India 5: Chennai, no it's Madras; it's no one's business but the Indians'

After visiting Hyderabad, I went further south to the city formerly known as Madras, now known as Chennai. I went mostly for recreation, but also for a tiny bit of research, since Chennai is the home of the Theosophist Society, an odd little sect created in the 19th century by Europeans and Americans out of an amalgam of esoteric, mysticist, and occult beliefs. (It is also, incidentally, the source of the internal mythology for Twin Peaks--which gives you an indication of where the weirdness level is starting.) In any case, the Theosophist founders relocated from New York to Madras in 1875, opening a compound which is still owned and operated by the Theosophical Society.

One famous Theosophist was Annie Besant, the Irish radical and feminist who relocated to Madras in the 1890s. There, she also became involved with the nascent Indian nationalist movement, founding the Indian Home Rule League in 1916 and serving as president of the Indian National Congress in 1917-18. Coinciding with her time in Madras, the young V.K. Krishna Menon went to school at Presidency College in Madras, where he came into contact with Besant and got involved in Indian nationalism. (Apparently he ran the Congress' flag up the flagpole at the school, much to the administration's consternation.) Besant then funded Krishna Menon going to London in 1922 in order to pursue further studies, and to lobby for Indian home rule in Britain. By the late 1920s, Menon broke with Besant and struck out on his own, following the line of Gandhi and Nehru's leadership of the Congress instead.

Theosophical Society Library

All of that to say: I went to use the Theosophists' library!

The entire neighborhood, called Adyar, around the Theosophist compound is named after Annie Besant, including one sign which struck my interest:

Anyone up for a jamboree?

Scouting has meant different things in different national contexts, but perhaps none more different from Baden-Powell's vision than scouting in India, where in the early 20th century scouting was associated with Indian nationalism. Thus, Besant and other Indian nationalists encouraged young Indian men to join the scouting movement; there are reports of Krishna Menon riding his bike around Madras evangelizing for scouting. I would pay money to see such photos.

The Bay of Bengal: warm

Just down the road from Adyar, one runs into the Bay of Bengal, the eastern arm of the Indian Ocean. I just stuck my feet in the water, and was pleasantly surprised to find it warm. (Check my upcoming post about Kerala to see the comparison with the Indian Ocean's western arm, known as the Arabian Sea.)

Chennai is also famous as the traditional resting place, and place of martyrdom, of the Apostle Thomas. Thomas is said to have arrived in Kerala, on India's southwest coast, around 52 AD, and then moved inland across the Deccan in the mid-60s, before coming to the southeast coast, where he was martyred ca. 68-72. Nestorian Christians founded a community on the supposed spot of his tomb in the 900s, where the Portguese built a cathedral in the mid-1500s. Now an English neo-Gothic church, built in 1893, houses his relics. (I'll admit it's not my favorite cathedral building, but in this case, it's the inside that counts.)

This was one of my favorite places to visit, since, despite debates about the historicity of Thomas coming to India, the traditions do attest to the early history of Christianity in India, and Asia. The antiquity of Christian community in West and South Asia reminds us that Europeans, much less Western Europeans, and even less Americans, were late in coming to Christianity. This reminds us that Christianity is and always has been a global faith, and it belies any historical claim to Western European claims of enlightening the "Orient." Asia and Africa brought the Gospel to Europe, after all, not the other way around.

I'll also just take a moment to note my appreciation for Thomas. After all, it is his question to Jesus, "How can we know the way?," which prompts Jesus' clear declaration of himself as God reaching down to us, rather than us trying to get to him: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:5-6). And while he disbelieves in Jesus' resurrection, Jesus not only met him in his doubt, but also offered great hope to those of us without the privilege of physically being in Jesus' presence: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). People like, one presumes, the Indians who met Jesus through Thomas' ministry.

MGR memorial

OK, off my soapbox. I found another prominent mausoleum along the coast in Chennai, in the form of the tomb of Jayalalithaa, the Chief Minister (Prime Minister) of Tamil Nadu for most of the duration from 1991 to 2016. Originally a film star in the Tamil film industry (Tamil is the local language in India's far southeast), she became a politician as the protegee of another film star-turned-politician, MG Ramachandran (MGR)--who is buried just down the beach from her. Her death in 2016 was a big deal in southern India, and across India.

Just a reminder that celebrities turned politicians are nothing new around the world! MGR became Chief Minister in Tamil Nadu in 1977, three years before the United States would elect its first (but not last) entertainer turned politician.

Jayalalithaa's tomb

After Chennai, I flew over to the other end of India's tip: the southwest coast, a region known as Kerala. That will be coming to you shortly, in another post. (I did eventually return to Delhi and do some work.)

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For my video, this just makes me laugh; no political statement intended.