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From Burma, with enterprise -- Looking Back from `Moulmein'

A Biography of A.M.M. Arunachalam By S. Muthiah

Publishers: EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd.

Price: Rs 295

A BIOGRAPHY of even someone like A.M.M. Arunachalam, notwithstanding the person's eminence and contribution, is not something that one would get terribly excited about. After all, a biography is serious stuff, very person-centric and mostly a glorificati on of the person, right?

But S. Muthiah's brilliant story-telling bludgeons to death the pre-conception that a biography cannot make for interesting reading.

Muthiah is an old hand at this kind of stuff. An author of several books on heritage, Muthiah's writing arm reaches deep into the past. Out of his gifted pen, gushes history. His approach to the biography stands testimony to his reputation. The book is v eritably more than a biography of the man who, along with his brother A.M.M. Murugappa, established the industrial conglomerate that is today called the Murugappa group. It is also more than a peep into the origins and evolution of the group. Although th e story is spun around the person called A.M.M. Arunachalam, the narrative itself is about the war-time and post-war industrialisation of India. It is the story of a family that built an industrial empire brick by brick, of the tragedies that beset the e ffort and the many successes achieved. Not very unlike Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline, at the heart of which is the evolution of an industrial giant. But Muthiah has created a `Sheldon effect' sans the embellishment of violence or sex. The book does indeed s peak a lot about Arunachalam, but is thankfully not exuberant in adulation.

Looking Back from `Moulmein' begins with a brief anthropological account of the Chettiar community and the events that led them to return from Moulmein in Lower Burma (now Myanmar), where they had set up a thriving banking business.

Muthiah adopts an interesting approach to his narration. He takes one facet of Arunachalam's personality, goes back in time to the early 1940s to describe how that particular trait shaped the fortunes of the family and its business establishment. So each time you open a new chapter, you go back to the 1940s, often re-starting the journey from Burma and meeting those who appeared (and died) in the previous chapters. Through the several historical personalities and events that touched Arunachalam's life a t various stages, the author provides an insight into the interplay of events that brought about industrialisation in infant-India.

Take, for instance, the origins of the company called Carborundum Universal Ltd. (Not many would know that the company is called CUMI even today because its original name was Carborundum Universal of Madras, India, thanks to collaborations with Carborund um and Universal). The company may have never come into being, if not for the demand for sandpaper generated by the War (>???). By this time, breaking away from the traditional Chettiar businesses of trading and money-lending, the Murugappa group had alr eady stepped into the world of manufacturing to produce storage equipment under the brand name of Ajax. Murugappa Chettiar, Arunachalam's father, had the foresight to produce sandpaper, anticipating its demand during the War. The story then goes on to de scribe how the land was bought and the building erected, the people who helped bring in the machinery, the collaborations effected nearly a decade later, the backward integration efforts and so on, right up to the recent past when the company consolidate d by buying out its rivals.

There are similar stories about the other companies in the group such as how Wendt India came into the Murugappa fold through what is perhaps the country's first hostile takeover, how Harrisons Malayalam was lost to the RPG group, and how TI and several of its subsidiaries may never have come up if not for the support of an Englishman called Sir Ivan Stedeford.

Muthiah says the word `Chetty' may have come from the Sanskrit `Shresti' or merchant. The `-ar' is a honorific suffix. For centuries, the Chettiars traded pearls, salt and other merchandise and, later, utilised the earnings for money-lending. They also s pent a considerable sum on charity and temple-building. Trade took some of them to the shores of Burma, Ceylon and Malaya where they contributed not insignificantly to that region's economy.

Looking Back from `Moulmein' begins with three brothers -- Arunachalam, Ramanathan and Murugappa Chettiar -- who toggled between Pallathur in southern Tamil Nadu and Burma, where many in their community had established a thriving banking business. The yo ungest of them -- Diwan Bahadur Murugappa Chettiar (called Kasi) -- went to Moulmein, joined a banking firm called AL.AR and ultimately took it over. He established a personal rapport with local businesses such as the Moulmein Electric Supply Company and won their support. He made enough money and had the foresight to repatriate much of the wealth back home. Says Muthiah: ``With business in Burma thriving and new business being opened in Malaya and Ceylon, Murugappa Chettiar left much of their managemen t to his three sons and began to develop new business in India. It was as though he had a premonition that a solid foundation had to be laid for business in India, if anything happened to the A.M.M. interests overseas.''

When something did finally happen to their overseas interests -- in which swirl of events the Diwan Bahadur's son, Vellayan, was even murdered -- the ``solid foundation'' that the Chettiar had built back home, stood them in good stead.

Though Vellayan was killed while attempting to make peace with the Burmese, Murugappa Chettiar's other two sons built a lasting edifice on the foundation laid by their father -- the Murugappa group.

``A.M.M. Murugappan got an industrial conglomerate going, and A.M.M. Arunachalam nurtured it into one of South India's biggest industrial groups,'' says Muthiah.

The personal rapport established by Arunachalam and his brother with scores of prominent people over the decades -- Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyer, Rajaji, T.T. Krishnamachari, C. Subramaniam and several Englishmen and Americans -- stoo d the group in good stead. Help was at hand whenever the AMM family wanted to buy property or set up a new business or forge a joint venture. Muthiah shows how, at every stage, Sir Ivan Stedeford helped the group obtain valuable technology and partners, and once even lent a million pounds at low interest. That is a bit of history with a relevant message for any business. While contacts in the Government may be less necessary in today's liberalised environment, the fact remains that personal equations a nd the ability to command respect are quintessential for the growth of a business.

If Arunachalam's personality is to be captured in one statement, then it was his personal get-alongability that steered the Murugappa group through the last five decades. His biographer, S. Muthiah, makes this statement very eloquently in the book.

M. Ramesh