King had any right to the Throne except that confirmed by might. This innocuous statement contained within it the gist of the political philosophy of the Levellers and as Christopher Hill has argued Levellers rejected Monarchy as unChristian. And Nathaniel went on to add that private interest superceded the interests of the Sovereign. Taking exception to these or rather using these statments as the pretext, Sir Edward Winter on September 14, 1665 Edward Winter along with his conspirators Fransis Chuseman, the Commander of the Guards,attacked George Foxcroft and the Council when a Meeting was in progress. In the melee William Dawes was killed Foxcroft wounded and the regime of the duly appointed Governor was over. Sir Edwars Winter ordered that Foxcroft and his son be arrested and they were cofined, perhaps in the building that I have shown.

Immediately after this bloody Coup, Sir REdward Winter wrote a long letter and curiously enough he directed the letter to the King and the Archbishop and cleverly insinuated that he acted in defence of King and Church. His strategy succeeded as for over three years he remained the Governor and only when rumours began circulating that he was in correspondence with the Dutch in Ceylon for handing over the Fort that the Company acted and sent a fleet of five ships to remove Winter and reinstate Foxcroft.

This episode clearly demonstrates what we have been arguing throughout that the Company in the Asian world was riven with factional and political rivalries that often erupted into open confrontation and this trend is again seen a century later when Lord George Pigot was deposed.

The Mayor's Court in Old Madras: Sovereignty, Law and Justice

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The early chorincles of Fort St. George refer to the Mayor's Court which was constituted in 1672. The location of the Court was somewhere in the area known as Sea Gate adjacent to which was the Choultry Court. There are references to the both the Courts and though the exact location of these institutions have not been identified we learn a graeat deal from the availbale historical records. I have access only to the public records as the rest of the archival material is found only in the British Library, London. Streyensham Master, the Governor was eager the have institutions thta could settle disputes and render the emerging settlement a tad governable.

The problem faced by the Company then for which legal precedents did not exist was: What laws can be used to administer Justice and by whose authority. In the Eighteenth Century, the Company was faced with a real dilemma: Did the Company have legal power over its employees and by extension over its "native" subjects living within its terrotorial limits. And how is Crminal Law to be administered. Treat "natives" equally or was a racial difference invented to discriminate between the English/European and the indigenous population. And the Company itself was not sure about the extent of its powers. Did the Charter given by Elizabeth, James I and later Charles II allow the Company to excercise judicial power over serious offences, including ones that called for or deserved the capital punishment. As a prelude to settling this  legal concumdrum, a beginning was made by establishing the Mayor's Court in Madras.

Let me just a century in order to give some persepctive. In the nineteenth century when the ideology of Racism and White Supremacy became the established credo, violence by the Britishers against the "natives" was treated very lightly. Te Sahib's boot only ruptured the malaria infected spllen of the native and the killing of an Indian was treated at best as "man slaughter" not murder. Again, it was the much reviled  Lord Curzon who insisted on Indians being treated fairly under the law. In the Eighteenth century George Town, Madras,  as indeed was the situation i n England too, violent crime was frequent and the Mayor's Court gradually won jurisdiction over grave and serious crimes.

Institutions were still  in their infancy and so we cannot expect well developed Juridical doctrines ' The Company bought a set of Law Books which included Coke's Digest to instruct its Mayor and 12 Aldermen who sat with him on the Bench. The Court met twice a week and strangely enough Trial by Jury was introduced as a procedure of administering Justice. In 1686 a Court of Admiralty was also established to adjudicat cases involving Ships, Maritime Commerce and the conduct of Sailors. This Court was ssentially a Company Court and the surviving records show that it tried to fulfill its mandate against great odds. Obviously differences over Jurisdiction between the Mayor's Court and the Admiralty Court did exist and eventually the Admiralty Court began to function, inexplicably, as the Appelate Court.

There are two episodes in the early history of the Mayor's Court in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries  both of which involved English defendents and "native" victims. One of these cases in well known. Ascentia Dawes killed her slave girl and was tried by Jury which found her guilty. But the Governor confused over the jurisdiction over the case eferred it to the Directors in London and Ascentia Dawes was set free. In perhaps the first of several"boot and spleen" cases in India, in October 1676 Manuel de Lima killed his servant. Spent 2 years in Jail and as equired by the then existing law, six of the jurors were of Portuguese origin sourced from Sam Thome, a Portuguese settlement close to Fort Saint George. He was found guilty and Strenysham Master ordered the execution of the man.An interesting legal argument was advanced by the condemned man in his appeal and one that bedeviled Colonial Jurisprudence for centuries. Hr claimed that neither he nor his victim, Pero Rangull, wer subjects of "His Majesty" and therefore the Mayor's Court had no Jurisdiction. In the eighteenth century the Mayor's Court tried to act in a fair manner, ostensibly without racial or cultural bias. An English pirate, Roger Bullmore, was executed after a Trial presidd over by the Governor and Council. Here the Governor was excercising Martial law delegated to him by the original charter. It was a different matter if civilians were involved.

In yet another serious incident, two white employees of the Company killed  a merchant in a Garden House. They tried to implicate the Dubash of the Merchant in the crime and escape punishment. The Governor and Council established that the men had indeed committed the crime and not the Dubas and though he was sentenced to death, the Governor commuted the punishment on the ground of jurisdiction. Without a positive regulation empowering him to carry out the death sentence, the Governor was reluctant to carry it out.

Throughout the Eighteenth century we have a number of interesting cases. Mostly the litigants who came before the mayor's court were Indian merchants who used the Court to enforce the settlement of debts and legal instruments. Disputes over carrigage of goods emanating even from Burma were settled in the Court. However, all was not well within the Institution itself/ As we have shown in an earlier Blog on Sir Strange, there was a lot of interpersonal problems among the Aldermen which could not be settled. In 1754 four aldermen--Percival, Edwards, Fairfields,and Browning compalined that their colleague, Ephrain Issac had cast serious aspersions on their professional competence and by implication their integrity. In spite of all efforts to bring about order the Governor and his Coucil failed as Ephrain insisted that as an Alderman the Local Government had no jurisdiction to try him even on a minor charge of "misdemenour'. The Report states that Ephrain was mischievous and "turbulent'.

I have given just a glimpse of the legal issues prevailing in 18th Century Madras. Problems among the "native" population were settled by the age old method of arbitration by community leaders acting under the direction of the Peddanayakkar. Breach of contracts, circulation of forged cowles/ intruments, property disputes were settled using the traditional institutions which relied on Customary Law. Towards the end of the Century, however with the establishent of the Sudder Adalat a degree of consistency was introduced.

We have not been able to determine the location of the Mayor's Court. But it was certainly within Fort St George, near the Sea Gate  and hence I have included two contemporary paintings of that are.