Old Martinians
Labore et Constantia
Lakdasa de Mel, the long-dead but fondly-remembered last Metropolitan of India, would have loved to hear Vijay Mallya trot out the names of school friends who had done well even if they hadn’t scaled his dizzy heights. “What has La Martiniere achieved in all these years?” De Mel, who was ex-officio chairman of the school’s board of governors, once burst out over dinner at Bishop’s House: “All that money and all those facilities, and it’s produced only generations of police sergeants, railway inspectors and Customs officials!”
The short answer is, “They also serve.” But, yes, aspects of the school can seem as anomalous as Claude Martin’s life. Last Tuesday’s Anglican service for Hindus and Muslims to commemorate his 176th birth anniversary, with Mallya as chief guest, didn’t reflect the beliefs of a Frenchman who was born Roman Catholic, lived an agnostic and stirred up a hornet’s nest in death by leaving his money to “the Christian Church”. It reflected the official religion of the defunct British Raj. The vibrant Anglo-Indian presence that used to justify the contradiction (and occasioned De Mel’s lament) was barely noticeable. Among the few recognizable Anglo-Indians in an institution meant for them were Donald Linus who won the Best Sportsman prize and read a lesson from the New Testament, and the Rev D.A. Howard, who proposed the vote of thanks. The board of “acting” governors of which Howard is a member highlights yet another seeming anomaly. It’s still acting because the gulf between past and present is not easily bridged.
But a Brahmin Christian principal, Sunirmal Chakravarthi, presiding over the gathering of Banerjees and Biswases, Rungtas and Ruias instead of the Carters and Palmers of my time is no more anomalous than the Bishop of Calcutta, Ashoke Biswas, Tuesday’s preacher, referring to clergymen as purohits in Bengali. The drawbacks are of language and imagination, not concept. There was always a fair sprinkling of D’Cruzes and Cachatoors for the descendants of Continental Europeans were (and are) legally “Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European”, while Armenians have always been an essential component of the school. Paul Chater, “our benefactor”, whose Rs 11 lakh rescued La Martiniere from collapse in 1925-26 ranked just below “our founder” in the school pantheon. Chater’s portrait in Atmodaya Bhavan was as new to me as the first name “Catchick” it sported, and the hall itself. The secular ceremonial was also more elaborate than anything I remembered. The “invention of tradition”, to adapt Eric Hobsbawm on the Delhi Durbar, is perfectly legitimate since the purpose is to highlight what already exists but is in danger of perishing without a special effort at preservation and projection.
If tradition is born, it also dies. I wasn’t the only old boy to miss female soprano voices rising above the male bass in “Let us now praise famous men” when functions were held jointly with the girls’ school. Brigadier Saibal Raychaudhuri mentioned it in his blog. So, too, with “Blessed [be] the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68), an old favourite that wasn’t sung on Tuesday. The high note always eluded me. Not many others may remember the now vanished hall floor being dusted with French chalk for dancing — we called it a “social” — after The Dinner. There was much brave talk among the bigger boys of stepping out with the formidable Miss Day (Duckie), who taught geography and always brought back little gadgets from England, just as there was boasting about “accidentally” ramming her bicycle on Loudon Street. Both remained fantasies.
I hope one tradition survives. The English writer, Simon Raven, who went to the famous public school, Charterhouse, claims that “sneaking” has become respectable, even mandatory. “We don’t use the word ‘sneaking’,” a senior boy says, “we talk about ‘showing up’.” His tongue-in-cheek example is of three boys going to a café where one urges the others to smoke and promptly rushes back to report the misdemeanour to the monitor. There’s no shame in being an agent provocateur; tattling is to his credit. The sneak also “sucks up” — another schoolboy slang for the second of the two deadly sins that no self-respecting Martinian could contemplate.
The violation of ancient codes that Raven mentions came up in conversation with the headmaster of one of India’s fashionable boarding schools who suspected some boys of stealing expensive watches, cameras and other luxury items from richer boys and passing them on to receivers in the bazaar. This head told me proudly that he had solved the problem without breathing a word to the police but by setting up his own ring of student informers to spy on the suspects, keep watch on receivers, and report their clandestine dealings. I showed him an article I had written in an Independence Day supplement in 1967 describing my own schooldays. Everything else could be forgiven but not “sneaking” on a schoolmate or “sucking up” to authority. We might have done better in the great game of life, I had mused, if those two lessons had not been dinned into us with such force and so early.
La Martiniere has survived many storms. It has suffered scandals about money, construction, admissions and appointments, experienced unprincipled clerics, greedy heads, intriguing old boys, legal stratagems and media calumny. Even a death. I was a guest on the stage once when a fracas erupted at the back of the hall: a disgruntled teacher had inducted professional thugs. His old boy blood up, John Mason, by then principal of St James’s School, rushed to the rescue, quelling what might have turned into an ugly riot. Mallya displayed similar affection and loyalty by writing in the visitors’ book that it was “the privilege of all privileges” to be back “where I spent my formative years, where I gathered skills and strengths largely responsible for my own career growth and where I made my best friends”. I was delighted last year when a friend without money or connections told me his little grandson had been admitted on merit. I hope that boy stays on at La Martiniere, doesn’t sneak or suck up to anyone, and has the wisdom and discipline to realize that, no matter what the courts might say, it’s for his own good if he is smacked by his class teacher or even caned by the principal.
Many wheels have turned since De Mel’s comment. Some future researcher might ask whether La Martiniere could have broken through the constraints of the time for earlier alumni to anticipate Chater’s or Mallya’s achievements. That would involve investigating Lord Cornwallis’s psychology as the governor-general of India who had lost a war to another set of colonials in America, 19th century race attitudes and ambitions, and — above all — the Anglo-Indian dilemma. There can be no proper study of the schools in Calcutta and Lucknow — the one at Lyons in France is a different matter — without a thorough understanding of that disappearing community. 
When all’s said and done, the Chaters and the Mallyas are exceptions, and not especially relevant at that. Education isn’t about success. A crammer’s only gift is high marks. A good school’s legacy is character. Judged in that light, La Martiniere ceases to be anomalous. In my second year at school — I was in the third form then — my grandmother wrote in my autograph book, “We cannot all be heroes,/ And thrill a hemisphere/ With some great daring ventures,/ Some deeds that mock at fear./ But we can fill a lifetime,/ With kindly acts and true,/ There’s always noble services/ For noble souls to do.”
Even the demanding Lakdasa de Mel would have regarded that as more than adequate compensation for the absence of worldly position. It would also be in the spirit of Claude Martin’s motto, Labore et Constantia.
TRADITIONS OLD AND NEW
-
A good school’s legacy is character Sunanda k. Datta-ray
COMMEMORATION FOUNDERS DAY
Lmb kolkata
NEWS & VIEWS 4
CONTENTS