Who Was V V S Aiyar, the man Gandhi called a 'fierce anarchist'?

Time of India

20 hours ago

V V S Aiyar was a patriot during British rule. Aiyar was born in 1881 and died in 1925
Vamanan
When even prestigious bodies sometimes mistakenly use V V S (Subramania) Aiyar's photograph for that of another early 20th-century patriot, Subramania Siva, one can reasonably presume that memory of the life and times of Aiyar is hazy.
A tragedy indeed, for Aiyar was a man of extraordinary qualities, both of head and heart, a patriot who put his life and well-being on the line for India's political freedom and cultural renaissance at a time when British repression was at its harshest.
Curiously, the comments made by his friend and nationalist Veer Savarkar, when Aiyar passed away prematurely in 1925 — trying to rescue his daughter from the swirling currents of the Papanasam waterfalls in Tirunelveli — underscore the collective amnesia that might afflict Aiyar's legacy: 'The noble story of thy life must for the time being, nay, perhaps for all time to come, remain untold ...
Thy greatness, therefore, must stand undimmed but unwitnessed by man like the lofty Himalayan peaks. Thy services and sacrifices must lie buried in oblivion as do the mighty foundations of a mighty castle.'
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One of the services that Aiyar rendered thus was supervising the English translation of Savarkar's landmark work, 'The Indian War of Independence, 1857'.
Though Aiyar's contributions in the socio-political sphere may be partially hidden from public remembrance and sometimes spark contention, his literary bequests can never be forgotten.
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His standing as a pioneer in the Tamil short story genre is assured, based on the heartrending masterpiece 'Kulathangarai Arasamaram' (one of the stories in his 'Mangayarkkarasiyin Kaadhal' collection).
The calibre of his exegetical writings can be judged from the fact that his translation of the Thirukkural and his study of 'Kamban' in English are highly respected texts more than 100 years after they were written.
Such was Aiyar's ardour for Tamil and Kamban, the Tamil poet par excellence, that he rated the latter above classical masters such as Valmiki and Vyasa, who wrote in Sanskrit in a different time and era. This was not the blinkered opinion of a Tamil bigot but the considered view of a master who was at home in a multiplicity of tongues.
Aiyar was born on April 2, 1881, in his mother's native village near Karur and grew up in Varaganeri, a hamlet that is now a central part of Trichy city.
His father Venkatesan had held a govt job (postmaster, says biographer R A Padmanabhan; school inspector, say biographer Shuddhananda Bharati and writer V Saminatha Sarma who worked under Aiyar and penned his recollections). But he quit his job to start a banking business and founded a cooperative sales and credit society.
Aiyar, named Subramaniam because he was born under the Krithika constellation which is associated with the deity Muruga, proved to be a brilliant student and passed the matriculation examinations at the age of 14, ranking fifth in the Madras Presidency.
Joining St Joseph's College in Trichy, he got his BA degree with distinction. He was not only an excellent student and the favourite of his professors, but also a good debater who worsted his opponents by his calm manner and sharp logic.
His mastery of English and knowledge of classical languages, such as Sanskrit, Latin (one of his subjects for his BA, in which he stood first), and Tamil (his mother tongue), made him conversant with the best of world literature.
He was an excellent swimmer and did his squats and push-ups regularly and swung the Indian club (karlakattai) to his heart's content, gaining a solidly built athletic physique.
Aiyar went to Madras to take the first grade pleaders examination and practised in Trichy district court for five years. Aiyar had been married when 15 to 11-year-old Bhagyalakshmi, though in later life he opposed child marriage. Through K G Pasupathi, a cousin of his wife who was a successful textile trader with outlets in Rangoon (Yangon), Bangalore and Pondicherry, Aiyar apprenticed under a British barrister in Rangoon before sailing to London to qualify as a barrister.
It was in London that he came into contact with the inmates of India House, a hostel for Indian students that had become a hub for revolutionaries fighting for Independence. He became an inmate and the right-hand man of Savarkar, the unquestionable leader of the India House residents. While permitting Aiyar to transgress the Hindu ban on crossing the seas, his father, who had been an activist for reconversions, had told him, 'Go like Saul and return like Paul'.
On his part, Aiyar went to London as an ambitious young man looking for a career makeover and was transformed into a full-fledged revolutionary, training other young men to wage war on the Empire through targeted killing of British officials.
After the assassination in London of British officer Curzon Wyllie by India Houser Madanlal Dhingra, on July 1, 1909, the closure of India House and arrest of Savarkar in the Nasik conspiracy case (killing of Nasik collector A M T Jackson), Aiyar was a marked man.
The odyssey of his escape from London and travels through Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Naples, Constantinople, Cairo, Bombay, and Colombo, until he reached Cuddalore, from where he walked to French Pondicherry, showed him to be a master of disguise and deception.
Life in Pondicherry (1910-1920) was marked by meetings with the poet Subramania Bharati and the nationalist Aurobindo, who were already there, as well as by recurrent incidents of attacks by goons unleashed by the British police.
His return to India to take over as editor of 'Desabakthan' in Madras brought another downturn as he was jailed for nine months in Bellary for a 'seditious' editorial that was published behind his back. Finally, despite his best efforts to run a gurukulam at Cheranmahadevi in Tirunelveli, aimed at training Indian youth in nation-building, the experiment was marred by abrasive charges of caste discrimination on flimsy grounds.
To a man of Aiyar's catholicity and compassion, they seemed unfounded and unjust, but he made every effort to address them. At this juncture, his sudden and dramatic demise occurred.
Ideas and ideals
Despite qualifying to be a barrister, Aiyar chose to forfeit the rank as it required taking an oath of allegiance to the crown
Gandhiji had found Aiyar to be a 'fierce anarchist' in 1907; in less than a decade, he had mellowed down and accepted the path of Ahimsa
Aiyar wrote biographical sketches of the first emperor of the Maurya empire, Chandragupta Maurya, Sikh spiritual leader Guru Govind Singh, reformer Booker T Washington and French statesman Napoleon Bonaparte (a book on military strategy that was confiscated by the colonial govt)
He was survived by his wife, who lived to the age of 73 and his son, Dr V V S Krishnamurthy, who served as a medical doctor in Thiruvanaikaval
Swami Chidbhavananda, who, as a young celibate, was performing penance at the Papanasam Falls during the fatal accident, later took over the administration of Aiyar's gurukul in the early 1970s through a trust. He also published Aiyar's translation of the Kural
(The writer is a journalist and author)
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