Colonel Cyril J Stracey - I.N.A – A remarkable man

Sept 6^th 1945, Singapore – A small crowd is gathered in front of an Azad Hind monument at Connaught Drive. As Indian Engineers position guncotton charges, Major Donald Brunt (Royal Engineers) is seen checking the fuses. The fuse is lit and the charges explode. Troops of the 17^th Dogra Regiment push over the monument (marked ‘Itmad’ on its larger face) with poles; a civilian crowd claps and cheers enthusiastically; while a Malay policeman observes. The clock of the nearby tower, shows 6pm. A burly Indian Naik (corporal) of the 5^th Indian Division, with an Mk 5 Sten gun with a bayonet fitted, is standing together with two other soldiers, looking on. A guard of honor of the 17^th Dogra Regiment is dressing back a few paces as a brigadier in a kilt (Is it Brigadier Patrick McKerron?) approaches and takes the salute. The brigadier spoke later, perhaps with enthusiasm after this important symbol in the memory of INA soldiers, built by one Col C J Stracey, had been finally demolished.

But Pat McKerron or Mountbatten, who ordered the demolition, could not have predicted their own flight out of India, just two years later. Now, who could this Stracey be? To get to his story, we have to traverse a long road back in time, to the last stages of the 2^nd World War and the years preceding Indian Independence.

Sometimes you just stumble on the beginnings of a story while researching another and that is how I came across the tale of a fascinating character, an Anglo Indian named Cyril John Stracey, who served as a senior officer in the INA. That itself should evoke some curiosity, an Anglo Indian in a nationalist Indian outfit?  It was not easy to unearth details of his life, but as it emerged gradually, bit by bit, it turned out to be a heartwarming tale, sandwiched and hidden between better known stalwarts in the INA and those of his other illustrious brothers, the two who served in the British bureaucracy - the ICS, the Forest Service and the third who rose to occupy the apex position in the Madras Police.

I have always admired the Anglo Indian community, a community which just happened. Some in British India reviled them for their leanings to things and thoughts West, many pitied or ridiculed their dual existence but others watched enviously from afar at their trysts with music and dance, their connections with the railways and their lighter outlook on life. Many said ‘but naturally’, when they moved off to Britain and Australia, seeking easier acceptance from the paternal races that created them, moving off after feeling a certain animosity in Independent India. There were a few though, who made India their home fighting through and shining as brilliant diamonds.

Eric Stracey did just that as he rose through the ranks to become the first DGP of Police in erstwhile Madras. His books on his Anglo Indian upbringing in Bangalore and his life in the police forces are interesting, but this is not his story, it is the story of his lesser known elder brother Cyril John Stracey. The Stracey progeny were in all 11 (four died as infants), four boys and three girls who lived their lives mostly in India and each of them were examples of how one could serve on public services. The eldest Patrick started the wildlife preservation society of India, Ralph became an ICS officer, Eric joined the police, Doreen became a doctor, Margaret a nurse and Winnifred, a teacher.

The Stracey’s affair with India actually started from the early days of the EIC when John and Edward from Cork came to India. Interestingly John worked at the offices of Hyder Ali as the British commercial agent representing the Bombay factory while Edward worked for the EIC at Madras, a bunch who were fighting Hyder. Both married Portuguese Indian girls, perhaps from Cochin and later worked for the Nizam of Hyderabad while their children continued working for the British who had by then started to govern India.

Their father Daniel a Catholic a district forest officer (mother Ethel a protestant), had a connection to Malabar, for he was born in Chittoor Palghat. Many other family connections can be seen with Malabar, Eric spent a couple of terms with the MSP at Malappuram, post the Moplah revolts. Ralph’s daughter married a Malayali, Pat married Peace Mammen a Syrian catholic from Kerala, Pat’s best friend was Ramabhadran, related to the Kollengode Raja’s.

The Stracey children moved from Andhra and grew up in Richmond town Bangalore, then a quiet and cool town with a cantonment and an Anglo Indian minority. Cyril who was born in 1915 at Kurnool, turned out to be quite different, one who chased adventure and traversed the world. He did his schooling in St Joseph’s Bangalore, but did not complete his intermediate and went on to join the Indian Military Academy in 1935 as a gentleman cadet. Eric records the difficulties the family had to endure in meeting Cyril’s 2 ½ year course expenses at Dehradun (Pat deferred his marriage to help pay for his younger brother and their mother had to give up their home in Bangalore and move to Rangoon as a house guest with her brother in law) after their father passed away in 1932. Other family friends also chipped in with support as Cyril was not granted a scholarship which he deserved, for that was awarded instead to the son of a well-placed ICS officer. Eric recalls that Cyril as a youngster was actually more artistically inclined than soldierly, could draw and paint well, and could play the piano with some proficiency.

The IMA’s newly graduated officers were not considered on par with the Sandhurst graduated ones for they were Indian commissioned officers, not the king’s commissioned officers, who were treated highly. ICO’s had a lower pay and were only supposed to replace the VCO’s such as Risaldars, Jamedars and Subedars. The first two terms made them physically fit, adept in English, accounting and in the next three terms, they were provided strategic and tactical training. Camps in the plains and mountains provided them exposure to difficult terrains and tactics. After graduation (Gen Bewoor, Army Chief was his batch mate), Cyril was attached to the West Kent’s at Lucknow (This posting, according to Eric Stracey, with a British battalion was a compulsory part of his initiation to regimental life before he joined his regular Indian battalion). His formal posting was with the 1^st battalion of the 14^th Punjab regiment at Bannu at the North West frontier.

In Feb 1941 the battalion was deputed to Burma. This battalion later became part of the 11^th Indian division’s 15^th brigade and was in Sept 1941 tasked with preparing the defenses at Jitra on the Malay-Thai border anticipating a potential Japanese invasion.

On Dec 7^th, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging America into the 2^nd World War. The Japanese attack was intended to destroy the pacific fleet, thereby preventing it from interfering with an intended Japanese conquest of key SE Asian countries such as Malaya, Thailand and Burma, the latter for oil and food resources. On Dec 8^th, the Japanese invasion forces landed at Kota Baru (actually 70 minutes before Pearl Harbor was hit, so that was the place where the first attack occurred). Despite their heavy initial resistance, British forces were eventually forced to retreat to their defenses in front of the airfield. On 11^th December 1941, the Japanese started bombing Penang. Jitra and then Alor Star fell into Japanese hands on 12^th December 1941. The British had to retreat to the south. On 16^th December 1941, the British left Penang to the Japanese, who occupied it on 19^th December. By 31^st January 1942, the whole of Malaya had fallen into Japanese hands.

In the meantime the conquest of Burma was underway.  On Dec 14^th the Japanese bombed Victoria point airbase, the southernmost British airfield in Burma and commenced the land based operations. Another Japanese aim was to destroy of the new Lashio Burma Road link to China. An attack or foray into India was never intended, originally.

As we saw parts of the 1^st division of the 14^th Punjab regiment were at Jitra. Mohan Singh and Cyril Stracey were part of separate but incomplete defensive positions laid around Jitra. When the Japanese arrived on the 8^th, they had solid air support and tanks. Barbed wire lines had been partially erected and some anti-tank mines laid but heavy rains had flooded the shallow trenches and gun pits. Many of the field telephone cables laid across the waterlogged ground failed to work, resulting in a lack of communication during the battle. In the Jitra attack, the Japanese decimated the under equipped British Indians who had little answer for the Japanese tanks supported from the air. The remaining British forces fled into the rubber plantations and hid. Both Mohan Singh’s and Stracey’s teams were hiding and while the former was contemplating his future, the latter was forced to assume leadership of a motely group of officers, soldiers, Gurkhas and so on, in the jungle.

C.J. Stracey

According to Stracey the ferocity of the Japanese attack forced the men to take refuge in the rubber plantations and as the lone road was taken by the Japanese, they could not venture back. The locals gave no shelter or support and eventually when the Japanese reached the location on 16^th where these men were hiding, the hungry and battered men had no choice but to surrender. They were taken to the police HQ at Alor Setar where the Japanese started to separate the Indians from the English. Stracey was initially left with the British, but when his orderly piped in that Stracey was Indian, he was moved with the Indians. It was here that Stracey met his old pal Mohan Singh and Mohan Singh updated him of the INA activities and his newfound involvement together with Pritam Singh and Fujiwara. He explained that Rash Behari Bose had arrived there from Japan and agreed on a potential tie up with the captured Indian soldiers to fight the British. Stracey was asked by Singh to explain all this to the new crowd after a cleanup operation of the town and exhort them to join the IIL as it was called.

Stracey was confused and torn, wondering what to do, for his heart was not set on cooperating with the enemy. He also noticed that some junior officers were now being awarded senior positions in the INA organization, and was a bit miffed about it. Anyway as matters took their course, Stracey did not join Mohan Singh and so was confined with other British officers in the Alor Setar jail. As the number of prisoners increased, they were moved to Taiping, then to Kuala Lumpur and finally to Singapore, which had fallen to the Japanese, in Nov 1942.

During this year of confinement, Stracey was getting disillusioned. He caught up with Mohan Singh who had by then become a general, who had after the Farrer park meeting created the first INA and recruited a great many soldiers, totaling to 16,000 or so. Stracey decided to volunteer to the INA, sick of the discriminatory attitude shown by his fellow British officers and noting that they had anyway washed their hands off the Indian soldiers and thrown them to the mercy of the Japanese. Another reason was that he saw a number of his old colleagues already serving in the INA. Stracey was tasked with leading the 10,000 odd new volunteers which included Jawans, JCO’s, Subedar majors, Subedars and Jamadars. He had to start a new army career as a 2^nd lieutenant once again!

Stracey in fact had a unique position, he in his own words ‘was the only officer who saw the INA as a germ, a mere idea and who eventually participated in its obsequies’. Not only was he with Mohan Singh at the start of the INA conceptual discussions, but was also a witness to its disbanding and the first officer to be formally picked up and arrested after the retaking of Singapore, by the Allies.

But things were not going well for Mohan Singh. The Fujiwara Kikan which was behind him had given way to the Iwakuro and Hikari Kikan’s which did not think much of Indians (or rate Indians as equals) and had other ideas. Mohan Singh had by then many other festering issues (INA recognition, use of Indians for manual labor, managing of Japanese misappropriation of Indian assets in Burma) with the Japanese over the INA recognition and issues about the tasks of the IIL. Mohan Singh’s relationship with the I Kikan as well as Rash Behari Bose turned sour resulting in him getting sidelined, dismissed and arrested and transported to Pulau Ubin, an island off Changi point.

A terminally ill Rash Behari Bose had by now decided on appointing fresh blood to lead the large INA organization, which was somewhat rudderless. It was into this vacuum that Subhas Chandra Bose stepped in, coming in from Germany. SC Bose thus took over as the new Supreme commander and recreated the so called ‘Second INA’. Stracey remained in Singapore as INA’s adjutant general (Singapore was the rear HQ while Rangoon where Bose lived, was the front HQ) and was the person responsible for the ‘A’ branch.

Accounts of his life in the INA hierarchy during the Bose days is very scarce (his family considered him lost or dead!) and Eric agrees - It was at this stage that Cyril played a prominent part as its Adjutant-General. We never questioned him about his motives, for as a family we respected each other’s personal privacy, and what notes he left behind about his INA days were only brief and purely descriptive. He rose through the ranks to become a colonel. Dr RM Kasliwal, who was Netaji’s physician states – Stracey was a smart Anglo Indian officer, a staunch nationalist, who joined the INA and became the adjutant general and Quarter master General with a rank as Colonel. He was a great organizer and a good friend and he and I shared a bungalow in Singapore. Stracey met Bose a few times and interacted with him personally. On a lighter side, he once arranged a football match where Bose kicked the ball off to start the match. He was also involved with the design of some air raid shelters.

Two incidents relate to him, one indirectly and one directly. The first is the case of the MK Durrani, an Indian POW who later turned out to be a British agent. Durrani was implicated in manipulating the newly trained spies from the Penang spy schools (they were trained and inserted in India by submarines, but as it turned out, they gave themselves up to the British, influenced by Durrani’s covert actions) and were eventually caught. Bose who was furious with this, sentenced Durrani to death. Dr Kasliwal and a few other Indians asked Bose to show some mercy and finally Bose agreed that Durrani’s life would be spared if he confessed and provided details of his mission. Durrani was thus arrested in 1944 and tortured (finger press and water boarding are mentioned), and some British investigators felt that Stracey and Kasliwal knew about this and perhaps condoned it (the case at the Red Fort involving them was dropped due to political reasons) as it was under Stracey’s watch. Incidentally, the Bidadari camp where Durrani was interred in was administered by others.

Original INA Monument Singapore

The second was in the construction of the Shaheed Smarak or INA martyr’s monument in Singapore where INA officers and contractors led by Stracey built a marble memorial on the Connaught drive, an obelisk 25 feet high, honoring the INA personnel who died. As is quoted often, C.J. Stracey, Quarter-Master General of INA produced a number of models for the memorial. Bose approved one of the models and asked Col. Stracey if he would be able to complete a sea facing structure before the British forces landed in Singapore. He built it in a record 3 weeks, racing against time to finish it before the allied forces retook Singapore from the Japanese, in 1945. The words inscribed were the motto of the INA: Unity (Etihaad), Faith (Itmad) and Sacrifice (Kurbani). The monument was built at the Esplanade just before the Japanese surrender. On 8^th July 1945, Bose laid its foundation stone. Perhaps it was an act too late, for the morale of the INA had gone down, what with the Japanese reverses, general lack of food and resources, Japanese utilization of Indians for other purposes (to fight MPAJA and at the death railway) and the INA and Jap failures at the Indian front.  But as soon as British troops re-occupied Singapore in early September 1945, they blew it up upon instructions from Mountbatten.

Stracey has this to say about the Japanese and the INA. The Japanese found in the Indian army POW’s a very useful weapon to help them achieve what they were setting out to do: the greater co-prosperity sphere of Asia. They were of course very tactful and they always quoted Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian freedom movement under the great and recognized leaders. He implies that on the ground, where it mattered the Japanese never really treated the INA as equals and that Mohan Singh was perhaps right in breaking up the first INA.

As adjutant and quarter master general, Stracey then reporting to Gen Kiani in the INA, was also responsible to coordinate the INA surrender to the British. By this time, Col CJ Stracey was, in British parlance, a JIFF (Japanese Indian or Japanese inspired fifth column). After the British had routed the INA and the Japanese, their task was to round up the JIFF’s and prosecute them to the extent possible.

Interestingly, Cyril’s brother Eric was at that time partly responsible for interrogation of JIFF suspects! He explains - By a twist of fate, I myself was engaged towards the end of the war with security intelligence at our Main Forward Interrogation Centre in East Bengal, where there was a large camp for INA prisoners captured during the fighting in Burma. Though Cyril was flown direct to Delhi from Singapore, and so did not pass through my hands as a prisoner as did some of the other INA officers after Japan surrendered, I had access to his file and classification before that, followed his latter INA career up to the time he was retaken, and was personally the subject of considerable interest to my Intelligence colleagues..

Stracey was taken to Delhi in Jan 1946 and together with a number of others were put on trial. It is a long and convoluted story with all kinds of people involved, Congress, Nehru, Patel, Bulabhai Desai, Gandhiji and so on. Proof was hard to come by, much of the documentation had been destroyed or lost and large communities including the Anglo-Indian applied pressure on the administration to disband the INA trials. Most of the INA officers were dismissed from service or de-mobbed. Colonel Prem Sahgal, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan were court-martialed. Many others were charged for torture and murder or abetment of murder. These trials attracted huge publicity, and public sympathy for the defendants who were considered patriots of India and fought for the freedom of India from the British Empire, ran high. Outcry over the grounds of the trial, as well as a general emerging unease and unrest within the British, ultimately forced the then Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck to commute the sentences of the three defendants in the first trial.

Cyril, was dismissed from the army and upon release from the Red Fort, worked for a year as Secretary of the INA Relief and Rehabilitation Committee in New Delhi, which proved of help to many refugees during the large-scale carnage at the time of partition. It was during the trials and this work that Cyril caught the eye of Nehru who impressed with the officer and his bearing, stated that he could provide him a job in the Indian Foreign Service IFS.

Perusing the Nehru papers, I came across substantial correspondence between Stracey and Nehru during the 1946-48 period. Nehru mentions about him to Patel, about Stracey’s request to archive all collected INA material, of Stracey’s request to induct all INA officers for training in the IMA ( Nehru replied that that would not be advisable as they were over age, but that he would recommend to Patel and Baldev Singh that they be appointed into state forces). He was involved with the refugee relief operations connected with the disasters of the Indian partition. Stracey was also the secretary of the goodwill mission to Ethiopia under Ammu Swaminathan (Lakshmi Menon’s mother).

Stracey repaid his debts to his family and friends from the back-pay he received after the war for his army services and POW period, and he even had a little extra which he lent to Eric so he could buy his first second hand car (a 1937 model Chevrolet released by the Air Raids Precautions service after the danger to Madras city ceased!).

Interestingly, in a fitting end, Nehru gifted Stracey a marble fragment, a part of the demolished INA monument which read ‘Subhas Ch’ after the dust had settled and India was free. This had been retrieved by a local Indian in Singapore. What happened to it later, is not known.

As promised, Nehru gave him a position in the IFS where Cyril did very well. His diplomatic career spanned through postings in Karachi, Bonn, Jakarta, as Consul-General at San Francisco, First Secretary at Washington and Chancellor in Paris, finishing with spells as ambassador to Finland and Madagascar. Reports mention him as being considered a ‘most eligible bachelor’ while in San Francisco and also of his amusing complaints about his lodgings and landlady while in Washington DC.

Eric and Cyril had purchased a small retirement home ‘Charleston” in Coonoor, where Cyril moved to after retirement from the IFS. He continued with philanthropic work and was an active member of the Coonoor branch of the AIS. His 78 rpm records, his piano and his garden gave him the solace he sought.

Eric’s retelling of his brothers last days is sad and poignant. Cyril lived on at “Charleston” until his death in November 1988, enjoying his music and his books, but keeping much to himself. Apart from a bachelor friend or two, his only company was a Marwari family, the Simrathmulls, who lived near-by. They were generous and open-hearted friends - husband, wife and five bright sons, who had him over for dinner every Sunday night and ran errands for him. (He did not keep a car in his later years and did not like going down to the bazaar in person). As a humorous sidelight, when their business ran into trouble, Cyril helped them with a loan which they duly repaid - a strange case of an Anglo-Indian, a member of a notoriously prodigal community not known for its wealth, lending money to one whose people constituted the traditional bankers and money-lenders of the north! When Cyril had a sudden and fatal heart attack, it was they who rushed him to hospital and later helped carry his coffin in a last gesture of friendship.

Eric had by then retired from his IPS position in Madras and moved off to Australia. In 1989, he returned to India to sell off their house, ‘Charleston’ in Coonoor and with that the last link the Stracey’s had to India was broken. A few educational scholarships and the Stracey Memorial School in Bangalore, provide trace memories of that family.

That my friends is the story of a very interesting man, one who stood at a very difficult crossroad and decided his direction only after much soul searching. One path would perhaps have led him to England or Australia to live there as a second class citizen, the other, the path he chose, led him to remain an Indian, in the country he lived for, and died in!

Notes

• 1      While Cyril states – I decided that I will join the INA, this thing has become a reality and why should not an Anglo Indian be part of it as well? Eric explains it differently - In Cyril’s case, predilection would have been reinforced by the pressure of his regimental peers. He was not the sort of person mindlessly to follow the natural course expected of Anglo-Indians and side automatically with the British, nor would he have wanted to incur the sneers and contempt of his other Indian colleagues for a member of a community they already regarded as lackeys of the Raj. It was these factors rather than any special feeling of nationalism that would have moved him to join the INA along with most of the other Indian officers of his battalion.
• 2.       Stracey was interrogated after he was picked up in Singapore. Kevin Noles who studied the files states - His interrogator considered that he joined in August 1942 ‘from motives of greed, ambition and pleasure-seeking’ although he conceded his ‘thorough ideological conversion’. The comments reveal more about the attitude of the interrogator attempting to comprehend the actions of an Anglo-Indian than they do about Captain Stracey himself, who seems to have been genuinely enthused by Indian nationalism and became a senior staff officer in the INA.
• 3.       The first battalion, 14^th regiment had a number of other well-known Indian origin officers. Ayub Khan, SPP Thorat, MH Kiani, Shah Nawaz Khan, Habib Ur Rahman, AIS Dara, GS Dhillon, Inayat Hassan, Mohan Singh etc.
• 4.       A number of Mohan Singh’s first INA followers who did not join the Second INA were transported by the Japanese to New Guinea and Solomon island labor camps. That is another story, for another day!
• 5.       One could ask if the Congress and Gandhiji won independence for India or was the decision by the British to leave a result of the INA movement? There are certainly many arguments supporting the latter, for the INA movement, the Red Fort trials and so on had a substantial influence on the Indian soldier in the Raj’s army and the general public. The British Empire, which was fully based on the unquestioning loyalty of the Indian armed forces, had finally been undermined by the INA trials. Once Auchinleck and the administration felt that they had lost their complete grip on and loyalty of the Indian army, they knew their cause was lost.

References

The late Cyril Stracey – A remarkable soldier and diplomat (The Review Vol 88, Feb 1989)

How I came to join the INA (Oracle Volume 4, Jan 1982) CJ Stracey

Odd man in: my years in the Indian police - Eric Stracey

Growing up in Anglo India: Eric Stracey

Interviews with Ralph, Eric and Cyril Stracey– The Centre of South Asian Studies

Netaji, Azad Hind Fauz, and After – RM Kasliwal

A remarkable family – S Muthiah Hindu April 16, 2012

Anglo Indians – S Muthiah, Harry Mcalure

Shades of white, brown and black - CVG The Hindu

The Indian national Army & Japan – JC Lebra

The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942-1945 -Peter Ward Fay

Waging War against the King’: Recruitment and Motivation of the Indian National Army, 1942-1945 – Kevin Noles

Pics – Azad Hind Monument courtesy EM Kasliwal, Cyril Stracey picture Courtesy S Muthiah, Harry Maclure

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Peace at the 38th

Indian role in defusing the Korean situation 1950-54

The 38^th parallel, the real line of latitude does not actually divide the Koreas, but in diplomatic parlance is considered to be the divider between the two. Prior to the Second World War (1910-1945) the whole of Korea was under the Japanese regime. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Americans and Russians decided to divide the country into the North and South roughly around the 38^th. The actual line of demarcation today is situated at a slight angle to the 38^th and meanders from the North to the South in a more leisurely fashion. The tensions around that line and the demilitarized zone, close to the large city of Seoul have since its creation, seesawed wildly, at times coming perilously close to nuclear confrontation between world powers. In the 50’s, one of the main peacemakers working hard to prevent a nuclear attack and larger conflict was India, a story not well known to most. The people who played a part in that tale are very familiar to us, and the story is a master class in plays, counter plays and the art of diplomacy. Today with the backdrop of the meeting which took place between Trump and Kim Jong-un and the prospect of lasting peace between the two Koreas, this story will I hope, provide an interesting aside.

The line was established in a hurry actually, for the Americans were worried that the Russians could occupy the whole of Korea after entering the war against Japan. Col Dean Rusk, was tasked with the job of drafting a line, something that he had no idea about. He states - Using a National Geographic map, we looked just North of Seoul for a convenient dividing line but could not find a natural geographical line. We saw instead the thirty-eighth parallel and decided to recommend that ... [Our commanders] accepted it without too much haggling, and surprisingly, so did the Soviets. And that was how Korea got divided! Things got complicated after the chill in the relation between the super powers, and the onset of the cold war. The UNTCOK (temporary commission on Korea) was then formed under the aegis of the UN, headed by KPS Menon. But the Soviets were firmly against it and did not allow the commission to enter the 38^th or set up elections in the North.

By the autumn of 1948 the independent states of North and South Korea had been established, pitted firmly against each other the communist North headed by Kim Il Sung and the South by Syngman Rhee. Both sides conducted independent elections, and the South’s election was supported by the UN. Following a number of deadly border skirmishes, the North Koreans launched a full-scale invasion against the south on June 25, 1950. Whether it was the North who really started it is not clear and Karunakar Gupta is of the opinion that the Indian Chairman of the UNSC did not consider the claims of the North while passing a decision favoring the South.  India’s BN Rau condemned the invasion, a decision which was not supported by Delhi’s MEA since Nehru remained under the opinion that India had abstained. During all these parlays, the Soviets were boycotting the UN over the non-inclusion of China in the UN. The US decided to provide military support to the South and Gen Mc Arthur was to lead the UN forces into Korea to help repel the North Koreans as well as to engage in a battle against communism in an Asia under transition. India refused direct involvement, but finally acceded by providing limited moral and medical support.

This was a critical phase and India’s involvement as an interlocutor in matters concerning Asia considered very important. The players on the UN scene and the ambassadors in key capitals were experienced diplomats, namely VK Krishna Menon, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, KM Panikkar, BN Rau, KPS Menon, KN Raghavan and so on, each held in high esteem. At this critical juncture, USSR offered support for India’s permanent membership if it supported the Soviets on Korea while US offered India the same to replace a possible Chinese position at the UN. Nehru rejected both proposals stating that India was opposed to these kinds of pressures to create a chasm between India and China.  Since China was not represented in the UN, India was the interlocutor between them and the West. It was to prove costly during the next four years for her relationship with USA became acrimonious and opinions vastly divided. The Americans threat of ‘you are either with us or against us’ was bandied about every now and then, as India sought to position itself as a neutral, nonaligned and Commonwealth member in the new world order. Nehru’s anti-imperialist views were viewed by America as communist, especially Delhi’s support for the PRC during the Korean War years. Over and above all that Nehru believed in the UN and its mediatory powers, more than war and with his efficient representation at the UN, sought to build up an important role as an educated mediator for sticky situations.

As Mac Arthur’s forces were poised to enter the North, the world feared that the Chinese would enter the conflict in support of the North Koreans. In Oct 1950 the Zhou Enlai summoned Panikkar and asked him to convey to the West that if the US forces did cross the 38^th, China would consider it an act of aggression and would come to the assistance of the North. The Americans at that time thought that the Chinese were bluffing and that Panikkar was panicking. Mc Arthur was tasked with destroying N Korean armed forces, but to stay clear of Soviet border or Manchuria. For a few days the UN forces advanced without resistance and the Americans believed that the Chinese had bluffed, they even jokingly called KM Panikkar as ‘panicky’.  It would be “sheer madness” for Mao to take on America, Acheson said, and the Indian warning was the “mere vaporings of a panicky Panikkar.”

But they were wrong and the Chinese who entered through Manchuria inflicted heavy damages on the US led troops. This now resulted in the UN allowing a Chinese representation to debate the issue at the UN and the Chinese called for sanction on the US for occupation of Formosa and armed intervention in Korea. As the debate became acrimonious and heated, the then US president Truman decided to force the issue by issuing a nuclear threat. Nehru conveyed through Atlee visiting Washington that an Atom Bomb drop in Korea was a no-no and requested that Gen Mc Arthur’s powers be clipped.

India then tried to pressure China into declaring a ceasefire, but did not succeed for the Chinese wanted full US withdrawal. As the matter deadlocked, Truman declared a national emergency in the US, driving up mass hysteria and panic, and China were now convinced that the Americans were now preparing for a full scale war in Korea. As the permanent powers seemed to be unable to do anything at the UN in these matters, the ‘little six’ as they were called, India, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Norway, Egypt and Ecuador tried to bring about a solution, but that effort did not take off. Eventually the commonwealth ministers met in London in Jan 1951 to discuss a fresh set of proposals agreeing to return of Formosa to China, entry of China into the UN and a cease fire in Korea. 

The Chinese seemed amenable to most of the terms but the Americans did not agree and fighting continued. The 60^th Indian Parachute Field Ambulance provided the medical cover for the operations, dropping an ADS and a surgical team and treating over 400 battle casualties apart from the civilian casualties that formed the core of their humanitarian objective. But the fighting also moved into a stalemate stage by July which resulted in the US finally requesting Soviet involvement for negotiations. During the interim Mac Arthur was relieved of his powers by an incensed Truman who later said “I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President ... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail”.

The war itself, especially the battles at Pusan, Unsan and Incheon, the involvement of USSR and China and their leaders Stalin and Mao, and the leadership of Mac Arthur etc is a subject which would involve a huge amount of text, so I will not get into the same here. The negotiations started with the first liaison meeting on 8 July 1951. The Americans considered the negotiations to be very difficult with the UN according to the US being unduly influenced by India and other neutrals. In 1952 the negotiations ground to a halt with the issue of the POW’s.

The next rounds were actually fought at the UN and involved India to a large extent. In China, Panikkar had been replaced by KN Raghavan (I hope you recall him from my previous article on the IIL in Penang). At the UN, the impeccable ‘saint’ KN Rau had been replaced by a suave Vijayalakshmi Pandit supported by the mercurial and highly impetuous VK Krishna Menon. While the Chinese insisted on the 1949 Geneva Convention implementation where the prisoner would be returned to the country of his origin, the Americans wanted the principle of voluntary repatriation to be enforced (after a preliminary screening it was determined that only 73,000 of the 170,000 wanted to return home). It was soon a matter of egos and neither side would budge. The American bombing of the power stations at Yalu, Poyang and Antung complicated the issue further and the Chinese did not back off.

And with the arrival of ‘Formula’ Menon, the so called ‘Menon Plan’ took shape whereby a special commission took into custody the non-repatriate prisoners and decided later on their disposition. The unhappy Americans launched the 21 Power draft resolution when they saw that the Menon plan found support with other commonwealth members. Meanwhile, a new US president Ike Eisenhower was elected, based mainly on his assurances to end the Korean War quickly. The various drafts of the POW plan, the acrimonious relations between Menon and Vijayalakshmi, the tough exchanges between Menon and Acheson, the mentions of the existence of a Menon Cabal, the mediation by Canadas Lester Pearson, Menon’s secretiveness, all add color to the larger story. Without doubt, it was a tense affair, but in the end things worked out.

Menon revised his plan to create a repatriation commission to take custody of all prisoners, repatriating immediately willing prisoners and persuade over the next 90 days the rest to return home. After 90 days the fate of unwilling prisoners would be decided by the UN after discussions. India upped the ante by summarily submitting the draft without an US approval as Acheson continued to persuade members to accept the US draft. Acheson was furious when he found little support for his plan and obtained Truman’s approval to vote against Menon’s. But matters took a different course as the Soviets seemed against the Indian proposal. The US now decided to support the Indian resolution, hoping that the communist states would vote against it. Nehru was aghast at all this and was considering to step out of the whole Korean business. When the UN members now saw a vacillating Nehru, they put their weight behind Menon’s plan which had huge support and in Dec 1952 adopted it despite a lack of support from the Soviets and the Chinese.

Truman was formally succeeded by Eisenhower in USA and Dulles replaced Acheson as secretary of state. During the 20^th May NSC meeting Eisenhower concluded that if the truce talks failed, the United States would have no choice but to initiate a greatly expanded military offensive into North Korea, Manchuria and China using nuclear weapons. President Eisenhower went so far as setting a tentative D-day for May 1954. He directed Secretary Dulles to relay that threat through Nehru and Raghavan to the Chinese.

On 5^th March 1953, Soviet leader Josef Stalin died and was replaced by Georgi M. Malenkov. Malenkov and his advisors were facing unrest in Eastern Europe, wanted to ease the tensions with the West, and saw the Korean War as a growing burden. They, as is believed, consequently relaxed Stalin's previous opposition to a negotiated truce announcing a ‘peace offensive’ at Stalin’s funeral. The Chinese and North Koreans facing huge expenses and losses also agreed to negotiation concessions and with it the Korean War came to an end in 1953. The Chinese in the end did not achieve much from this foray, for neither did they obtain UN membership nor Taiwan.

Krishna Menon however saw no connection between the death of Stalin and the softening of Soviet policy toward the West. "Unlike most Americans," he said. "Indians have no terror or phobia of the Communists. In India we don't say. "Thank God the man is dead." After six years in the United Nations, Menon had come to the conclusion that "effective diplomacy is the capacity to keep quiet."

The Chinese signaled that they were willing to exchange sick prisoners and accepted the rest of the Menon plan. After some differences of opinion with the Americans were ironed out, the Menon plan was finally executed. The resolution as submitted by Brazil and received unanimous support. Meanwhile South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee unilaterally released 27,000 prisoners allowing them to escape into S Korea and threatened to kick out the Americans from S Korea if they entered into an armistice. But an armistice was completed on July 27^th 1953, with the South Koreans not signing it.

The person in charge of the POW transfer operations was none other than Lt Gen Thimayya, assisted by Maj Gen Thorat. India helped with the repatriation of captured prisoners to each side, a very delicate issue because thousands of North Korean and Chinese prisoners wanted to be free to stay in the South and not go home. The Indian custodian force located at the DMZ called ‘Camp Nagar’ and ‘Shanti Nagar’, despite severe criticism and lack of support from the Rhee (they forbid the Indian forces to land in S Korea) regime, supervised a careful process that ensured they were able to defect, but without too much humiliation for the communist regimes. The UNC held 132,000 prisoners while the Communists held 12,773 prisoners. All of these prisoners had the choice of whether or not they wanted to be repatriated. The vast majority of prisoners wanted to return home and each side had 60 days to hand the prisoners over. Statistics shows that under the operations Little Switch and Big Switch eventually around 83,000 POWs were repatriated to the north, while around 22,000 preferred to remain in the south. Nehru decided to bring the 88 left to India.

Interestingly of the 88 prisoners who were brought to India, 5 were sent to N Korea, 2 to China, 55 to Brazil, 11 to Argentina and 9 to Mexico. Two returned to S Korea while the remaining five who elected to stay in India namely Ji gi cheol, Hyun Dong hwa, Jang Gi Hwa, Cho in Cheol, and Ji Sin young lived out the rest of their lives in India. Four died in India and the last went back to S Korea with his son.

On 27 April 2018 the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula was signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un which commited the two countries to denuclearization and talks to bring a formal end to conflict. The two leaders agreed to, later in the year, convert the Korean Armistice Agreement into a full peace treaty, formally ending the Korean War after 65 years.

The broad canvas of geopolitics that played in the background is a great study for those interested. The Soviets pulled the cords at key moments, the Chinese were goaded on by the Soviets, the North Koreans perhaps got the nod and support from both in varying amounts, the South Koreans and Syngman Rhee (who himself had been raising the war bogey to prop his regime) were supported by America who was fighting a war against communism and hoping to arrest its spread into Asia’s southern regions. The global cold war played its part as a backdrop to the various acts and sub acts and it was into this heady mix that Nehru and Menon stepped in, perhaps attempting to project the intellectual might of a young India authoritatively in the world arena, for the first and last time. The Korean War bruised many a leader and India earned the distrust of America and S Korea due to her firm stance. When India refused to call China an aggressor, Truman is said to have stated – ‘Nehru has sold us down the Hudson. His attitude has been responsible for our losing the war in Korea’. It is believed by academics that Truman resented India’s socialist stance and her being right about potential Chinese intervention.

The Canadians proved to be a bridge between India and US throughout the play of events wanting India’s direct involvement while at the same time pointing out that America resented public Indian criticism of any US stance or policy. In addition, this was also to prove an important point to the Americans that the general assembly and not the UN Security Council would prove decisive in thwarting war and attaining peace.

Tragically most historians and strategists agree- if only the Americans had listened to KM Panikkar, the situation may have been different. Panikkar himself wrote in his diary later in 1950 that “America has knowingly elected for war, with Britain following. The Chinese armies now concentrated on the Yalu will intervene decisively in the fight. Probably some of the Americans want that. They probably feel that this is an opportunity to have a show down with China. In any case MacArthur’s dream has come true. I only hope it does not turn into a nightmare.” It did eventually when in Tokyo, MacArthur and Willoughby completely dismissed the Indian warning as merely communist propaganda delivered by an untrustworthy source. Over 2.5 million people were to die during the Korean War, including 30,000 Americans.

References

Military armistice in Korea: a case study for strategic leaders –lieutenant colonel William T. Harrison

Between the Blocs: India, the United Nations, and Ending the Korean War - Robert Barnes

India’s Diplomatic Entrepreneurism: Revisiting India’s Role in the Korean Crisis, 1950–52 - Vineet Thakur

How Did the Korean War Begin? Karunakar Gupta

Conflicting visions – Canada and India in the cold war world 1946-1976 - Ryan M. Touhey

Explaining the origins and evolution of India’s Korean policy - Rajiv Kumar

The Role of India in the Korean War-Kim ChanWahn

Ending the Korean War: Reconsidering the Importance of Eisenhower's Election - Robert Barnes

Heroes of the Korean War: Lieutenant General Subayya Kadenera Thimayya – See link

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A heady marriage

English and Indian influences – Zimbly English

You start to notice the real difference only after you travel to other parts of the world. As we grew up in India, the English we learnt and the English we heard in the streets were we thought, the norm or the standard. So many usages that we assimilated were commonplace, and interestingly they arrived on the scene due to literal translation or adaptation of a Hindi, Urdu or even a South Indian phrase. Let us take a look at some of these interesting usages and as you can imagine, it is ever growing.

It was very common in the India of the 80’s, to hear the question, Sir, what’s your good name? The usage of Sir at every juncture can be heard only in India, and it for sure does not indicate that you are knighted. The honorific usage came about as a translation from sahib or janab, and coupled with the question above does not mean there are bad names, the ‘good name’ part comes from the colloquial Hindi, shub naam. Another typical usage is ‘boss’ every now and then, amongst the younger crowd. Hey boss, no problem boss, a usage which gets corrupted to ‘bass’ as you hit the Tamil and Telugu regions and ‘buuuss’ in Kerala. Now note here that the usage does not really mean that the person to whom it is directed is your supervisor, but somebody who is temporarily placed at a higher standing during the conversation, again like the use of Sir or Sahib.

And then you hear the usage, how was the lunch? Are yaar, it was First class! How on earth did that ‘first class’ come about? Perhaps due to the railways where the best was for the first class travelers. Sometimes you hear the question ‘when is he passing out’ and wonder, is he getting really drunk or not, only to realize that the question was about your son’s impending graduation. Ek kaam kar, a typical usage from Hindi gets translated to ‘Do one thing’. Maa ki kasam becomes ‘mother promise’ and you often come across ‘out of station’, a usage from the old EIC bureaucracy signifying ‘away from town on company duty’. I used to jot often whilst forwarding emails, the phrase ‘please do the needful’, and once a Turkish employee came to me asking what exactly that was supposed to be. It was then that I realized how stupid the usage was, when placed out of Indian context. Another typical office usage is ‘will revert back’, meaning I will work on it and get back to you, and does not mean the situation will go back to what it once was. Spoken English in India has many such usages and a common usage you will come across in India is the ever common addition of ‘no’ or ‘na’ to the end of the sentence, once attributed to ‘convent educated’ people!

Usages like ‘prepone’ and ‘like that only’ can never be found anywhere else and when somebody comes to you and says ‘I have a doubt’, you understand it instinctively only in India. It is most definitely not a part of a longer sentence such as I have a doubt on Chris’s experience, but it means you are unsure! In America, people get mugged all the time, accosted and deprived of their belongings violently, while mugging in India means cramming for your exams. Fiancé or Fiancée becomes ‘would be’ in India. But there are mixed language sentences which firanghees cannot pick up - like in Bombay you hear the usage ‘tension mat lo yaar’…meaning don’t get tensed up. Sometimes you make a lame joke and the hearer in Delhi says, ‘aree, poor joke’. I wonder – since there were langada beggars, lame became poor? Schoolmates, classmates and batch mates take such important positions in the hierarchy of your memories and are not to be fooled with. It does not mean a mixing of genders in any way, and they need not be friends but belonging to a particular group connected by the calendar and an alma mater.

Nothing to beat the usage of rubber, which in India is precisely what it is, something that can also be used to erase pencil marks, but with its popular usage as a term for condom, you have to be careful these days. Another term I had issues with was the usage ‘co-brother’, while working at Madras. I used to wonder what exactly it meant – brother in law? Step brother? Well, generally it means your wife’s sister’s husband i.e. your wife’s brother is brother-in-law, and to convey a proper relationship, your sister-in-law's husband is your co-brother, a usage common in the Tamil regions of India. These days it is difficult to hear the Tamil usage cent per cent, but once upon a time, it meant ‘very sure, pukka or ‘definitely’! ‘God promise’ is something you will not hear in any other country (another version of - I swear!).

A most commonly used word is ‘fired’. If you say ‘he fired me’, it means ‘he shouted at me’, in India, not that somebody who has been thrown out of his job! Or there is the common place usage ‘by chance’ often heard in the Delhi regions added to Hindi sentences. The wife or missus usually go ‘marketing’ to the mall, and puts all the stuff in the ‘dickey or boot’ (trunk). The drivers in India has to have knowledge in changing the ‘stepney’ (spare tire) and you leave your RC book in the ‘dash’ (glove compartment). But it is only in Bombay suburban trains that you come across ‘time-pass’, which signifies roasted peanuts (eaten to pass time!). In India we have brothers and we have cousin brothers, and everybody who is not your parent is still an aunty or an uncle. I have come to the conclusion that this is so since we have been taught from childhood that ‘all Indians are your brothers and sisters’.

I read the other day that Amazon is teaching Alexa to learn Hinglish, but to be very frank, my experience with Siri and all other similar assistants has been simply terrible. They just do not understand me. The other day my friend was trying to instruct Siri to call me and the phone kept telling him it did not know his mother (for Siri – ‘man madhan’ sounded like ‘my mother’).

I read recently that English colleges are these days offering Hinglish as a subject finally signifying that it is not really ‘same same, but different’. Portsmouth College has offered it as a course and all British diplomats have since a few years been instructed to learn it! But the problem in India is that there is more than Hinglish, as you travel around, there is tanglish, manglish and what not. The only trick is to think in context, especially as the pronunciation of the original word also gets clobbered as in jeebra for zebra! You remember the usages with cum in India? I was in Rooms to go the other day and a young couple from the new state of Telangana were asking the wide eyed Latino sales girl for a ‘Sofa cum bed’. She looked flabbergasted. Well, don’t try using that in US, cum is ejaculate, in colloquial usage. Dual usages such as seat cum berth, toilet cum bathroom and so on are applicable only in India.

The version of Punjabi English mostly heard around Birmingham and London is quite different though, it is more modern in origin and reading a remarkable novel ‘Londonstani’ helped me understand some of the usages from that ‘rudeboy’ world. It is very difficult to follow if you have not lived in England or listened to it for a while. You get to know for example that coconut is the Indian Englishman who is brown outside in looks, but white inside in thinking. So many such similar usages common to the Punjabi dominated suburbs around Heathrow.

Indians actually get upset when you try to tell them they are not native speakers of English or that it is perhaps an alien language for them. They learn it all the time starting from kindergarten and use it effectively every day and at all occasions, sometimes even at home and trying to imply that others speak it better irritates them no end. Take for example Krishna Menon in the 50’s. Menon was complimented by a well-meaning Englishwoman on the quality of his English. "My English, Madam," he said to the hapless lady, Brigid Brophy, "is better than yours. You merely picked it up: I learned it."

In olden times we did have bad English speakers who spoke a broken English, what they called Babu angrezi, and without doubt, such English is still spoken not only in the remote parts, but also major cities and for that matter even more literate states such as Kerala. Nissim Ezekiel once wrote a nice book called Very Indian poems in Indian English and an example from ‘The Patriot’ will suffice to illustrate it

I am standing for peace and non-violence. Why world is fighting fighting - Why all people of world are not following Mahatma Gandhi, I am simply not understanding. Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct. I should say even 200% correct. But modern generation is neglecting- Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.

Pakistan behaving like this, China behaving like that, It is making me very sad, I am telling you Really, most harassing me. All men are brothers, no? In India also, Gujarathies, Maharashtrians, Hindiwallahs All brothers -Though some are having funny habits. Still you tolerate me, I tolerate you…..

The usage of English on Indian signboards, mainly in the North leaves you dumbfounded at times, but when you understand the intent, you can only smile at the mix-ups in usage, when a beer bar become ‘bear bar’, where a tailor offers ‘alteration of ladies and gents’, where they launch a new drink called ‘computer juice’, and a popular Samsung advertisement states that ‘penis is mightier than sword’ and Anu S Sharma’s English school becomes ‘Anus English school’, or instances where they inform- that ‘shop lifters would be prostituted’. And of course there is the famous signboard seen often in Indian towns and cities ‘entry from the backside’ or when you hear it ‘open the backside of the car’. But these are examples of mistakes. It is also properly used, for Hinglish is popular in mainstream advertisements like ‘Hungry kya’? for Dominoes, ‘dil maange more’ for Pepsi, ‘life ho to aisi’ for Coke, ‘what your bahana is’ for MacDonald’s and so on…

Now coming to manglish, the heavily accented English spoken by Kerala’s, especially South Travancore Malayalis, a typical example can be seen below. My brother left koliage and zimbli went to gelf, agjually thubaai where he became very bissi. Agjually my ungle got him the joab. Now he yearns luot of mani and does not pay ingum tax. You know, they have no tembles there, but he listens to lot of pope music and he is planning to do his yum bee yae. The other day his car had an accident with a loree and his aandy had to jemb out of the window to escape. No otos in thubai!

There are more complex ones as documented by the British council, of the ‘teacher sitting on your head’ (wo sir par baitha hai). He is ‘eating my brain’ (demakh khata hain), my neighbor is ‘foreign return’ and was ‘doing his graduation’ in London, and even his sister is ‘convent educated’! There is also the special application of words like belong ‘I belong to Delhi’, but the usage ‘monkey cap’ can only be found in India, try telling you are looking for a balaclava, nobody, I am sure not a single soul would understand the term but a monkey cap, is definitely Indian. Talking about that, we have a number of baby-sitting parents visiting US during the April-Sept time frame and in our neighborhood, we can still see some of them going for their early morning walks in the pedestrian pathways with a monkey cap around their heads, imagine, in May – June when it is like 80 degrees Fahrenheit!!

I will always remember how my boss once corrected me when I said ‘yesterday night’ many moons ago. He explained patiently that it is ‘last night’ or as in ancient English ‘yester night’, never yesterday night. Similarly today morning is always ‘this morning’. Another oft used Indian phrase is ‘years back’ I remember him from years back! ‘Let’s discuss about movies’ is not considered right, it is ‘let’s discuss movies’, similarly ‘let’s order for pizza and fries’ is wrong, the ‘for’ is not required in the Englishman’s English. Now these rules are the so called Victorian English rules, todays rules are more relaxed with so many versions of grammar, spellings and so on. Microsoft word offers various English (US, Australian, UK, Indian, Caribbean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Philippines, South African, Singaporean and so on…..) options for language proofing!

Then of course, we have the interesting case of Parsees who added English trade and food names to their names as surnames, and without doubt are hilarious. And so you will come across Canteenwalas, Cakewalas, Masalawalas, Narielwala, Paowala, Confectioners, Messmans, Bakerywalas, Peppermintwala, Daruwala, Rumwala, Toddywala, Tavernwala, Biscutwala, Hotelwala, etc. But nothing to beat the sodawaterbottleopener wallah. That was a constructive and practical method of designating Parsees by profession in Bombay, I suppose.

It is always good to check out how some of Indian lingo entered mainstream English. Take the word Ginger – It was originally a Malayalam Tamil word, Inchi. Similar are the origins of Copra, Coir, betel, catamaran, cheroot, areca, calico, pappadum, teak, mango, curry.” There are so many similar ones from Hindi, Urdu and other Indian languages. The word Blighty – shows how language is constantly evolving. “It’s usually used by expat Brits referring to Britain and the homeland as in ‘good old Blighty’ but it comes from the Urdu word for foreigner or European, ‘vilayati’. One of the most delightful books you can refer to is the voluminous ‘Hobson Jobson dictionary’ which I introduced to you all some years ago. You will find many examples of worlds which are now part of English and this book tells you their origins.

Sometimes, it all makes sense, our own Ami - Madhavi Kutty aptly expressed it all, while introducing her ‘Summer in Calcutta’

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,

I speak three languages, write in

Two, dream in one.

Don't write in English, they said, English is

Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I like? The language I speak,

Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness’s

All mine, mine alone.

It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,

It is as human as I am human, don't

You see?

There are many papers and books which have analyzed Hinglish and its development, and some even go on to point out that Shoba De writing in Stardust was the originator of popular Hinglish in Bombay while at the same time, Salman Rushdie used a similar vein in his books, living in Britain.  This is a topic you can write or talk about on and on, especially if you have lived in India and traveled about. But I promised myself to make this short and that I will.

Strange isn’t it, they say that about 300-400 million in India speak English, out of which 100-200 million speak it perfectly. Just imagine, that signifies the highest number of Indian speakers in the world and so wonder not why this new lingo was born, but see how it is going to develop! It is time for Alexa, Cortona and Siri to figure it all out and factor it in. After all most of the coding for those voice apps is being done by Indians anyway!

And there will always be Shashi Tharoor to gently guide us with great examples of how an Oxford educated English lord in London would have put it. He said - The purpose of speaking or writing is to communicate with precision. I choose my words because they are the best ones for the idea i want to convey, not the most obscure or rodomontade ones….

Recommended reading

Entry from backside only – Binoo K John

Hinglish by the way is defined as - a portmanteau of Hindi and English, is the macaronic hybrid use of English and South Asian languages from across the Indian subcontinent, involving code-switching between these languages whereby they are freely interchanged within a sentence or between sentence

Pics - Courtesy Amul

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The Pathana at Pallavur

The muted sounds of the CCU were permeating my consciousness, I was supine and I had nothing to do. After a while, I was scanning the hall, starting with the fluorescent lights, and stopping often at the flickering tube that escaped the maintenance rounds. I noticed that they hummed, like they were alive, perhaps due to older ballasts, or was it so that the hum was from the air-conditioning? And then there were the gurgles and hisses from the various fluid and gas lines and cocks, valves or spigots as they called them here.

Now you can understand how bored I was, and I was starting to doze off, with the reassuring sounds of the busy hospital lulling me to sleep. It was then that I picked up a conversation in the distance, in Malayalam. I could discern two accents, one being Kottayam Malayalam and the other somewhat strange, it was Malayalam alright but with a very heavy Tamil tinge. I had heard that accent before but I just could not place it then. The voices revealed much more, that one was being spoken by a confident nurse (it must be Thresiamma), while the other was more childlike and hesitant, as though she was finding it difficult to converse in this tongue. I thought she could be a Tamilian lady who had picked up this difficult language sometime in her past. The voices faded as they moved to the farther end of the ward and I lapsed into a fitful slumber. The drapes around my bed fluttered in the light breeze as the piped and hydrated air gushed in at just the temperature and humidity set by a computerized system.

I must have slept for not more than 15 minutes when the very same voices, now louder and close, woke me up. Through bleary and half open eyelids, I recognized the Malayali nurse, Thersiamma, she strayed not from the ‘tending to chubby’ build, practically attired, ramrod straight stance and a tough countenance, but her eyes were friendly as always. The lady standing next to her was totally different, for she was definitely plump, incredibly fair in color, her skin texture tending to a kind of translucence. She was certainly on the wrong side of her 50’s but life had treated her well and her unlined face was home to strikingly large and smiling  eyes, she was indeed pretty, even in that late middle age. As I was looking at her, my eyes now wide open, I could see the face of the nurse taking on an ominous frown, obviously disapproving of any attempts to flirt with her boss!!

The pretty doctor took her eyes of the chart and looked down at me. Something was familiar about her eyes and face, but I just could not place it. The lady looked at me, screwing her eyes a bit and went back to the chart, then again down at me, then again back to the chart. Are you from Kerala? 

Yes! 

Where? 

Palghat!  

Where in Palghat? 

Pallavur! 

Her eyes now widened in alarm and locked.

That was when realization hit me like a thunderbolt. Of course! I moved my eyes to the left corner of her coat to check the name, yes, part of it was just what I thought - Dr Maimunna Faizal. I did not say anything, for I was not sure what to say, but muttering an affirmative, I continued to look at Maimunna, a trifle sheepishly. The doctor did not say much more, just tightened up and went through the routines of a perfunctory examination which doctors on rounds tend to do, check your lungs with a stethoscope, look under your eyes, check your pulse and the such. I was there for a angioplasty, the present day plumbing routine on your arteries to remove plaque buildups, resulting from an affluent and sedentary lifestyle. 

It had been a fairly uneventful period of rest following a successful procedure and I was recovering famously or so declared the pretty and plump Dr Maimunna. But her voice betrayed her, for it was a wee bit nervous and the nurse missed not the looks her doctor were casting on this patient. She steered her doctor quickly off my bed and they were off to the next, after drawing my drapes back to ensconce me into my own insurance paid private hospital space.

Tremulous is not just it, but I think my mind was racing furiously into its recesses, to recover memories from my youth, of days more than 40 years into the past. It was difficult, a few events came to the fore quickly, but the details would not and it took me a good 2 hours to figure whatever little I could, concerning a girl called Maimunna and Pallavur. Amazing, I muttered, how on earth did this girl surface after so many years, and of all places as a cardiologist in NY? What an amazing coincidence, to have come across a very person, the very same family which was once the cause célèbre in our obscure village of Pallavur?

I am sure you guys are wondering what kind of a silly story I am planning to regurgitate, assuming of course that it could be one of those silly childhood infatuations. In a way it is, but mostly it is not. As you would have guessed, I have to take you to our village and the 70’s.

I still remember that hot summer day, Mani and I were on the parapet wall and listening to the cricket commentary on my trusted little Keltron Transistor radio. I stopped to smile, thinking how a radio got its name from one of its minor components, the transistor, a part which had unceremoniously unseated the venerable radio valve that used to rule the roost. Anand Setalwad was droning away and we were all waiting eagerly for AIR to switch to the more enthusiastic Suresh Saraiya. BS Chandrashekar my favorite, was bowling and the Englishmen facing him were behaving like cats on a tin roof, dodging his vicious leg breaks and googlies. Just as the mike was handed over to Suresh Saraiya, a bullock cart appeared on the road connecting Kizhakethara to Kunissery and stopped in front on the post office. The post office in those days was housed in the nice home which had been rented out for that purpose, close to Kizhakethara.

Across the post office was a little cement home which had been built by Koran, Raman Nair’s supervisor. In fact people used to wonder how this bloke saved money to build his own hovel. It was not difficult actually, for he was the only one among the field workers who was careful with his earnings. He did not drink or whore around, and after a couple of decades saved enough to buy a small bit of land from Nair. That was the first of the big scandals in our village, as a landlord sold land to his serf. But my uncle had intervened and eventually the villagers accepted the fact. Now Koran had become old, his wife had passed on and it appears that he had decided to move to Kozhalmannam, where his daughter lived.

The bullock cart looked strange, it was not like one of those plain Palghat varieties, it was more ornate, there were colored ribbons festooning the vehicle, the shape itself was different and the bullocks pulling the two wheeler were bigger and healthier. The smaller wheels did not creak and groan and they even had a rubber padding around them. It was a summer afternoon, very hot and you could see the shimmer over the tar road, which was softer here and there. Krishnan Kutty, that son of the priest, had his Hawaii slippers stuck in the tar the other day! The cart stopped, the bullocks looked around and settled down, I guess they sighed with tiredness, after a long trek from god knows where. The whole incident was happening just a few hundred yards away from us, although a little curve in the road covered up parts of our sight.

A burly middle aged man alighted from the front, and we could make out that he was an affluent and purposeful man. His attire was quite alien and he sported a great big green Mecca belt around his waist and a fierce mustache and a beard under his beaky nose. The shirt he wore was clear white, his lungi was checkered, riding well above his ankles and his hair was not black but brownish red. What was most striking about him was his great height, sharp eyes and his somewhat haughty bearing. Next to jump out from the rear of the cart was a rotund lady, attired in bright Muslim clothes, more like a gown, and with her head covered. Last of all was a young girl in her teens, wearing a bright green skirt, a white blouse on top. Uncharacteristically her head was not covered and we could see from the distance that she was a beauty, incredibly fair and tall, but a little pudgy.

The cricket ball had changed hands, Bishen Bedi had replaced Chandra and his tight maiden overs were tiring the English. Now Balu Alaganan was droning on, and our attention strayed from cricket to the activity across the post office. The Pathan, for we assumed he was one such, had untethered the bullocks and tied them to the tree in front of the house. The woman and the girl were systematically removing their belongings from the cart and taking them to Koran’s house.

Mani, I am sure you remember my live-wire cousin, for I had introduced him some time ago, could not take this any longer. He had to find out what was going on and in a jiffy he was off, headed Eastwards. I had to smile seeing Mani go, his brown dhoti at half mast, hands and legs pumping furiously, eyes screwed up, head inclined up and Northwards as though it was tracking the wind. I went indoors, as I knew Eacharan had arrived after the weekly shopping at Alathur, some time ago. There were fresh and hot SNR banana chips to be munched.

I saw my uncle at his usual place, lounging on the rattan ‘easy chair’ with his legs draped on its extendable leg support. He had woken up after his afternoon siesta a little while ago and seeing me asked what the cricket score was. I was more interested in narrating to him what I had seen, that a Muslim family was settling down in Koran’s house across the post office. What I had not expected was to see the look of alarm turning to consternation on his otherwise resolute face. He dropped his legs down, pulled in the leg stops and sat up to ask me ‘Did you say Muslim’? And I answered ‘yes, they are Pathan’s, I think that fellow is 7’ tall! He has come with his wife and daughter’.

What I could not have imagined was the furor this event created in our otherwise obscure little village. In fact it took no more than a couple of hours for various events to unfold.

That evening Mani and I went to the temple. My brother was studying in Coimbatore and my cousin was studying rural management in Gujarat. All the other cousins were here and there, in Madras or Bombay while I was alone at Pallavur for a study holiday. So there was not much to do other than read, gossip with Mani or smoke a forbidden Passing-Show (only one we could afford, the cigarette with no filter but looked like it had one) cigarette and visit the temple to ogle the girls who came for evening Deeparadhana. In those days that was the only place where one could do a bit of honest flirting in Pallavur. Youngsters gathered there and not surprisingly many girls came too, to offer their prayers, looking demure and pretty, in small groups, with the heady fragrance from jasmine flowers trailing their wake.

I had a crush on my friend’s sister Lakshmi and so I was hoping to see her that day. She did come, wearing a blue skirt and half saree (dhavani – they call it) and looking ever so pretty and bashful while I was wondering how I could muster some courage and start a conversation with her, but with all the people around, it was proving neigh impossible. So Mani and I sat at the temple ledge and just looked and ogled. Lakshmi and her sister had finished their prayers in the Sreekovil, she had completed her pradikshanams and was soon off on a tangent, homeward bound. I had again lost an opportunity to talk to Lakshmi and there were only 20 days left of the study leave left to further this potential affair. In the engineering college, it was not a problem talking to girls, but here closer to home it was too complicated, the families knew each other so well and all news reached home in a jiffy. 

Usually, the village retired for the day when the sun set. People went indoors to escape the heat, the mosquitoes, and listened to Vividbharati and other local AIR programs on the radio (no television to watch, those days). Interestingly, the village had just two phones, one in the post office and one in the company mill, as it was called. The mill was where paddy was de-husked and milled and polished to make white rice as you see it in shops, and my friend Babu’s family ran it. They also manufactured par boiled rice from raw rice, a process which created a fantastic aroma if you ask me, I can still smell it in my senses!

As usual the voltage dipped with Babu’s Mill working overtime and we all cursed him. I was trying to find a book to read, my uncle had a fantastic collection of books, some entirely unreadable and covering terrible subjects like world history. There were books on the great wars and anthropology. He also archived a number of old Readers Digest issues, Life magazine and Imprint magazines which were the best. On some days my aunt from Koduvayur brought in old pocketbooks for me to read. They were usually Perry Mason books which her cousins had picked up during their train journeys. I would devour those fascinating mysteries sitting next to the brightest lamp in the house.

Today it was all different. By 6 PM, the village think-tank appeared at our door steps. Karavatte Raman was first. Soon to come was Krishna Aiyer, then there was Aravancheri Raman Nair. Vadasseri Krishnan Nair followed and FACT TRS Iyer completed the entourage. Ooops, I forgot, after a little while, one more person landed up, Subedar Ananthan Menon. Sometimes I think we have the strangest characters in our village, comprising people from three communities - the Nair landlords who had their nalukettu homes, Iyers who were once upon a time associated with the temple and lived in the agraharams near the Tripallavurappan temple, and a few people who started and settled down due to marriage connections with the aforesaid landlords like Subedar Ananthan (he was actually from North Malabar). Of course there were Cherumans who worked in the fields, as well, but they were not represented in temple matters, those days.

The people of the village had only one occupation, agriculture, more specifically growing different varieties of paddy. That’s why you see those endlessly beautiful green paddy fields north and opposite our house, right upto the bottom of the black hills of the Western Ghats in the distance. On the rocky hill nearest, beyond the leaves of the Palmyra palms dotting your sight, you could see a little temple atop the hill and on cooler days, we cousins trekked up and lounged there till the sun set, shooting the breeze and chit chatting.

Of the families boasting some importance, Karavatte Raman was the remnant of a once prosperous tharavad, all that affluence lost when an uncle squandered it all away in the past, though they retained their position among the village elders. Nowadays he ran a Landmaster taxi and it is said that everybody in our village had travelled on it at least once, with normally specific reasons such as - a wedding at Guruvayur, the hospital in Palghat, the railway station at Olavakkode, the Palani temple or saree shopping at Trichur or Coimbatore, for a wedding. If somebody got bitten by a snake or a dog, Raman would speed the stricken patient to the GH at Palghat, though the speed is not what you believe, it was possibly 30-40 km per hour, and you would still reach Palghat in a half hour at best. He had a son, Mohanettan, whom I have on occasion seen cozying up to Aravancheri Malu in the dark recesses of the temple. Let him be, lucky fellow, though I don’t like Malu, she never gave me a good vibe. I don’t know too much of the Vadasseri tharavad, in fact I do not recall seeing many youngsters from that family, all of them were older people, so out of my circuit.

FACT Iyer gets his name because he used to work in FACT Kalamassery and had recently retired. He was a very helpful and philanthropic man actually, and would ensure delivery of fertilizers for the farmers of our village at special rates due to his company connections. He was the main person on all temple related activities, the temple committee president actually. Krishna Iyer on the contrary was a little eccentric and more interested in Yoga and some occult studies. I was told he used to teach history in Calicut and was an author of some history books and one on the Zamorins of Calicut. My uncle used to discuss matters with him for hours sometimes, and Iyer could often be seen cycling from one end of the village to other, dhoti tied round his neck, lost in thought.

Ananthan Menon was an oddball, he had returned after the Second World War from the Assam border where he served with the British under a general called William Slim. He used to tell us all kinds of stories and in general it was accepted that he added a 70% exaggeration factor, so we never knew exactly what and how much to believe. Like he used to say that black American prisoners were building a road to China. Nobody believed him at first, but it was only some year’s back that I read details of the Ledo road and the handiwork of the Americans at the CBI Theater, and how the Chinese Madam Chiang (Soong Mei Ling) got Americans to do it. Anyway, the villagers called him Vidals Ananthan (exaggerator Ananthan), but of course due to his apparent knowledge of all kinds of matters, he was part of the think tank.

The discussions were held at our poomukham or what we called the Porathalam. Everybody was animated, the decibel level went up, and my Gandhian uncle looked troubled. That was the scene I observed after I got back from the temple. The matter was simple. Pallavur had three strict commandments since time immemorial. One - the village would allow only Hindus to live within its temple Sanketham. Two – No coconut tree would be used for toddy tapping, ever and Three – People could go to other places to live and work, but they had to come for the yearly Navarathri festival in September or they would not be considered legitimate citizens. The first one had now been broken, and nobody had anticipated that a Pathan family would acquire Koran’s house.

Raman Nair mentioned that the rumor was that Koran had borrowed a sum of money from the Pathan who was originally from Putunagaram across the Tamil border, for his daughter’s wedding but had not paid back. Koran, by virtue of the stamp paper he had signed, had no recourse but to leave the house when his wife died to the Pathan and move to his daughter’s place. That is how the Pathan got the house, square and simple.

The elders were in a quandary, what to do next? The law would not serve any purpose, the Pathan would win and any argument over obscure and ancient edicts would not stand upto the test of the legal systems. As a quiet and harmless village, goondagiri which you see in movies was also not a direction to consider. The motely group decided to task the only person who spoke Hindi (they all assumed Hindi would be more persuasive) – Subedar Ananthan to go and speak to the Pathan. Ananthan without any further delay strode purposefully, you know what – a military man can be easily identified from his stride, its measured length and the simple movement of hands – the left hand will always follow in perfect synchrony to the right leg even when not marching and the hands won’t be idly swinging about like other’s tend to do.

Meeting the Pathan, who ceremoniously offered him a glass of red Rhoo-afsa, Menon explained gruffly the quandary the village was in. The Pathan, Afzal Khan was his name, politely told him that they had sold off their small hovel in Pudunagaram and had moved into this house, that they had nowhere else to go and that they had no plans to do anything else other than starting a small shop and maybe attach a small hotel to it over time. Menon came back and reported the matter to the group, who were aghast. A Muslim hotel now? The Iyers from the agraharam were trembling - What if they served beef and other non-vegetarian items in the village? Something had to be done, and in the end, they all hoped that my uncle would figure out a way.

My grandmother’s stentorian voice cut across the hall, she stated that it was already late and that the lamp lighting at dusk had not yet been done. This was a polite reminder for the think-tank to wind up their meeting and get lost. My grandmother was known to be very strict and even her son, my uncle the Karanavar of the tharavad, would obey when her voice was raised. My cousin sis soon walked in with the lamp and sat down to mutter the prayers on the kolayi or corridor adjacent to the thalam. My grandma would not have that, she wanted the prayers loudly sung and heard by all in the house. I saw that my uncle was distracted and troubled, he was trying to figure a solution and was perhaps using all the management experience he had gained from his corporate days in Calcutta.

After dinner, I tried to imbibe some knowledge from BL Theraja’s electrical engineering text book but was soon left wondering why they prescribed a book purportedly written by a librarian, not even an engineer for us, but it was all heavy going and thoughts of that pretty Pathana kept intruding my thoughts. Scenes of belly dancers from Persia (that’s how they show it in movies) kept flashing at the back of my mind, and in my dreams, I was soon prancing about with the Pathana.

Next morning, I accosted Mani and appraised him of the previous evening’s happenings. We decided to walk past the Pathan’s house. The father had gone out and the girl was up and about in front of the house. Before I could, Mani asked what her name was, and she answered without hesitation or a blink – Maimunna. There was nothing more to add or ask, and that was when we stole our first looks, and our glances locked. Like they say in those novels, I was simply rooted to the spot for a while, and I interpreted that the look conveyed a more than subtle startup interest. My blood pressure rose, I guess, so also my heart rate, so much so that I was alarmed to hear its thud thud. At close range, she looked fascinating, a bit on the plump side, charming and pretty. Mani pulled me away and we got back to doing other tasks like going to the post office to collect letters, a swim in the pond and more attempts at trying to master Theraja and Benjamin Kuo’s Control systems, for the upcoming exams. But Maimunna was a distraction and electrical technology, a nuisance.

Days passed by, the think-tank met often, voices were becoming louder, and my uncle was getting more irritable, after all he was planning to stand for the Panchayat president’s post and this was becoming a litmus test, it would not be good if he failed to find a solution. I knew he was very unhappy about the whole thing, on one hand, his principles were guiding him to let the Pathan be, but on the other hand, he did not want any kind of disharmony in the village, if he could help.

As for me, I wasted days and nights dreaming about Maimunna, but doing absolutely nothing to further anything on the romance front. I would force Mani to accompany me for walks past the Pathan dwelling and the girl and I would exchange glances, but that was it. Kind of stupid, don’t you think? But you can understand I suppose, it was too large a chasm to cross. Needless to mention that my interest in Lakshmi had waned.

This is not the kind of love story you have read, seen or heard of, it went nowhere. As it transpired, my uncle figured out a solution. He identified an area in nearby Ayilur where the Pathan could be relocated to. The villagers decided to split the cost of that plot, the Pathan could sell this Pallavur house to a worker in our employ and move there. My uncle was of course nominated to pitch the idea to the Pathan. Roughly a fortnight had gone by.

What happened was anticlimactic. When Afzal Khan was summoned to our place, the proud man had something else to say. He had heard about what was going on and had decided himself that this was not where he wanted to settle down, he had decided to move to Koduvayur, where he said, business prospects were better, there were many Rowthers and kinsmen and that they could even visit a mosque regularly. His said that his ancestors hailed from some Pashtun province and had moved to Madurai, generations ago. They had eked a living first as Kabuliwalahs and later as money lenders. Now it was time to do something else and his wife and daughter hated the bad will he was getting, lending money, that was why he had decided to start a shop. Anyway it was not meant to be in Pallavur, and hopefully they would do well in Koduvayur. A week later, they left. As I was getting ready to go back to college at Calicut, I heard the bullock cart tinkling and trundling its way through the hills and the forest road, headed to Koduvayur. I caught a glimpse of Maimunna and her mother seated within, both were looking straight ahead, neither unhappy nor forlorn.  Perhaps this was not their first experience of being considered as outcasts.

That was so many years ago, was this the same Maimunna?

I was woken out of my reverie by the arrival of the doctor. This time she was alone, sans Thresiamma. She sat on the edge of my bed and asked me if I was the Pallavur lad she had once seen but never talked to. I nodded and she smiled, a wry smile.

‘You remember how you all drove us out of your village?’ She asked.

I had no answer.

She continued, ‘You know, we went to Koduvayur and I studied in the school there. Then I did my pre degree in Victoria and later got admission into the medical college at Trivandrum’.

I pretended not to be surprised.

She added a bit more of personal information– ‘After marriage, I landed up in America and have been working my way through the system. I am filling in for a friend in this hospital this month and we will move to New York, Faizal has obtained an appointment at the power utility there and I have got a job at NYU’.

Now looking at the chart, she went on – ‘So this is your name! I never knew that you had such a funny name! I kept mum, and she professionally filled me in -  that my heart was OK, that my vitals were looking good and that I would be discharged soon….perhaps she wanted to add  - ‘to lead the life you had chosen’.

I nodded.

With a pat on my thigh and a little sigh (did I imagine that?), she was gone.

I never saw her again. But I wondered often about that month in Pallavur and how the rules of coexistence were decided by a community. Perhaps it was wrong, perhaps it was right, but life in a village cannot be equated with the life in a crowded city like Bombay, I suppose.

The village is still the same, the rules remain, nothing has changed, nothing will, I presume….

For it is, a village frozen in time.

Notes

The Pallavur Sanketham’s rules are factual. KVK Iyer mentions it in his history papers and books. This story however, is pure fiction and just a figment of my imagination.

I had written a more detailed article on the sankethams of Malabar, do take a look at it, if such matters interest you. One thing is still not clear, how Pallavur had such a big temple when the village around it had so few people. Perhaps it all came about as a result of a rumored pillage of the Pallavur temple by Tipu’s marauding forces in the 18th century. 

Pathana - meant to signify the feminine gender of Pathan, does not exist as a word – it is my own go at it. 

I will also let you in on another not so well known fact - One of the three uralaers (sanketham trustees) responsible for the Pallavur temple was from EMS Nambuthirpad’s Illam. EMS describes his very first ride in a car from Vellangalloor to Pallavur, in his autobiography.

  

Along the way, I learnt that greenish colored drapes and gowns was chosen after the color of medicine, when a bloke named Harry Shermann in 1914 established that green was perfect for any kind of discriminatory observations and calm confinement.

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