C. R. REDDY

R. BANGARUSWAMI

Among the intellectuals who played important roles in shaping the history of our country during the present century Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy was a significant figure, a man distinguished alike for his thought and style. Originality in whatever he said and wrote and the vigour and courage and beauty that clothed his expression never failed the mark.

Though he was an educationist all his life, as he himself once said, an educationist in the truest sense of the word, a born educationist, his inroads into politics and entry into the chambers of Legislature for a few years secured for him a place among politicians of repute, while some of his wise and constructive views, as for instance, on Democracy, gave him the status and stature of a statesman.

Nor was this all. He was a scholar, a speaker endowed with gifts of oratory, a traveller who enjoyed his travels and made use of them.

He began life, rather a little late, in his twenty-eighth year as a Professor of History and Vice-Principal of the Baroda College, succeeding the Chair of no less a personality than Sri Aurobindo. Reddy gained reputation as an able teacher. Later, as Examiner in History to M. A. Students of the Madras University he had to examine the papers of S. Satyamurti, the future “trumpet-boy of the Congress”, the great orator and statesman. Reddy ‘ploughed’ him then but recapitulating the incident years after said that Satyamurti was greater than all his examiners and examinees put together.

Reddy often probed into History for the lessons it has to teach us. History to him was not all dates and names and facts. History has an undertone of Philosophy to those who would like to imbibe it. Violent changes have always foreboded an aftermath of stagnation. Trivial incidents have provoked tremendous conflagrations–like wars–even as little sparks have made big fires consuming towns. We cannot hold back History, he says.

As an education is to him goes the credit or rearing the Andhra University from the days of its infancy to its present-day huge dimensions. True to his affection for it, he has willed away the copyright of his works to the university.

Reddy’s ideal of a good university lies not in a collection of huge buildings, not even in a collection of books as Carlyle said though they may be necessary, but in a group of talented men who would work as a team and in a spirit of dedication to the task of inspiring the younger generation for work and research. Education in India should sprout as a blossom of the soil wafting its beauty and scent all around. Mere “decanting of Western wine in Indian bottles” is not only not enough but will be harmful. “The clientele of a true university are not confined to the students on its rolls. Its discoveries reach the farthest ends of the earth. The whole world are its students. And it itself is ever a student anxious to learn and to grow.” That was his ambition.

Reddy, the literary artist, rivets one’s attention always. He is a connoisseur of words and their import. He toys with them off and on. Alliterations come to him unasked. So does wit. Epigrams are his forte:

“Life is not idea. It is will and conduct illumined by idea.”

“Waves echo the ocean, moments reflecte eternity”

“The ballet box is not the eleventh Avatar of Vishnu.”

“We have to be a fact and not a freak or a fancy.”

Even in a letter to a friend he can be his true literary self asin “You have brought out all the myriad rays and colours of the great luminary and blended them into the harmony of a sublime figure.”

Reddy, I do not know why, always reminds me of Sastri. Though the latter was obliged to play a bigger role, in a larger sphere, both of them were educationists, both were states both spoke and wrote with literary grace, and both regarded Gokhale as Guru.

Reddy, as Sir John Squire opined, was like Burke in eloquence and wisdom. No mean tribute! Reddy’s close friends tell us that his heart was as good as his head. Yes, the essence of greatness lies in goodness.

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