Dr. C. R. REDDY
A Portrait from his Letters
K.
ISWARA DUTT
There
are fewer blessings in life than friendship with the celebrities of one’s own
country not merely in terms of extreme cordiality but on those of real
intimacy. What more could one ask for than the privilege of sharing one’s
thoughts with them on things, near and remote, and peep into the innermost
workings of their minds through the sovereign medium of the epistle? Between C.
R. Reddy and me there was a fairly regular exchange of letters across the years
from the latter ’Twenties till his death, with no mental reservations on either
side and sometimes even in a Puckish vein as a tribute to our mutual affection.
And among many other things which went together to single him out on the intellectual
plane, Reddy was an expert letter-writer–indeed, a master of craft as much as
he was a pastmaster in conversation, another of the
lost arts of the age.
My
friendship with Reddy was really an inheritance: he was my father’s friend
for half a century. It was social reform that was
their common interest, while my relations with him had an intellectual basis.
He was generous in the measure of encouragement he gave me as a journalist and
writer. Knowing something of my bias for biography he offered me the following
counsel in one of his earliest letters to me:
Remember
Lord Acton’s dictum that even funeral eulogies should be couched in the
temperate and discriminating language of history and that indeed there is no
justification for telling lies even in the absolving presence of a corpse.
Biography should be written in the spirit of history and not of pamphlet. And
that is why it is best written after a man is completely dead inasmuch as he
might not like to hear of the severe things that have to be said about him.
A little later when I
happened to join The Hindu he wrote:
Glad
you have become embedded in The Hindu, more and more, and find it no bed
of roses. It is the intellectual standard of journalism and will educate you
out of your Andhra vapours…
Those
were days when the whole country was agitated over the findings of the Simon
Commission. Reddy who could probe into their inner character and hidden
implications was on the war-path. Writing to me towards the end of June 1930 he
exploded thus:
On
the whole I feel that it is the funeral pyre of nationalism that they have
proposed to erect. Our nationalism is to be consumed by the sectional fires to
be kindled. What will be set up by the Simon Commission is a disreputable
Indian oligarchy of careerists very amenable to Government pressure. It shuts
the door of hope not only for nationalistic but democratic advance.
This
is
I
have a feeling that for the next three years Reddy was in no happy mood. I was
supposed to be “the only person outside the family” to remember his birthday
but during the above period he gave me a peep into the prison-house of his own
secret existence when I offered him the usual felicitations:
You
are an incorrigible rememberer of an insignificant
day. We did not observe the day this year. A nation’s struggle and suffering
cannot permit of these rotten festivities.
In
early 1935 he opened his heart to me thus:
I
have neglected you badly due to mental and moral depression at the great
opportunity lost by the country, by people not rallying in sufficient strength
to the Congress.
About a year later he
again wrote in the same vein from Chittoor:
I
have been here for some months past–in a mood of strict and exclusive
vegetating–and this vegetarianism is the only thing that agrees with me!
I
found that the mood had passed when I was in
So
you are back at the
And
then with playful ease he added:
I
shall be visiting your holy place in November. Wonder where I shall put up? I
want European comforts. The soul is Swadeshi but the
stomach Videshi! Which is the best hotel?
He
would not, however, close the letter without saying something, however
casually, about the current controversies of the hour. Referring to a
divergence of outlook between Rajaji and Nehru (Exactly on what question I
don’t remember) he said:
Intellectually
I am with C. R., a moderate and anti-Socialist; morally with the more intrepid
and straighter J (jawaharlal), the weaker party. J is
a man doomed to be a Martyr, and they are Judases enough in his camp who are using him today and will abuse him tomorrow.
As
in the case of Morley, even in casual letters or on post cards, his style is
“strong and vital” and also often distinguished by flashes of irony and wit.
Alluding to Mr. Kripalani’s attack on his “mythical
ban on Socialist literature” in the
I
suppose an occasional braying is necessary for health and leadership. Yet K is
a very nice fellow and highly clever and competent. We have met before and he
could have asked for the facta...But his attack on me
was charmingly well-written. I read it over and over again enjoying his attractive
style. I could have exclaimed in the language of one of Shaw’s doctors: “What a
beautiful ulcer! How perfectly ripe!”
Whether
he always agreed with Congressmen or not, he had for them on the whole a tender
regard. At any rate he had little or no regard for the Liberals though he found
them individually estimable. In one letter he dismissed them contemptuously:
All
Liberals are rats. They mistake patriotism in careerism.
In
one of my letters I passed on to him one of Chintamani’s
epigrams which I thought was quite revealing. Diagnosing the political
situation Chintamani said: “Government lack honesty,
Muslims patriotism, Liberals sacrifice and Congressmen judgment.”
Reddy
reacted to this rather fiercely and wrote to me:
I
don’t understand your Chief’s epigram. If Government is not honest, why do the
Liberals support it? Is it because they too lack honesty and so have
fellow-feeling? Liberals lack sacrifice–which translated into psychology meant
patriotism and courage. Congress lacks judgment–which similarly analysed means that cowardice is an aid to judgment while
courage is not. There is not a more contemptible race on earth whether for
judgment or character than the Liberals. Every year on the new
moon days they threaten to lose their confidence in Government, but never reach
the end of the process, and on full moon days they regain it. Themselves heroes
of the verbal order, they are easily won over by words as hollow as their
own...Constituted as they are, the greatest service they can do to the country
is to hold their tongues which, of course, they cannot.
Again,
in another letter returning to the charge he hit out thus:
They
proclaim that the Congress is the only power which can deliver the goods and
then deliver themselves which is all the goods they can deliver.
It
was a sad thing that for all his spirited defence of
the Congress, he was at no stage much a persona grata
with it. At one stage it accepted many of his ideas but had still let him
out of the picture. I expressed both my surprise and regret at the injustice
done to him when he poured out his heart:
You
are always hankering for gratitude and worrying about its conspicuous lack in
our public men. When I made the proposals–which are now Khaddar-wear of the C.
R. group of Congressites–I was abused by name, and
now my ideas arc used without so much as the most indirect or inferential
acknowledgement. But I consider this right, proper, progressive!
Again in 1946 he wrote
in the same strain with a tinge of regret but none of bitterness. By then the
Constituent Assembly had been set up but there was no place for one like Reddy
there, if only because the Congress was in no mood to emerge out of narrow
grooves. I felt that it was a serious injustice to Reddy and also a big loss to
A
great pleasure to have heard from you; and your tones are as warm-hearted as
ever for which thanks. Yes: it was a bit of a disappointment to me that I was
not given chance to serve on the Constituent Assembly–not tragic anyway,
since there is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we
may–though He takes a deuced long lime to do the shaping! That I would be left
out was foreseen, for there was no obligation on the part of Congress to pay me
that amount of regard. Their action was natural. The anticipated is never so
bad as the unexpected.
Before
he bade adieu to the Andhra University it was my privilege to have manipulated
an invitation for him to Hyderabad where I was the Public Relations Officer and
got for the Andhra University a donation of two lakhs. During the time he
stayed there he tried to probe into the intricacies of the Hyderabad problem by
talking as freely to Mr. Laik Ali as to Mr. Munshi and Swami Ramanand Tirth with whom we dined. Reddy narrowly missal Kasim Razvi but when he met Nawab Moin Nawaz
Jung, Reddy cornered him by asking why Hyderabad needed an army at all without
being satisfied with something like a Malabar Special police force!
He
entertained the hope that Hyderabad might revive “the traditions of Akbar and Golconda” and prove to
be “the cement and synthesis of India” He took the gloomiest view of “the
furies and fanaticisms” ravaging this great land and gave anxious thought to
the problem. He confessed to me:
My
soul’s attention flows in the direction of the communal and other problems that
afflict this dear old land–almost too old to last long.
As
early as in 1946 he gave me of what was passing in his mind:
My
interest in Vice-Chancellorship has waned–these are the last flickers before
extinction.
It
was at that stage that I suggested to him literary retirement, so that he might
leave behind something enduring far posterity. So did some others even earlier,
including my brother, Kameswara Pralad,
in reply to whose letter he thus unburdened himself:
As
regards how best to utilize the few years that may yet remain for me, it is
strange that you should have suggested devotion to literature at the same time
as a Parsi lady friend of mine asks me to quit the
university and enjoy a literary retirement. This coincidence happening to be in
the line of my own thoughts and feelings which have been welling up for
sometime past, I think, will have an effect. Venkataramani also suggested that
I should bring out a collected edition of my English works and that he himself
would come to Chittoor and help me to make the
selection. It is not even one month when towards the end of my summer sojourn
in Chittoor I made a collection of all my old stuff,
including the “In Memoriam” in prose I wrote on Viresalingam, and found that
they covered 3 or 4 shelves of an almirah. There are
also the diaries of my world-tour, which though antediluvian, may yet have some
historical and personal interest, certainly historical. So without being very
definite about it, I can only say that this blessed seed of your letter has
fallen on soil already prepared.
But
nothing came out of it. It is our loss.
It
was a pleasure to be on writing terms with Reddy who, in his lighter moments or
gayer moods, could be simply charming and irresistible as when he said to me
that “Even love must be reduced to matrimony if it is to be stable”–himself a
gifted bachelor in the line of Balfour. In one of his letters alluding to
patronage in this country he hurled this at me:
In
India nobody will share patronage with another, whatever else he may share. I
am informed by Vyasa that even the Pandavas who
shared a wife refused to share patronage with each other.
This
incidentally reminds me of his eagerness in his last years to husband his
eye-sight if only to read Mahabharata. Such was his love of that classic
on which he was supposed to be one of the greatest authorities.
It
is a sad and depressing thought that Reddy, one of our finest intellectuals and
most gifted men, was among the least lucky–and that in the ultimate analysis he
should be regarded as one of the “Splendid Failures” in history, in view of the
glaring hiatus between promise and fulfilment.
His achievements as an educationist for all their striking quality could hardly
make his cup brimful. Even his parliamentary gifts were but
confined to a provincial legislature though “a certain mingling of mellow
wisdom that is unique” and his own, could have established him at the Centre.
In politics he invariably proved to be a receding hero. He was out of tune with
his environment and he seemed seek “the palm without the dust” like Rosebery of whom he was reminiscent both in brilliance and
temperament. Aristocratic, proud, sensitive and a trifle aloofish
he could hardly fit in, in any party mechanism, and was content to take delight
in mere intellectual exercise. His speeches were remarkable as much for a
coherent body of thought as for splendour of diction
while some of his phrases enriched the English tongue. Mr. Ramaswami Mudaliar, no mean judge of politicians, spoke to me of
Reddy as the greatest phrase-maker in politics since Disraeli, not excluding
Randolph Churchill who, in England, came next to Disraeli.
It
is difficult to say if there will be any posthumous publication of Reddy’s
speeches, diaries and letters but it will be no small consolation to me if this
piece will revive interest in good old Ramalinga
Reddy whose memory I cherish with a friend’s love and an Indian’s pride.
–From
Swatantra Annual, 1952