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SOUTHERN INDIA

SOUTHERN INDIA ITS POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

by Gilbert Slater, D.Sc. PROFESSOR OF INDIAN ECONOMICS IN MADRAS UNIVERSITY, 1915-21 ACTING PUBLICITY OF FICER TO THE GOVERNMENT OF MADRAS, I921-2

WITH A FOREWORD BY THE MOST HON. THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON First published in 1936 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

©1936 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 37012395 ISBN 13: 978-1-138-55322-4 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-12341-7 (ebk) SOUTHERN INDIA

THE MARQUESS AND MARCHIONESS OF WILLINGDON SOUTHERN INDIA

ITS POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

b Gilbert Slater, D.Sc.

PROFESSOR OF INDIAN ECONOMICS IN MADRAS UNIVERSITY, 1915-21 ACTING PUBLICITY OFFICER TO THE GOVERNMENT OF MADRAS, I921-2

WITH A FOREWORD BY

THE MOST HON. THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD

MUSEUM STREET FIRST PU BLISH ED IN 1936

A ll rights reserved

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY UNWIN BROTHERS LTD., WOKING FOR EWORD

BY THE MOST HON. THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON

It is a great pleasure, as an old Governor of the Madras Presi­ dency, who was associated with the work of Dr. Gilbert Slater when he was Professor of Economics at the Madras University, to write these few lines in order to recommend a study of his book to all those readers who wish to learn something of Southern India, which in many ways is, historically and traditionally, the most interesting part of that great country. The volume gives the impression of one who lived and worked for twenty years in India, and was full of sympathy with the feelings and aspirations of the people. W e may not agree with all the views to which he gives expression, but it certainly supplies, almost in the form of a diary, a most interesting account of the economic, social, and political happenings during the years he lived in India. Indeed, I think that this book will do much to increase interest in that part of India where the British connection first began and of which much too little is known and appreciated.

WILLINGDON

PREFACE

In November 1915 I sailed for India to take up a five years’ appointment in the University of Madras as its first Professor of Indian Economics, with the duty of carrying on and stimulating research into the economic conditions and problems of Southern India. I held that appointment till April 1921, when I took on for one year the duty of deputizing for Mr. J. T . Gwynn, i.c.s., on long leave, as Acting Publicity Officer to the Government of Madras, and, as such, became the official channel of communication between that government and the forty million inhabitants of the Presidency. I had previously been nominated by the Governor, Lord Willingdon, a member of the Madras Legislative Council, as newly constituted by the Act of 1919. Since my return to England in April 1922 I have continued to keep in contact with the development of opinion and political feeling among Indian students, through holding appointments as a lecturer on Indian Economics to Indian Civil Service probationers in the London School of Economics and under the Oxford Univer­ sity i.c.s. Delegacy, by supervising the work of Indian research students, and in other ways. The period from 1915 to 1922 during which I was in service in India was peculiarly momentous and critical. First in 1915 began the very effective organization of the Home Rule agitation by Mrs. Annie Besant, with the publication of her daily newspaper, New India, and the formation of a “ Home Rule League,” which before long captured the Indian National Congress. Then came, in 1917, the appointment as Secretary of State for India of Mr. E. S. Montagu, and his tour of India, preparatory to the drafting of the “ Montford” (Montagu-Chelmsford) Reforms, which, when enacted by Parliament, threw the existing system of administration into the melting-pot, exasperating old discontents, and raising new problems with which we are still concerned. T he coming into existence of the new constitution was heralded, most unfortunately, by the “ Rowlatt Acts” for the suppression of sedition; and then came the troubles in the Punjab and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Moreover, Indian Mahommedans were roused to indignation by the Sèvres Treaty imposed on Turkey, and the Khilafat agitation 8 SOU THERN INDIA organized by Mahomed and Shaukut Ali brought about a savage Mopla rebellion in Malabar. Simultaneously Mr. Gandhi’s Non- Cooperation movement swept India, with ever increasing peril to the British Raj, until its climax on February 4, 1922, when the massacre of police at Chauri Chaura induced Mr. Gandhi to order its cessation. This period was not less eventful economically. Organized trade unionism made its first appearance in India in 1918, when Mr. B. P. Wadia created the Madras Labour Union, while the rising prices and general social disturbance caused by the war was provoking an epidemic of unorganized strikes. Trade unionism quickly spread to the much bigger industrial centre of Bombay, where it took strong hold, and whence it spread, aided by the post-war boom of trade, which forced up prices, employers’ profits, and workers’ cost of living, so that increase of money wages became a vital necessity. Wild fluctuations in the rupee­ sterling exchange exaggerated the boom and the subsequent slump, and forced many importing firms, on pain of bankruptcy, to repudiate their bargains, while two of the worst monsoon failures on record in ig i8 and 1920 taxed to the utmost the resources for prevention of famine, and the post-war influenza epidemic took a toll of perhaps as many as ten million lives. The line of demarcation between economic and political science is everywhere a faint one, and in India it vanishes altogether. Soon after my arrival in Madras I was called into consultation on a great variety of politico-economic problems, first by heads o f departments of the Madras Government, and later by the Government of India and the Diwans of certain Native States. M y experience with the Publicity Office was also extremely interesting and enlightening. Altogether my contacts with South Indian conditions and problems have been o f an exceptional nature, and therefore I feel called upon to put my observations on record. This record is based partly upon memories, many of them very vivid, and partly on family letters sent home, and fortunately preserved. I am also indebted to Dr. Vera Anstey of the London School of Economics (lately of Bombay), and Dr. P. S. Lokanathan of the Economics Department of Madras University, for additional detailed infor­ mation on some important topics touched upon. M y thanks are PREFACE 9 also due to Lady Pentland and Mr. F. H. Brown, c.i.e., for kind help and advice, to the Madras Agricultural Department, to the late Mr. F. C. Richards, i.c.s., and to Mr. E. Krishnamurti of Thettupalli, Chittoor District, for some of the photographs used as illustrations, and to the Oxford University Press for permission to use again those which have already appeared in Some South Indian Villages. Lastly, my very special thanks are due to the Most Hon. the Marquess of Willingdon for the photograph of himself and the the Marchioness of Willingdon, and for the Foreword which he has so kindly written for this book; and to Sir Richard Burn, c.s.i., who has been so kind as to go through the proofs with a lynx eye for mistakes. I desire, in conclusion, to express the high esteem which my South Indian experiences have instilled into me for three classes of people; firstly, the Indian students of the University; secondly, the British and American missionaries, especially the medical women missionaries; thirdly, the members of the Indian Civil Service, who, as a body, are, perhaps beyond any other corps of administrators, distinguished for complete freedom from even suspicion of corruption or nepotism, and for wholehearted zeal in the public service. For the causes of what is wrong in Indian government— and there is much that is wrong— we must look elsewhere, and particularly at home.

GILBERT SLATER

OXFORD May 1936

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword, b y t h e M o s t H o n . t h e M a r q u e s s o f W i l l i n g d o n 5

Preface 7

I PROLOGUE 17

II BOMBAY CITY AND THE BOMBAY DECCAN 23 NOTE: Housing a n d Health in Bombay City

III FIRST DAYS IN MADRAS 32 The Madras Industrial Exhibition, 1915—The Madras Department of Industries—Sir Frederick Nicholson—Soap

IV THE GEOGRAPHY OF MADRAS 40

V MAKING CONTACTS 48

VI ERUVELLIPET, A DELTA VILLAGE 54 The Village Husbandry—Homes and Temples—Padials

VII SALEM AND ITS ENVIRONS 72 Mallur and its misfortunes—A Zemindari village—Kanjamalai and Josiah Heath—Tanks, urban and rural— Salem handicrafts­ men and markets

Vili PALNI AND RESETTLEMENT IN MADURA DISTRICT 89

Subrahmanyam’s Temple— Some Settlement proceedings — Anicuts and Ayacuts—A pioneer settlement in the wilderness — Village weavers and their lord—Kalians and irrigation water

IX THE CITY OF MADURA 102 The patient lovers—The Nattukottai Chettis

X THE TINNEVELLY COTTON AREA 1 12

XI KUMBAKONAM II 7 Tanjore Brahmins and Kumbakonam health problems 12 SOU THERN INDIA

CHAPTER PAGE

XII THE NILGIRIS AND THE PALNI HILLS 123

n o t e I : The Tamil language n o t e II: Tamil Verse

XIII THE COIMBATORE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 140 Cattle breeding and sugar

XIV TRICHINOPOLY H 5 A police court case and reflections on Indian criminal pro­ cedure—Saivites and Vaishnavites—St. Joseph’s College and Monastery

XV CUDDALORE AND PONDICHERRY *59 Ayuda Puja and Muniswami

XVI TRIVANDRUM AND TRAVANCORE 167 The Maharajah and his Ministers—Lace-making in Nagercoil and Muligamudu

XVII COCHIN AND TRICHUR 179 A coconut plantation—Cochin Town and State—An Ayurvedic physician—The Diwan of Cochin—Anthropological studies, (i) Nambudiris and Nairs, (2) Syrian Christians, Nayadis, Tiyyas, Cherumas, Moplas— Nascent capitalism in Cochin

XVIII CO-OPERATION IN CONJIVERAM AND ELSE­ WHERE 206 Conjiveram weavers—Village factions

XIX THE INDIAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION 221

XX JUTE-MILLS AND THE MANAGING AGENT SYSTEM 225

XXI THE TATA IRON AND STEEL COMPANY AND THE MADRAS COTTON-MILLS 234

XXII PEASANTS IN GANJAM AND THE GODAVARI 240 DELTA

XXIII MYSORE STATE 246 Dasehra in Mysore City—Bangalore—The Kolar Gold Field C O N T E N T S 13

CHAPTER PAGE

XXIV A VISIT TO BURMA 256

XXV PUBLIC AFFAIRS IN MADRAS, 1912-22 262 Lord Pentland’s administration—Mrs. Besant and the Indian Home Rule agitation—Mr. E. S. Montagu as Secretary of State for India—The Problem of Political Reform—Financial readjustment

XXVI THE FAMINES OF 1918 AND 1920 284 A Controller of Supplies—The Indian Board of Agriculture, December 1919—Two famine riots

XXVII THE WAR AND AFTER 291 The part of India in the war—Jallianwala Bagh—The Mopla Rebellion—Currency eccentricities

XXVIII THE NEW CONSTITUTION IN MADRAS 305 Lord and Lady Willingdon—The Madras Publicity Board— A Non-Brahmin Ministry—A personal digression—The Ramachandra water lift

XXIX LABOUR TROUBLES 322 The Labour Commissioner—The Cotton-mill Strike—The Mahatma in Madras Presidency

XXX THE WORK OF THE MADRAS PUBLICITY 00 OFFICE, 1921-22 tn The visit to Madras of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales—The anti-hookworm campaign—The Indian Fiscal Commission— Some economic enquiries note : Evidence submitted to the Fiscal Commission

XXXI THE MADRAS LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, 1921-22 559

XXXII EPILOGUE 368

Index of persons and places 376

LIST OF ILLU STR ATIO N S

THE MARQUESS AND MARCHIONESS OF WILLINGDON Frontispiece

FACING PAGE THE APPROACH TO THETTUPALLI, A TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY 64 AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS USED BY THE VILLAGERS (PLOUGH, HARROW, SEED-DRILL, MAMOTI, PICK, PULLEY-WHEEL) BEFORE COBRA SHRINE 80

CORNER IN TEMPORARY VILLAGE OCCUPIED WHILE PALNI WAS EVACUATED FOR CLEANSING FROM PLAGUE 96

PALNI, YOUNG COWS GRAZING ON PADDY STUBBLE 96 MADURA, STREET SCENE, WOMEN ASSEMBLED A T WELL 104

MADURA, GOPURAM OF SIVA— MENAKSHI TEMPLE 104

TAKING COTTON TO MARKET IN TINNEVELLY 112

A STUDENT A T WORK, DRIVING A LEVELLING-BOARD OVER PADDY FIELD 144 THE FORT, TRICHINOPOLY 160

GROUP OF SHANARS (NADARS) TINNEVELLY DISTRICT 160

THE CONVENT TOWER AT MULIGAMUDU 176 VIEW FROM DYE RESEARCH STATION, NEAR TRI­ VANDRUM 176 GUEST CHAMBER OF NAMBUDIRI HOUSE 192 A GROUP OF NAYADIS 192

DOLMEN, ONE OF A GROUP 208

TEMPLE TO CHATTAN (? SATAN) 208 CHERUMAS CARRYING PLOUGHS AND HARROWS 224

UMBRELLA-MAKER CARRYING HIS WARES TO MARKET 224

ENTRANCE TO THEEBAW’S GOLDEN PALACE, MAN­ DALAY 2 $6 16 SO UTHERN INDIA

FACING PAGE RANGOON, THE SHWE DAGON, THE PLATFORM SUR­ ROUNDING THE PAGODA 256

MOPLAS DRINKING TODDY 288

THE ZAMORIN OF CALICUT WITH HIS BODYGUARD 288

THE “KHILAFAT KING OF MALABAR” 296 GROUP OF NAIR WOMEN 296 FATEHPUR SIKRI, CORNER OF MOSQUE WHERE AKBAR PREACHED 320 FATEHPUR SIKRI, CENTRAL COURT, TOMB OF THE HINDU SAINT CHISHTI 320 SOUTHERN INDIA

CHAPTER I

PROLOGUE

It was in December 1915 that I first landed in India on my way to take up an appointment of Professor of Indian Economics in the University of Madras. The appointment was a new one, the policy of appointing University Professors being in itself a recent innovation. Previously the University of Madras, like other Indian Universities, had been purely of a Federal character. University teaching was the task of affiliated colleges of different grades; the business of the governing body of the University, its Senate, which consisted of elected representatives of the colleges with nominated members, acting through its Executive Committee, the Syndicate, was to hold examinations, confer degrees, and exercise a general supervision over the colleges in order to secure their efficiency. The new departure of calling upon the Univer­ sities in their corporate capacity to take a separate part in the work of teaching was taken by the Imperial Government of India, in response to an Indian demand, due to a widespread feeling that the existing system tended to be wooden, that it made no provision for research, and tended to reduce a university education to little more than a mere cramming of text-books and lecture notes. T he Indian Government had accordingly provided for grants to be made to such universities as submitted approved schemes for using the money in the directions desired. The earliest schemes sub­ mitted and approved were those of Calcutta and Allahabad Univer­ sities; both provided for the appointment of Professors of Indian Economics. The Syndicate of Madras University had at first taken a different view. It was satisfied with the teaching of Economics as provided by the colleges, and, in fact, did not consider it advisable that the University should overlap or compete with the colleges in any work they were doing already. It therefore pro­ posed that the grant should be used to develop a new study, namely B i8 SO UTHERN INDIA the Philology of the Languages of South India. But this idea did not appeal to the local leaders of Indian opinion; they thought that Philology might wait, that it was urgent that Indians should be helped by their Universities to understand more fully the history of their own country, and its economic problems. With this view Lord Pentland’s government had much sympathy, but it was reluctant to dictate to the University. A compromise was agreed upon, and the approved scheme provided for the appoint­ ment of professors for Sanscritic Philology, Dravidic Philology, Indian History and Indian Economics. When I departed for India, the Professors of Indian History and Sanscritic Philology had already been installed, and the latter had been entrusted with the task of training Readers who spoke the four chief Dravidic languages in the more abstruse science of Philology, in the hope that one of them would become competent to fill the vacant chair. During the time when my appointment was passing through its various stages, I had leisure enough for availing myself of any opportunities that presented themselves for becoming better qualified for my Indian post. Madras, I ascertained, was within the Tamil-speaking area, which extends from about eighty miles north of Madras to Cape Comorin, being bounded on the north by the Andhra, or Telugu, country, and on the west by the Malayalim and Canarese areas, these four being the chief Dravidian languages. Oxford University still commanded the services of a Reader in Tamil, a Cingalese gentleman, Mr. Wikremasinghe; so I applied to him for instruction, and procured Dr. Pope’s First Tamil Reader. I persisted in the study on the voyage, and engaged a pundit on reaching Madras, but my hopes of using what Tamil I acquired as a means of communication with Tamilians were soon undeceived. Tamil is spoken with extraordinary rapidity, all the words being run together, and until you have acquired enough mastery of the language to speak more or less in that fashion, it is impossible to make your interlocutor realize that you are trying to speak to him in his own language. The case is very similar with regard to the other Dravidian languages, with the result that English is used to an extent that astonishes a new­ comer to South India. The study of Tamil is, however, of great interest in itself and for the light it throws on Dravidian mentality, PRO LOGUE x9 for it is perhaps the most logical of languages— at any rate it is superior in this respect to any European language with which I have any acquaintance. There were about fifty Indian undergraduates in residence in Oxford in the Michaelmas Term , 1915, and they kindly invited me to attend a meeting of their Mejliss, and in other ways evinced much cordiality. I asked them whether they did not think that a chair in Indian Economics at an Indian University ought to go to an Indian; they said it should in a few years’ time, but at the moment they had no men sufficiently trained, and they warmly welcomed my appointment in the meantime, and, strange to say, they did not seem to think that my ignorance of India and of Indian Economics mattered. In my efforts to abate that ignorance before sailing I learnt from Mr. H. A. L. Fisher that Madras was the pleasantest place of residence of all the great Indian cities; Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe, who had not long ceased to be editor of the Statesman of Calcutta, gave me his opinion, a very favourable one, of the Madras politicians; Professor (Sir) Patrick Geddes expounded to me theories about Indian archi­ tecture, gardening and town planning, besides giving me many introductions. He had lately returned from Madras, after showing his Cities Exhibition there, and lecturing on Tow n Planning. On Indian Economics proper, the most pertinent observation I received was from Mr. (Prof.) H. H. Dodwell, then Curator of the Madras Museum, who was home on leave. He remarked that the essential and all-important fact was that in India the Malthusian theory in its primitive form applied, population was pressing hard on the means of subsistence, and an excessive birth­ rate was the main cause of the dense poverty which produced the balancing result of a similarly high death-rate. On the politico- economic side, Mr. (Dr.) John Matthai drew my attention to the efforts of Alfred Chatterton in Madras to assist the organiza­ tion and establishment of new industries, and of the manner in which Lord Morley, as Secretary of State for India, had suppressed that initiative. The voyage out gave me a glimpse into Indian psychology. Mr. and Mrs. Dodwell were on board with a little daughter, and there were also one or two more fair English children playing about on the decks, whom the Lascar sailors watched with most 20 SO UTHERN INDIA affectionate eyes, eager for a chance to do something to give them pleasure. I thus got my first realization of that extreme Hindu fondness for children to which the Mirza Aziz referred when he said that every man ought to have four wives, a Persian to converse with, a Hindu to look after the children, a Khurasani to do the work, and a Tartar to be beaten when the others mis­ behaved. Soon after I got to Madras, I got another illustration. Mr. Tirunarayanan, a student at the Presidency College, had taken me down to the banks of the River Cooum which flows through the city, to show me the larvae of different varieties of mosquitoes, and to point out which were carriers of malaria. In the midst of his disquisition he looked at his watch and hurried away— it was the time when he went to tell stories to his little niece. That was a sacred obligation, not to be neglected even for the study of malaria, though for that study he had neglected his examination work in Early English, and so had incurred the disapproval of the College authorities. Later, I was told by an English lady in Madras, who had three blue-eyed children with fair hair, that she frequently saw her Indian servants when they thought they were unobserved touching the children’s heads lightly with the tips of their fingers, and then kissing them. I infer that the affectionate and admiring gaze with which the Lascars on the P. & O. steamer followed the children on board was due in part to their fair complexions. India in fact, seems to display, especially in the lowest castes, an inverted colour sense, being attracted, instead of repelled, by the coloration most contrasted with their own The explanation may be partly in the fact that as a general rule the higher the caste the lighter the colour; and partly to the fact that exposure to the Indian sun darkens the skin; women and children are fairer than men, and a man will be darker or fairer according as he works in the open clad in a loincloth and turban, or covers his body with clothes and keeps mostly indoors. In consequence the well-to-do, merely by virtue of their economic status, are fairer than the poor; and among the peasants and coolies the women are fairer than the men and children fairer than adults. Lightness of complexion evidently is to the Indian male an element in sexual attraction, a fact that the matrimonial advertisements in Indian periodicals invariably illustrate, whether inserted by men desirous of getting PRO LOGUE 21 brides or of parents in quest of bridegrooms for daughters. The fairer the girl, the smaller the necessary dowry. The political importance of this trait in Indian psychology is probably enormous. For many centuries before the East India Company was chartered the masses of the Indian people had been trained to revere the Brahmin caste as the highest because the fairest in complexion. When Europeans, and particularly when Englishmen arrived, it was inevitable that the masses of workers who tilled the fields and recruited the armies should look upon the newcomers as super-Brahmins, and that, so far as I could observe, was still their attitude invariably in South India during the period of my service there. Macaulay in his Essay on Clive emphasized the fact that the Indian sepoy preferred service under “John Company” for meagre pay and an exiguous pension to accepting the lavish promises of the recruiting agents of Indian princes; but the reason was, I am sure, not merely the one he mentions, that they discovered that the English had a higher standard in the matter of keeping promises, important though that motive was. With the Indian, considerations of social status weigh astonishingly high in comparison with economic ones; and the status of a servant depends on that of his master. Hence to take service with John Company was social advancement, especially for low-caste men. In Madras I was astonished to observe how re­ luctant a man who had once served a European employer was to accept service under an Indian, though under very favourable conditions, and with complete security, merely on account of what he regarded as a descent to a lower status. The Honble. Mr. Madge, a leader of the Anglo-Indian com­ munity, was one of my fellow passengers. He it was, I understood, who took the chief part in persuading the Indian Government to make “ Anglo-Indians” the official designation for those previously termed Eurasians. He argued to me that the new term was the more accurate, in spite of the fact that it has to cover a great many people whose European ancestors were Portuguese, and a few of other non-British descent. I thought it a pity to lose the convenient term Anglo-Indian for those natives of the United Kingdom more or less regularly resident in India. For them we have, per contra, to use the word “ Europeans,” which in India means, first, English, Welsh, Scots and Irish, secondarily Ameri- 22 SOU THERN INDIA cans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, and lastly people from the continent of Europe. But to Mr. Madge linguistic convenience was naturally unimportant compared with the advan­ tage to his community of a continual reminder to English people of their responsibility for its existence. There was also a newly wedded American couple in our small company, bound for Madras, Mr. and Mrs. Noehren. Noehren had been recruited for the Department of Public Instruction through the y .m.c.a. as an expert in physical training. He introduced net-ball and other games into the schools, organized the teaching of physical exercises, and was one of the first people to draw attention to the prevalence of hook-worm disease, called in England “ miners’ ankylostomiasis.” Among the barefooted, who are the great majority of the population, the percentage infected with hook-worm goes up to 90 per cent, and even those who best tolerate the parasite are somewhat debilitated by it. Hook-worm is one of the causes of the poor average physique of Indian workers, though less important than malaria, under­ feeding, and their excessively starchy diet.