V S Srinivasa Sastri
India’s struggle for freedom took many forms before it came to be dominated by the Mahatma Gandhi-led school of thought based on civil disobedience and non-cooperation with the ruling British.
In the early years of the Indian National Congress, there were two distinct shades of political opinion – one voiced by the so-called extremists and the other by the moderates who followed Gopalakrishna Gokhale’s conciliatory approach towards the British. It stressed cooperation rather than confrontation to achieve self rule for India.
The Rt. Honourable V S Srinivasa Sastri was a disciple of Gokhale and he followed his guru’s moderate path in India’s politics. Sastri was arguably the greatest Indian speaker of the English language whose ‘silver-tongued oratory’ even the British respected.
Born into a poor brahmin family on September 22, 1869 at Valangaiman, a small village eight miles from Kumbakonam, in Tamil Nadu, he began his career as a school teacher. His interest in public causes and his powers of oratory soon combined to bring him accolades from throughout the country.
Sastri was poor, but grew up on a rich intellectual diet of traditional and mythological lore provided by his mother. The Ramayana made a profound impact on him. At the same time, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, and the novels of Sir Walter Scott and George Eliot cast a spell on him.
Sastri studied at the Kumbakonam Town High School till class XI. He had the good fortune of being a student of Appu Sastri, the Headmaster, who initiated his wards into reading serious news reportage in the English dailies. By 1887, Sastri was a graduate and soon after, he became a teacher in the Municipal High School, Mayavaram. After working in a college at Salem and Pachaiyappa’s High School, Madras, Sastri became the Headmaster of the Hindu High School. He was there for eight years before joining the Servants of India Society founded by Gokhale.
Sastri who taught English and Sanskrit won great fame as a teacher. He was both a scholar and an able teacher in these two languages. His faultless pronunciation of English words, his clarity of thought, felicity of expression and his impressive teaching enabled the pupils to attain high proficiency in the English language; his brotherly love and affection for his pupils was reciprocated by them. His arresting personality evoked their respect and admiration.
Sastri was instrumental in forming the Madras Teachers’ Guild. Love of teaching made him accept the Vice Chancellorship of the Annamalai University at 65. He taught English idioms and phrases to students almost daily. The classes were so interesting that professors competed with the students to occupy the front seats. His weekend lectures on a variety of topics and the training and encouragement he gave in recitation and elocution produced many student orators who later occupied high positions in life.
In 1905, a chance reading of a pamphlet changed Sastri’s life. It carried the prospectus and rules of the Servants of India Society, which had just been started by Gokhale. The language and sentiments no less than the ideals set forth in it, made a special appeal to him, and he wrote to Gopalakrishna Gokhale applying for membership. He was 37 then. Admitted into the Society on 15 January, 1907, he moved from his familiar Madras milieu to the strange coffee-less environs of Pune and a heavier schedule of work, his income halved. But he never regretted his decision.
Those were the days of cruel repression by the British authorities. Caught between extremist eloquence and daredevilry on the one hand, and the extreme suspicion of the local administration on the other, the going was tough for the moderates. But Sastri managed the superhuman task and as a trusted lieutenant of Justice V Krishnaswamy Iyer, was responsible for organising the 1908 session of the Indian National Congress at Madras. By 1915, he was able to unite the Congress party. Later, he did good work in the Madras Legislative Council and the Imperial Legislative Council. He made a famous speech opposing the draconian Rowlatt Bill in the Imperial Legislative Council on February 7, 1919.
From his admission into the Society, for forty years, Sastri played a distinguished part in the public life of India. After serving under his master Gokhale, he succeeded him to the Presidentship of the Society, which office he held till his death with singular devotion, winning the esteem and approbation of Indians and Britishers alike. Sastri symbolised the golden mean in Indian politics.
Sastri had to his credit a string of achievements as a delegate to the Imperial Conference in London and as an Agent-General of the Government of India in South Africa. He used his eloquence to present India’s case for self-government in the Councils of Europe. His speeches made the British Dominions
sit up and take notice of India’s greatness. Sastri collected Rs.3 lakh for starting a college for South African Indian children. The college still prospers as “Sastri College” in Durban.
South Africa was Sastri’s greatest challenge. In 1919, Gen. J C Smuts, the Prime Minister of South Africa, declined to accord Sastri equality of status with Sir Benjamin Robertson, when the British Viceroy of India planned to send them both as a delegation to help Indians in South Africa. The same Gen. Smuts admitted in 1928, that Sastri, the First Agent of the Government of India in South Africa, was the most honoured man in South Africa.
Sastri’s lectures on Ramayana were described as an “adventure in the voyage of intellectual discovery.” An excellent teacher, he was able to transmit to his audience his great love for and appreciation of the classic.
Sastri’s oratorical skill was matched by the force with which he wielded the pen. In the words of K R Srinivasa Iyengar: “We see history unfolding itself in the sequence of his letters, we find them flavoured with philosophy. We find in them the material for other men’s biographies, and we recognise in them the charm, candour and clarity of the writing, the man himself, the whole man.”
A few months before Sastri died in 1946, Gandhiji who admired him, visited him twice in the hospital. It is recorded that Sastri quoted a sloka from the Ramayana substituting the word Gandhi for the word Rama. The sloka means: “He who has not seen Rama and whom Rama has not seen is worthy of censure by his people; even his soul will find fault with him.” Srinivasa Sastri passed away on April 17, 1946.
“An artist in words” was Lady Lytton’s compliment to Sastri. A H Smith, Master of Balliol, Oxford, observed that he did not realize the beauty of the English language till he heard Sastri. Prof. Max Gluckman (a British social anthropologist of South African origin) remarked that, the best English he had “ever heard spoken was by an Indian, Srinivasa Sastri.” Lord Erskine, Governor of Madras Presidency, while delivering his address at the annual convocation of the Annamalai University in 1938 turned towards Sastri and said, “Sir, it is with some trepidation that I begin my speech in English, my mother tongue, because of the inescapable feeling that neither in English pronunciation nor in the mellifluousness of your intonation can I match the excellence of your attainment in both the spheres. I am humble enough to acknowledge my limitations in both, before this august gathering.”