COMMENTARY

C S Subramanyam
Communist Chronicler
A R Venkatachalapathy

C S Subramanyam, one of the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India in the south, died a year ago. With his passing, the last link with the founding generation of communists in India has snapped. While no decent account of his life exists, this tribute is based on information the author recollects from conversations, occasional correspondence, some archival data (of the colonial government of Madras) and a reading of his publications.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Tamil monthly, Kalachuvadu, November 2012. A R Venkatachalapathy (chalapathy@mids.ac.in) is at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.
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t is over a year since comrade C S Subramanyam, one of the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in south India and the chronicler of its history, passed away. For some inscrutable reason, communist leaders either die prematurely or enjoy extraordinarily long lives. Fondly known as CS, Subramanyam had celebrated his 102nd birthday when he breathed his last. No decent account of his life and work exists. Organs and front magazines of the CPI and Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) published notices and tributes at the time of his death in September 2011. If they are woefully inadequate, little blame will attach to them for CS was extraordinarily self-effacing and reticent about discussing what was an undoubtedly eventful life. Individuals did not count in the impersonal march of history, or so he resolutely believed. In the 1980s, Bipan Chandra tried to conduct a full-edged interview with him but CS refused. Several attempts on my part to conduct formal interviews failed as well. It now turns out that I was able to tease out more information about him than others, and the following account is based on such tantalising information that I could recollect from conversations with him, occasional correspondence, some archival data (of the colonial government of Madras) and a reading of his publications. In mid-1984, I entered the portals of the Tamil Nadu Archives (TNA), Chennai. Not yet 17, I had just entered college. Fascinated by V O Chidambaram Pillai (VOC, 1872-1936), the tragic hero of the early nationalist movement in Tamil Nadu, I had entered the musty corridors of TNA to track him where Clio seduced me. Everyday, at about 11 am, a thin gure with a shock of silver hair, dressed in khadi dhoti, shirt and towel would walk into the research hall. I never saw him in laundered and ironed clothes. A lump on his
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forehead was prominent later I would wonder how he managed to escape the police when lookout notices were issued to apprehend him. This was comrade CS. The name immediately brought to my mind the two-volume Bharati Darisanam, the primary resource for the history of Swadeshi movement in Tamil Nadu. Ilasai Manian, a cultural activist from a godforsaken village had managed to acquire microlm copies of the only extant copy of the rst volume (1906-07) of Bharatis weekly India from the National Library in Kolkata. Demonstrating resourcefulness, he had improvised a microlm reader and transcribed large parts of the journal. When they were eventually published in 1976-77, it was CS who served as the editor, classifying the articles and providing annotations. Bharati Darisanam remains a milestone in the bibliography of Bharati. Early Life A stickler for rules, CS would scarcely speak in the research hall; even for a short conversation, he had to step out. In the early 1980s, he had established the Institute of South Indian Studies (ISIS) under the aegis of CPI and New Century Book House (NCBH). ISIS was located on 6th Nallathambi Street at the junction of Anna, Wallajah and Ellis roads. ISIS was an institute only in name; the doors would open on evenings when CS came. Despite his reserve, I managed to draw out a lot from him he was 74 at that time and I was more than half-acentury younger. I was nave, enthusiastic, curious, and particularly ignorant of etiquette, a combination that must have amused the old man and somewhat loosened his tongue. I had also recently edited and published a collection of VOCs letters, and CS was evidently impressed. One evening in late April 1985, I was waiting for CS to arrive at the institute but he failed to turn up. When I saw him the next day, he explained it was his wifes sixth death anniversary. It was a rare occasion when a glint of emotion could be detected in his calm eyes. CS marriage to Sugunabai was the turning point in his life. His father, Sundaram Iyer, was an ofcer in the colonial education department. The family hailed from
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Comal, a village near Mayiladuthurai in the undivided Thanjavur district. As his father was transferred from one town to another, CS studied at the Voorhees College in Vellore and Presidency College in Chennai. Sometime in 1930 he embarked for England to sit for the Indian Civil Services (ICS) examination. CS studied at Oxfords Balliol College. The inter-war years were, of course, the time when left ideas and ideals captured the imagination of the youth. CS became a member of the October Club at Oxford and did voluntary work for the Communist Party of Great Britains Daily Worker at the time of the Second Round Table Conference (1931). He interacted with Rajani Palme Dutt, among others, and returned to India, without taking the ICS examination, as a communist. (His younger brother, C S Ramachandran, became a well-known ICS ofcer.) When CS returned to India circa 1933, the Communist Party barely existed. According to a condential report of the government of Madras, when the Government of India was contemplating a legislation to ban the Communist Party, the only organisation actively engaged in Bolshevik propaganda in south India was Periyar EVRs Self-Respect Movement. During 1931-32, Amir Hyder Khan, deputed to establish the party in Tamil Nadu, organised the Young Workers League. He was arrested in 1932 and the organisation of a formal party had to await S V Ghates arrival from Bombay in early 1936. CS met Khan clandestinely in July 1934. Meanwhile, the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) acted as a front for communists and CS played a part in its organisation. By the time the CPI was banned in 1934, he was among its top leaders. When Janasakti was launched in 1937, CS was entrusted with the responsibility of running the partys weekly apart from managing the press and party ofce. CS early life thus parallels the early history of the CPI in Tamil Nadu. In 1940, the government of Madras instituted the Madras Communist Conspiracy case under the Defence of India Act against P Ramamurti, Mohan Kumaramangalam and CS. They went underground and a lookout notice was issued with a reward of Rs 100. Eventually, CS was arrested and sentenced to 18 months
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rigorous imprisonment. However, with the Soviet Union joining the allies in the war, the ban on the party was lifted. CS was released from prison in July 1942 along with other leaders. A party in the forefront of an anti-imperialist struggle was now in the uncomfortable position of having to oppose the Congress call for Quit India, and mobilise the masses for what they had only recently described as an imperial war. When the issue was debated in the central committee of the party, CS was one among the small minority that voiced reservations on the partys stance regarding the Quit India movement. At the Calcutta Party Congress in early 1948, the CPI adopted the ill-advised B T Ranadive line for the armed overthrow of the Indian government and was consequently banned. During this phase of the party, CS developed a romantic relationship leading to marriage with Sugunabai who had long endured domestic violence at the hands of a party comrade. The party, known for its moralistic position on such issues, promptly expelled CS. But CS never left the party! In the late 1980s, in the context of Gorbachevs glasnost, CS was asked to give a letter requesting rehabilitation. Rather than give such a letter, CS asked R Nallakannu, the then state secretary of the party, if it would not be simpler for the party to simply revoke the resolution expelling him! Following his expulsion in 1952, CS moved to Gobichettipalayam. It is not clear what occupied CS during the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, 1956 barely caused a ripple in the Tamil Nadu party the only casualty was the distancing of the great Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy from the party. Not surprisingly, the 1964 split saw CS remain rmly with the CPI. History of CPI Project In the late 1960s, G Adhikari embarked on the major project of compiling the documents of the history of CPI. If P C Joshi inspired N Vanamamalai, the most prominent intellectual of the CPI in Tamil Nadu to take up the study of folklore, it was at Adhikaris instance that CS took upon himself the task of chronicling the communist movement in Tamil Nadu. CS may not have realised at the
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outset that chronicling the communist movement would come to occupy his life and give it meaning and substance, making up for not being able to work for the movement directly. CPI celebrated its golden jubilee in 1975. In the years leading up to it, once again at Adhikaris instance, CS embarked on a biographical study of M Singaravelu. Singaravelu had been introduced to communist ideas at the time of the rst world war and had played a stellar role in the strikes following the war; celebrated the rst May Day ever in India (in 1923); and maintained extensive (not to say, intercepted) correspondence with M N Roy in the early 1920s. Based on an impressive exploration of sources, the monograph Singaravelu: First Communist in South India was published by Peoples Publishing House. This book, and its vastly expanded Tamil version published in 1990, remains the standard work not only on Singaravelu but also on the history of the communist movement in Tamil Nadu. Two short books in Tamil, one on Shapurji Saklatwala and the other on S V Ghate, followed Singaravelus biography. In 1998, to mark the 17th party congress of the CPI held in Chennai, CS wrote Our Partys Growth in Tamil Nadu: A Brief Sketch. Rereading this short book one is left with a sense of how grievously incomplete remains the task of writing a history of the CPI in Tamil Nadu. It could be said that CS reclaimed Singaravelu for the communist movement in Tamil Nadu. But for his work, Singaravelu would have been conned to a brief chapter in the history of the Dravidian movement. CS continued with his work on Singaravelu and in a short booklet demolished the calumny that Singaravelu had apologised to the government to escape the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case (1924). CS also edited a series of publications of the uncollected and unpublished writings of Singaravelu. One of them was a manuscript on the fundamentals of communism written in Tamil. Other volumes put together essays published in Pudu Ulagam (New World), a monthly that Singaravelu was associated with at the time of his break with the Self-Respect Movement. In 1983 or thereabouts, I had gone in search of this
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journal to Bhagat House (the ofce of the harbour workers union) on Broadway in Chennai. However, both Pudu Ulagam and comrade Nagai K Murugesan proved to be elusive. Ultimately, I saw them both at CS institute in 1984. If CS came to the party through the nationalist movement, K Murugesan had taken a different route. A worker himself, he was part of the socialist faction that split with Periyar. The friendship between CS and Murugesan dated to the early 1930s. The two septuagenarians would address each other in the singular, much to the amusement of this teenager. He would chide Murugesan for one reason or the other, with Murugesan receiving the reprimands quietly with a bowed head. It did not take much to realise that the chidings really masked fondness and affection. On one such occasion, after the routine chiding, CS pulled out a book and handed it to Murugesan with the words, Heres our book! It was an edited volume of Singaravelus writings, with their two names appearing on the cover as editors (as in all their publications, Murugesans name appeared rst even if the book was in English, a language that Murugesan could barely read). Until the moment he saw the book, it is certain Murugesan scarcely knew of its publication. Research on M P T Acharya At the time of my rst encounter with CS, he was researching M P T Acharya. It was Acharya who re-established India in Pondicherry when Bharati took refuge in the French enclave to escape certain imprisonment in British India. Acharya soon left for London and joined the revolutionary terrorist group of V D Savarkar and V V S Aiyar. In 1919, he met Lenin and was a founding member of the CPI at Tashkent. Disillusioned with communism following a bitter falling out with M N Roy, he lived for over a decade in Berlin as an anarcho-syndicalist. He returned to India in 1934 with his Russian wife and died in penury, a bitter man, in 1953 in Bombay. It was Acharyas role in the birth of the Communist Party that interested CS. With a small grant from the Indian Council of Social Science Research, CS embarked on a full-length
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study of Acharya. Apart from thoroughly scouring the TNA, he explored the National Archives of India, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, the P C Joshi Archives in New Delhi, and the Kesari-Mahratta Library, Pune. During the course of his research CS unearthed the Mandayam family memoirs and also traced a rare letter by Acharya to K Sivarama Karanth, the distinguished Kannada writer. I read a smudged typescript of CS nal manuscript on Acharya. It is not difcult to spot the heavy hand of Rajani Palme Dutts India Today in the rst chapter, indicating a major and abiding inuence on CS intellectual make-up. The manuscript went through a long and tortuous process with the press before its eventual publication in 1996. Essays on V V S Aiyar CS handwriting in English or in Tamil was difcult to decipher. Despite the outward deference shown to him by the staff of NCBH and the party, there were long delays in publication. Annoyed with such delays, CS occasionally opted for other avenues. He wanted to produce a volume of critical essays of V V S Aiyar, an idea triggered by an incisive essay by R Srinivasan of the University of Bombay. Srinivasan had provided a brilliant assessment of Aiyar and the ideological basis of his right-wing nationalism. CS added two further essays, one on the Shermadevi Gurukulam controversy and the other his own, on Aiyars political activities and concepts. At this time, D Veeraraghavan, who was working on a history of the working class struggles in inter-war Chennai (this brilliant study will appear posthumously as The Making of the Madras Working Class from LeftWord Books), had unearthed Swadharma, the rst Indian (English) weekly devoted exclusively to labour issues. From its pages, CS culled out a short story in English by Aiyar as well as an appeal on behalf of the Shermadevi Gurukulam, which were appended to the book. CS asked me to translate elegies on Aiyar by Bharatidasan and Namakkal Ramalingam Pillai. V V S Aiyar: Critical Studies appeared as an ISIS publication in 1986.
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Bharati Darisanam Series Through his contact with V Subbiah, the legendary labour leader of Pondicherry, CS traced the 1908-09 volume of Bharatis India to P Kothandaraman, a veteran Tamil writer residing in Aurobindo Ashram. CS planned to compile the writings from this volume in the Bharati Darisanam series. The rst two volumes, as noted above, pertained to 1906-07. The rst edition being out of print, CS planned an expanded edition of the volumes. I provided a few missing pieces and the rst volume was reprinted after a long delay (the revised version of the second volume never saw the light of day). The India issues for the intervening year (1907-08) the year of frenetic Swadeshi activity in Tamil Nadu remain untraced to date. CS did not want to launch on the 1908-09 volume without lling the intervening gap and hit upon a brilliant idea on how to do it. The colonial government kept track of the native-owned press. Ofcial translators selected features and editorials, and submitted translations to the government, which were used not only to gauge public opinion but also to sue editors for sedition. These translations are embodied in the Native Newspaper Reports (NNR). In the absence of the original, CS argued, the NNR provided an alternative version. He patiently culled out the translated extracts from the NNR volumes of the missing issues of India and entrusted me with the task of retranslating them into Tamil. Towards attaining a certain historical accuracy, I adopted a particular strategy for retranslation rather than employ a contemporary idiom, I used the contemporary language of Bharati. This strategy greatly pleased CS. Unfortunately, NCBH never published the volume and the manuscript itself is lost. The India volume that CS had in his possession was in relatively good condition. Bharati was the pioneer in publishing political cartoons in south India and the India cartoons caught my fancy. I nursed the dream of compiling the cartoons and publishing them with an introduction and notes and when the dream materialised a decade later, it was perhaps the rst Tamil book in coffeetable format. CS encouraged my work,
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generously lent me the original volume for reprography and also donated a small sum to help with the expenses. He also wrote a long afterword to my Tamil monograph (written jointly with A Sivasubramanian) on the famous Binny Mills Strike of 1921. Meanwhile, CS work on documenting the history of the communist movement in south India continued. Amir Hyder Khan had penned a memoir on his experience of building the CPI in south India. The manuscript fell into CS hands through Adhikari. CS had the memoir translated into Tamil and prepared the manuscript with extensive appendixes and notes a hallmark of all his editions. It was also at this time that CS readied the Tamil translation of his biography of Singaravelu. Since over two decades had passed since its original publication, CS had lost the notes and transcripts that went into it. To trace the original Tamil version of the translated appendices he sought my help. Conclusions After his wifes death, CS relocated to his family house on Josier Street in

Nungambakkam. The huge house was decrepit and appeared to be in a state of constant disrepair, musty with cobwebs and piles of old papers and files. His elder sister, who shared the house, fit the stereotype of an old orthodox brahmin widow, constantly snapping at everybody. CS did not sport the sacred thread and must have thrown it away in the mid-1930s. The combination of an unconventional marriage and affiliation to the Communist Party ensured ostracism, and CS bore the brunt of it. A frugal man not known for culinary finesse, he cooked his own meals. If there was any remnant of caste in him, it was unconscious. CS would have considered caste as part of the superstructure that would wither away sooner than the state after the revolution. He evinced little interest in theoretical debates and it is likely that he had resolved all questions in the 1930s at the time of joining the party. Reading Eric Hobsbawms autobiography Interesting Times, one cannot miss the contrast between the English and Indian communists. If the English left intellectuals did not forsake the pleasures of life, an important strand among Indian communists

aspired to a Gandhian austerity. CS exemplified that tradition. After my move to Jawaharlal Nehru University to pursue a PhD and later to Tirunelveli to teach at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, my contact with CS was reduced to occasional letters. By then he had shifted back to Gobichettipalayam. ISIS turn towards grant-driven publishing of books that bore little relevance to its founding objectives grieved him. In 1996, its premises were vacated and all the files, papers and books including Bharatis India volume were dumped in the NCBHs Ambattur office. CS was not in any state to worry about such disasters. My frantic attempts to retrace them proved futile. I met him a few times during 2001-02 on his occasional visits to Chennai. It was only with much effort that we could communicate the tragic news of Veeraraghavans death in February 2009. During the last year of his life, CS was brought to Chennai and nursed in the hospital managed by NCBH. As I was away in Singapore teaching for a year, the news of his passing reached me only a year later on my return. Hence, this belated tribute.

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