Post No. 12,160
Date uploaded in London – – 20 June , 2023
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Xxx
Sydney Low, an arrogant London journalist sent by Standard magazine to accompany Prince of Wales to India, wrote a book titled ‘A Vision of India’ in 1906.
Here is an excerpt from page 234
“These Canarese , Telugus and Tamils command no respect either from Europeans or the natives of other Provinces. They are not among the fighting races; they furnish a very small contingent to the amies of King- Emperor, and the head quarter staff thinks so poorly of them that it has almost abolished Madras as a recruiting ground. Yet all the virtues of the world are not military, and these Southerners seem to me a rather attractive people. They have the reputation of ill looking , except the high caste Brahmans, among whom, indeed, you will find faces not easily beaten for perfection of feature and intellectual distinction. I have seen a Brahman lawyer of Madras who could have sat the model for the model of Giotto’s Dante, and another who might have passed for Phoebus Apollo in crème coloured marble.
It needs no ethnological expertness to select the Aryan strain of this aristocracy of birth from the Dravidian masses. These same Dravidians are dark and low of stature and sometimes negroid in type; but they seem healthy and sturdy, their chocolate skins are sleek and clear. They are a lively good tempered folk; very poor, I am told; extremely lazy, I make no doubt; but kindly humorous, and placable except when they are roused into frenzy by fanaticism. They have the Southern insouciance (indifference, lack of concern) and some touch of Southern artistry , in their selection of bright colours that go unerringly with their dusky tones of skins and in the classic grace with which they loop their scanty drapery over one shoulder leaving the other bare as the Greeks often did.
Giotto’s Dante
For picturesqueness I saw no festal crowds in India to beat those assembled to greet Prince of Wales on his entry into Madras and Mysore. Some of the groups of women, in robes of orange and majenta or deep blue, made splendid clumps of colour, as they lined the roofs or were framed in the recesses of verandahs and arcaded windows.
Madras itself seemed to me one of the most desirable of the larger Indian towns. I did not notice anything which struck me as resembling the attitude of demeanour often ascribed to this fine city. We have been told to see in the capital of the South only
A withered beldame now,
Dreaming of ancient fame.
But Madras looks more like a matronly beauty than a faded old hag. She may be dreaming of ancient fame, but she many present amenities to comfort her. It is a city of ‘magnificent distances’—far ampler even than those of Washington. The five thousand inhabitants were spread out over an area almost comparable to that occupied by the five million of Londoners. And, like London, the capital of the South is not so much a town as agglomeration of villages. They are linked together by wide open tree shaded roads, flanked by gardens and meadows.
In Madras , you find the compounds the largest in India, so that quite insignificant official personages or private individuals have their three or four acres of land ground and many have small estates, like miniature parks, with lawns and groves and kitchen gardens and pasture land. They are well housed, for they are able to live in handsome roomy bungalows, such as people built in the spacious old Anglo-Indian days, before they began to be cramped by rising prices and falling rupee. Space is treated with a kind lavish disdain in Madras, where in the middle of the municipal area, you come upon a great grassy maidan, a sort of Hampstead Heath or Putney Common, upon public offices are surrounded by leafy glades and flower beds, upon water courses and river channels, and native hamlets and plantations of palm trees.
Phebus Apollo
(He continues with describing the Adyar Club, Marina beach and Fort St George. He also regrets that no monument for Robert Clive is found anywhere in India. He wants a statue for Clive saying , ‘more than any other human being, we owe our Empire of the East’ to Clive.
(My Comments : Now we know that scoundrel Robert Clive committed suicide in England. We must celebrate by burning the effigies of Robert Clive instead of Ravana in Ram Leela Festival. That demon caused millions of deaths in India; He made the British plunder the whole of India for 300 years. )
–subham—
A vision of India, Dravidians,
Tamil and Vedas 