IN MEMORIAM - MGS
It was on the 15th December 2007 that I received a call from Father Jolly Aluvelil who was then the Director of the local Chavara Centre saying that MGS wanted me to attend a meeting at the Centre that evening. I was a bit surprised as I had no acquaintance with him till then. My brother and sister had been his students in their Intermediate course long back in 1954. I remember their admiration for the new History lecturer who had stood first in History Honours in Madras University. I also remember that the Calicut University had opened its Research Centre which was located at the Guruvayurappan College. The University Centre was housed next to my Pre-Degree class and I would watch with some admiration the two shadowy figures of Prof. Raveendran and MGS stooping over some book or estampage a sight that evoked both admiration and pity for their sole student, Bharati Nair, who was my cousin!
Anyhow, I decided to attend the meeting that day. It was an informal meeting with most of Calicut's prominent citizens attending. There was Dr. Madhavan Kutty who was a leading culture czar those days, Prof.M R Chandrasekharan and Prof. A Achuthan were there. So were some doctors from Calicut Medical College with amateur interest in history. MGS explained the purpose of the meeting which was to form a new body to preserve and protect Calicut's heritage.
He explained that he had taken the initiative to form a body called Calicut Heritage Society or something which had stopped after showing initial enthusiasm. He suggested the name 'Calicut Heritage Forum' and the meeting approved the name. He would be the President so that he could give directions and the Vice Presidents shall be Dr. Madhavan Kutty, retired Principal of Medical College and Chairman of the local Board of Directors of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan; and Dr. A Achuthan, a noted environmentalist with deep interest in preserving the heritage of Calicut. He looked at me and asked me to be the Convenor and Secretary and Sri M Radhakrishnan Nair to be the Joint Secretary of CHF. He also suggested that the Zamorin Raja of Calicut and the District Collector of Kozhikode be approached for being the patron of the CHF. We approached both of them and they readily agreed. Thus was born the Calicut Heritage Forum which was inaugurated by the then Zamorin Sri P.K.K. Raja on the 6th January 2009.
Ever since, till his passing away on 26th April 2025, I have been interacting with MGS frequently. Beyond his fame as a historian, he was a person of extraordinary qualities.- humble, generous and egalitarian in his dealings with everyone.
He dealt with everyone on an equal basis. There were many who came to seek his favours and many more who came to just meet him and seek his blessings. He did not disappoint anyone. He gave freely letters of recommendations to those students who sought his intervention to get admission for post-graduate and higher courses. He believed that the country required many more independent historians. When some controversy arose, like the Ayodhya excavation or the Pattanam controversy, some Hindi media like Dainik Bhaskar and Jagran called him to get his bytes. They were speaking in Hindi and I have sometimes acted as interpreter. He was bold in giving out his opinion, unflustered by the political ripples that his comments would cause.
Then, there were those who approached him to write an introduction to their books. He has dutifully obliged all of them. At the same time, he was serialising his autobiography in Malayalam in a local daily. I once asked his wife how he found time to read and write so much amidst the crowd milling around his drawing room. She explained the secret - he wrote late into the night after dinner, occasionally sleeping in the early hours of the morning. He read every word of the book that he had agreed to write a preface for. Very often his comments were rather uncomplimentary. But he spoke his mind.
This forthrightness and intellectual honesty had got him into trouble throughout his career. When he was the Secretary (1990-92) of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), its Chairman was Prof.Irfan Habib who was a known leftist historian. MGS had a fight with Habib over principles and quit his position. Irfan had tried to brand MGS a Hindu communalist, without knowing that long ago, Rao Bahadur Krishnan Nair, the then President of the Board of Management of Guruvayurappan College had wanted to oust the young lecturer MGS on the ground that he was a rabid Communist!
Later on, this so-called Hindu communalist himself became the Chairman, ICHR (2001 - 2003). He lost no time in airing his difference of opinion with the BJP Minister, Prof. Murli Manohar Joshi and quit the post. When the Historian and self-confessed leftist Prof. Nurul Hassan became the Education Minister, he had no qualms about making MGS the author of NCERT text books. Much later, when the Congress Government in Kerala under late Oommen Chandy made him the Director General of the Government's Centre for Heritage Studies, MGS had traversed the entire spectrum of political allegiance, without surrendering his independence and the courage of his convictions.
Apart from being a historian, MGS was an artist, having learnt sketching form the one and only artist Namboodiri in Edappal. He was also a poet, having published at the age of 92, the poems of his younger days as an anthology named 'Marichu Mama Balyam' ( My Childhood is Dead).
 |
| The doors of his house were always open...! |
MGS will be remembered for many things. His seminal contribution to the early history of Kerala will stand out . He toured the length and breadth of Kerala scouting for inscriptions and giving existing inscriptions a new interpretation, under the tutelage of Sri Elamkulam Kunhan Pillai, and expanding our knowledge of the Cheras, . His book , Perumals of Kerala represents an original contribution to the understanding of the Cheras of Mahodayapuram. Equally valuable is the Index of Chera Inscriptions, totalling 150 and classified according to the dates. Here, his genius is revealed in suggesting corrections to existing interpretations and suggesting coherent formulations where gaps exist in the script. This book is an expanded version of his Ph.D thesis.
One of his external examiners was the reputable Indologist and the author of the classic, The Wonder that was India, A L Basham. Basham had to say this about the thesis submitted by MGS : '...one of the ablest and most thorough Indian theses that I have examined,... the thesis forms a very thorough survey of the subject... All...sections are excellent, but the candidate deserves special credit for his detailed study of the political history of the period, for which he has utilised all the available material including a great collection of inscriptions, many of them unpublished....The detailed catalogue of all the many inscriptions relevant to the period, with summaries of the contents,... in itself is a contribution to knowledge...
The... work is a really impressive one. It should be published, and I look forward to seeing it in print. I would ask that the candidate be warmly congratulated on my behalf'. - A L Basham
Basham, who passed away in 1986, did not get to see the book in a printed form. It finally saw the light of day in 2013, thanks to the untiring effort by his beloved students, Prof. T R Venugopalan and Prof. Kesavan Veluthat.
MGS attributed his interest in history to his teachers, with Sri K V Krishna Ayyar playing a leading role. He recalled once that his father, who was a doctor, wanted the son to follow his footsteps. But, after listening to Prof. K V Krishna Ayyar on Calicut History, he was converted . "If I am a historian ,it is only because of Krishna Ayyar", he said in his tribute (Please listen to his speech here from 5.00 to 20.00)So when MGS wrote about Calicut in his book, Calicut:The City of Truth Revisited, he dedicated the book to the first historian of Calicut thus: 'To the Hallowed Memory of Prof. K V Krishna Ayyar who opened the doors of History for me'.
Similarly, when MGS got his magnum opus published, he dedicated his book, Perumals of Kerala to his mentor, Prof. Elamkulam Kunhan Pillai thus : 'This book is dedicated to the memory of the saintly scholar, Professor Elamkulam P.N. Kunhan Pillai. He welcomed me, a total stranger, affectionately into his house, "Satyaniketan" like an old friend, placed his time and immense knowledge , and his entire library at my disposal, imparted instruction in Kerala's ancient scripts and languages, and tolerated my cross examination of his views for four years continuously. Without this apprenticeship in Gurukulam style, my training as historian would have remained incomplete.- M.G.S. Narayanan'
 |
| Mr.Swaminathan met MGS in Nov 2024 |
MGS was an atheist, like K V Krishna Ayyar before him. He has probably visited more temples in Kerala than even the most devout believer. But he was looking for inscriptions and other historical proof in these temples. MGS may not have believed in God, but one suspects that God had immense faith in MGS, who lived his life on his terms. No tribute can equal the one that MGS himself has recorded in the Author's Note of his work, Perumal of Kerala and reproduced below:
'Thanks to longevity ensured by modern science, and tolerably good health, I have reaped full rewards and honours for my hard work in the form of recognition within our country and outside. My work in the field of historical research has earned for me a good number of friends and enemies, even outside the circle of my students. I am thankful to all of them. They made my otherwise uneventful life full of excitement, challenge and suspense. Research has been a passion with me, but I followed it without sacrificing domestic and social life and all their attached pains and pleasures. This was possible because of the generosity of the members of family, my colleagues and students. This enabled me to withstand the trials and tribulations imposed on me by some Calicut University authorities and some political leaders whom I had to oppose in the course of my professional activity. I do not retain any ill-will against them especially since I have been able to overcome the obstacles and recover the losses'.
Au Revoir, Sir!
0 comments:
Post a Comment