Madras miscellany

The Governor who painted

IN MADRAS recently, and now shooting in Tranquebar, or Tarangambadi if you will, is a Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation team recording what remains of a forgotten part of Tamizhagam history as a backdrop to a story that is probably known to no more than a score of people in India. It is the story of Peter Anker, the 27th Governor (1786-1807) of the Danish East India Company settlements in India. And in his being Norwegian lies another forgotten bit of history, the early history of Scandinavia.

When the Vikings who'd constantly warred with each other, decided it was time for peace, the union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway was born in the late 14th Century, with Denmark dominant. The Swedes revolted and became an independent nation in 1523, but Norway remained a part of Denmark till it declared itself independent in 1814/15. Which was how Tranquebar, a Danish settlement on the Coromandel from 1620, came to have Norwegian governor generals from time to time, Peter Anker shortly to become the best known of them.

A painter of merit, a prolific recorder of the social and political scene in his letters, diaries and travelogues, and an enthusiastic collector of Indian objets d'art, Anker took back with him a treasure trove. And there in Scandinavia, in Danish and Norwegian museums, they have remained, little noticed.

The one exception is the exhibition of bronzes at the National Museum, Copenhagen, the sculptures found when excavation work was undertaken during Anker's restoration of Dansborg (Tranquebar's castle and fort).

That Anker's bronzes were sold to Christian VIII of Denmark, the king who transferred Tranquebar to the British for Rs. 1,25,000, is probably better known than his 131 paintings stored in Oslo's Ethnographical Museum and so forgotten as to be described as ``one of the best kept secrets in Norwegian art history''. The first Norwegian artist to paint India, Anker's paintings include Dansborg and other buildings of Tranquebar, impressions of Mahabalipuram dated 1790, ``Ruins of the old castle of Madura, the age of which it has not been possible to discover'', ``The Gingee fortress in Karnatik which was the residence of a powerful Indian Raja, before it was conquered by the Muslims'' and ``The big gate of the Bagoda on the island of the Seringam in the Cauvery river, the largest Bagoda in India''.

The TV documentary being shot on Peter Anker, his letters and his paintings will lead up to a major exhibition of his work at the museum in Oslo in March, 2002, followed by exhibitions in Copenhagen and Goteborg (Sweden).

With the Government of Denmark showing some interest in helping with the restoration of Tranquebar, it might be a good idea for the Tamil Nadu Government to invite this exhibition here next year to launch the restoration and get the Norwegian Government interested in the project as well. Imagine a few of these paintings and copies of the rest hanging in a restored Dansborg!

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Far above Cayuga's waters

Moving from IT to BT is the name of the game in India's technology-oriented South, and Madras, having developed an Information Technology Park during the tenure of one Government, looks to raise a Biotechnology Park during the present Government's tenure. The Rs.63-crore TIDCO Centre for Life Sciences (TICEL) expects to draw an investment of over Rs. 1,000 crores from at least 50 biotech companies. To help with the planning and design, the technology and the technical services, TICEL couldn't have chosen a better partner than the College of Agriculture and Life Science, Cornell University, in Ithaca, upstate New York.

Cornell, one of the eight Ivy League colleges — all in the top 15 universities in the U.S. — was established by Ezra Cornell of Western Union in 1865 as "an institution where any person can find instruction in any study". To make his dream a reality he teamed with Andrew Dickson White of Yale who felt that the liberal education of the 19th Century did not meet the demands of the industrial revolution. He was determined to offer a practical education, with even manual labour a component. And no wonder that from the beginning agriculture was taught as a discipline, for together they built the College on a part of Ezra Cornell's farm that was set on a hilltop high above the beautiful Lake Cayuga. Cornell's first building, South Hall, is now a national landmark. Today, the campus offers great beauty in the spectacular views it provides of the lake and its wooded surroundings.

About half Cornell's sprawling campus today is devoted to plantations, grazing meadows, orchards, speciality gardens and greenhouses and midst these nestle the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology and Veterinary Medicine, all of them among the pioneering institutions in the U.S., with the vet school awarding the nation's first degree in veterinary medicine. With these facilities, Cornell has developed into one of the world's best institutions for biotechnology research. It has over 500 patents and is the world leader in Genomics. And TIDCO has certainly gone to the right place for assistance in setting up incubator and germ plasm centres, greenhouses and an animal testing facility apart from help with mentoring, contract research work, networking and library services.

Targeted to open a year from now, TICEL Park, to be located on five acres next to TIDEL Park in Taramani, will also support the needs of commercial manufacturing biotech units that are expected to come up in Sirusseri 15 km away.

If TICEL Park is built as efficiently and as quickly as TIDEL Park was, Tamil Nadu could well develop into one of the major international sites for biotechnology development, for takers of facilities here, there will be no shortage, particularly if they have the opportunity of accessing help from Cornell. A year from now, we'll know how well Cornell has done in India and whether it has helped Madras go a step ahead of Bangalore.

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When the postman knocked

Writing with reference to that pioneering course in photography introduced in the Madras School of Industrial Art (Miscellany, August 13), reader Theodore Baskaran wonders whether Captain Linnaeus Tripe, ``one of the pillars of early Indian photography'', might not have been something of the momentum for it.

After much `shooting' in Burma, Tripe arrived in Madras in 1855 to serve here as the `Photographer of the Government' from 1856 to 1860, the period when the course was getting off the ground.

Photographing in town and country throughout his stay here, Tripe published his magnificent collection in albums of photographs with brief textual introductions by scholars. Baskaran not long ago saw three of these albums in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. One was titled, `Stereographs of Trichinopoly, Tanjore and Other Places in the Neighbourhood', another `Photographs of the Elliot Marbles and Other Subjects in the Central Museum, Madras' — the Elliot Marbles being the Amaravathi panels retelling the Jataka Tales.

The third was an untitled collection of portraits — "evidently Tripe had a studio in Madras where the famous and the wealthy had their pictures taken," writes Baskaran — including one of Mrs. Orr and child and another of Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, founder of the Madras Cricket Club, the official in charge of getting the University of Madras started and player of many other Madras roles.

Where are the other photographs by Tripe to be found in South India, wonders Baskaran. What intrigues him more is the fate of the pictures C. Iyahsawmy took.

Iyahsawmy, a photography instructor in the Madras School of Industrial Art, travelled with Tripe as his assistant on the government Photographer's several expeditions.

Iyahsawmy took several photographs of his own during their travels and exhibited them at the shows of the Photographic Society in Madras. They attracted a lot of attention, it is reported, Baskaran writes. But where are those pictures today? If they are ever found, they could be as important as the internationally renowned Lala Deen Dayal Collection.

When the British Council held a major photographic exhibition here in 1996 of old Indian photographs, there were a couple listed so: "Unknown Madras School of Arts Photographer, The five hill tribes of the Nilgiris, early 1870", and "Madras School of Arts Photographer, Portrait of Professor T. Schaya, Madras University, c. 1870".

Were they Iyahsawmy's work? Are there any descendants of his around who could shed more light on his work?

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