S Satyamurti (1887-1943) was one of the towering intellectuals from the south who enhanced the image of the Indian freedom movement with their fiery oratory, total dedication to the cause, and ability to meet the Englishman on equal terms. A loyal soldier of Gandhiji’s army of nonviolent freedom fighters, Satyamurti was nevertheless unafraid to express dissent even if it meant criticizing the Mahatma. (He once said that Gandhi was “unexcelled as a saint, leader and prophet, but when it came to dealing with day-to-day human questions, he had not been rewarded with results which perhaps lesser men might have achieved.” According to him, India’s history might have been different had Patel, Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad and Maulana Azad had accompanied the Mahatma to the Round Table Conference at London).
Born to middle class parents on 19 August 1887 at Tirumayam in the former princely state of Pudukkottai, Satyamurti was a bright student throughout his school years. After passing the Intermediate examination at the Maharaja’s College at Pudukkottai, he came to Madras where he completed B A History at the Christian College. He then joined the Madras Law College and duly obtained his BL degree. As a lawyer, he worked as a junior of V V Srinivasa Iyengar and S Srinivasa Iyengar, a former president of the Indian National Congress.
No doubt inspired by his senior, Satyamurti joined the freedom movement and responding to Gandhiji’s call to the youth of India to sacrifice their careers for the country. Soon his ‘eloquence, dignity and integrity’ came to be noticed by such luminaries as Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the Rt. Hon. V S Srinivasa Sastri. When following the Jallianwalabagh massacre in April 1919, the Congress sent a delegation to the Joint parliamentary Committee of the UK on the Montagu- Chelmsford Reforms, 32-year-old Satyamurti was chosen its secretary. Satyamurti went to England again in 1925 as a member of the Swarajya Party (a party within the Congress led by Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru) at the invitation of the Independent Labour Party.
Rigorous imprisonment
Defying the prohibitory orders of the British government during the noncooperation movement of 1930 and 1932, Satyamurti was sentenced on both occasions to rigorous imprisonment. Elected to the Central Assembly in 1934, was one of the most celebrated parliamentarians of his time. He was feared in the Assembly by the official bloc for his awkward supplementaries, and he was even nicknamed “Supplemurti” by Sir James Grigg, Finance Member.
According to The Hindu, Satyamurti made a fine art of the supplementary question. In his own words, “I should like to say as a notorious culprit in that respect that the attempt of the Opposition in putting questions is not only to elicit information but to put the Government in the wrong and to raise a laugh at their expense in the House if possible and in the country certainly.” Sir F E James, a bitter opponent inside the assembly and bosom friend outside it, described Satyamurti thus: “Like the Niagara, he was torrential, deafening and unceasing; but unlike the Niagara, he had never been known to freeze in silence.”
An active member of the Madras University Senate and Syndicate, Satyamurti championed numerous reforms in the field of education. His service to the cause of education led him to play a major role in the creation of Annamalai University. A lover of music and arts, he devoted his spare time to the promotion of Carnatic music and the revival of bharata natyam. He became the Vice President of Madras Music Vilas Sabha, a prominent amateur theatrical group.
Satyamurti Sagar
Elected Mayor of Madras in 1939, he worked tirelessly to make Madras “the city beautiful” as he called it. He initiated the Poondi Reservoir scheme, and the reservoir is now called the Satyamurti Sagar. Participating in the individual Satyagraha campaign in 1940 in defiance of government order, Satyamurti delivered an anti-war speech and was imprisoned for eight months. He was arrested again two years later while returning to Madras after attending the Congress Working Committee meeting in Bombay, where the historic Quit India resolution was adopted. He passed away virtually a prisoner on March 28, 1943. It was a disappointing end to a glittering career as Satyamurti did not live to see India free. He had fought fiercely both inside and outside parliament.
In a tribute, The Hindu wrote: “He achieved with effortless ease distinction on many fronts and he will be remembered in the history of the national movement as a great tribune of the people. He loved the good things of life, but few of the rewards that the world prizes came his way. He would have been more than human if he had not felt these mischances as slights to his worth. But he did not allow them to sour him; his outlook was fundamentally too cheerful and healthy. Above all he was a born fighter to whom the fight was the thing.”
Satyamurti was truly a man of culture. He was a lover of art. In the midst of his exacting public work, he found time to interest himself in the fine arts.
He was one of the original founders of the Music Academy, Madras, with which, for the promotion of music and dance, he was actively connected till the end. He was a great lover of music and he encouraged and patronised musicians.
In one of his letters to his daughter Lakshmi, he says, “A love of fine arts is a sure sign of culture”. In another letter to his daughter Lakshmi, he extols the virtues and beauty of the arts of painting and sculptures which, he says, give form to our conceptions of the Divine. In his public speeches, Satyamurti used to say, “We shall win our way to Swaraj singing.” He had an equally great love for fine arts—dance, painting and sculpture. “ What has always evoked the greatest admiration in me is the expression on the faces of these so-called lifeless figures,” he says, referring to sculptures. Satyamurti was endowed with linguistic proficiency in three languages, viz., English, Tamil and Sanskrit. A keen student of Sanskrit, Satyamurti was one of the pillars of the Sanskrit Academy in which he used to take active interest. He could speak in Sanskrit and his early training under his father had laid strong foundations for the love for Sanskrit in him. Usually, no speech or lecture of his would be complete, either in the legislature or on the public platform, without an apt quotation in Sanskrit.
Next to Sanskrit, Satyamurti loved Tamil. In the twenties and early thirties when the hallmark of a politician or a public man was his ability to speak in fluent English with affected English accent, Satyamurti used to speak in Tamil to large audiences. His Tamil was impeccable, eloquent, flowing and in simple straight language, devoid of pedantry; and this appealed to the masses.
His English was equally flawless and eloquent. In the Madras Legislative Council and the Central Legislative Assembly, his speeches were patterns of perfection so far as the language was concerned. He had no patience with faulty English and often he twitted the Government benches for bad English and bad drafts. (Excerpted from a tribute by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, New Delhi.)