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Madras Miscellany
A 500-year-old connection
I'd always thought that the cultural relations between Germany and India were 300 years old, beginning with the arrival of Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg in Tarangambadi in July 1706. A recent international seminar organised by the Max Mueller Bhavan, on Indo-German cultural relations, however, shed new light on the relationship and put it 200 years earlier.
Gita Dharmapal-Frick and Dr. C. S. Mohanavelu, formerly of Presidency College, point out that the first German to arrive in India — in Calicut — was Balthasar Sprenger from an Augsburg business house. King Manuel of Portugal had invited merchants from all over Europe to sail with the Portuguese to India and Sprenger arrived in Calicut in 1505 and stayed four months. Sprenger's account of the voyage and his stay were published in 1609 under the title "Die Merfabrt un erfarung nuwer Schiffung und Wege zu vil onerkanten Inseln und Kulnigreichen" (The voyage and experience of new shipways to many unknown islands and kingdoms). This was the first eye-witness account in German about India. Indeed, though Sprenger was a merchant in search of spices, the report has little commercial information, but much information about the people of Calicut.
More significantly, the account has 13 wood-cut illustrations, four of which are on India. The illustrations include the Zamorin's troops with an elephant, a camel and on the march. The fourth illustration was the most significant one, comprising drawings of different kinds of ships.
Mohanavelu says that also aboard the ship was another German, but little is known of Hans Mayr. Sprenger, however, made a business success of his voyage and so disturbed King Manuel that he banned all German sailings to India. Thereafter, even if the Germans did not sail on Portuguese ships, they helped in financing several voyages till the middle of the 17th Century. The German commercial connection then faded out.
The last German report of this period, according to Mohanavelu, was written by Heinrich Roth and published in 1652. This report focussed on Goa, Agra and North India.
The lively 2-and-a-half-day seminar was as much a commemoration of Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg's arrival, as it was a tribute to Gerhard Fischer who died recently. Fischer was born in Madras where his father was the German Consul. Gerhard Fischer himself was German Consul-General in Madras in 1960-64. Later, after several ambassadorial stints abroad, he settled in India which he considered his home. During his tenure in India, he helped in the founding of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the Neyveli Lignite Corporation.
It was, however, in retirement that he became best known for his campaign against leprosy. He set up numerous institutions to care for patients and treat leprosy. It was for this that he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize in 1997.
The seminar focussed on several aspects of the Indo-German connection — and revealed how much scope there was for research in this field.
Harry Crowe Buck
Forgotten figure
A recent celebration in the city gave the impression that America's most popular sport, basketball, arrived in Madras just 50 years ago. That's far from the case. The celebration was for the golden jubilee of the Tamil Nadu Basketball Association, which must have been the Madras Basketball Association when it was founded. But was there no governing body for the game in the Madras Presidency or the city before that? Did its spread depend, prior to 1957, as in the case of a few other sports, on the Madras Olympics Association? I do not know, but what I am under the impression is that the game had its beginnings in India in Madras. As did volleyball, I think. Both introduced by Harry Crowe Buck. Who seems to be a forgotten figure but for the bust in the YMCA College of Physical Education, Nandanam, and a building named after him there.
Buck came to Madras in 1919 to work at the YMCA in Esplanade. And the next year, there began his association with physical education and sport in Madras. Nay, India. Buck came to India from Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts, the world's first physical education college. It was at this `Y'-associated institution that basketball was `invented' by a Canadian, Dr. James Naismith, in 1891. He formalised the game with a book of rules in 1895. That was the year that volleyball was invented by another YMCA Physical Director, William J. Morgan, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Springfield.
With Buck's YMCA connection it was inevitable that he would introduce both games in Madras and, with his association with the Indian Olympics Association from 1924, propagate them throughout the country. But what surprised me was to hear that basketball was first played in India only in 1930, ten years after Buck's arrival. I presume volleyball was also first played in India around the same time. I wonder why it took quite so long to introduce the two games in India. I wonder whether readers have answers to the questions I've raised here.
Incidentally, after Buck's death, his wife Marie was appointed Group Welfare Director of Amalgamations in 1946. She recommended to the Group in 1947 that it acquire "3700 acres of waste land (poromboke) adjoining the city limits and extending ten miles south of the City of Madras, known as the Pallikkarnai Swamp" and establish a well-infrastructured satellite township there for its employees and help develop farms for them. She recommended that a township be developed for 5000 families (a 25-30,000 population) and that it should have all public utilities, educational, health and market facilities, places of worship, and ample housing. The residents, she suggested, should be helped to develop farms, seabased enterprises and light industries.
The postman knocked
* Reader S.V. Ramakrishnan, referring to Dr. John Mathai's stewardship of the Finance Ministry (Miscellany, July 24), writes that he recalls people saying that Mathai left Delhi
ONLY on two occasions during his tenure as Finance Minister. One was to declare open the Bank of India's headquarters at Hornby Road and speak at the meeting presided over by the Bank's Chairman, Sir Cowasji Jehangir. The second occasion was to go to Calcutta to address the Annual Session of the Associated Chambers of Commerce. He wonders if he is correct.
* My tribute to K.N. Prabhu (Miscellany, August 14) had reader T. K. Visweswaran reminding me that "obviously" F.W. Ellis (Miscellany, April 10) has not been forgotten, seeing that there's a road named after him. And reader T.M. Srinivasan rang to point out that he did not think the Suguna Vilas Sabha ever staged kutcheris. Prabhu must have been thinking of the unforgettable dramas it put on the boards, he said.
S. MUTHIAH
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