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The peregrinating statue
When the 3rd Baron Cornwallis of Linton, an 8th generation descendant of the 1st Marquess and 2nd Earl Cornwallis whom India better knows, visited Madras recently, I wonder what he thought of the scene depicted on the circular base of the statue of his forefather in the Fort Museum. I also wonder what he thought of all the moves the statue had made before it found this niche under the stairs that keeps it virtually out of sight. I didn't meet him after that tour he took to look at the Cornwallis sites in the city, but the authorised history of the Cornwallis family he presented me the day before the tour probably reflects his views.
Most people who visit the Fort Museum briefly peer at the 14 feet tall, Thomas Banks statue of the imperially robed, viceregally postured Governor General of India and pass on, scarcely wondering who he was. Certainly almost none of them pause to look at the scene just below eye level. That's a bas relief narration of a story of fame or infamy, depending on the viewer's viewpoint, and shows Tippoo Sultan handing over two of his sons to Lord Cornwallis in 1793 as hostage after the Third Mysore War. From the British point of view in 1800, it was a statue erected at the time by "the citizens of Madras to memorialise Cornwallis's military achievements." In today's world, most people will agree that holding children hostage till reparation for the ravages of war were paid is hardly cricket.
The Cornwallis Family History narrates that Cornwallis assured Tippoo's negotiators that "as he had only one son himself, he experienced the affection of a parent in more than an ordinary degree but even that child could not be received by him with great tenderness than would Tippoo's." The two boys who, according to Tippoo's spokesman, "must now look up to your Lordship as their father", were, however, not returned to Mysore till May 1794, after every penny of the nearly £8 million `indemnity' had been paid. But during the two-year stay in Madras, looked after by John Doveton, they were feted by Madras Society, particularly European Society which `displayed' them at many a ball.
When the Madras Society decided to honour Cornwallis, it erected the statue under a cupola at the junction of what is now Cenotaph Road and Mount Road in Teynampet, at the time the southern boundary of the Great Choultry Plain. It was moved in 1906 to the Parade Ground in the Fort, which then became `Cornwallis Square', then to a new larger cupola in front of Bentinck's Building, now the Collectorate, in 1925. The Cenotaph Road cupola now stands next to the Fort Museum, the Beach cupola opposite the Collectorate, and the statue, moved in 1928 to dominate the reading hall of the Connemara Public Library, was finally located in 1950 in the Fort Museum.
S. MUTHIAH
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