Swadeshi's heroic failure

At a time of 'Make in India' and Asia's rise, the story of a man, a failure in his endeavour, shows us how the past can illuminate and educate our current journey

Swadeshi Steam: V O Chidambaram Pillai, and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire

Author: A R Venkatachalapathy
Publisher: Penguin Random House

Price: Rs 999

The conflation of political assertion, a larger social movement and modern economic enterprise is what distinguished the efforts of this company. Such stories are not new in the history of colonial, later imperial, India. Jamshedji Tata and the foundation of the steel city of Jamshedpur and the effort of the young Ghanshyam Das Birla to rally Indian business groups on a platform of economic nationalism are widely known. The Bajaj and Dalmia families’ links to nationalism are also well known. Even earlier, Dwarkanath Tagore had attempted to create a modern business enterprise in the unfriendly milieu of a Bengal Presidency dominated by the stranglehold of white capital.

But for more than one reason V O Chidambaram Pillai’s story stands apart, till now little known outside the Tamil-speaking world. In February 1949, then Governor General Rajaji launched a steamship named after him. Rajaji reminded everyone how he himself had subscribed to the Swadeshi Steam Ship Company when it had faced hard times. Over a decade later in 1961, the cine actor and thespian Sivaji Ganesan was star of the aptly named Kappalpotiya Thamizhan, or the Tamil Helmsman.

But this is a case where fact is far more fascinating than the legend. A small-town pleader rallied men across castes, communities and linguistic groups to set up a joint stock company that had a mission. It took on the British India Steam Navigation Company, trying to wrest maritime traffic from Tuticorin, India’s fifth largest port, to Colombo.

Just like his hero Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Pillai faced the wrath of the government. Public protests, a police firing that left four dead, the assassination of District Collector and Magistrate Robert Ashe, the only such death of a British colonial officer, and the double conviction of the founder were all to follow. Pillai was sentenced, the company went bankrupt.

The end was tragic but the trajectory of the story remains inspiring. A R Venkatachalapathy is a historian’s historian who knows how to ferret out gems from the archives. Pillai, or VOC as he was known, was unable to meet Mahatma Gandhi in 1915 because he could not afford the fare for a tram ride. On his release, he shunned Tuticorin, which had been his staging ground, for many years. Interestingly, for a man who brought together Saiva Vellalars and Brahmins, Muslims and Christians, Telugus, and Tamils in a nationalist enterprise, he drifted towards an anti-caste platform towards the end of his life. This book is a page turner because Dr Venkatachalapathy wears his learning lightly. It has taken decades of research, not only in archives and collections in India and Sri Lanka but France, UK, and Ireland to piece together this narrative. Among other sources, the famous Lloyd’s Register of Shipping helped track the movements of the two steamers in their short span of service.

The company’s brief life of five years ended in its liquidation. While there were internal rifts among the board members, the key factor in hastening the end was the combined weight of the government at every level presided over by no less than Governor Arthur Lowley. This was only a foretaste of barriers that lay ahead for anyone who tried to break the racist stranglehold of white capital. It was no wonder that the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharati fully backed and lionised the effort.

Any historical work aimed at a larger audience reflects but also enriches the public debate of its times. Just over half a century ago Professor Sumit Sarkar’s work on Swadeshi in Bengal showed the accomplishments as well as the fissures in the movement against the partition of Bengal. The cracks and divisions were also shown up in Tagore’s great novel Ghare Bhaire  where rifts of community or class emerged through the prism of personal relationships. Here, the author places not political mobilisation but the putting together and building of a business at the centre of early Indian nationalism. Pillai found inspiration beyond Indian shores. The victory of the Ethiopians against the Italians at Adwa in 1896 as much as the sinking of the Tsar of Russia’s fleet in the Tsushima Straits in 1905 were prominent in his mind. Stepping away from social history bereft of attention to wealth creation as also tales of mere victimhood, Dr Venkatachalapathy sets the Swadeshi Steam story within a wider framework.

At a time of “Asia’s rise” and “Make in India,” it shows us how the past can illuminate and educate in a lucid manner. The story of a man, indeed a heroic failure, sheds light on the times well beyond his own.

The reviewer teaches History and Environmental Studies at Ashoka University