C P Brown: Commentaries on Magazines

27. Commentaries on Magazines

C P Brown Memorial Library Brochure Writers 8th Meeting of CPB in Dec 1981

This is a magazine, containing over 20 articles on CPB.

In the inaugural lecture Sri S. Chellappa IAS made original points of great value. They are:

1. Increase of the importance of Nannayya should be not by belittling Telugu and saying that it had little vocabulary, but by bringing out his positive contribution.

2. Writers are the people who light the culture of the people and the world, which moves along for ages to the goals shown in that light. {This is a profound concept, covered in chapter on Language and Culture in this book}

3. For a cheap name and fame if you write swerving from Dharma it is not you but the society, which gets damaged, and you will be cursed by the future. [This is the very reason for this book]

4. You need not give all that the society demands but should give them great truths with new ideas and new styles as they are the life breath of a society.
The biographers, who had extolled Brown at the cost of the Andhra literature, should note these points brilliantly expressed by SC.

Arudra in his article makes an unfounded statement that the development of Telugu literature today is due to CPB, that CPB was trained in methods of research at a young age, which is sheer bunkum. It is contrary to CPB’s own statement that he did not learn anything in the colleges both in England as well as in Madras.

Some writers made unsubstantiated statements that the Telugu literature, which was floating in the skies, was brought down for a. number of people to be able to write. This debate of Vyavaharika Vs Grandhika is pointless without regard to the ultimate ends of cultural developments of a nation and its goals. In the GOML there are scores of works of that period using vyavaharika. It was CPB, who subtly injected this poison, which the communists today want to exploit by talking about commoners Vs learned. This debate was non-existent then.

Some wrote that all the books printed 1841 onwards were prepared by CPB. This is not proved and is a ghastly statement, which is totally off mark. How can any responsible writer make such a false statement? Out of over 1800 books that would have been published by now, not even 30 are the ones got ready by CPB, if at all.

Arudra says, for the last 1-½ centuries we have not printed what CPB and McKenjee brought together. Arudra should have been asked if he donated any money to print even one? Or at least honestly approached any one to sponsor publication?

Some writer says that CPB ‘Lived for about thirty years in London spending his whole life for service to Telugu’. They do not quote even one article, one pound donated, one book sponsored by him in over 30years of his Long Life. All writers keep writing such pointless, and slavish eulogies merely to boost up the image of CPB who himself wrote that he was not even visiting the Asiatic society in London.

Here is another author who does not bother contradicting himself. He states that the innumerable books published by Vavilla Publishers were all done by CPB’s research and correction. This is a blatant lie and he should have been sued by the Vavilla for defaming them through such rude comment on VAVILLA’s service to the literature.

Till 22nd October 1825 when CPB was transferred to Masulipatam he did not go near Telugu learning from his gurus but in his police office. He arrogantly wanted to learn only the spoken language and disliked pedantry, and that street vendors, dhobis etc were his teachers of the Telugu language. Imagine the double standards of all these writers, because not a single writer wrote accha Telugu at all. But this author states that CPB studied without any rest day and night to master the language and then worked for the upliftment and rejuvenation of Telugu literature. This is totally at variance to CPB’s own statements, that he spent his life in parties, wine and women, incurring 60000Rs in loans. He also had a suspension problem and was thrown out. Not even one of the writers brings out the fact that CPB never touched Andhra after 1834.

The article by Kala Prapoorna N. Venkata Rao, starts with the usual praise of Brown. Before writing about the writers who sweated their life, an indictment of Brown is made in a most poignant statement, in one paragraph, which I translate:
Quote “Till now we have been only looking at Brown’s efforts but not at those Telugu Pundits who were responsible for CPB’s fame. We have forgotten in individuals’ days under unbearable poverty, large families as a burden they lived like beggars. The applications they used to send bring tears to our eyes, living like college Munshis, Writers, Peons, Copyists, and Poor Pundits they put all their knowledge like ghee in a Yajna (sacrificial fire) called Brown. Their lives were not like those of poets but only of the forgotten day labourers. They died like obscure people.
The amount of writing we spend for the foreigner Brown and his fame while totally ignoring these our Pundits is strange indeed. I therefore would like to get their names in”, unquote - Translation over.

I have stated that Brown never mentioned with gratitude “any writer’s name”. This seems to be an unwritten law with the colonialists. No one ever mentioned the hundreds of pundits, hundreds of times more erudite than them, who sweated their lives out for a pittance of pay and died without a mention of their names by these callous colonialists.

Most unfortunately, this ungrateful nation still pays homage to those swindlers, and scoundrels due to the disease called psychological bondage, which is perpetuated due to conversions, communism and aberrations of pseudo secularism. We are continuously destroying self-esteem in younger generations.

A slight digression to bring out the prevailing atmosphere between 1800-1850 regarding Sanskrit, Missionaries, and sincere lovers of Indian Culture is worth it. Lt. Col. Boden founded the Boden Chair in the University of Oxford. He stated in his will (Dated August 15, 1811) that the special object of his munificent bequest was to promote the translation of the Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as ‘to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion’, look at the dastardly motive.

The second occupant of the chair was Sir. Monier Monier Williams. Some of his critics expressed surprise as to his practical researches carried on with the Pandits of India, in India in their own country. Williams acknowledged the vast superior scholarship of Indian Pundits shooting down the claims of all the so-called Western scholars. His statement is worth reproducing.

“At all events let any one who claims a reputation for superior scholarship on that sole ground associate with Indian Pandits in their own country and he will find out that far severer, proofs of his knowledge and acquirements will be required of him there”.

Sir. Thomas Munroe also made a similar statement about the scholarship of the “natives”.
In an article, Sri. V. Venkatappayya brings out the publication of so many earlier dictionaries as follows”

1. Tamil – Portuguese in 1679.
2. Oriental Language Dictionary which includes Telugu, Sanskrit, Marathi, Kanadiga and Hindi, in 1782
3. Four Telugu books published in Germany, in 1742-46.
4. Amara Kosham with twelve languages in 1809.
5. William Brown in 1837.

Most of Dictionaries were basically for usage of English in day today work by the English. I am surprised that the biographers are not even ashamed to give so much credit to CPB for what was so common in those days, as the coloniser always wanted to communicate at the lowest possible level to recruit people, sepoys, workers, barbers, cooks, sweepers, clerks, pimps, concubines, malis, bearers, syces, and the like and not for literary pursuits. In view of this there is nothing spectacular in the Dictionaries of Brown getting published. Yet the biographers write as if it was a monumental original work. Dr. R. Balaraju of Anantapur made a valid points for research after reading the first edition of the book, he says,

It is however strange that Venkatappayya feels that the efforts at learning languages was made by the French or British etc to stay permanently in India. Whether the author knew or, there was indeed an idea of that nature at one time in the 1800-1820 period to COLONISE INDIA as in South Africa. But the board of directors, and a number of others nipped the idea in the bud due to weather, and diseases.

One-writer makes a pointless statement that while in England CPB on forced furlough “Restlessly struggled for Telugu”. What he did was that heaps of books, which were lying in the India House, were listed on the suggestion of Wilson. JH quotes Brahmaiah Sastri, and the whole pack of poor Pundits steeped in pathetic poverty with no place to go, who praise CPB to the skies. Has this got any real value? Let us recapitulate Bartrhari’s sloka that a hungry lion will not eat anything except its own natural food, while a hungry dog will keep on begging for food in a pathetic manner. It is sad but true that people living in all these areas were reduced to that stage. The Guntur famine proves it.

Let us take the case of Narasimha Reddy. His father was a jagirdhar, his jagir was taken away and a compensation of about a 1000th of income was fixed, no one revolted and the pension was accepted. When Narasimha Reddy fought and was killed by the Britishers, still no one revolted and even now Bangorey calls him a naxalite and not a freedom fighter.

The article by M. Narayana on Vemana apart from highlighting the poems leading for social transformation ends up with some poems, which highlight the stage to which the entire population had been dragged down.

My loose translations of these lines are:

Those who think they are from thigh castes or great pundits, become slaves before a person having gold because of poverty.
Even the greatest people become shamelessly subservient to the rich. “He only rules who has money”.
Vemana’s solution is to donate money constantly and let rich people give their daughters in marriage to poor people. These are simplistic.

The essence is that poverty degrades.

The Fame Brown bought by spending only the rents is a proof of this truism. It is unfortunate all the writers missed this point as to how little Brown spent and how much undeserved fame he bought.

I do not grudge the fame he thus got but the oblivion into which he pushed all the pundits and the insults he hurled at Telugu and its value is deplorable and horrendous. In short he and the biographers degraded all of us.