Centenary of Justice Party (1916-2016)
90th Year of Self Respect Movement(1925-2015)
Dr.C. NATESA MUDALIAR THE DOYEN OF DRAVIDIAN MOVEMENT 1875-1937
Dr. Natesan is a popular figure in Madras who is familiar to all and friendly with everyone. From a man in the street to a mighty millionnaire everyone knows him and everyone loves him. For he is one of those noble persons whom to know is to love. His is a peculiar attachment to his partymen without peevishly estranging the people as a whole. There is hardly another man in the Justice Party who has so well conquered the hearts of the Non-Brahmins, so little creating the hatred of the Brahmins, as Dr. Natesa Mudaliar. He has the city in his heart and the city in its turn has him in its own.
The metropolitans of Madras mention his name with pride and affection, not unmixed with pity, while the muffasil people regard his name as something of a myth. Somebody has spoken of Gandhi the man. even so there is, methinks Dr. Natesan the myth as distinct from Dr.Natesan the man. The fame of the Doctor’s proverbial loyalty and freedom from hypocrisy has travelled far and wide throughout the Province and the Justicites have an instinctive reverence for him whenever they hear his name mentioned or read it in the papers.
They have a vague feeling that if all their sense of selfless devotion, sincerity and sacrifice should assume a human frame and shape and strut about in a suit and speak faultlessly, it could not be very different from that of Dr.Natesa Mudaliar. With emotion in their hearts and tears in their eyes, every Muffasil Justicite hears the story of this ‘mythical’ Doctor;s endless sacrifices and heroic services. And their wrath and indignation can hardly be repressed when they are told that the only return this self less man gets is a cold rebuff and cumulative disappointment.
Yet he gets never disgusted and yet he never grows cynical. Every time his path is crossed, he grows all the more sincere in heart and buoyant in spirit. It is this incredible and irrepressible enthusiasm for the Party that has earned for the Doctor the vague but complimentary reputation of a ‘myth’. “Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over.”
If Dewan Bahadur A.Ramaswami Mudaliar represents the intellect of the Justice party with his eloquence and brains, Rao Bahadur C.Natesa Mudaliar represents the heart of the same with his healthy feelings and honesty. Dr.Natesan is the last of the Romans yet left on the stage of Justice politics.
“The Justice Party is the justest Party
Give that Party your support hearty”
is in fact the endless burden of his ancient song all through his life. He has an all-consuming, childlike and unswerving faith in its principles. It is he and he alone more than anyone else that can be said to live for the party and be ready to die for the same. He has no religion except the religion of the Justice party. His faith in the party’s doctrines borders on the fanatic and far transcends his faith in God and religion.
This attachment to his party can be equalled only by the attachment of a Jesuit to his Sacred Order. The sight of his partymen and the sound of his Party name are refreshing to him. He delights in the mention of its name and dreads and shudders to think of its death or even the probability thereof. If Napolean had said that he was the State, Dr.Natesan says he is the Party. But there is all the difference between his identifying himself with his Party and others identifying themselves with the same.
Whereas everyone of his Partymen thinks that his own elevation means the Party’s advancement, Dr.Natesan thinks that the Party’s victory everywhere is his own personal triumph. Never is he ashamed to scramble for and snatch at the loaves and fishes of office; nevertheless he does not keep even a bit for himself. He always fights other people’s battles. He never fights for himself.
Like the chivalrous and selfless warrior huntsman of old, Dr.Madalaiar hunts and daringly enough bags big game of jobs but only on behalf of others. He arrogates to himself the glory of the hunt but always allows his partymen to go in for shares of the prizes. He has no interests of his own separate from and save those of his party.
At home and abroad, within his drawing room or while on the dining table, in the Cosmopolitan Club and in the Cabinet room, with an ordinary propagandist or an aristocratic leader, Dr.Natesa Mudaliar will always and ad nauseum, with the fervour and zeal of a missionary talk about the Justic Party and discuss about its present and future, with a proud reference to its glorious past. All other things are trivial and unreal compared to this Mistress of his heart. If it lives, you live, he says, and if it dies, why, you too die. In his blind faith and overzealousness he loudly proclaims to an amused audience, as if to counterpart the Congress man’s claims, that the Justice Party is the only party in India which is broad-base on the solid foundation of justice and which is comprehensive enough to accommodate within its wide and warm wings all kinds of parties like the Congress, Independents and Muslims.
It is one of Dr.Natesa Mudaliar’s proud claims to consistency and loyalty, that he has always been a true Justicite, a constitutional and orthodox one. And one may not grudge him this consolation. For when all is said and done, it is he more than anyone else that has been consistently and continually representing the spirit as well as the letter of the principles and constitution of the Party. His whole life has been a series of struggles for the maintenance of the main features of the Party, unchanged and unpolluted.
A dealer in pulses by profession, the Doctor himself has been the true pulse of the party, mirroring its health and fitness by means of its normal beat. He enshrines his party’s principles in his heart and echoes its true voice through his words. There might have been times and occasions when even the Justice ministry had strayed a bit from the strict principles of the Party. But sure as anything, Dr.Natesan would never have swerved by a hair’s breadth from them.
The conscientious Doctor crossed the floor of the Legislature in 1923 and perched himself on the Opposition Benches to the very palpable and professed ground of being more true to the Justice Party than the ministry itself was. It was he who first drew the distinction between ‘Justicites’ in the truest sense and the ministerialists, though the latter too belong to the same party. He did not see eye to eye with the second ministry of Panagal. He accused it of being untrue to the Party;s ideals. Hence was the parting of his ways from them. But the moment proofs were forth-coming of the mending of their ways by the ministerialists, Dr.Natesan recrossed the floor with equal facility and ease as before.
Again there came an occasion for his ‘revolt’ in 1927. The Non-Brahmin Confederation held at Coimbatore, after much deliberation and discussion resolved to change Creed of the Justice Party to the extent of permitting such of those Justicites as chose, to join the Congress opposition. Yet this was not to the liking of the Doctor and some other colleagues as Sir K.V.Reddi, who separated themselves and seceded from the main party and formed themselves into a group called the Constitutional Justicites. This political entity persisted in existence till 1930 and has not been heard of since.
He has a definite partiality for the youths whom he pats and partonises with a paternal affection. Recommendation letters are his commonest mode of helping the students. Such letters have a free coinage in his mint and are issued in such unlimited quantities that there seems to be an inevitable depreciation in their value. He genuinely feels for the youth and greatly interests himself in their welfare. With a heavy heart and tearful eyes, he appeals to the Government to intervene betimes and emancipate the thousand of educated unemployed from the thraldom of poverty and disease of despair. He is the most beloved public man in Madras liked and loved, both by Brahmins and by Non-Brahmins, both by Christians and by Muslims.
It has come to stay as a hallowed treadition and a hard custom to say either on the platform or in the Press that Sir P.T.Chetty and Dr.T.M.Nair founded the Justice Party and the Rajah Saheb of Panagal fostered it with care. To canonize any more name and to add to that galaxy would be condemned as a political heresy and a profane attempt to defile the sanctity of the dead triumvirate. Nevertheless it will do us no harm to know the real actor behind the scenes, none the less to be thanked and honoured because of a veil cast over that episode. For in a very real sense, Dr.Natesa Mudaliar was responsible for the birth of the Justice Party.
No doubt the masterful personalities of Sir Thyagaroya and Dr.T.M.Nair brought into formal existence and performed its baptisement and Christening. No doubt they imparted to it a shape and a steady footing such as could have hardly been imparted by any others. No doubt they imparted to it a shape and a steady footing such as could have hardly been imparted by any others. No doubt too that they blessed the party with bell, book and candle and set it out with the equipments and outfitting on its glorious journey to its goal of power and service.
But if only either of them had been left to himself without being brought together and bound by a golden tie of glorious friendship, in the place of the mutual repulsion that had kept them apart for evil, the Justice Party, at least the one we know could never have come into existence. And it was the perseverant, patient and magnanimous good offices of this queer Peace – maker of Madras that brought those two Olympians on the same platform and brought about a permanent and fruitful entente cordiale between them.
The mother instincts of Thyagaroya’s generosity, love and selfless devotion and the paternal and manly qualities of mental prowess, mighty intellect and marvellous tongue Dr.Nair were united by him in a blissful bond of ever-lasting nuptials out of which unparalleled union sprang forth the all-powerful Justice Party. That is not all.
It cannot be too often repeated that Dr.Natesan had prepared the ground and set the stage ready for the Caesars and Mussolinis of the Justice Party. It was he that first of all realised the necessity and usefulness of an organisation for the Non-Brahmins, at once to bring them all together and to give battle to the Brahmins. The Dravidian Association was the consequence. With small beginnings, it grew and developed into a mature organisation of much importance. It even sent a representative of its own in 1919 to give evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in England.
It was as the Founder-President of that first Association that Dr.Natesa Mudaliar was ‘At Home’ to the Non-Brahmins graduates every year and infused the spirit of healthy revolt against the Brahmins and the spirit of self-respect in themselves. The Dravidian Association was the intelligent anticipation of the Justice Party; it was the genesis of the latter in a true sense. It had broadcast, however imperfectly, the message of the future Justice Party, at least in the city of Madras. And that healthy spirit was swaying the masses without a shape and sign which were duly furnished to it later on.
The Dravidian Association was the child of the doctor and the father of the Justice Party. It also served incidentally to unearth and find out the latent genius of future luminaries like Mr.R.K.Shanmukham Chetti. And the simple Doctor that he is, he would fain share with Lord Willingdon the privileged God-fatherhood of the President of the Assembly.
He loves and admires all those who serve the interests of the Non-Brahmins in reality. He has a fervant admiration for Dr.Subbaroyan and Mr.S.Muthiah Mudaliar. He alone of all the justicites has the political honesty and the rare courage to find the real benefactor and frankly appreciate him. Even for Sir C.P.Ramaswami Iyer he has got a word of appreciation. At the Nellore confederation the Doctor showed his evident anxiety to strengthen the hand of Dr.Subbaroyan. “Gentlemen” he exhorted “to speak about this ministry, it has been doing us as much, if not more than our own ministry did.”
Undaunted by the cries of ‘no,no’ that greeted this remark, he added “Dr.Subbaroyan earns the gratitude of the Non-Brahmins for doing any amount of good to them. Taking stock, you would find Dr.Subbaroyan has done good to the community more than all the previous Non-Brahmin ministries put together.” Again there were wild and persistent cries of ‘no, no’ and ‘withdraw’. “I shall withdraw the word” he concluded with undisturbed calmness “but we must recognise facts”.
The sleepless sentinel of the Justice Party is always made to stand out. He has invested his all in the Party but is reaping only disappointments. The Justice Party has been a South-sea Bubble unto him. The people who have from 1920 till to-day, with a brief interval, voted him into the Legislature with readiness and rapturous joy deem no prize too big for him, provided they have the power to give it. But the cunning adventurers in the political woods are more than a match for the honest Doctor and his simplicity.
It is indeed melancholy to muse over his magnanimous life. His has been a record of all work no reward. He is neither a landed magnate spending his time in the pleasurable and favourite hobby of politics nor a prize-boy of the Party and a tenant of the Treasury Bench on a perpetual lease from His Majesty’s Government. He makes his politics a life and death question too serious an affair in this world. Worthy of the fondest nickname of the public (his Rao Bahadur title is more often forgotten than remembered), Dr.Natesan is more famous and popular than the most famous of men. While the land is pested with ‘Bahadured’ men of baffling variety, always warming themselves under the sunshine of thier own estimation and hardly known outside their circle, the magic name of Dr.Natesan is a name to be conjured with by the public.
He is here, there and everywhere, applauded by some and cheered by others and always loved by all, by Brahmins no less than by Non-Brahmins. Though without an office, Dr.Natesan’s is the peculiar privilege of occupying the highest office in the hearts of the people, appointed thereto by the Royal Sign Manual of the Imperial Masses of India. While titled non-entities and arrogant aristocrats dread the sight of the dangerous lion of public opinion and are cooing and billooing to win it over to their side, this heroic Doctor, like the adept ring-master that he looks, walks up straight into that lion’s den with the easy familiarity of a favourite friend and strokes and speaks to it in an endearing tone.
The tame and grateful lion understands his affectionate language and roars out its gratitude and registers its life-long loyalty to him. If the highest and ultimate regard for a public man is the approbation of his own conscience and the appreciation of the public at large, Dr.Natesan has that two-fold reward in plenty. He is acclaimed as its own and applauded wildly by that highest tribunal on earth, the Vox Populi which is at the same time the Vox Deii of Eternity!
Source : The South Indian Celebrities Vol – II by K.M.Balasubramanian,
From the Archive of Periyar Rationalist
Library & Research Centre, Chennai
