Those Were The Days: Saluting the many lives of Dheerar Satyamurti

One of the top Congress politicians of the Presidency with clear cut views that even opposed Gandhi and the central leadership at times, Satyamurti passed away before getting to see the tricolour raised at Red Fort. Perhaps having a premonition of that, hehimself had raised the national flag on the Triplicane Parthasarathy temple in1930s and served a jail term for the act that was then deemed illegal.

Though trained as a lawyer, the fight for freedom was what attracted him. Satyamurti is perhaps responsible for drawing the Madras Congress from a mesh of personality politics into a cohesive freedom fighting force. Till then, it was just a club of rich lawyers. He mentored many common men like K Kamaraj who rose to become towering leaders.

When Satyamurti became the Mayor of Madras in 1939, the city of Madras was in the grip of an acute water scarcity. It was left to him to impress upon the British government the importance of the proposal for building a reservoir in Poondi, about 50 km west of the city, to augment water supply to the capital of the Presidency. The tenure of Mayorship was only for a year but due to his efforts and skilful dealing with the British establishment, the foundation stone for the reservoir was laid in a matter of eight months.

Post Jallianwala Bagh massacre, press censorship was strict. Satyamurti identified that the cultural world could be harnessed for the fight for freedom and later in electoral politics. He roped in stars such as KB Sundarambal and SG Kittappa to participate in his meetings, which witnessed record crowds. For the artistes, it meant a lot of new-found respect they hithero did not receive. At the end of the performances, they were appearing on the stage alongside national leaders which gave them superstar status. While the group led by Rajaji vehemently opposed this, terming the artistes as koothaadis, the opposition Dravidian movement took up the cue. The rest is history.

Shakespeare entered the Tamil world through translations of plays such as Hamlet (Amaladityan) by Pammal Sambandha Mudaliar. A Tamil incarnation of Hamlet under the title Manohara was staged by Suguna Vilas Sabha (Mudaliar was one of its founders) in which Satyamurti played the role ofHamlet’s father. Satyamurti continued to act in Suguna Vilas Sabha dramas even after becoming the Congress president. Whenhe visited Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, he mentioned, “I have come as a pilgrim from SVS”.

As vice president of the All India Music Conference held at Madras in 1927 – along with the Congress meet on Spurtank Road – he helped found Music Academy. Taking his role seriously, Satyamurti wanted to erase from musical concerts what he thought was detrimental. He vehemently opposed singing of the pallavi presented as the pièce de résistance of the concert. Pallavi was the third part of any concert and the musicians took their liberties with both effort and time. His efforts made the Academy adopt a resolution torestrict Pallavi singing to half an hour. He called for setting rules and standards for a concert, avoiding drinking water and taking snuff on the stage for instance.

During his election campaigns in 1936, Musiri and KB Sundarambal came forward to sing patriotic songs in his meetings to rouse the audience. Shocked that her mentor had ignored his career for the sake of national interests and was living in a rented house, Sundarambal bought him a bungalow in T Nagar which was named “Sundara” in gratitude.

Satyamurti was one of the notable opponents of the movement to abolish the Devadasi system. He argued that the removal of the Devadasis from the temples would trigger a similar demand by non-Brahmin forces to go after the temple priests, too. His manoeuvres to dilute and delay Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy’s legislation against the Devadasi system led to the bill being delayed by a decade.

In an attempt to quash the Quit India movement in Madras, the British had him arrested. A diabetic, Satyamurti suffered in jail and was transferred to Madras General Hospital where he died at the age of 55.

The venue for the historic AICC session of 1956 in Avadi, where the Congress adopted the socialistic ideology, was calledSatyamurti Nagar. The Poondi lake that helps quench Chennai’s thirst was named Satyamurti Sagar by Kamaraj.