IDay retrospective: Gandhi and Madras Christian College

Chennai:‘The eternal Spirit in various garbs’ best captures how notions of ‘tolerance’, ‘freedom’ and ‘reason’ get a foothold amid seemingly irreconcilable differences, more so in modern times.  

Last week, as this correspondent stumbled on a copy of ‘Life and Legacy of Madras Christian College’, authored by two of its distinguished faculty, Dr Joshua Kalapati and Dr Ambrose Jeyasekaran, in a second-hand bookshop here, one was struck how it unwittingly opened a retrospective on ideas in India’s 70th year of Independence.

It is a painstakingly researched work on the history of MCC, as this cosmopolitan institution from the South is widely known. From its founding days by the Scottish Missionaries in 1837, the book covers up to 1978, and gives a glimpse of outstanding alumni in all walks of life including two former Presidents of India – Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and V.V. Giri to P.V. Saraswathi who became the ‘Sankaracharya of Puri’-, who made their ‘alma mater’ proud. This chronicle also brings to light some remarkable aspects of Mahatma Gandhi, how his struggle impacted MCC and how its thought-leaders saw his political mission. Few snapshots from that era seem equally relevant in India’s present political context.

It was on February 16 and 17, 1916, when Gandhi (not yet Mahatma as the authors put it) first visited MCC at its Armenian street premises – it moved to its Tambaram campus only in 1937. On the first day, at a YMCA session (before visiting MCC that evening), “Gandhi spoke on the aims and objectives of his Satyagrahaashram,” write the authors. The following day at Anderson Hall, Gandhi chaired a debate on, “Shall the Vernacular be the Media of Instruction in our Schools and Colleges?” Gandhi was for making vernacular languages as the ‘media of instruction’ (note his emphasis on plurality), but added, “the authorities and the peoples themselves who would have to settle this issue”.

KPS Menon, later India’s distinguished Foreign Secretary, succinctly recalled that occasion years later in a message to MCC magazine’s centenary number thus: “The war was raging; loyalty meetings were held galore; Mrs. Annie Besant, then in the heyday of her glory, was fanning the flame of nationalism, especially in student minds; Dr ( TM) Nair, with his mordant tongue and pen was challenging her influence and forming the Justice Party; and I remember one memorable occasion when we thronged the great Christian College courtyard to listen to Mahatma Gandhi, a comparative stranger in internal Indian politics, though none of us then realised what a portent his appearance was.”  That was a transformative moment in a new East-West encounter.

For instance, Ms Alice Barnes-, whose husband Barnes had joined the faculty at MCC in the 1930s’ and she herself had contributed substantially to women’s education teaching for long at Bentinck Girls School here, had this to say: …Gandhiji never forgot the value of the individual. Of this fact, the letters in this book (for which Alice wrote an introduction) are a convincing and moving proof.

They are proof too, if proof be needed, of the fine sensitiveness and generosity of his spirit; there is no attempt to influence the ‘child’ to whom he writes, against the foreign rulers of India, no self-glorification or self-pity, no bitterness or rancour. On the other hand there is,….a revelation of the motive springs of the whole of Bapuji’s life and work, his complete devotion to Truth and Love, his utter surrender to the Will of God.”  

If those three ‘core values’ made inter-religious dialogue possible in inter-war years, separating contested dogmas of individual religions from ‘philosophical search for Truth’, it brought Gandhi and the Congress closer to various sections of Minorities. The appreciation the likes of Ms. Alice Barnes had for Gandhi, and setting the tone for a wider secular space apart, a ‘major crisis’ MCC went through was during the ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942, more so for its British teachers,  the authors underscore.   

“It was almost impossible to contain the patriotic zeal among the students,” write the authors, adding, some of the “most enthusiastic” of them held secret meetings in the three halls in MCC – Heber, Selaiyur and St Thomas - while several of them like Ramunni Menon and Tamil Nationalist poet Subrahmanya Bharathi’s granddaughter, were arrested for participating in agitations then.

The situation was quite tense and the then MCC principal Dr Boyd not only “received” the ‘patriotic students’ who came back without any rancour, but “Boyd never allowed the police to enter the campus even once” while maintaining “necessary standard of discipline.” The MCC was then the only college here to admit students from other colleges sent out for “political activities” without insisting on transfer certificates. Dr Boyd had such an ‘impeccable record’. So much so, at the height of the Quit India Movement, Rajaji, who was a frequent speaker at MCC functions, “once confessed at a public meeting that he was “simply unable to dislike this one Britisher – Boyd.”

“India, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi did well to have abandoned violence and chose non-violent, non-cooperation as her only weapon,” said the MCC magazine in an article in the first issue after Independence. This was at a time when many Indian Christians were tussling to reconcile the spirit of Indian Nationalism with the Christian faith. They saw in Gandhi, who said his life was his message, an iconic bridge-builder.

There were key differences though when Gandhi disagreed with learned theologians like V S Azariah on the issue of religious conversion. Quoting from the Gandhi-Azariah debates, the authors point out how for Gandhi spiritual conversion from one faith to another fellowship could be only individual and could not be applied on a mass level. And yet Gandhi left behind a cherished legacy of many Christians who were proud to be Gandhians, a testament to how cultures share reciprocal feelings.