Come September, and thoughts invariably turn to the bombing of Madras by the German cruiser Emden on the night of September 22, 1914. That was 110 years ago. Not much remains by way of as yet undiscovered memorabilia — the photographs and news reports are all published, the plaque by the side the High Court compound is preserved, and we have had accounts and retellings galore.
The word Emden, which for almost a century in Madras ‘bhashai’ meant a bully, has now faded from public memory. R.K. Narayan even wrote a short story with that title, depicting an old man who had dominated over everyone for much of his life.
But there is still one mystery that needs resolution — the role of Chempakaraman Pillai in the bombing. I still recall the Madras Week of a decade and more ago when Gabriele Landwehr, then Director, the Max Mueller Bhavan Goethe Institute, organised a talk on the Emden’s ‘visit’ to Madras.
The speaker was Joachim Bautze and he dwelt at length on the ship, its career on the high seas and its eventual sinking off Australia. He amazed us with the wealth of detail in his possession, right down to the manifest of the people on board the ship during that voyage.
At the end of the talk, there was a question answer session, and one man in the audience asked why there was no mention of Chempakaraman Pillai, the patriot. It was he, claimed the questioner, who guided Captain Muller as to the various locations of Madras city that were worthy targets for training the ship’s guns at. Professor Bautze was quite puzzled.
He said he had never come across the name before and none of the records in Germany support such an account. The questioner held his ground as did Prof. Bautze and the situation threatened to get out of hand when the late Chennai chronicler S. Muthiah brought the event to a quick conclusion.
And so the mystery has endured. Last week there was a visitor from the U.S. who claimed to have some connections to Pillai and wanted me to assist her with further information on his role in the Emden episode. I could only repeat what I have written above and tell her that much of what in India is said about Chempakaraman Pillai as regards the Emden is not supported by material from Germany. It appears that Pillai himself was the source of the Indian version and given his early death — he died in 1934 of what some people say was slow poisoning — proof backing his account perished with him.
Coined Jai Hind
Yet another claim is that he dared cross the path of Adolf Hitler and it was the latter that was behind the early demise of Pillai although why this could have been a reason, is not clear. There is another ‘fact’ attributed to Pillai — that he coined the term Jai Hind. None of these can be at this point of time backed with much proof. But the official Indian version takes in them all, as can be seen in the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ site.
There is a rather pedantic statue for Pillai in the garden of the Gandhi Mandapam in Adyar. It would be inappropriate to dismiss all the details of Pillai’s life as fiction. Certainly there was patriotism in all that he did, and he deserves the honours that came long after his demise, but it will be good if Germany can consider having someone research further in the archives that exist in that country and help substantiate much of what some people in India are now claiming.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)
Published - September 17, 2024 11:02 pm IST
