A Single Group with Double Identity
By A V. Raman
(Author’s Note. To many in the North, the word Madrasis means people
from the South without any regard to the geographies like Andhra, Karnataka,
Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Big cosmopolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai have huge
numbers of such Madrasis. I have lived as a Madrasi in both cities and observed
the difference in their attitude and outlook. With due apology to George Bernard Shaw**, I
would say that Delhi’s and Mumbai’s Madrasis are the same as a group but widely
divided in their respective lifestyle and attitude. If Delhi’s are more bureaucratic, Mumbai’s are
more entrepreneurial.
Delhi's Madrasis
I have lived in Delhi for nearly three decades,
from 1950 to 1980 as school and college student and as a junior government
official. My maternal uncles and other relations were all government servants, some
living there from the 1920s and used to move between Delhi and Shimla and back
as the British government shifted its offices likewise. In Delhi the
high-ranking officers lived close to the Central Secretariat in large bungalows
with spacious lawns, hall, bed rooms with attached baths, and three or four servants’
quarters. Lower rank officers like
superintendents etc. lived in smaller bungalows while officials like office
assistants, stenographers, and Clerks lived in smaller quarters consisting of
one or two rooms, kitchen and a bathroom with the latrine at the rear end of a
court yard.
With many Subramanians
and Ganesans for their names, distinction was made either with reference to the
Ministry where they worked or in the Square where they lived, like Finance
Subramanian, Defence Ganesan or Wilson Square Ramasubban and Lawrence Square
Sivaramakrishnan. If two Sethuramans were in the same Finance ministry, then
the distinction was based on the Wing/ department, such as Expenditure
Sethuraman versus Controller of Capital Sethuraman. Another distinctive
clue was their pastime or leisure activities like Bhajana Samaj Krishnan or
Karnataka Sangeetha Sabha Ramamurthy and these persons had high titles like
Additional Secretary, Joint Secretary, etc. in their respective
organisations... And in addition, there were also nicknames given and
recognised by the whole community, like Bonda Srinivasan, Typhoid Krishnamurthy, and
Driver Devarajan, and so on.
When it came to their career in government, all Madrasis earned the
unenviable reputation as honest, sincere, hard- working, efficient and with
absolute integrity. The price that was paid for such appreciation was the
neglect of leisure time happiness on holidays with family and friends. Many of
them would have spent decades living in Delhi but had not had the time to see
the Kutb Minar, the Red Fort, Purana Qila
and other historical monuments which abound in Delhi.
The institutions that united them were The South India Club, The Madrasi
School, The Karnatak Sangeetha Sabha, The Vaishnava Siddhantha Sabha, The
Saturday Bhajana Sabhas, The Navaratri Golus and of course the Irwin Road Pilliar
Koil and the adjacent Hanuman Mandir and the Baird Road Kali Koil. Apart from
mutual family visits, inter-family communication was through the Tamil Vadhyar
group to which the families belonged when a Sastrigal of that group came to
announce the important religious events of the month and collect the monthly
subscription. Integration with other communities was next to nothing for most
of the Madrasis, although they collectively enjoyed the confidence of the
Punjabi grocers, clothiers and other shopkeepers who gave them credit facilities
liberally without question.
Among the uniting institutions mentioned above, the Madrasi School
occupied a predominant position as it was here that the children of all
Madrasis, irrespective of the status of the parents, whether a Joint Secretary
or an Upper Division Clerk, or the child of a Sastrigal or a cook, came for
studies. Those were days of no dress code or uniforms, and yet all children
studied in an environment of equality and fraternity The teachers, both male
and female, were exceptionally devoted to their profession, took avuncular
interest in each student, and were kind-hearted. Till the fifties, there was
only one school on Reading Road. Even when there was no bar for students from
other regions or linguistic groups for admission, the Madrasi School remained
exclusively a Tamil school. Ironically, when it became a multi-branch Tamil
school in its name in the sixties, called The Delhi Tamil Education Association
School (DTEA), it now has both students and teachers from other parts of the
country. Today the School has many branches spread across New Delhi and its
suburbs and celebrated its centenary.
The Madrasis were a powerful group in the Central Secretariat.
Their network was strongly knit and mutually helpful. Any special attention or
facility in AIIMS, Safdarjung and other government hospitals was arranged by a
Madrasi Jt. Secretary in the Health Ministry, while a Madrasi officer in Civil
Supplies Department took care of additional allotment of sugar and Maida for a
Madrasi wedding. Acquiring of land and construction of the many temples in the
sixties and seventies in New Delhi was mainly because of the initiative and
strength of this network.
Most of the Madrasis of my time in Delhi have retired, while some
continue to live in Delhi in their retired lives in housing colonies in faraway
places bordering U.P and Haryana, their post- retirement life and interests are
confined within these areas mainly centring the local temple. They re-live
their experience recalling some happy and. A few have gone back to their native
towns or villages in South India to a quiet life. Only a
few of their next generation have opted to be government servants and continue
to constitute Delhi’s Madrasis. The Tamil population in Delhi is around 10
lakhs now lakhs comprising sizable numbers employed in private sector companies,
as self- employed professionals, as traders and service providers etc. Yet, there is still a lot many of them working
in or retired from public - sector organisations like banks, insurance
companies, STC, MMTC, Delhi State government offices, etc. So, the Delhi is
still a government city by and large and smells bureaucratic Delhi Madrasis are, at heart, Sarkari animals.
They populated the ministries of Shastri Bhawan and the corridors of the UPSC.
Success to a Delhi Madrasi is defined by three things: a permanent government
pension, an allotment of a Type-IV quarter, and a daughter who cleared the
Civil Services. The Delhi Mama speaks in files, notifications,
and protocol. He has mastered the art of looking incredibly busy while doing
absolutely nothing, a crucial trait absorbed from his Punjabi colleagues. His
cynicism is sharp, intellectual, and masked behind a polite, bilingual
Mumbai’s
Madrasis
The Mumbai Madrasi has a very different story. He did not arrive with
government postings but with ambition, relatives and one address in Matunga or
Chembur scribbled on paper. Mumbai transformed the Madrasis into bankers, restaurateurs,
railway employees, Udupi hotel owners, accountants, tuition masters, and
eventually IT professionals.
The Mumbai Madrasi’s real
university was not IIT but the suburban railway but Mumbai gave something Delhi
never fully could: social blending. The Mumbai Madrasi became part-Marathi,
part-Gujarati and part-Mumbaikar. He learnt to eat vada pav without betraying
dosa ancestry. His Tamil acquired Marathi punctuation. His children spoke in a
linguistic khichdi that linguists may someday classify as an endangered
dialect. A typical Mumbai Madrasi of
yore would take one look at the local train map and claim Matunga and Chembur as
his holy land. Here, space is a luxury. The Mumbai Madrasi lives in a flat so
small that if Mama does his morning Sandhyavandanam (prayers)
too vigorously, his elbow hits the neighbour’s kitchen.
The legendary Chembur Mama is a
creature of the private sector—either a chartered accountant, a bank manager at
Nariman Point, or a statistician. He values
efficiency over status. He doesn't care about government bungalows; he cares
about his local train first-class pass and the current valuation of his mutual
funds. He is completely stripped of the Delhi snobbishness. He will argue with
a vegetable vendor over two rupees of coriander, save fifty thousand rupees on
his income tax through complex legal loopholes, and then donate a lakh to the
local temple without batting an eyelid.
Mumbai
Madrasis too have unifying institutions like the Shanmukananda Sabha, South
Indian Education Society and its schools and colleges, the Fine Arts Society in
Chembur, and the Bhajana Samaj and temples in Matunga and in suburbs like Mulund
with heavy Madrasi population and last but not least the ubiquitous Kamat and
Shetty restaurants all over the metropolis. The Onam celebrations and the associated
Sadia feasts are other uniting factors. Mumbai Madrasis are financially practical. They
tracked mutual funds while complaining about coconut prices. Mumbai gave them
freedom. The city cared less about where you came from and more about whether
you paid rent on time. A Madrasi in Mumbai could reinvent himself. The son of a
railway clerk could become a banker, actor, entrepreneur, or software engineer.
Mumbai’s cosmopolitan chaos diluted rigid identities. And unlike Delhi, Mumbai
never freezes South Indians during winter.
The Second-Generation Revolution
Today’s younger generation of Madrasis, both in Delhi and Mumbai, has
evolved dramatically: they eat sushi without guilt. They speak English more
fluently than their mother tongue. They know Spotify better than Thyagaraja. They
debate startup funding instead of Carnatic ragas.
Conclusion: Two Cities, One Filter Coffee
Delhi’s Madrasi became disciplined, intellectual and
institution-oriented. Mumbai’s Madrasi became adaptive, entrepreneurial and
socially blended. One mastered bureaucracy. The other mastered survival. One
conquered ministries. The other conquered local trains.
The Verdict: Who is the Real
Madrasi?
To compare the two is to compare a vintage,
slow-moving government file with a high-frequency algorithmic trade.
· The Delhi Madrasis won the battle of space and status. They got
the large flats, the green lawns, the administrative clout, and a vocabulary
that allows them to stand up to a volatile Delhi autowallah with a calm,
bureaucratic stare.
· The Mumbai Madrasis won the battle of survival and soul. They stayed
closer to the coastal air, mastered the art of financial independence, and
learned to find absolute bliss in a two-minute cup of kaapi standing
on a crowded footpath while the monsoon hits the city.
One looks up at the corridors of power; the other
looks down at the bottom line of the balance sheet. But should you ever place a
perfectly crisp idli and a bowl of steaming hot, uncompromised
home-made sambhar between them, the geopolitical borders vanish instantly. Both
will forget the city outside, click their tongues in unison, and exclaim: Nothing
to beat filter coffee
(**England and America are two countries separated by a common
language-GBS)
