Madras History :The autorickshaw’s ancestor

The state government is involved in yet another struggle to bring the autorickshaw drivers of our city under control. 

All this brings to mind the two-century-long battle that Madras fought against another transport operator — the Masulah boatman. And the two struggles are remarkably similar to each other.

Our city did not have a natural harbour with the surf near the coast being particularly dangerous. Between 1639 and 1875 or so, all ships dropped anchor beyond the surf, at a distance of almost two miles from the coast. 

This spot came to be known as Madras Roads. The only vessels that could brave the surf and ply to and fro between the ships and the coast were the native masulah boats. Passengers and goods had to use this form of transport when they landed at Madras or embarked on a sea voyage. Over time, given this monopoly, the boatmen became a law unto themselves.

The two-mile ferry service on the native boats to the shore was fraught with risks. As an account put it, “the boatmen waited for a big wave, came in on the crest of it till it was spent, paddled hard to get past the breaking place of the next wave so as to be carried by it right up to the beach. 

And as they waited outside the surf for a good wave they bargained with their passengers”. Those who did not accede to the boatmen’s demands could be pushed over by means of an accidental rocking of the boat and their goods could also be roughly handled.

For years, the government tried its best to rein in the boatmen but as a writer put it, “they were a gang of rapacious scoundrels who knew themselves to be indispensable and traded on it”. In 1839, the government tried to end the monopoly of a few boatmen who controlled the service by throwing open the supply of boats to public competition.

 But the boat cartel ensured that no newcomer came forward. In 1842, the government passed an Act by which it was compulsory for boats to be licensed. None of the boatmen applied for it and went on a strike! They “defied the law and plundered property under the very eyes of the watching peons”

. The government kept enhancing the rates and also published rate cards to bring some control but to no avail. In the 1860s, it even enacted a rule that every boat should have a policeman on board, no doubt to ensure safety of the passengers and goods. It all sounds terribly familiar doesn’t it?

It was finally technology that put an end to the boatmen.

 The ships became bigger and steam driven, enabling them to brave the surf.

 And the harbour works began in 1856, concluding in the early 1900s, enabling ships to dock safely. The boatman and the masulah boat became a thing of the past.

 Perhaps effective public transport alternatives can control the autos as well.

Sriram .V, H 23 Nov 2014

Madras History :Remembering the Co-operator

 Sir Frederick Nicholson 

The invitation I received recently read, “On account of 61st All India Co-operative Week Celebrations conducted from November 4, 2014 to November 20, 2014 in commemoration of the architect of the Co-operative Movement in India Sir Frederick Nicholson and the Co-operative Pioneers in Nilgiris such as Thiru H B Ari Gowder, we have programmed a seminar on 15.11.2014 at Nilgiris District Plantation Workers’ Co-operative Society, Coonoor …”

I hadn’t heard of any celebrations in Madras recalling Nicholson, but I can understand the Nilgiris interest in him. After retirement in 1904, Nicholson and his wife Catherine settled in Coonoor, where he played an active role in helping found the Coonoor Urban Co-operative Bank in 1916 and remained associated with it till his death in 1936. He and his wife and their son Major T B Nicholson are buried in the Tiger Hill Cemetery in Coonoor. 

On November 15, wreaths were placed on their graves and a portrait of Sir Frederick was unveiled in the Nilgiri History Museum. Frederick Augustus Nicholson arrived in Madras as a 23-year-old member of the Indian Civil Service in 1869. He was, in time, to serve as Collector of Tinnevelly, Madras and Coimbatore. It was while serving in the last-named post that he fell in love with the Nilgiris.

In the aftermath of the great Madras Famine of 1876 – which killed an estimated ten million people and virtually wiped out farming in the Presidency — the Government in 1892 set up a Famine Commission to study how such a disaster could be prevented in the future. Nicholson’s report was published in 1895 and the Indian National Congress, then in its first flush, insisted on its implementation, but it was to be 1904 before the co-operative movement began getting under way, with such recommendations as the establishing in the districts of co-operative agricultural credit societies and co-operative banks being implemented.

Nicholson, following in the footsteps of Dr. Francis Day of the Madras Medical Service, who is considered the father of India’s fishing industry, now turned his attention to fisheries in the Presidency. 

In July 1905, he presented the Government a report on the need to not only increase fish production in a Presidency that had the longest coastline in India, but also improve fish curing methods (helping inland areas get a hygienically better quality of cured fish) as well as those of making fish manure badly needed by the plantations whose constant complaint at the time was the poor quality of fish guano. 

Requested to investigate how these improvements could be made, Nicholson visited Japanese and European fishery centres and on his return was made the Honorary Director of the Bureau of Fisheries, Madras Presidency, which was established in 1907 on his recommendation. The Bureau, the first in the country, was the nucleus of today’s Departments of Fisheries in all the Southern States. 

One of the first things the Bureau did was to establish in 1908 an experimentation centre, the first in the country, in Ennore. The techniques of fish curing it developed became standard practice not only in India but in all Britain’s tropical territories.

Oxford-educated Nicholson became the First Member of the Board of Revenue in 1889. In 1902, he was appointed to the Madras Legislative Council and was knighted that year. In between, in 1897, he was made a Member of the Imperial Legislative Council. 

Some years later, in 1905, he was to make yet another significant contribution to Madras. Teaming with the Rev. Canon Sell and Sir S Subramania Aiyar, all members of the Syndicate of the University of Madras, they recommended to Government “that there should be for so ancient and important a language, with a classical literature of so unique a character, a dictionary worthy of its subject.” 

The seed was sown for the University of Madras’s Tamil Lexicon (Miscellany, March 28, 2011).

 Even that is a forgotten contribution of a man who dedicated himself to making life better and people more knowledgeable in the Madras Presidency

.S.Muthiah,  H 24 Nov 2014