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The scientist as storyteller
By S. MUTHIAH
WHEN DR. Rangaswamy Srinivasan wanted to talk to me about the Arbuthnot crash a couple of days before he left for America, I said let's meet - particularly as the crash and the family with his hoary connections with Madras have long been of interest to me - but his name rang no bell. When he came home, however, the face was that of a scientist I had heard speak at a function a couple of years ago. Dr. Srinivasan is the man who, while at IBM, worked on what ultraviolet light can do to organic matter, leading to the LASIK technique of laser eye-surgery that has benefited millions with cornea problems. His work in this field also made an important contribution to inkjet printers. And now he's looking at uniting the sperm and the egg by drilling a small hole in the egg with a laser. Dr. Srinivasan's discovery brought IBM millions, but he received only $10,000 for his findings. But that was not the tale we met to talk about.
Now running his own consultancy in the U.S., he finds more time between research hours to focus on a subject that's interested him for years but is as far removed from science as can be. And that is the story of the Arbuthnot crash, when the leading British business house in South India that also functioned as a merchant bank declared bankruptcy in October 1906. Dr. Srinivasan's interest in the financial disaster that rocked South India and which made paupers of many, was born when he found out that it was his grandfather, T. Narasimha Iyengar, then a young vakil, who had been the only Indian to play a role in the criminal proceedings against Sir George Arbuthnot.
Planning to write a book about the collapse of Arbuthnot's, Dr. Srinivasan has been researching its history diligently. The crash led to two trails. One was the firm's insolvency petition on which that Acting Chief Justice Sir S. Subramania Iyer tactfully deferred judgment, knowing that he would be retiring soon and thus would be leaving it to another judge to rule on. And the other was that which started no sooner Subramania Iyer had given his ruling, when the Government acted by filing a criminal complaint against Sir George, stunning most of the European community. In the end, the prosecution softened its stand; nevertheless, Sir George received the unprecedented (for a man of his standing in European society in India) sentence of 18 months R.I. It was in the latter case that Narasimha Iyengar rather surprisingly figured as an assistant to the prosecutor and even cross-examined a major witness. This might have had something to do with his proficiency in accountancy, surmises his grandson.
I look forward to Dr. Srinivasan turning up information about where and how Sir George served his sentence, how the insolvency petition was resolved, how the 6,000 or so creditors were settled and a host of other questions which curiously have, till now, not excited the imagination of any researcher in Madras.
One of the most infamous incidents in modern Madras history, the Arbuthnot crash has been studiously ignored till now, despite it being one of the finest hours in the history of
The Hindu, the paper never having been more outspoken than when it called for help to the creditors and action against Sir George. About the London Office of the firm nothing could be done, for Patrick Macfadyen, formerly of Madras and who later headed the London office, had walked into a railway tunnel when an express was approaching. Macfadyen had gambled with West Indian sugar, businesses in Java and American rails. In Madras, Sir George lost on coffee, indigo and sugar, gambled with gold mine shares and invested in industry that never took off. But more than bad investment and gambling, the saddest part of it was the utter irresponsibility shown by the principals that could only be described as defrauding those who trusted what had been an honourable firm and had deposited their money in it only to later discover that the principals had treated their deposits with gay abandon.
I hope Dr. Srinivasan will look beyond the court proceedings and put together a book rich in the human element, focussing on both the goodies and the bad `uns. Meanwhile, it should be recorded that Dr. Srinivasan was visiting Madras this time to participate in the birth centenary celebrations of his Chemistry professor at Loyala. Srinivasan had been his first graduate student.
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