Looking Back Memoirs of K. Santhanam 1895-1980 (An Old and Rare Book)

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This is not an autobiography. I do not think that my life has been of such importance nor that it has been so full of exciting adventures that the world will be interested in a detailed description of its course. But I have had the good fortune of living during a period which has been of great historical importance to the world in general and India in particular. I have participated in the struggle for freedom under Mahatma Gandhi which ended in the transfer of power on August 15, 1947. Throughout this period, I have held various positions in the Congress organisation. I was six times in jail and have intimate experience of the feelings and thoughts of many co-workers in the satyagraha movement. As Editor of The Indian Express from 1933 to 1940 and as Joint Editor of the Hindustan Times from 1943 to 1948, it was my daily business to watch and comment on all the political and social changes that were happening.

In 1937, while I was the Editor of the Indian Express, I was elected unopposed to the Indian Legislative Assembly of which I was a member till 1942 when I resigned as I was with Rajaji in his opposition to the Quit India movement. During the 3 years 1937 to 1940 when the Congress Party in the Indian Legislative Assembly functioned actively, I took an active part in all its work and particularly in the scrutiny of bills and moving amendments to them and in the work of Select Committees and Standing Committees.

When I look back on the first 75 years of this century, I am filled with two conflicting impressions. On the one hand, I see great changes, some of them revolutionary in character. On the other, I feel that, in many matters, there has been little or no change whatsoever. They include conditions and habits which should have changed if Indian evolution had been sufficiently dynamic.

This simultaneous and conflicting phenomena of change and stagnation range throughout the entire sphere of national life. Let me take physical appearance to start with. Change is most visible in the metropolitan cities of Madras, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi. When I came to Madras in 1911-12 to join the Presidency College, there were no motor cars or aeroplanes. There was a tram service but the "jutka", the horse cart, in which one had to sit with folded legs was the major means of transport. There was no electricity in many houses. The population was then perhaps a fourth of the present population. Most of the extensions in which the majority of the population now live did not exist. For instance, the sites of Thyagaraya Nagar and Gandhi Nagar which are now so over-crowded were mere empty waste-lands. In spite of all these changes, the City gives the same impression of being ill-built and insanitary. There are more slums now than 60 years ago. Though a row of fine buildings now adorn the Beach, and some attempt has been made to put flower beds along the Beach road, the number of people committing nuisance in the Beach is much larger and there is more bad smell and less comfort in having a walk along the Beach. In the densely populated areas of Triplicane, Mylapore, George Town, Egmore and Purasawalkum, the old houses continue to dominate the scene.

The same is true of the other metropolitan cities. It is in Bombay perhaps that the new and tall buildings arrest one's attention. The Marine Drive and the glittering view it presents at night are certainly fascinating. In many suburbs, old houses have been replaced by multi-storied buildings. Yet, during my recent visits to that city, the insistent impression was that it was still the old Bombay. There too, the slum population has increased and it is difficult to imagine a more disgraceful sight than the vast slum area on the way to the airport.