Beach House, inside Queen Mary’s College, has been demolished. The colonial-style bungalow, with wooden balconies, a gable, a large portico and Madras-style roofing, was pulled down a month or so ago to make way for what is claimed will be a ‘world-class auditorium’. With that, we have lost a building that had a direct connection with the freedom struggle. Beach House and its neighbour, Sankara Iyer’s bungalow, of which very little is known, both came up in the late 1800s. They were built in a style sympathetic to two of their neighbours the older Cappers House to the north and the DGP Office to the south.
Beach House and Its Historic Legacy
Beach House itself was the residence of Sir S Subramania Iyer (1842-1924). How the two bungalows became part of the QMC campus I have not yet found. Qualifying in law, Subramania Iyer practised in Madurai and later Madras. He became a judge of the High Court of Madras in 1895. More significantly, he was the first Indian to officiate as Chief Justice of the High Court. His association with Beach House therefore gives the building a significance that goes well beyond its architectural appearance or inclusion in any official list of heritage structures.
Why am I going into so much detail? This is simply to counter one of QMC’s college teachers who responded to my lament about the demolition by stating that this was not a heritage building. I am sure she was referring to the list of heritage structures enumerated in the Justice E Padmanabhan Committee report and subsequently adopted by the High Court. But is that the only yardstick by which we identify what qualifies as heritage? Surely, the intangible history associated with a place must count for something too.
Beach House and the Madras Legal World
Beach House became a centre where some of the brightest legal minds of Madras gathered. That, in turn, led to the birth of the Madras Law Journal. As the judge who presided over the trial in the sensational Arbuthnot bank collapse, Subramania Iyer remained firm despite the pressure brought to bear on him. He sentenced the accused, Sir George Gough Arbuthnot, to a term in jail. In 1906, it would not have been easy to resist an establishment that wanted Arbuthnot to go scot-free. Yet Subramania Iyer did precisely that.
In another case, the Mahant of Tirupati was accused of pocketing gold that was supposed to be buried at the base of the temple flagstaff. The only option was to uproot the flagstaff, something that went against agamic law. Subramania Iyer nevertheless ordered it. No gold was found, and the Mahant was sentenced. These are just two examples of his conduct as a judge. They also illustrate why the history associated with Beach House cannot be dismissed simply because the building itself did not appear on an official heritage list.
The House and the Freedom Struggle
Knighted for his services, Subramania Iyer later served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Madras, which also conferred an honorary doctorate on him. He was a founder of the Congress Party and, after retiring as a judge, became a follower of Annie Besant and her Home Rule League. When she was arrested in 1917, he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson, arguing that the USA ought not to aid Britain in the First World War while civil liberties remained suppressed in the colonies.
He was chastised for this by Edwin Montagu, then Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy. In response, Subramania Iyer immediately surrendered his knighthood. That was in 1918, a full year before Rabindranath Tagore did the same in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Tagore’s act is rightly celebrated in Bengal. Tamil Nadu, however, has often treated its heroes differently. The story of Subramania Iyer and Beach House is another example of how easily such histories can disappear.
Queen Mary’s College and Its Heritage
I do not blame the QMC faculty of today for not knowing all this, though the college does have a history department. To them, Beach House was perhaps just a dilapidated building that would eventually have collapsed anyway. Nor am I surprised by some of the revisionist history buffs who wrote to me saying that temples are the only heritage worth preserving and that this was merely a colonial building. They may never have heard of S Subramania Iyer. But heritage cannot be reduced to a question of religious identity, architectural style or the age of a structure.
QMC’s heritage has been unlucky ever since J Jayalalithaa eyed the campus as a possible location for a secretariat. That move failed owing to spirited opposition from the alumni. The campus was subsequently denied basic maintenance by the PWD. When I was once invited to speak on the premises, I was shocked by its condition. In the process, the main building, Capper House, one of the oldest structures on the Marina, collapsed. It was replaced by Kalaignar Maligai, known by that name when the DMK was in power and as Kalai Maligai when the ADMK held office, a building of doubtful aesthetics.
The Loss of Beach House
The other historic blocks were restored by the PWD, but Beach House received no such attention. It was denied even basic maintenance, declared unsafe and allowed to deteriorate. Then came an MP who promised a world-class auditorium on the premises, and Beach House was sacrificed for it. Declaring a building unsafe before demolishing it has been one of the PWD’s standard operating procedures for decades. Bentinck’s Building was an early victim. The DGP Office escaped by the skin of its teeth. Beach House was not so lucky.
The loss is therefore not merely that of another old bungalow. It is the loss of a place connected to one of the most significant legal minds of colonial Madras and to an important chapter in India’s freedom struggle. A building need not appear on a heritage list to carry historical meaning. Once such a structure is demolished, its associations cannot be recreated by constructing a new auditorium in its place. Queen Mary’s College has lost some of its sheen, but more importantly, the city has lost another tangible link to its past.
This article appeared in The Hindu–https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/chennai-queen-marys-college-loses-a-heritage-building-in-which-jurist-s-subramania-iyer-lived/article71300981.ece#google_vignette
My book, Chennai, A Biography can be ordered-http://My book, Chennai, A Biography can be ordered-https://sriramv.com/2021/12/27/how-to-buy-autographed-copies-of-chennai-a-biography-from-outstation/20.ece