The Kappiri slaves of Cochin

The Cafres of the Portuguese & the Dutch

The last months of 1662 in Cochin were proving to be a test to the Portuguese who remained. The Portuguese Casado no longer carried the usual armaments like the sword, gun or spear like their well protected, but uncomfortable predecessors had, clad in mail. They were once upon a time, much better in strategic thinking and came up with a number of new techniques of war. Who else would think of cutting down trees on the opposite banks like Duarte Pacheco in the battle of Cochin? As the Franks perfected their act and got better at keeping the Zamorin’s forces in check, and getting rich off the relative monopoly of the seas and the trade of spices, the community in Goa declined in morality, often behind the shrouds of religion. But Cochin in comparison was benign until the Dutch peeped around the corner.

During the period between the 1663 and somewhere after 1500 when the Vasco Da Gama decided that Calicut had no plans of welcoming him, the Cochin Raja provided the Portuguese with a place to reside and the support to establish trade. The Portuguese flourished as we saw in many previous articles and soon started a regular colonial relationship not only in Goa, but also in Cochin. They intermingled with the local populace to create a group of Mestizo’s who spoke Portuguese and had Portuguese names. A new caste called Topasses (dark skinned, half caste – wearing a topi - gente de chapeo or Topci – gunner in Turkish) came into effect mainly to man the cannons and were Christians by way of religion. Around 1662, the Portuguese lived in a larger area within the fort and this was the Portuguese town where some 900 houses existed and around 2,000 Topasses were resident. Most of the other Topasses lived outside the fort, but close to 2,000 of them moved in after the Portuguese left while many left for Goa with their masters.

Much like the Anglo Indian community, these Toepasses classed themselves with the Portuguese. Visscher opines that the name came from the Portuguese Tu Pai (my boy) who later learnt the Portuguese language and became interpreters. Later, especially in Cochin they became bakers, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers and so on or during the war as letter carriers. He considers them exceedingly superstitious, and possess many heathen customs. A mourning toepass wears his black coat inside out and grows his beard!

By 1565, the Jews of Cranganore fled to Cochin and erected what we know today as the Jew town, and close to a century later, the lives of the Portuguese and their associates were soon to be in peril, not from the 3 million or so of local forces, but from another foe from afar, the Lanthan’s or the Dutch. The Dutch resolve was clear when Rijklof Van Goens sailed away from Batavia to confront the Portuguese in Malabar. By 1657 he had gotten the Franks out of Jaffna and were entrenched in their all-important base at Jaffnapattanam. By 1658, he had taken over the pearl fisheries and Tuticorin, the very place where Joao da Cruz and Francis Xavier had once carried out the evangelization of the Paravas. Goens was a mature warrior and decided to leave Goa alone, but set his sights on Cochin instead. It took all of five years and some five expeditions for him to execute his plans. These actions were also to eventually launch the career of a simple Jonkheer – Henderik van Rhede, the man behind the great Hortus Malbaricus, who in 1663, was just a warrior participating in the second siege of Cochin.

The first three Dutch forays in 1658, 1660 and 1661 aimed at the Portuguese in Cochin were not to bring much by way of success. Interestingly the people who ordered this were the members of the High government of Batavia - the Dutch VOC’s Gentlemen XVII. Anyway in the winter months of 1661, the Dutch took Quilon, and Cranganore was taken a month later. It was then that they worked out an interesting ploy, by getting support from Vira Kerala Varma, a claimant to the throne, and the incumbent Rama Varma was already on the Portuguese side.

Planning from the Roman Catholic bishop’s house on Vypin, Van Goens oversaw the construction of Fort Orange, a small fortification for the cannons aimed at Cochin. Mattancheri, just outside the Fort Cochin walls was in those days called Cochim de Cima or Native Cochin in Portuguese. This was where the raja of Cochin had his seat of government and here stood the Pazhanyannur temple. The Dutch palace as it is known today, was actually the Vira Kerala Varma’s palace which the Portuguese had built for him. Of course he had other palaces near Jew town and in Tripunithara.

As this was taking place, the Paliyath Achan tried to persuade the Portuguese to have the Mutta tavazhi raja take over to avoid Dutch slaughter and simultaneously the Zamorin’s forces moved in to Elankunnapuzha. Goda Varma tried encouraging Vira Kerala Varma to flee, but the latter desisted.

The forces of Van Goens landed some miles south of Cochin and advanced towards Mattanchery, while the king requested that they spare his women. Meanwhile the Nair’s defending the palace put up a stout fight against the well-armed Dutch, many of the Nairs being Chavers (mistaken for people influenced by Opium in Baldaeus’s accounts) and about 400 perished. And soon Van Rhede an ordinary soldier, made his place in history for killing Rama Raja and his brothers and saving the aging queen rani Gangadhara Lakshmi from a hiding room under the roof in a nearby temple. Three or four princes of the royal family were killed while Goda Varma escaped. The main fortress of the Portuguese was now under attack on three sides, the southern side by Goens’s forces, western side by Isbrand Goske and the eastern side by Root bans. Simultaneously cannonades followed from Fort Orange in Vypin.

But the siege in Oct 1662 failed, the rains came in unseasonably and the Dutch had to retreat while Kerala Varma and his brother fled to Mannar and later to Quilon to be covered by the Dutch safety net. However the claimant to the throne died and his brother who went by the same name was proclaimed king by the queen rani who had the final say in these matters. By December, the returning Rhede took over Bolghaty Island, exiled Goda varma who sided with the Portuguese and a decision was taken to lay siege to Cochin next. That fateful day of liberation from the Portuguese was to be 6^th Jan 1663. Tavernier the jeweler whom we talked about in the Kohinoor story was one of the persons who provided a graphic description of that fateful day.

Let us however get back to that fateful week in Cochin. What followed next was interesting. The Dutch sent two captains with a white flag. These two fellows were blindfolded by the Portuguese so that they would not see the planned fortifications, but the clever Dutch brought along with them a small boy, who cleverly took in minute details. In the meantime, the Dutch and the Portuguese had signed a peace treaty in Europe on 14^th Dec 1662.

The Portuguese governor Ignatio Sermento was offered a treaty based on free commerce and religious freedom in return for Portuguese surrender. The Frank captain refused as expected and the Dutch went back with the little boy providing valuable details of the fortifications. The Dutch erected cannons at various strategic points (near the churches of St Thomas and St John as well as Calvetti). The Portuguese expected an attack from Calvetti while at the same time the Raja of Porkkad sent his Nairs with food for the Portuguese and were trounced by the Dutch forces landing there. Finally it was time for the Dutch to storm the fort and they decided to do it with soldiers coming in by a frigate from Vypeen. The boat capsized on the way killing all but 10 soldiers who were also decimated by the Portuguese. The final attack took place on the 6^th January with 600 Dutch soldiers and finally the team under du Pon entered the fort. Goda Varma and his family had fled, so without much ado, Sermento delivered the keys of the fort to Van Goens in surrender on the 7^th January 1663. 360 Dutch died, 300 were hospitalized and 500 became unfits for further duty. 900 Portuguese were killed. According to the terms of surrender, all valuables and property and slaves were to be handed over to the Dutch. All Toepasses and Konkanis were to serve under the Dutch.

But the accounts of what transpired later are not clear. The Bishop states that the town was looted for three days and many cruel actions took place. The Portuguese complained later that the Dutch took Cochin after the treaty was signed in Europe, whereas van Goens stated that the treaty was ratified only in March. The Mutta tavazhi prince was crowned by Van Goens and after 1663, the VOC considered all trade in pepper on the Malabar Coast undertaken by any other party except itself ‘illegal’. The pepper monopoly had to work, either through force or through contract. Three new forts were constructed and the raja of Porkkad signed a treaty with the Dutch as though he was an old friend. Ten years later Van Rheede himself came back to Cochin as commander.For those who wish to read more in detail the siege, check this link. 

But as you can all imagine, this story is not about the Dutch capture of Fort Cochin, for it will now move on touch upon the Kappiri myth associated with the Toepasses of Cochin. That these people made plenty of wealth from trading is clear and were favored by the Portuguese masters. It is also clear that after the attack and siege of the fort, they were not allowed to go to Goa. From Visscher’s notes on Toepasses, we can see that they were exceedingly superstitious, and this largely contributed to the myths which followed. So what did the fleeing Portuguese Casados and the resident Toepasses do to all their wealth? In order to hide it from the Portuguese, it is rumored that they hid it underground, and also hatched a ghoulish plan to guard the treasure. Here is where the kappiri or the cafre African slave comes in as recounted by the old-timers of Cochin.

That the Portuguese brought in large numbers of African slaves is clear and they mainly served them in the warfront, as fearless and tireless warriors, but their presence in Cochin is lesser documented save for their continued presence in our minds through the myth. Most of the Toepasses and the Casados must have surely had a few in their midst and it can be concluded that some of them were the reason for it. We know for certain that many Kafir soldiers lived in Cochin and we also see from records that while 100 of them joined Capt Almeida, another 200 stationed there were moved to Ceylon later. They were considered very loyal, an aspect that we will come to see being utilized by both the fleeing Portuguese as well as the Topasses who remained. Baldaeus himself recounts presence of Negro slaves in Cochin during the first attack by the Dutch in 1662. Bindu Malieckal establishes in her paper (India’s luso-Africans) that they were indeed called kapiris and according to Linschoten, they, both men and women slaves were brought to Goa from Mozambique and sold for 2-3 ducats. Goa was also a place where the African slave got transshipped to places like Macau and continued on till the 1800’s. A number of Abyssinian women and men worked for Portuguese masters and even today we come across their descendants in towns where the Portuguese settled, Cochin being one among them. The men occupied the rank and file of the Portuguese armies.

But their connections with the gods date back to an earlier time when a group of them were being brought to India from Africa. Quoting Dr VGeorge Mathew , we hear of a tale that is retold, many centuries ago a Portuguese ship laden with slaves was enroute Malabar when it got caught in a violent storm. Soon it became clear that the ship would capsize and the entire crew and living souls went up to the deck for mass prayers, but the waves only kept becoming bigger. Finally it was decided to sacrifice a human, and of course a healthy Cafre slave was chosen. He was taken to the edge, his head was cut and the body and head consigned to the seas. Lo and behold, the storm blew over and the sea was calm. The Portuguese captain settled in Cochin and would always remember the sacrificed slave every day before he ate. In fact he started the custom of making the first offering of food to the departed slave. That was how the ‘cafre food portion’ custom came about. And as you can imagine, the Kappiri slaves were subsequently associated with power and their spirits ever present where they died such violent deaths.

So as the Dutch attacked, a number of wealthy Portuguese Casados and Mesticos decided to do exactly that, as the story goes, they either walled up a living Kaffir with the wealth in a hole in the wall and mortared it or dug a hole in the ground , executed a slave and buried the wealth with the slave. The spirit of the slave was supposed to guard the treasure trove and lead the owner back to it when he came back. Well, so it seems, for we have not heard of any wealth dug up in those regions, in the recent past.

Obviously these spirits liked to lead an interesting life. Like the stories associated with ghost e.g. the Poole’s ghost story I wrote about earlier, these spirits dressed well, smoked cigars, lounged against walls in the neighborhood and drank a lot. So they had to be satiated with these things if their support was expected. As is said, there are a few of these spots known as ‘Kappiri Mathil’ (Negro Wall) in local parlance and some of them were located at Chakkamadam and Parwana. Here the cigar smoking ‘Kappiri’ apparently safeguards treasures hidden by their masters. The natives of Mattanchery, irrespective of their religion, still believe that the ‘Kappiri Muthappan’ will one day be their savior. And when the Kerala delicacy puttu is made in mattanchery, the first block is given to a Kappiri spirit to ensure that the rest following do not crumble!

Today, you can see a small temple near Manghatmukku, which is the benign grandpa kappiri’s abode, and even today people offer small offerings to appease the Negro god. In some of the spots such as Mangattumukku and Panayapally, the days for offerings are Tuesdays and Fridays when candles and arrack are offered, with the hope that someday the ghost will lead them to a treasure and obviate their day to day miseries.

In the early 1900’s there lived a very interesting lady, in the confines of Jew town, named Ruby. Her story provides so many insights into the daily lives and happenings of Mattanchery. Let us now peek into the pages of her reminiscences to see what see has to say about the ones she calls ‘mischievous spirits’. She lends them a physical structure too and one which surprised me (I though these warrior slaves were tall and hefty), she says they were considered to be short, black and with curly black hair, with small white teeth and quite harmless unless they were harmed. Interestingly in those times, slaves had to be blacker than the blackest, women had to have breasts which were not pendulous and anyone with a lighter color or straight hair would be shunned! But they, the ‘indigenas’ of Mozambique, were also considered to have a sort of a devil in them and had scars on their faces. But Ruby points out that they also enjoyed playing tricks on people, living invisibly in home corners and sometimes inside of a cupboard. In some cases they were whole families, not just one and were particular about cleanliness. In case their area gets polluted and you pass by, they even threw excrement at you. There were all kinds of beliefs - if the master of the house (in those days) has forgotten to take the mug of water to the toilet, and calls out for water, it is sometimes the kappiri of the house who brings him the water, scaring the X&^% out of the master. She also mentions many other pranks played by the spirits, and narrates stories of the kappiri leaving small rewards for good deeds, especially with respect to keeping areas around their abode clean, but only as long as they kept it a secret. She had personal experiences too, like the time a cloth was lost in the neighbors well and the sprit brought it back when she started cribbing about it.

Another astounding story is when a resident Jew decided to dig his backyard for buried treasure. They dug and dug, and saw a large pot, but just could not get to it. First, some obstacles were observed by the workers, then an elephant was bought to pull the pot out but curiously the handle broke and simultaneously the pot was pulled underground by some force and moved under the terrain, to another location. It is said that the broken handle was pure gold and the crown for the Sefer Torah of the Tekkumbagam synagogue was actually made from this piece of gold! She makes a poignant statement that just like the Jews who came to Cochin and never ‘really’ wanted to leave, the spirits also will never leave Mattanchery.

Some others mention that people who got lost were shown the way by these spirits inhabiting trees bearing sour mangoes, and that people also faced misfortune if one of those trees got hacked down. We also hear stories of Hindus moving into such houses and feeding the ghosts vegetarian food instead of meat. And so, many of the locals are firm believers in the ghostly powers of the Kappiri,  the cigar smoking benevolent negro, sometimes propped on the wall, drinking arrack or toddy and humming some soft African tunes. A graphic description of the Dutch looting,  the helplessness of the defeated Portuguese and the human sacrifice of a willing servant Ambrose in order to secure his masters (Asvares) Portuguese treasure, (Ambrose was a kappiri) can all be read in Raphy’s Malayalam novel O Rapro Nobis.

As a newspaper titled the story, this is the story of the kappiri, now consigned to newspaper reports, tourists, and the minds of the people of Cochin and a temple or two….

The Kappiri - Once a slave, now a deity.

References

Fort Cochin in Kerala 1750-1830 - Anjana Singh

The Rajas of Cochin 1663-1720 - Hugo K s’ Jacob

Ruby of Cochin – Ruby Daniels

O Rapro Nobis- P Raphy

The Dutch power in Kerala – MO Koshy

The Dutch in Malabar – PC Alexander

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 - Hugh Thomas

Letters from Malabar by Jacob Canter Visscher

A True and Exact Description of the Most Celebrated East-India Coasts of Malabar and Coromandel - Philippus Baldaeus

For those interested in an interesting deeper analysis of the myth, please read Dr Edward A Edezhath’s paper Kappiri Myth: a living remnant of Luso–Dutch encounter in Cochin

Van Rhede in Cochin http://historicalleys.blogspot.com/2009/04/rani-of-cochin-van-reede-and-hortus.html

Note- The large Siddi Muslim population in India living in the upper west coast states of Gujarat & Karnataka also have ancestral connections to the African slaves brought in by the Portuguese. Some of those who settled down in Kerala however adopted Christianity and have merged fully with the local population and were termed Siddhi Malayalam community. Perhaps they were the original kappris.

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Experiments with the heart

Werner Theodor Otto Forssmann's story

Friday, Oct 12^th 1956

That was the fateful day when the motely group comprising members of the Vereinte Aquarienfreunde (united friends of the aquarium) met as usual at the local pub in the spa town of Bad Kreuznach, a locale once famous for radon balneology. That by the way, is where one immerses oneself in waters which had traces of radium, supposedly soothing for rheumatic joints. The people of Kreuznach later built a radon inhalatorium, also popular for a period, into which was piped air from an old mining gallery. Later, during WWI, Kaiser Wilhelm II lived in the spa house and then the town became the seat of the German Army High Command during WWII, only to get bombed with marked regularity by the Allies. Kreuznach was later occupied by US troops in March 1945. But more mundane activities occupied the minds of the group, the plan was to discuss nothing in specific, perhaps they talked about fishes and it is a fact that many years ago, one of the gentlemen among them, a Prussian, used to study protozoa collected from his aquarium, with a Leitz microscope which he had been gifted.

The German urologist had been a prisoner of war between 1937 and 1945, after capture by the allies for having served the Nazi cause and had thence moved to Krueznach. The German urologist had been a member of the NSDAP party between 1937 and 1945, became a prisoner of war after capture by the allies for having served the Nazi cause and had thence moved to Kreuznach. His story is a fairy tale one, and as you will soon observe, many of you continue to live because of him and his firm convictions.

I would guess that the stout Prussian, an urologist in real life, swigging his mug of beer, looked and acted as though he was quite annoyed with life. He did have reasons for that and all his medical life he had been ignored or scoffed at, and his attempts at heading a research team was reaching nowhere. When the barman bawled out at him to attend to a phone call from his agitated wife Elsbet, he suspected nothing. When she told him that some woman with a foreign accent had called to say she wanted to discuss regarding the Nobel Prize, he scoffed at her and continued with his drink. Anyway he dutifully trotted home to attend to the matter. The woman with the foreign accent, Frau Johansson a reporter at Svenska Dagblad called again late at night when he reached home, and asked for an interview.

The lady told him that he had a 25% chance of winning a Nobel Prize. The physician with the gruff voice did not curse Johansson nor did he slam the phone (not that anything would have happened to the phone, for in those days those black phones were made of Bakelite). The next day a letter arrived from the Carolinska institute asking for his photograph. The man who handled the nether regions of the body in hospitals with great dexterity, was quite surprised when a photographer later arrived to take his family photographs. Soon the petite Swede, Frau Johansson, presented herself at his home to state that there was a better chance of his getting a joint Nobel. The press started to hound his house and children, even at school. On Oct 18th, after he had completed surgeries on three kidney patients, the medical director Dr Alfred Behrens came by to formally congratulate him for the Nobel Prize he had won jointly with a French American and an American, and then, finally, realization sank in. That evening his trembling white faced wife collected the formal telegram from Stockholm, one that heralded a new lease of life to the hitherto unknown urologist. As the press entourage arrived to make life complicated for the flabbergasted urologist, he must have wondered, ‘for what’?

Why would somebody who had been told that he had been bestowed a Nobel Prize (nobody gets a Nobel accidentally) ask such a mundane question? As you can imagine there is an interesting story behind it all, and an even more interesting person. This is the story of a German surgeon and Nobel laureate, Werner Theodor Otto Forssmann.

First a bit of perspective - In 1895, Roentgen discovered the existence of x-rays and took the very first X-ray of his wife’s hand, after which he won the first ever Nobel awarded, in 1901. He died in 1923 due to carcinoma of his intestines, contracted perhaps from X ray exposure but then again, X ray therapy was not known to be of any use in treating carcinomas at that time, whereas radiation therapy is extensively used for the same today. Marie Curie who had won twin Nobel prizes since then for her work on radio activity, succumbed to aplastic anemia contracted from long term exposure. Barry Marshall on the other hand, kept saying that H Pylori was the main cause for peptic ulcer while the learned medical fraternity and as it appears, the antacid lobby went against him and prevented his rise to fame for a full two decades, before everybody finally accepted his views and became a Nobel laureate himself. At one point of time, Marshall had to swallow the bacterial concoction himself to prove the point.

The world as you can see, recognizes greatness only after sustained reluctance especially when it relates to these kind of path breaking discoveries. It was the same in the matter concerning Werner Forssmann, a person recently described by a thoughtful blogger as ‘the most badass scientist’.

Many years back, I stood beside an equally brilliant cardiac surgeon, Dr Cherian and watched a complex cardiac bypass surgery which took many hours. I saw and recorded in my mind every step, but I had missed seeing the diagnostic step that preceded it, a procedure called the angiography. In order to map the blockages in the arteries leading to the heart, a dye is injected, then a catheter is threaded through the femoral vein or artery in your groin, all the way to the heart while the path is filmed using X-rays. The doctor thus sees blockages and plans a surgery to bypass them with coronary grafts from the patient’s leg. That in essence is a bypass surgery, the basics of which many people know about today. It is matter of fact, something that has been done very often since R Goetz first performed it in 1960. The procedure is not without complications and rare as they are, sternal infections can lead to death, like it happened in the case of my dear friend Mohan, recently. Cardiac afflictions are still the leading cause of death around the world and as you can imagine, the angiogram or cardiac catheterization is the main tool used by surgeons and cardiac consultants.

Cardiac catheterization was first performed and so named by Claude Bernard in 1844 on a horse, and using a glass thermometer he reached the animals heart, in order to check temperatures. Though it looked challenging, nobody even dreamt of carrying out such a procedure on humans, fearing instant death.

Werner Forssmann had by now become a doctor after fatefully deciding not to become a tradesman, graduating from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University in Berlin. After many unsuccessful attempts to obtain a residency in internal medicine, he was finally admitted at the Auguste-Victoria-Heim in Eberswalde, a small Red Cross hospital supervised by Dr Richard Schneider..

But as you know youthfulness is often associated (if it fails, such events are classified as ‘stupidity of youth’) with fearlessness. The 25 year old surgical resident Werner Forssmann was one of them but he was sure that his procedure was not reckless. He was particularly interested in analyzing lung damage due to heart valve failures and wondered if one could find a safe path into the heart without anesthesia and without triggering the body’s reflexes. It was his intent to find a path to the heart while at the same time avoiding dangerous surgery. He had seen the work of Claude on a horse, but instead of entering the heart through the jugular, he wanted to get in through the cubital vein with an elevated arm. The median cubital vein is typically used for taking blood samples, for intravenous injections, for blood transfusions, and as Forssmann was about to consider, for the introduction of catheters. People who have seen the TV series ‘Lost’ will remember how Jack the doctor threads a sea urchin needle into his cubital vein for a live ‘person to person’ transfusion.

With a bit of local anesthesia near the venal incision, Forssmann concluded that it was indeed possible to pass a urinary catheter through the vein and all the way to the heart. But to check its efficacy on a live patient, he had to obtain permission from Dr Richard Schneider. Schneider, whose sister was his mother’s friend, refused to give him permission but then, Forssmann persisted stating that he was even willing to experiment on himself. When Schneider refused again, the young Werner was devastated. In those days it was a medical taboo to work directly on the heart for it was a surefire way to invite death. Even if one could access it through the ribs, without piercing the lung, potential hemorrhaging was impossible to stop, if something untoward happened. Also, if the endocardium was irritated, fatal arrhythmia could develop and kill the patient. But it had been done, for in 1903, the famous Dr Sauerbrunch did operate on a woman with an aneurysm of the heart.

You will not believe it, but it was perhaps a risqué joke narrated by his college professor Frederich Kopsch (according to Forssmann’s memoirs) which inspired him. The joke went thus- ‘the only way to a woman’s heart is through her v$%$^na. You go from the uterus and the fallopian tubes to the abdominal cavity, then via the lymphatic space into the lymphatic vessels and veins and thus to the goal’!!!! That ignited the idea of finding an un-traumatic way to the heart.

Most thrillers show the hero in association with a sidekick. Such a sidekick lends both physical and moral support to the protagonist. Werner needed one, not only to witness his next steps, but also to help him get the deed done in the hospital and to obtain the required supplies, which he as in intern, could not. And that is how he selected Nurse Gerda Ditzen, in order to get hold of the hollow needle, scalpels, sutures, urinary catheters, and Novocain for local anesthesia. Gerda was very interested in medicine and so Forssmann plied her with books and explained to her the procedure, step by step. As he narrated later, he went after her ‘like a sweet toothed cat around a cream jug’. After lunches together and further talks, Werner told her that he had been forbidden from doing the procedure. As planned, the nurse suggested that she would be glad to have the experiment done on her. That was just what Werner wanted to hear and quickly he chose an afternoon to do the deed, a time when the hospital staff took their routine siesta.

Gerda Ditzen the surgical nurse, sterilized the equipment and had them all ready for the venesection, including the 30 inch long catheter. Werner asked Gerda to lie down on the surgical table, put her legs through the straps and he then tied her down, explaining to her that it was so that she would not fall over from the effects of the anesthetic.

Behind her head, Forssmann went on to do the unexpected, he dabbed iodine on his left elbow crease and injected the Novocain. As he waited for the anesthesia to take effect, he moved over to Ditzen and dabbed her venal area with iodine, laid gauze over it and talked reassuringly to the heady patient on the gurney, as his own anesthetic took effect. As soon as he felt the deadening on the elbow, he took the scalpel and cut through his skin. The nurse seeing this, watched wide eyed, struggling under the belt but then, he had intentionally tied her down tight and made sure she had no chance to get to the buckles.

The Deschamps aneurism needle was next pushed into his cubital vein and Werner eased it up a foot.You must now understand that this is possible in a vein with little resistance because it moves with the flow of blood towards the heart and in the direction of venal valves. Werner then put gauze over the wound and tied a sterile split over it. After all this was done, he loosened the straps on Ditzen and released her hands. Werner himself felt no pain, just a little feeling of warmth. Gerda was furious at being duped and aghast of course, seeing the doctor with the dawdling catheter, and wondering if and when he was going to die in front of her.

But Forssmann had other ideas. He had to inch up the catheter all the way to the heart and record the event by taking x-rays of the procedure. The problem was that the X-ray room was in the basement, two floors below. As they rushed down the stairs, the word went around the hospital of the bizarre event taking place. The duo reached the x-ray room and a stunned nurse named Eva took orders to ready the equipment for the x-rays. Peter Romeis, a surgery friend and drinking partner of Forssmann burst in screaming and tried to pull the catheter out. Werner was heard to shout back ‘nein nein’ and kicked Romeis in his ankles to get him to stop. It was all melodramatic and in the middle of it all, the Prussian doctor kept barking commands to Eva, for he wanted a mirror to view the fluoroscope display as he threaded the catheter past the collar bone, while Romeis continued his dire threats, and got it past the two foot mark. Soon the tube was inside the heart, its tip near the right ventricle, just as Werner had planned.

Eva was asked to click an x-ray picture which she did and that image burnt the event forever into posterity. Werner pulled out the catheter slowly, sutured and dressed the wound on his elbow and everybody went home, while Werner was summoned by Schneider for a stern lecture. But the senior doctor Schneider saw the value of the experiment and the importance of the x-ray picture. He asked Werner to prepare a paper, gave him advice on how to go about it, by laying some precedence and toning down on the revolutionary aspects, so that it got accepted and then took the young lad for dinner at Kretchmer’s where they consumed several bottles of good wine. The paper was published in Klinische Wochenschrift, in Nov 1929.

As expected, it created a furor and the story became a sensation. Dr Ernst Unger another doctor who had done experiments on volunteers protested, stating that he had already done it in 1912. But they had never recorded the results or taken x-rays, so their claim reached nowhere (In reality there was one attempt carried out during the 1830’s by the founder of modern plastic surgery, Johan Dieffenbach who used a catheter to drain ‘bad’ blood from the heart of a man afflicted with cholera, a fact that Forssmann himself heard about, only in 1971).

Schneider seeing the boys genius, recommended him to a position under Sauerbrunch at Charit’e, the mecca of surgery. The collaboration was not to last long and he was fired for his new ideas while other doctors felt that he was a danger to their patients. The great Sauerbrunch then stated publically that Werner belonged in a circus, not a hospital. The hurt young man slunk back to his old position under Dr Schneider and continued self-experimentation to herald contrast radiography, this time injecting dyes into his circulation system and taking x-rays, just as they do in today’s angio-cardiography. It was as you can imagine, events benefiting the future of medicine. He published yet another paper and was invited back to Sauerbrunch’s hospital only to leave the hospital again in a huff. At this juncture, Germany was in the grip of nationalism and Nazism and like most young men, Werner was drawn into it in 1932 and to the Nazi party by a friend in Sauerbrunch’s hospital.

It was in 1932 that he met the Dr Elsbet Engel at Mainz and by 1933 they were married. His next experiment was aortography, but the painful procedures on himself were finally stopped at the insistence of his wife. He continued to experiment with catheterization in dogs and it is also rumored good naturedly that he stopped self-experimentation only when he had used all of his veins with 17 cut downs.

He never did any more experiments on himself and moved away from cardiology to work as an urologist and practice general surgery. Karl Heusch, who had been trained by Sauerbruch, opened the Virchow Krankenhaus urology department at a city hospital in Berlin, and when Heusch offered Forssmann a position as senior physician, he accepted it after some hesitation. He excelled in the position, publishing many papers on kidney, bladder, and prostate surgery. By 1936 he had moved to work with Professor Fromme in Dresden, and in 1938 he moved to the Third Surgical University Clinic in Berlin. In 1939 he was called up for military reservist training, with World War II beginning shortly afterward. Until the end of the war, Forssmann served as a frontline medical officer in Poland, Russia, and Norway.

Until 1945, he could be seen tending to the sick and injured at the war front. Towards the end, faced with the Red army on one side, Werner fled toward the Americans swimming across the Elbe, while getting strafed by the SS, and was caught and imprisoned as a POW. All he had on him were his family photos and a copy of Gothe’s Faust.

Werner Forssmann and family
(Pic Credit Werner Forssmamn: A pioneer of cardiology Forssmann-Falck, R)

When he came out of prison in 1946, life was changed. He was forbidden from practicing medicine for having collaborated with the Nazi’s. It was only in the 1950’s after the ban was rescinded that he could work again. The doctor had initially settled with his wife Elsbet in the small town of Wambach in the Black Forest and eventually, in 1950 took a position as the director of the Department of Urology in Bad Kreuznach.

The world had moved on by then, the medical field had developed further and many new techniques including Werner’s own methods were being practiced. There was a new catheterization lab in Basel and in 1951 he met Cournand. In 1954 he was awarded the highly esteemed Leibniz Medaille by the German Academy of Science in Berlin, but his attempts at becoming a professor was not to become successful because they said he had not obtained a PhD. The world passed Forssmann by, and the man who once had glory in cardiology in his sights was now tending to kidneys and bladders. As he said later after the Nobel ceremony, it was painful so see others gathered at the harvest in his own apple orchard, laughing at him.

Now we go across the pond to America to meet the other two doctors who won the prize with him, namely Andre Cournand and Dickenson Richards, who worked at the Bellevue hospital in New York. By 1930, Cournand was qualified to enter private practice and trained in pulmonary medicine at the renowned Columbia Chest Service at the Bellevue Hospital. During this residency, Cournand participated in studies of pulmonary physiology with Dr. Richards after bidding goodbye to Paris.

(Pic Credit Werner Forssmamn: A pioneer of cardiology Forssmann-Falck, R)

As Enson and Chamberlain explains, Cournand and Richards were aware of Werner Forssmann’s report of catheterizing his own heart in 1929 and of subsequent pioneering work by European radiologists who injected contrast material into the right atrium for diagnostic purposes. Despite the opposition of many renowned cardiologists of the time, over the next four years Cournand worked to demonstrate the feasibility and safety of catheterizing the right heart, first in dogs, then in a chimpanzee, and, finally, in humans. In all the early procedures, the catheter tip was positioned in the right atrium. It was feared that attempts to catheterize the pulmonary artery might be excessively dangerous. The catheters were permitted to remain in that position for prolonged periods without side effects or complications. As a consequence catheterization of this vessel became a routine feature of hemodynamic evaluations.

All this while Forssmann lived in relative obscurity, until the phone call came on Oct 12^th, 1956. As Renate Flack (his daughter) writes - The Nobel ceremony was moving and overwhelming. My father while giving his Nobel address struggled with emotions and was close to tears when he received the award by the Swedish King. Forssmann later said, “No one in West Germany has paid any attention to me,” he told reporters. “The Americans were the ones who recognized my work.” He added that in 1929, when he performed the first of nine dangerous catheterization experiments on himself, “the time was not yet ripe for this discovery.” Still, it was “a very satisfying feeling to know that my research was right.”

Upon his return from the ceremonies in Stockholm, he tried again to obtain a better position but did not succeed. In 1958, Forssmann was appointed as the Chair of Surgery at the Evangelische Krankenhaus, a large hospital in Dusseldorf, where after initial problems, he worked on as a general and trauma surgeon until his retirement in 1969.

Werner Forssmann died on June 1, 1979, following two myocardial infarctions (heart attack due to blockages in the vessels to the heart). Ironically, it was his own heart and vascular system that did him in….

He and his wife, who died in 1993, are buried in the country cemetery of Wies. His wife Elsbet was among the first women physicians in urology when she received her board certification in 1954.  All of his 6 children excelled in their careers, and among them his son, Wolf Georg, became an internationally renowned peptide researcher, and his son Bernd developed the HM1 lithotripter.

The operating room, where Werner opened his vein and inserted the catheter, and the x-ray room, where the x-rays were taken, are still in use today. I do not know if the Vereinte Aquarienfreunde meet for drinks on weekends, but I won’t be surprised if they still do though it is unlikely they have heard of the great Werner Forssmann who once drank there. I am also not aware of what happened subsequently to nurse Ditzen, technician Eva and Dr Romeis.

My son does his medical studies at the New York University and is often with patients at the Bellevue hospital, the very hospital where Cournand and Richard furthered the path breaking research of Werner Forssmann.

References

Experiments on myself – Werner Forssmann

Who Goes First? The Story of Self-experimentation in Medicine - Lawrence K. Altman

Werner Forssmann: A German Problem with the Nobel Prize H.W. HEISS, M.D.

Journey into the Heart - David Monagan

Werner Forssmann: surgeon, urologist, and Nobel Prize winner - Michael C. Truss á Christian G. Stief á Udo Jonas

Werner Forssmann: A Pioneer of Cardiology Renate Forssmann- R Falck, MD

Cournand, Richards and the Bellevue Hospital Cardiopulmonary Laboratory by Yale Enson and Mary Dickinson Chamberlin

Tailnote

Approximately 4 million cardiac catheterizations are being performed annually in the US alone. They are also performed daily in untold numbers around the world. However, in recent years, with the push to make medical care as noninvasive as possible and with the development of possible alternatives, less invasive means of monitoring are being developed, and you will see methods using nanotechnology, embedded nanobots and so on in the fore….

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When the Amerika Maharani came calling……

Jackie Kennedy in India – and how she charmed

Barrack Obama is in Delhi, charming the Indians. The papers are full of what’s going on. A great relationship is being forged. US’s icy relations with Cuba are on the thaw.But that made me think of a period in the past, 53 years ago, when an attempt was made, to forge a relationship between India and the USA. The first lady was the emissary, and she was none other than the graceful Jacqueline Kennedy Bouvier.

This first lady always had a special allure, primarily because of her youth and beauty. In 1962, she was just 33 years old and only the previous year had her husband JF Kennedy become the 35^th president of the United States. Their marriage at that time was 9 years old. A consummate entertainer, she was very popular with visiting dignitaries, and in fact even the dour Khrushchev had mentioned that he wanted to shake Jackie’s hand fist and then JFK’s. Her restoration of the white house and getting it accessible to public eye took her into the limelight and the resulting focus and admiration for Jacqueline Kennedy took some of the negative attention away from her husband. By attracting worldwide public attention, the First Lady gained allies for the White House and international support for the Kennedy administration and its Cold War policies. But her (JKB – Jacqueline Kennedy Bouvier) visit to India at a very crucial juncture was a masterstroke by Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith. Clint Hill, JKB’s secret service agent would remark – Little did we know it would be one of the best years of our lives.

So I take you to the 60’s, a period which turned out to be terrible for India. Nehru’s grip at the age of 70 was still strong at the turn of the 60’s, but the Chinese border issue was taking alarming proportions and crafty Krishna Menon was stirring the pot at home and squabbling with the military as the defense minister.

Most of you would not know how it was in those days, as it was a time when electricity had yet to reach many villages, we had limited public transportation, listening to valve radios for news or reading the newspaper in unison, music was enjoyed at public performances, a time when we had rudimentary schooling in most parts, and joint families depended on farming. Those were days when postmen, doctors and teachers were demi gods and a government job something to look up to. Saigal, Noorjehan and a few others ruled the roost and a trip to the movie theatre with the grainy newsreel before the B&W film, a must watch to see the food scarcity in Bihar and the floods in Bengal. Bees Saal Baad was the big hit of 62. Out there in the big bad world, lots of things were happening. While on one hand the Beatles were in infancy of their formation and Joan Baez just becoming popular for her activism, the cold war peaking and the Vietnam War was dragging on.

As all this was going on, Galbraith, US ambassador in India was busy with twin objectives. He had to get India on the US side, weaning them away from the USSR who became an ally following USA’s treaty with Pakistan. Close ties between the countries were further consolidated by a mutual defense treaty signed in May 1954, after which hundreds of Pakistani military officers began to regularly train in the United States. During Eisenhower’s time, it was also a secret base for reconnaissance on the USSR ICBM program. Ayub Khan had become a good friend of the US and U2 spy missions had begun from Peshawar. Allan Dulles of the CIA was the father of the critical alliance with Pakistan’s ISI.

On May Day, 1960, Francis Gary Powers left the US base in Peshawar on a mission to photograph the ICBM sites inside the Soviet Union. It would be the twenty-fourth U-2 spy mission over Soviet territory. Soviet Air Defense Forces were on red alert as they suspected a U-2 flight and Powers was subsequently shot down. Eisenhower almost resigned in the bungling following that incident after this covert espionage activity had been exposed. The incident compromised Pakistan's security and affected relations between it and the United States. However, the Cold War was still in full force and a replacement intelligence gathering reconnaissance aircraft was required. For a while, RB-57D models were flown along the air borders of both the USSR and Communist China by the PAF.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a great fan of Chou En Lai was a minister in Ayub Khan’s cabinet and supported eliminating the US presence. President Johnson apparently wanted him fired and Bhutto finally had to quit. Ironically, the U2 was already outdated by the time the Soviets shot it down as it was quietly replaced by the Corona mission using the Discoverer spy satellites, soon after.

The Americans were getting nervous while the Chinese were getting busy, for they were developing both missiles and nuclear bombs. With Pakistan’s support not forthcoming, there was only one way to keep an eye on the Chinese, and for that they needed India’s support. To get broad support, two people had to be influenced, Krishna Menon and Nehru. Krishna Menon was simply not a possibility, and the various actions to sideline him were gaining steam. Simultaneously, Nehru had to be charmed. Galbraith launched his plan (actually a number of plans, and this article will cover only one, and it involved Jackie).

Kennedy also had other ideas about global relationships and world peace. His idea was always to develop India as a counterweight against China’s rise in Asia and was exasperated with Pakistan’s refusal to understand the situation and its continuous squabble about Kashmir and other minor issues. It was with this in mind that Galbraith was deputed to Delhi as ambassador with a primary mission – Sideline Menon, woo Nehru.

On Sept 13^th 1961, Galbraith broached the idea of a trip to India by JKB. JFK applauded the idea according to Galbraith’s memoirs and when he talked to Jackie about this, she was enchanted and wanted to travel in October/November, the following month. Thus Nov 20^th was planned as the date for the private and informal trip of Jackie to India accompanied by her sister princess Lee Radziwill (Some trivia - do you know that Onasis was Lee’s boyfriend and eventually her elder sister Jackie married her later?). Meeting Nehru on Oct 28^th to confirm the invitation, Galbraith notes that Nehru is equally delighted and insists Jackie stay in his house for part of the duration. By then, JFK is troubled over many other matters, the Cuban Bay of Pigs incidents, Vietnam and the USSR.

On Nov 6^th, a moody Nehru visits Washington with Indira in tow and the meeting and discussions did not amount to much, in fact Nehru had lost all interest midway. JKB, a bit miffed postponed her visit to January. Incidentally, as a souvenir of the visit, the US announced help to set up IIT Kanpur.

Soon preparations start for Jackie’s trip but the Indian protocol organizers are alarmed that Jackie wants to visit Konark. They are absolutely worried about the prospect of a wrong photograph of hers in a hugely pornographic ambience. In the midst of this Yuri Gagarin visits Delhi for a reception, which Galbraith attends. The play ‘Passage to India’ had just opened on Broadway and people in America are getting a better feel of India. At this point of time the Goa incident takes place.

This became a problem for the US since Dulles had already taken a stand by agreeing with the Portuguese foreign minister that Goa was a Portuguese province and not a colony. Though Galbraith did not agree with this basis, he tried to persuade Nehru not to use force. The Portuguese even suggested that Pakistan move some troops to scare the Indians and dissuade them from going into Goa. In a military operation led by Gen Candeth, on 18^th and 19^th December 1961, Indian troops capture Goa with little resistance and no causalities. The governor-general of Portuguese India surrenders.

Cables pour in from America asking Galbraith to get Americans out of troubles way from Goa.Galbraith wittily responds that there was just one person there other than some reporters and that they would be better off in Goa than at the New Jersey turnpike, on an average day. JFK tells BK Nehru in private that India should have done it 15 years ago instead of preaching morality to US for 15 years. He compares it to the incident when the priest is caught coming out of the brothel door.

Indians in the Delhi bureaucracy worry on rumors that JBK’s trip might be cancelled. Menon approaches the Americans for military equipment as he is worried about the Chinese on the border. Galbraith recommends that JBK delay her trip and cut it short to give the right counter message to India. In the meantime Galbraith falls sick with an infected sinus for a few days and is recuperating in Switzerland. During this, Pakistan tried to raise a ruckus by bringing up Kashmir at the Security Council. Kennedy warns Galbraith that he has no idea what traveling around with Jackie would be like and suggests that Galbraith take a breather in Florida before the event. Krishna Menon remarks in good humor that Galbraith is becoming too pro Indian (Sadly Menon has no idea what is coming – more about it another day)…

Republic day is on and JKB delays her trip by a week. Galbraith worries about all the work in rearranging schedules and despairs on the thousands of rupees spent. A huge number of animals arrive from America for the Delhi Zoo, perhaps there just in case JKB falls homesick.

Nehru in the meantime has decorated his hallway with picture of his strolling with JKB, according to Galbraith, he is already in love. Krishna Menon is out of town campaigning and so the capital is slightly pro American. The embassy worries about trifles like flowerbed lighting for JKB’s dinner, should they be floating Diwali candles or flashing lights? Two tiger cubs are placed in the house (Gerry Gerald’s house – duly repainted and refurnished for the occasion) JBK was to occupy, just in case she wants to pet them. A rehearsal dinner is carried out.

March 13^th – JKB arrives and the car meant to take the ambassador is locked out, with the keys inside. Here in USA, they would have AAA take care of it by sliding a flat blade through the window, but in Delhi they had no such option and a Mercedes was sent. JKB arrived in an Air India plane, disembarked in a radioactive pink suit accompanied by Lee, a personal maid and a secret service team. Nehru, Indira, Menon and a ‘million’ children received them. More people lined up than did for Lyndon Johnson.

They meet President Rajendra Prasad, a remarkably uncommunicative man, then walkabout in the Moghul gardens, lay roses at the Rajghat and go to the chancery to meet the embassy staff. A lovely lunch follows at the Raj Bhavan where S Radhakrishnana VP and Nehru kept Jackie in good humor with their entertaining talk. The next day she is moved to the PM’s house as a guest and goes riding which is her pet hobby, doing well, but Bubbles the prince of Jaipur has a dreadful fall from his horse. The guests are set in a flower petal canopied area. Singing and dancing follow at Nehru’s house, and Jackie in a turquoise dress glows amidst gorgeous Indian women in glittering sarees, a stunning array, as reported. Jackie then visits Agra in the presidential train, posing for photographs that have since then became famous. They also visited the AIMS aided by USA.

Like always things did not go right next, the plane that was to take Jackie to Benares had a problem and within no time the IAF sent a plane, and a few others were also made available, but Jackie chose to go by train. She loved them and had previously got herself photographed next to an engine with its driver in Agra. There was alarm when a ‘Made in Poland’ label was spotted in the photo frame, but it was shrugged off.

The Benares trip was quite a crowded event where she purchased silk material for a Presidential coat and got photographed next to the Ashoka pillar, visited a Buddhist temple and as joked by Galbraith, passed on the opportunity to die in Benares and go straight to heaven. Later they flew to Udaipur. The main palace was where they settled for the evening while the lake palace on the Pichola Lake was being converted into a hotel. And that was where she got christened the America maharani, by the thousands of screaming children. Perhaps their teacher taught them. Jackie wanted to give the secret service the slip and meet the children, but the Indian police refused permission. Jaipur presented problems when the maharajah took off with Jackie, as he was a friend of Lee’s and left the official entourage behind. Later they wanted to take her to the city palace, a private residence but this would not be quite right. Eventually this was arranged and Galbraith gets fascinated by the vivacious maharani – Gayatri Devi.

The next day is the grand gala which goes off splendidly after a final visit to the Nehru household where Holi was celebrated and where she applied a tikka on his forehead and Nehru doing likewise. The day after she flies off to Lahore to be a guest of Pakistan and Ayub Khan. She took away some jeweled brocade and some handbags from Benares, too expensive for her plans and the newspapers reported that Jackie spent $600 in less than 5 minutes.

Jackie met Galbraith later in USA, presented him with a well reported kiss at the airport and thanked him profusely for a beautiful trip to India. Galbraith, happy with his ambassadorial success, returned and went off on a trip to Kerala. Meeting Nehru later, he found the photo had been moved to Nehru’s upstairs sitting room – that of his walking arm in arm with Jackie in the white house garden. So much from the Ambassadors diary. Later he wrote – When Mrs Kennedy came to N Delhi in March of 1962, Nehru went to the airport to greet her and at the earliest opportunity moved her from the quarters we had contrived, to his own house. There, she had her sister occupied the apartment once inhabited by Edwina Mountbatten, and a great Nehru favorite, Nehru did not fail to tell of the earlier tenant, and he devoted himself fully to his guests instruction and enjoyment. As the resident expert, I was commissioned to buy an 18^th century miniature to be presented to her by the prime minister.

Enroute her return, Jackie met the British queen and had a delightful English lunch. Back in America, she talked incessantly of her trip to India.

The world was soon on the brink of a nuclear war, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. It was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. After a critical period, Khrushchev finally pulled back stating “If there is no intention to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this”.

In an effort to prevent this from happening again, a direct telephone link between the White House and the Kremlin was established; it became known as the “Hotline.”

A couple of years later, Nehru collapsed on the floor of the Lok Sabha. This visit by Jaqueline was as they say, perhaps the last spring in his life….

Jackie left and Delhi went back to what it was, a great big dusty bureaucratic capital full of backbiting politicians. While they argued, the Chinese took a bite off the North East, jolted the Indian mindset and alarmed the world. With only UAE supporting India and the other NAM nations desisting from condemning China, the lofty NAM ideal of Nehru disintegrated. As John Scofield of National Geographic wrote - India’s cherished neutrality lay shattered—perhaps forever—and the nation was united as never before. The arms race in the subcontinent was soon to begin.  

Mukesh and Rafi became famous, Lata got her Filmfare award for Kahi deep jale kahe dil, Bandini with Dharmendra won the national award and actress Sreedevi, my favorite actress was born while I was packed off to a kindergarten in Calicut.

I just heard that India and USA will soon establish a direct hotline between the respective heads of state.

Some Tidbits

Jackie carried 48 pairs of gloves to remain clean in India. Two lady reporters carry, in addition to typewriters, hatboxes containing wigs, and three take notes while wearing little white gloves.

Jackie never forgot how elegant the women in India looked in their diaphanous saris gracefully draped across the contours of their bodies. A friend of Jean Kennedy Smith, Jackie's sister-in-law, remembers seeing Jackie wearing a sari at a winter party held in the Smith townhouse in Manhattan in the 80’s, a cotton pastel sari - turquoise & cream flecked with gold while others had jackets and coats. There was the time when sari based dresses worn by Jackie pervaded America according to Tina Santi Flaherty. Flaherty wrote. “Extremely feminine, this flattering garment is both demure and seductive at the same time. Jackie decided that the style suited her.”

Jackie, in particular, disliked Nehru’s daughter, Indira, who accompanied her father to Washington. Referring to a decision by JFK to separate the men from the women during dinner, Jackie said of Indira: "Well, of course, she hated that. She liked to be in with the men. And she is a real prune -- bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman. You know, I just don't like her a bit. It always looks like she's been sucking a lemon.”

During the Indo China border war, JFK became popular in India when he ordered the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal to help India in the event of an invasion by Chinese forces. He also apparently had plans to deploy US forces stationed in the Philippines to assist India should the war expand. Historians have suggested that China’s quick ceasefire may have been the result of such threats made by the U.S. against Beijing. In a May 1963 National Security Council meeting, contingency planning on the part of the United States in the event of another Chinese attack on India was discussed. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor advised the president to use nuclear weapons should the Americans intervene in such a situation. McNamara stated "Before any substantial commitment to defend India against China is given, we should recognize that in order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons. Any large Chinese Communist attack on any part of that area would require the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S., and this is to be preferred over the introduction of large numbers of U.S. soldiers." After hearing this and listening to two other advisers, Kennedy stated "We should defend India, and therefore we will defend India”.

When the Indian government hear that Jackie was going to Pakistan later, they rescinded the offer to pay for the rooms occupied by the secret service. The agents who had spent all their allowances on gifts were left in a quandary and scrounged for the rest of the trip.

Jackie carried Cowhide Leather framed pictures from US. They were replaced with Indian made silver frames when it was made clear that it was not a good idea to make such a present, insulting the cow, a revered animal in India.

William Kuhn writing about Jackie notes that Lee found Nehru sensual and that – The sexiest thing about Nehru was that he made Jackie laugh.

JKB was gifted two paintings in India. The painting ‘Lovers watching rain clouds’ dated 1780 was willed by her to her friend Rachel Bunny Melon. A second miniature ‘Gardens of the Palace of the Rajah’ was also gifted to Bunny.

After JFK died, JKB became a book editor for Doubleday in New York. In later days her protégé would prove to be an Indian, Naveen Patnaik. They published a book ‘A second paradise’ on Indian artwork.

JKB visited India again in 1984, this time as Jackie Onassis. John Kennedy her son, was in India studying Indian culture and history at the Delhi University.

References

A life in our times – JK Galbraith

Ambassador’s journal – JK Galbraith

Indian summer – Alex Von Tunzelmann

Mrs Kennedy and me – Clint Hill

Pics – from the net thanks to the uploaders….

Life photographs of the visits 

Various Videos of the visit

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

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AM Nair – Ronin extraordinaire….

Nairsan - An Indian in Manchuria, China and Japan

Many a hotel in Kerala serves chiggen manjuri (Chicken Manchurian) or Gobi manjuri (Cauliflower Manchurian) these days and you will see that it is relished with gusto by the finger slurping Malayali, wrapping it inside bits of Malabar Porotta. Of course Ayappan Pillai Madhavan Nair, the subject of our story was not the one who brought it to Kerala from Manchuria, for it was apparently conceived by one Nelson Wang of Calcutta (owner of China Garden Bombay) in 1975, using Indian spices.

So what has AM Nair got to do with Manchuria? Then again many won’t even know there was once a state called Manchuria, for it does not exist today. Some people may remember Nair as the Nairsan of Japan, purveyor of Indira curry powder and late owner of the Indian restaurant in the trendy Ginza area of Tokyo, but his exploits during the World War II are legendary, if not in public, at least in the intelligence circles where he was known as the Manchukuo Nair. So I will now go on to narrate to you some of the exploits of this interesting man from Neyyatinkara - Travancore, son of Aramuda Iyengar and Lakshmi Amma…

After schooling at Model school Trivandrum, and later the Srimmolavilasm School at Vanchiyoor, Nair was drawn into the vortex of the anti-British freedom movement in the 1920’s. He got into trouble leading student marches and was quickly listed as a trouble maker by the British. In order to get him out of troubles way, Nair’s well to do father decided to send him for Civil engineering studies in Japan, following the footsteps of his brother who had earlier completed a fisheries degree from the Sapparo University. Nair’s degree in engineering was to be done in Kyoto.

This was how he ended up meeting the wanted revolutionary Rash Behari Bose who had fled British India and settled down in Japan. A powerful Japanese extreme right nationalist leader Mitsuru Toyama had taken Bose under his wings and sheltered him in the house of the Soma’s. Soon their daughter was married off to Bose and Bose had taken on Japanese nationality. Bose was the first to lead the anti-British movement from Japan.

Rash Behari Bose

Nair was always under British observation, but that petered off to an extent and he soon became fluent in Japanese and excelled in his studies to graduate in 1932. After this he plunged headlong into the anti-British movement, touring around Japan and giving speeches as well as writing for publications. During this period, he built up excellent contacts in the top circles of the Japanese bureaucracy and military, all of which was to stand him in good staid in the days to come.

Nair was initially planning to return to Kerala, but found out that the British were waiting or him to get back, to put him behind bars and this information from Kerala made him stay back in Japan. Back in India, Nair’s family acting on the advice of Sir CP declared AM Nair dead and divided up his remaining properties. This resulted in Nair, a person who had only Indian freedom foremost in his mind, living in Japan and concentrating his activities on the Indian freedom movement from this far away corner of the world.

A little Central Asian history has to be narrated to set the following scene. If you recall, there existed a 4,000 odd mile silk road many centuries back and it was on this road that camels and mules plied, laden with wool, silk, spice or whatever was needed along the route. The profitable venture took a turn for the worse when the Ottoman Turks became powerful and seized Constantinople or todays Istanbul, in 1453 and declared a trade embargo on the West. To get around it, a sea route was established by the Portuguese after Vasco da Gama successfully sailed around Africa to Calicut. Following this Magellan and others went around India to Chinese ports later. The seaborne Indian Ocean trade had become the new norm. The people who were most affected were the Muslim trading families on the land route in Central Asia and of course the Muslim traders dealing with Malabar ports. For now, we will confine ourselves to the Mongols on the silk route.

In Japan, population was increasing and expansionist tendencies were discussed. Korea was already under them. Now their eyes were on the state of Manchuria (Manzhou), with China on the south, Mongolia on the west, Russia in the north and Korea on the North east. In the late 14^th century, the Mings were in control of the territory, but in 1644 the Qing Manchus took control of Beijing. By 1858, it again changed hands and became Russian controlled. By 1904, the Japanese had taken over and exercised control over Inner or Southern Manchuria. Manchuria was noted for its abundant mineral and coal reserves, and its soil suited for soy and barley production. For pre–World War II Japan, Manchuria was therefore an essential source of raw materials and needed for Japan’s war cause. This inner Manzhou was otherwise known as Manchukou or Manchuria. China and Japan quibbled incessantly over the area and its administration.

Japan at that time was still smarting from how it got boxed into signing the naval treaty in 1921-22, though it had done so amidst intrigues and much wrangling. In 1931, Chinese expelled Japanese supported Korean workers from Manchukuo and a Japanese intelligence officer Nakumura was killed at Mukden. The Mukden bomb incident on the railway line followed, and the Japanese army blaming the Chinese and utilizing the situation, moved in and occupied Manchuria. Korea in those days was a Japanese colony and the infamous Japanese Kwantung army was based in Manchukou and controlling the place.

Manchuria had become Japanese territory by now, and Pu-yi of the Qing dynasty (the Qings who had previously defeated the Ming’s and taken control of China) was kept as the titular emperor. The imperialist tendencies of Japan were not popular and the rest of the world was watching these steps warily.

In China, the Xin Hai or Scarlet winter revolution had overthrown the Qing emperors and a republic was born. Sun Yat-Sen was elected president and the capital was moved from Nanjin to Beijing. Soon after this Yuan Shikai took over from Sun Yat-Sen. Anti-Manchu movements started and a new leader Mao Zedong was slowly becoming heard in the midst of the Bolshevik movement in Russia. In 1919, anti-Japanese protests took place in China. Mao in the meantime was heavily influenced by communism and soon became a member and officer. By 1923, he was elected to the party committee, taking up residence in Shanghai. When party leader Sun Yat-sen died in May 1925, he was succeeded by a rightist, Chiang Kai-shek, who initiated moves to marginalize the position of the Communists. Soon Mao and Chiang were to fight each other for supremacy.

In the meantime, the many thousand Japanese in Shanghai were starting to feel nervous about the Chinese intrigues and so the Japanese deputed a large number of troops, mainly from Manchuria, for their comfort. They fought the Chinese and ousted them out of Shanghai, in what was known as the Nanking massacre. In the melee an American aircraft painted with Chinese colors was shot down. The League of Nations got involved and appointed a commission under the Earl of Lytton to enquire.

The commission did its work and declared that the Kwantung army did have a hand in Manchurian aggression, but at the same time did not accept the status of Manchuria as a separate state outside the suzerainty of China. The furious Japanese pulled out of the League of Nations. Manchuria was critical for the Japanese, as a supplier of raw material and Japan had held Manchuria stable while there was chaos in the rest of China and had kept the Soviets at bay. Japan retaliated with an anti-Lytton movement and Nair was quickly involved in that and promulgated the Asia for Asians theme, raising the ire of the British, yet again. This was all in 1932-33 period.

This was when Nair decided to step into the Manchurian cauldron. In his own words, Nair says it was to help his class mate and friend Nagao set up the Manchukuo administration and to profess the Indian independence movement, but Manchukuo to me seemed an unlikely place to fight it singlehandedly, for there were hardly 20 Indian families in all, comprising Sindhi’s and a few Tamilian jewelers. Nair organized the Asian conference in Dairen with Mahendra Pratap in tow and later based himself in Hsinking and learnt a smattering of Mongolian, all financed by the South Manchurian railway. Nair had one other objective in mind, to sabotage British trade activity as much as he could, himself. Not directly under control of any Japanese officer or department, Nair was akin to a Japanese Ronin.

Now what is a Ronin? A Ronin was a samurai with no lord or master and was seen during the feudal period (1185–1868) of Japan. A samurai became master-less from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege. The samurai incidentally is like a medieval Malabar Nair, licensed to fight and kill.

Teh Wang

Anti-British propaganda in Northern China and Inner Mongolia was the next target for Nair and this was planned amidst his administration set up and consultations with the emperor Pu-Yi. One thing Nair had noticed was the flourishing wool trade over the silk route, terminating in the Sea port of Tientsin which was under British Control. In fact caravans from southerly Tibet and North westerly Alashan were converging at Pao-tao before moving on to the sea port. Nair discovered that all the wool was later shipped to Manchester and Lancashire. Recalling Gandhi’s boycott of British goods, Nair decided to see if he could somehow stop or reduce the wool trade. An important link in this was the Mongol Prince Teh Wang (Demchugdongrub) based at Sunit and soon Nairsan befriended him and gave this simple local chieftain a class on the scenario going on. He also got him on the Japanese side, thereafter.

Upon receiving letters of introduction and assistance from Teh Wang, Nair travelled westwards for 4 weeks on camel-back to Ujino, and thence for Alashan in the Gobi desert. But it was not so easy and to pass off as a lay person, Nair donned the disguise of a religious Tibetan monk – a Lama Rimpoche. He had another reason for this, to avoid getting laid by the Mongol women (many of whom were STD carriers) who were highly desirous of getting a child fathered by a monk, but they would stay clear of a senior Rimpoche. And so, Nair went about his spy work, questioning traders and so on, trying to get the details of the wool trade, and managed not to get laid…

Much of the wool (Marco Polo mentioned it and even today you can get Alashan Cashmere) did originate at Alashan. To the west of Alashan is Lop Nur. From Alashan, Nair travelled back to Ujino and spent a few days there, playing Mahjong and doing not much else. His next plan was hazardous, for he wanted to travel westwards to Hami and Urumchi and think of going further southwards to Tibet. The Ujino king warned him against it, as there were bandits around, but Nair in his exploratory enthusiasm decided to plod on. He did reach Hami, but was soon waylaid by a gun toting Chinese bandit who relived him of what little money (50 coins) he had.

Inner Mongolia

Nair’s Japanese friends in Manchukuo had by now (it had been a 6 month expedition) come to the conclusion that he was dead and completed his death rites and a snake party. When he turned up suddenly, Nair had a tough time convincing them that his heavily bearded unkempt lama façade was actually himself. Anyway he got back to Hsinking, safe and sound, and everybody celebrated his rebirth with gusto.

It was during this trip that Nair discovered the presence of many Chinese Muslim (Uighur?) tribal traders who controlled the wool trade. They would procure the wool and trade them on a barter system for grains (Wheat, millet), cotton cloth, chop-sticks, implements, tobacco and so on. The caravanserais were also owned by Chinese Muslims. Nair decided to head to Tokyo and apprise others about the situation in Manchukuo and Mongolia. But Japan was tense, with martial law virtually clamped over the city due to some rebellious acts. In any case, the government officials stated that he was free to pursue the matter on his own and that he would be provided with all support & finances for the plan. Nair convinced Japan to step in and buy all the wool at the marshaling location which was Pao-tao, but this was to be done only after he had convinced the traders to divert the supplies to the new buyers.

A check on this matter provided the following information from an Australian newspaper report which stated – Mongolia is the best wool growing land in Asia and Mongolia has been marked down as the home farm for the Tokyo mills.

So how did Nair fight what he called, his single handed economic war in 1936? Well to execute that part of the plan, he decided to don yet another disguise, this time as a mullah (Muslim religious priest) from India touring Mongolia. With the help of Colonel Kuo, a Muslim officer in the Kwantung army, the Mullah Nair now trained himself in perfecting Islamic rituals and did a crash course on the Koran. What further aided him was the fact that an abscess had necessitated a circumcision a couple of years back, in 1934. Now sure that he could pass off as a Muslim, Nair started the second part of his reconnaissance mission, in the guise of a Mullah, heavily bearded. They left in 1937 to Pao-tao and met the many traders involved. Together with Col Kuo, he helped form a Muslim wool merchants association and convinced them to sell the wool at the same price to the Japanese instead of the British. This was how the wool delivery from Mongolia to Tientsin got adversely affected by Nair’s intervention. Nair returned to Hsinking in 1938, by now marked up as an even more dangerous Indian in Japan, by the British. Known officially as a liaison man in Manchukuo, he was actually ranked equivalent to a Lt Colonel in the Japanese military - intelligence section.

Things were however not going too well in Manchukuo and Korea and there was a Russian invasion threat hanging in the air. As the Manchukuo army became heavy handed, the next task was to create a buffer zone between Manchukuo and Russia by penetrating the Mongol population on the Russian side of the border. Nair’s next task was to work with one of those leaders named Lee Kai-ten in assuring support for Japan, which he managed admirably. The boryaku or espionage school set up to train willing Koreans was headed by Lee and it had Nair as one of its ‘un-committed’ instructors.

Nair and Janaki

It was in 1938 that Nair got married to Iku Asami, a Japanese girl from an aristocratic family. She was renamed Janaki Amma and again they went back to Manchukuo where Nair got involved in a newly started university for administration students, as a visiting professor. But things went steadily downhill as the army got mauled in a skirmish with the Soviets in 1939. Things were not going too well in the Chinese areas controlled by the Japanese and Nair took on a counter-intelligence trip to those places as well as to Peking (Beijing) and Nanking (Nanjing). 

There he was involved with Eric Teichman, a British consular representative, who was intent on mapping a land route from China via Tibet to Delhi. In 1943 Teichman began his journey from Chongqing. Nair did try to delay or stop Teichman, by blowing up some gas stations on the way so as to halt or slow the trip, but was not successful in the end. After caravanning as far as Lanzhou, his truck continued along the outer Silk Road, across the Tarim basin, and over the Pamir Mountains to New Delhi.

Nair’s last task in Manchukuo was to infiltrate the white Russian community. He provides a very interesting explanation on how he handled Vodka drinking sessions with Russians, by first drinking an amount of olive oil to remain sober and to even outdrink a Russian. Nair completed this task as well, adroitly.

This article will not go on to explain AM Nair’s other exploits (For that I encourage you to read AM Nair’s autobiography), but I will surmise them quickly. After getting back to Tokyo, Nair finds the Japanese war machine in full swing and Rash Behari Bose ill, with little time in his hands. Nair takes to making radio broadcasts on the NHK. The WWII has started and Japan had marched into Singapore and Malaya. Upon Nair’s specific instructions, the larger Indian populace is spared of any Japanese brutality.

The Indian Independence league is formed and Nair is entrusted with organizing all kinds of activities.  Shivaram becomes a friend, Mohan Singh does not and all kinds of issues are created by the sparring Indians in the independence fray. The INA is created and KP Keshava Menon takes Mohan Singh’s side. Behari Bose is too ill with TB and passes on the baton to NSC Bose who is drafted in from Germany where he has not had much success. The INA is integrated with the Japanese army and the army loses heavily in the U-Go campaign at Imphal – Kohima. In the INA there is large scale corruption and soon Behari Bose passes away. Keshava Menon is arrested in Singapore at NSC Bose’s behest, and Shivaram resigns from the IIL. Japan is routed in Burma and A-bombed in August 1945. It surrenders and MacArthur moves in by September to Tokyo.

Subash Chandra Bose vanishes, so also the vast amount of gold and silver as well as currency collected from the masses in the name of INA. Nair is not convinced and feels that Subash’s accomplices are to blame and that there is some hanky panky involved.

Nairsan became a manager of a PX department store for American servicemen after the war. Life went on, Nair is later involved in the 19521-52 treaty with Japan which we talked about in my earlier article, and the independent Indian government has nothing to offer him in return for all the work he had done. However an Indian representative does sound him out - If he could help mediate with the Chinese - post 1962, after the war. Nair refuses. He was a Manchukuo Nair, but he will not be a China Nair, as he says……

Nair never got the recognition he deserved, and driven by his own convictions was always an Indian at heart. For all his services to India, he got no recognition… According to TP Sreenivasan who met him often, Nairsan expected to be appointed the first Indian ambassador to Japan, but the highest post he was offered was that of the consul general in Kobe. Later he decided to become an entrepreneur.  

And that was how he got to starting the Nair restaurant eventually…. In the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, no Indian visitor could have missed the small Indian restaurant in Higashi Ginza in Tokyo, right across the Kabuki theatre. Nair continued to visit Trivandrum often, till his death in 1990, aged 85. His sons Gopalan and Vasudevan continue to live in Japan.

People ask me how Malayalees end up in the most obscure places and thrive. Well, if you read Nair’s exploits, you can see yet another of those from Kerala, driven by pure tenacity and conviction. An extraordinary man, who loved his land, who loved his people, but was perpetually exiled in another. Then again, he remained with his benefactors the Japanese, in their time of need, and remained true to them ever after.

No wonder the Japanese respected AM Nair.

Epilogue

Manchukuo does not exist anymore. On 8 August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and invaded Manchukuo from Outer Manchuria and Outer Mongolia. Emperor Pu-Yi abdicated and was captured by the Soviets and eventually extradited to China. From 1945 to 1948, Inner Manchuria served as a base area for the People's Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. Nowadays the name Manchuria is not used, for it is NE China.

The military in Manchukuo were terrible people actually and their acts, especially those of the unit 731 dealing with human experimentation is unbelievably horrible. It is possible that Nair knew about it and he does mention that the Kumantung army were not above reprieve. The Japanese army were also involved in untold brutalities in Shanghai and other SE Asian places which they conquered during or before the WWII. The Indian population in Malaya, Burma and Singapore may have escaped much of the brutality thanks to AM Nair.

The Pao-Tao wool association disintegrated when the Japanese army which starting to feel invincible when the WWII started, wised up and decided to only pay a fraction of what was originally agreed by them with Nair.

Not very many people even know who Rash Behari Bose is, but instead believe that Subash Chandra Bose was the one and only person behind the IIL and the INA. Many of his dealings and connections with the Japanese were mainly through AM Nair.

As I said before, Alashan wool is still popular.

Lop Nur became the site of Chinese nuclear tests, and how India got involved with that is a very interesting story. I will write about it soon.

Nair’s son runs the Nair restaurant. Indira Curry powder is still popular. To clarify, Behari Bose was one of the first made curries in his father in law’s restaurant/bakery, where he was in hiding.

Sivaram wrote a book ‘Road to Delhi’ where he talks well about AM Nair

Teh Wang lived on, braving many regimes. His story can befound here. 

Teichman completed his last road trip and flew back to England, where a few days later, at the age of 60, he was killed by an American GI and his pal, who were poaching on his estate. When Teichman confronted them, he was shot and killed.

Nothing is known about Lee kai-ten, perhaps he is in N Korea or dead by now. Mohan Singh did well, following Indian independence, he served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House) of the Indian Parliament. Mahendra Pratap returned to India in 1946 and faded into obscurity.

Malayalees will continue to love Chicken Manchurian, but the fact remains that many do not know Manchukuo Nair, the only Malaylee who lived for so many years in Manchuria. Perhaps that at least will change for the few who read this……

References

An Indian freedom fighter in Japan: memoirs – AM Nair

Subhas Chandra Bose: A Biography - Marshall J. Getz (Pg 137)

Words, Words, Words: Adventures in Diplomacy - Sreenivasan, T. P. (Pg 29)

The man who knew Netaji – TP Sreenivasan 

Nair's Restaurant - Ginza - Time Out Tokyo

Murgi lunch at Nair’s restaurant  

The Road to Delhi - M. Sivaram

Pics - from the net - thanks and ack to original uploaders...

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2015

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