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The postman knocked...
S. MUTHIAH
THERE'S MORE about T. V. Subba Rao that the postman has brought. Reader Raghu Tagat informs me that Subba Rao was the Jagirdar of Aska and NOT Arni. Aska is a village in the Ganjam District, once the northern reaches of the Madras Presidency but now part of Orissa. Some of the earliest refined white sugar was from Aska and was popularly known as Aska Cheeni. This could well have come from Binny's `Aska concern', its pioneering venture into agriculture, circa 1842. Aska, according to Binny's records, was a small proprietary estate that was once part of the Goomsur Zamindari, not far from Gopalpur-on-Sea. The refinery had been set up by a syndicate, in which Binny's had a 30 per cent interest but whose other partners had close links with the firm. Binny's was named managers of the refinery. When West Indies sugar began being favoured by London, Aska — and two Parry refineries — were the only factories to survive in South India. Aska struggled on till around 1915, but Aska Cheeni was known in the Madras market till at least Independence.
To return to Subba Rao, reader Tagat writes that he was a Maharashtrian Brahmin and that there were several fiefdoms of theirs in Arni as well, no doubt, explaining how Subba Rao came to be incorrectly linked with Arni. Many of these settlers from Maharashtra in what became the Madras Presidency used as a caste-based surname `Rao Saheb'. One of the better known such users was C. S. Krishnamswami Rao Saheb, who retired as Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India in the 1980s.
Golus in the Subba Rao household were famous, adds reader Tagat. A mythological story was always depicted, with characters "created by the women of the household using cardboard, cloth, cotton, wool and other easily available material." Similar displays were to be found in the homes of K. Rajah Iyer (who became Advocate-General) and C. Rajam who sold `India House' to `Gemini' Vasan in order to establish the Madras Institute of Technology. Incidentally, I wonder whether there is a connection between Rajam's `India House' and the `India House' mentioned in the address of the publisher of the Municipal Gazette that I referred to last week?
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