{"id":211,"date":"2011-04-08T20:45:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T20:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/?p=211"},"modified":"2011-04-15T22:54:56","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T22:54:56","slug":"indian-independence-was-academic-to-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/sipa\/2011\/04\/indian-independence-was-academic-to-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Independence Was Academic to Him"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo of Vemuri Venkat Ramanadham. Photo credit: The Hindu.<\/p><\/div>\n

By Sarika Bansal<\/p>\n

Cramped in a sweltering college dormitory in South India, Dr. Vemuri Venkat Ramanadham\u2014then known as \u201cLecturer Ramanadham\u201d\u2014and fervently debated the Indian independence movement with more than 50 students.<\/p>\n

Was non-violence the best way to get the British to leave India?\u00a0 How should India govern itself if the British leave?\u00a0 How long would it take for Gandhi\u2019s \u201cQuit India\u201d movement to be effective?<\/p>\n

Students posed and answered questions in rapid-fire Telugu, and Ramanadham sat on the side, looking back and forth between his students as though watching a tennis match. \u00a0This is the closest he would come to the independence movement, and he was satisfied with his contribution.<\/p>\n

Today, the nonagenarian is best known for his work as an economist for the United Nations and as a poet in his native language, Telugu.\u00a0 Seventy years ago, during the climax of India\u2019s independence from the British, he was just starting his illustrious academic career.\u00a0 After completing his master\u2019s degree in 1941, Ramanadham became an economics lecturer at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, a mid-sized town on the coconut-scented southeastern coast of India.<\/p>\n

Like most Indians of his generation, Ramanadham spent the 1940s partly engaged with everyday work and partly yearning for India\u2019s independence. \u201cFew people quit their jobs to start fighting for freedom,\u201d he said in a phone interview, \u201cbut the freedom struggle permeated everyday life.\u00a0 Almost [everything] in the university during those years related in some way to the independence movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

During these years of intense struggle across the country, Ramanadham decided his biggest potential contribution lay in helping students organize debates and demonstrations across the city.\u00a0 \u201cMy colleagues and I were trying to bring the students together in the fight for independence,\u201d he said. \u201cWe would give them advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to offering tips on how to fight for freedom\u2014\u201calways, it must be non-violent\u201d\u2014Ramanadham also offered an intellectual understanding of independence.\u00a0 It was crucial, he told his students over and over again, to distinguish anti-British sentiment from India\u2019s need for self-governance.\u00a0 \u201cAs teachers at a high level, we encouraged students to understand the meaning of independence.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t against the British, but against the fact that the British were keeping India in bondage,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cThe main function students had during those years was to explain [this distinction] to ordinary people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was our role,\u201d he continued, \u201cto prevent students from doing stupid things in the name of independence.\u00a0 Students had to show the public what was going to be good about freedom, and not simply that we got rid of the British because it was fashionable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering how he had been witnessing freedom efforts since he was born in 1920, Ramanadham\u2019s sentiment was hardly surprising.\u00a0 The seeds of India\u2019s independence movement date as far back as 1885, when British and Indian members of India\u2019s Theosophical Society established the Indian National Congress.\u00a0 This move both symbolically and pragmatically represented a step towards India\u2019s self-governance.\u00a0 The next few decades saw several independence movements, such as the militant one led by Subhas Chandra Bose (\u201cNetaji\u201d), as well as famously nonviolent ones, like the one led by Mohandas (\u201cMahatma\u201d) Gandhi.<\/p>\n

By the 1940s, Ramanadham said, \u201ceveryone knew the British would be leaving soon.\u00a0 It was just a matter of time.\u201d\u00a0 Gandhi\u2019s Quit India movement, which called for immediate Indian independence, had quickly gained ground from its inception in 1942.<\/p>\n

Across India, including in Visakhapatnam, common people were demanding that the British renegotiate their presence in India.\u00a0 Ramanadham remembers bonfires in the middle of town, where people would burn their Western clothes and pledge to wear only Indian-made threads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was done in the Gandhian spirit of self-reliance.\u00a0 The khadi <\/em>movement\u201d\u2014the movement that encouraged Indians to wear domestically-produced handspun cloth\u2014\u201chad started years before. It meant that you would give employment to local people and that you don\u2019t buy clothes [made] from a machine.\u00a0 After all, India is a country that had always grown cotton, and there was no reason to buy cotton from another country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramanadham recalled the khadi<\/em> clothes as sometimes being itchy and ill fitting, but he and his colleagues still wore them, day in and day out.\u00a0 \u201cThey didn\u2019t look as nice as non-khadi<\/em> suits, even after ironing,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut it was the [idea of] a national dress that mattered to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the while, he was helping his students debate the core independence-related issues more succinctly, more carefully, more powerfully.\u00a0 He was sometimes gruff in his approach\u2014\u201cafter debates, I would tell students where they had defects and what not to do again\u201d\u2014but a core group of debaters returned to him time and again. \u00a0They seemed to admire Ramanadham\u2019s strict Gandhian approach to the revolution: violence was the easy solution, but Indians needed to rise above it.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few people were damaging buildings and assaulting British police officers during these years,\u201d he recollected.\u00a0 \u201cThis was wrong.\u201d\u00a0 Luckily, he added, such acts of violence were not very common in Vishakapatnam.\u00a0 They were certainly not common within the university campus, where Ramanadham spent most of his time.<\/p>\n

By the time independence came in 1947, few were surprised.\u00a0 \u201cIt was time for the British to leave,\u201d Ramanadham said, \u201cand it was good of them to leave when they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was pleased not only by the timeliness of Britain\u2019s departure but also by the manner in which independence was achieved.\u00a0 \u201cGandhi\u2019s biggest contribution,\u201d he recounted, \u201cwas that we should be peaceful.\u00a0 Be peaceful to the extent that you give yourself to the beatings of the British.\u00a0 Many were hurt in the process.\u00a0 But the British gradually knew that it was a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the beatings he witnessed, and despite the intensity of the independence movement, Ramanadham maintained a positive opinion of the British.\u00a0 \u201cWe used to emphasize that the British as persons were friendly, but that the government was not friendly,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cThey held India under them politically, which was a mistake.\u00a0 But they were fairly nice people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years after independence was achieved, Ramanadham matriculated to the London School of Economics, where he received his first PhD.\u00a0 To some, Ramanadham\u2019s choice of university may have seemed incongruous with his desire for India\u2019s self-rule, but he did not believe so.\u00a0 \u201cI found everyone friendly there.\u00a0 India was free by then, but it wouldn\u2019t have mattered if it wasn\u2019t free.\u201d\u00a0 After all, he repeated, \u201cwe didn\u2019t like the British as rulers, but we were never against them as individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than half a century later, his experience in the independence movement has stayed close to him.\u00a0 Both during and after his 30-year career with the United Nations, he published dozens of poetry books in Telugu.\u00a0 Some of his books featured the independence movement quite strongly.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my poetry books is called Swadham Siddhi<\/em>, which means the achievement of independence. \u00a0It is 350 pages long, and tells the story of independence from the time Gandhi came from Africa to when he started to lead the independence movement.\u00a0 It finishes when we gained independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why he chose to recount the story of India\u2019s independence in such a manner, Ramanadham simply replied, \u201cI have the good fortune of a gift of poetry.\u00a0 I just wanted to use my gift.\u201d