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Heritage-conscious or not?
Soon this picture is all we will have left to remind us of a building where 200 years of South India’s destiny was determined
What a strange world we live in in this city. One day we have every reason to congratulate Government for being heritage-conscious and making an effort to save its heritage buildings in the city and the next we are constrained to regret the lack of h
eritage-consciousness shown by Government when it refuses to listen to reason or emotional appeals and sets about pulling down heritage buildings. One day, it legitimately claims possession of land that belongs to it and dedicates it to the public as a badly needed green lung, the next day there are allegations that it seeks to go back on a solemn contract and take over a building from those who have a heritage connection with it in order to hand it over to an authority that could be sited anywhere in the city, nay, in the State. The rhyme or reason for all this chopping and changing in Government’s attitude on heritage matters, of all these allegations and denials, is something this column finds difficult to fathom but, maybe, as citizens of Madras that is Chennai it is not ours to reason why or even be consulted. That being the case, let me get on with what this column is, more often that not, best at: writing obituaries.
And today’s obituary can be written in just a couple of lines: The picture that accompanies this piece is probably all that will remain in a few weeks of a place that Governor Thomas Saunders bought and which Governors Edward Clive and Thomas Rumbold developed to its final shape and where for nearly 200 years decisions were taken that shaped the destinies of the Madras Presidency/Province. May the contribution it made to history — much of which survives in Tamil Nadu to this day — rest in peace.
Curiously, when Governor Thomas Saunders rented what became Government House in 1752, he was also restoring Madras to its status as capital of the Madras Presidency. From 1746, Fort St. David, Cuddalore, had that honour, Madras having been occupied by the French. Madras continued to be subordinate to Fort St. David even after its rendition in 1749. It was only on April 6, 1752 that it took supremacy over Cuddalore again. Thomas Saunders had been appointed Governor in 1750 and moved from Fort St. David to Madras in 1752.
While Thomas Saunders, “President and Governor for all our affairs on the Choromandel, Orixa and Sumatra Coasts”, was in Fort St David, Richard Prince was in Madras, with the designation ‘Deputy Governor’. And, in Fort St. George, he lived in what was called ‘The Great House on Choultry Street’. This house had belonged to a leading Armenian merchant, Sultan David, and was in Prince’s time owned by David’s son Shawmier Sultan. It was Saunders who settled dues unpaid on the house from 1749, amounting to nearly 2500 pagodas, and returned the house to Shawmier in 1752 when he moved to what became Government House. Shawmier thereafter rented the ‘Great House’ to Robert Clive and others. Some years later, Government bought it and when it became used by the Admiralty Courts it got the name Admiralty House. The house which Saunders moved into was where Governors lived and held court from 1752 till 1947; at no time was it Admiralty House, it was always Government House.
Of Thomas Saunders, the Company historian Robert Orme wrote, “....(he) certainly has good Abilities and who by the Moderate fortune he carried home may be deem’d moderate in his Government...” In his last couple of years in Madras, Saunders had constant problems with his Army Commander, Stringer Lawrence. The latter felt that he should in no manner bow to civilian authority; Saunders, according to Orme, had “Reason on his Side, and had he managed it with Less Sharpness, The other had perhaps been less inflamed.”
The Rev. Robert Palk, who exchanged his collar for a lay role in Council, was sent by Saunders to pacify an inflamed Lawrence, but, according to Orme, Lawrence literally bought over Palk — and in 1755 a disgusted Saunders resigned and sailed for home and a quiet life. In a few days, even the home he bought for a Governor will no longer remain to remind us of that new era in Indian history that began with the Army that Saunders and Lawrence had raised in Cuddalore and men like Robert Clive used to implement the policy that “anything the French can do we can do better.”
S. MUTHIAH
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