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The Armenian benefactor
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The Armenians, apart from the inland trade in India, played a major role in the export trade to West Asia and the Far East. Few, however, became as successful as the Uscan family...
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TWO MERCHANT communities who played a major role in business in early Madras, the Armenians from Julfa, near Isphahan in Persia (Iran), and the Sephardic Jews from Iberia are no longer a presence in Madras. But relics of their heyday remain here and there in the city, the largest number among them recalling the greatest Armenian of them all, Coja (a title) Petrus, son of Uscan (Woskan) and grandson of Pogus (Paul). As you step on to the Maraimalai Adigal Bridge to go from Saidapet to Guindy, there on your left is one of them, a little noticed stone plaque commemorating one of Petrus Uscan's numerous contributions to Madras, the first bridge across the Adyar.
Petrus Uscan, a staunch Roman Catholic, not only replaced the old Mamalan (Marmalong / Mambalam) Causeway with a long arched bridge across the Adyar to make it easier for the Catholics of Madras to access Little Mount and St. Thomas' Mount, but he also built in 1727 the 160 steps and resting places that lead up to the church on the Mount. Petrus Uscan built the bridge in 1726 at a cost of about Rs.1,00,000 but he also left in his will an equivalent amount to be administered by the Government to carry out with the interest repairs to the bridge as well as to the steps.
A couple of years ago, when it was pointed out to the now defunct (or forgotten) Heritage Committee of the CMDA that this plaque on the first pillar of the bridge was threatened by vehicles dangerously turning in and out of a new bus terminus established by its side, with the pillar as one marker of the entrance, the commemoration stone was news to almost all the officials at the table. As was the trust fund. Anyway, action was promised, but it took a year before this little bit of heritage written in Armenian and Latin was protected - and when it was, it was only with a short guard rail, instead of moving it to the central pillar of the new bridge built in the 1960s to succeed a second bridge built to replace Petrus Uscan's "pro bono public" effort.
Coja Petrus Uscan was one of a long line of Armenian merchants to trade in Madras from the 1650s (the oldest Armenian tombstone found in Madras is dated 1663). All of them were from Julfa, where numerous Armenians had been resettled by the Persians who had, like the Saracens, Tartars and the Turks, "desolated the region where God created man in His own image" - Armenia or Ararat or Adam's Paradise. It was on these re-settled refugees that Persia depended for its international trade. And so, the Armenians, following the world's oldest trade route, settled in India and played a major role in the export trade to West Asia and the Far East as well as in the inland trade in India, moving imports into the interior. Few, however, became as successful as the Uscan family, who were joined by Petrus Uscan in Madras in 1723.
When the French seized Madras in 1746, Dupleix appealed to the Catholic faith of the leader of the Armenians and requested him to support the occupation. Petrus Uscan, who had escaped to Danish Tranquebar, replied in biting verse that the Armenian tradition was to remain loyal to a person's benefactors - in this instance the British, who had made possible his wealth. As for his properties the French had confiscated, they were welcome to them, but it would be nice if they sold them all and distributed the proceeds amongst the poor; after all, "the renowned French Treasury" could not be so empty as to need his wealth to meet its deficits!
In the event, the French levelled to the ground 33 houses that had belonged to Petrus Uscan and confiscated all his moveable wealth. Despite these losses, Petrus Uscan left behind, in cash alone, Rs. 7 lakh when he died in 1751. And what all this swelled to, his childless widow, who died a few years later, left to charity.
Petrus Uscan's will, besides the bequest to maintain the Mamalan Bridge and the St. Thomas' Mount steps, also left Rs.50,000 to Padri Severini to complete the Chapel Nossa Senhora de Milagres in Vepery, in whose yard Petrus Uscan was buried. Though the British on their return to Madras had appreciated his loyalty - he and Mrs. Madeiros were the only two Catholics allowed to continue living in the Fort - they destroyed the Capuchin chapel in the Fort and externed its Padre Severini, on suspicion that the Catholics had aided the French. So Petrus Uscan had built the Chapel of Our Lady of Miracles in Vepery as his private chapel, but where other Catholics too could worship. On his death, the chapel was taken over by the British and handed over to the German missionaries from Tranquebar who were running the first Protestant Mission in Madras. On the site of the Uscan's Chapel was raised and consecrated in 1823 St. Matthias' Anglican Church. But Uscan's tombstone is still in its courtyard.
In Latin and in Armenian, the tombstone states, "Raised on high by his renown... .here lies... one who reconciled discord and appeased strife, the strong support and pillar of the Armenians, the protector and warm defender of the poor, a man liberal and generous in repairing the loss and damage suffered by the public, one who spent his money lavishly and without stint to promote the worship of God... Petrus Uscan... whose heart is in Julfa... " Legend has it that his heart was indeed taken in a golden box to Julfa and buried in the yard of All Saviour's Cathedral there. In the Cathedral hangs a life-size portrait of him painted in Madras in 1737 and in it he is shown writing, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom... ."
The words on the tombstone reflect his contributing to the building of St. Rita's church in San Thome in 1729, after he had been one of the Witnesses to the opening of the grave of St. Thomas that year, and his serving Fort. St. George as Councillor and an envoy; in the latter role, he had negotiated successfully with the Mahrattas and the Nizam of Hyderabad on behalf of the British. Indeed, he was an extraordinary man who deserves better than a threatened plaque on the lead pillar of a bridge.
S. MUTHIAH
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