In the November 1918 issue of Young India, its editor Lala Lajpat Rai penned a short commentary on Ananda Coomaraswamy’s notes on the Ramayana. In fact, after the huge success of Lalaji's 1915 book Young India, between 1918 and 1920, published the monthly retaining the same title. It was published from Broadway in New York by India Home Rule League of America. Both Lala Lajpat Rai and Sri Lankan born American metaphysician, art critic and philosopher Dr. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy or AKC were in exile at the time. The two separate cases of the forced exiles are quite strange. Lalaji went to London as one of the Congress deligation members in 1914, and was not allowed to return before end of World War I. AKC visited India during the same war in 1915, and after returning England was forced to leave the British Empire before the end of next year.
“The following critical notes on the Ramayan by the eminent art critic and scholar, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy will be of interest to students of that great Indian epic. These notes presuppose a knowledge of the story of the Ramayan on the part of the reader. We do not know how far that supposition is justified in this country. It would have been better if Dr. Coomaraswamy had given a brief account of the story also,” Lala Lajpat Rai wrote in that issue.
Coomaraswamy, the Sri Lankan Tamil born in British Ceylon, had studied in the United Kingdom and at last died in the United States. But he loved Bharat (India) more like any Bharatiya (Indian) since his first visit.
AKC started the voyage on 28th December 1906 to reach India first time. Before that he has accomplished his tenure as the founder director of Geological Survey of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). It was the time, when partition of Bengal was a part of the public discourse along with the Swadeshi movement. Its top leaders Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose were defining the Indian nationalism. He returned back to England, after the two months in different parts of India. And for the next eight years continued visiting here in a quest for the suitable role in the nationalist movement and to explore the arts and crafts that reflected from his volumes of works.
Influence of Indian nationalism got its overt expression in his 1907 speech that was delivered at Cheltenham. Some of his books including Essays in National Idealism (1909) and Art and Swadeshi that appeared in 1912 were its testimonies. Profound impact of the 19th century British scholar and author of Unto this Last, John Ruskin and socialist artist and author of News from Nowhere William Morris can be traced on major parts of his life and works.
He has started the India Society in London with William Rothenstein, Roger Fry, E.B. Havell and certain others in 1910. British orientalist T.W. Rhys Davids became its first president and the musicologist Arthur Henry Fox Strangways its secretary. One of its top achievements was launching poet Rabindra Nath Tagore with the publication of Gitanjali winning Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Before that AKC had spent many moons with Tagores in Calcutta (now Kolkata). He was appointed President of the committee for Indian freedom that was formed in 1914 at Washington. The same year, when Mahatma Gandhi had reached London after the tedious experiments in South Africa, AKC received him at Caxton Hall along with Jinnah and Sarojini Naidu.
Once his son and heir Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy, described him in a pen sketch, and wrote, “He was involved in the Indian independence movement during this period of his life, and his home was frequently visited by individuals whose interests were still associated with the Independence movement. During the First World War, he refused to serve in the British army as long as India was under British rule. As a result, he was exiled from the British Empire and his home Norman Chapel, was confiscated and was made part of the English National Park Service.”
A little village, Broad Campden, is situated near Chipping Campden (Gloucestershire) around 90 miles apart from the city. It is known for the Norman era houses of 12th century. AKC has procured one of housing units through the British architect Charles Robert Ashbee, who has renovated it and converted it into the double storey house, while maintaining its original structure and design, before Coomaraswamys returned from India in 1907. Ashbee's wife, Janet recorded one of such occasions next year, when the disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble) was invited to deliver the lecture at Norman Chapel. Janet wrote that she had reached with Sister Dhiramata (Sara C. Bull) and delivered a talk on Women’s Ideals in India, and received a rather nonplussed reception.
In India his nationalist polemics remained unsuccessful due to the patronizing rants against middle class. Here, most of his writings failed to get the wide audience in that period. But Coomaraswamy steadily made the name as an art historian in Europe and the U.S. At the same time the nationalist activities and regular visits to India made British authorities suspicious, and they began to explore his links with the Ghadar Party as well. Britain revised the Military Service Act during the World War I, and he refused to serve even war-time civilian role. In such circumstances he planned to seek the asylum in the United States with the help of his friend Denman Waldo Ross, who was a trustee of Boston Museum of Fine Arts and teaching art and design at Harvard University.
Ross helped him considerably. He had procured the collection of his arts for the Boston Museum at a the time, when the British Home Office and the Scotland Yard were trying hard to make his life rather difficult. It reflected from his correspondences with close friends like Rothenstein. He wrote, “I am still harassed about the permit to leave, have spent several hours at Scotland Yard—the difficulty is due to the words in a speech I made at Cheltenham in 1907! It is a bitter irony altogether.” In his biography, Roger Lipsey wrote about the role in nationalist movement, but still kept silence about Cheltenham speech.
At last Coomaraswamy managed to evade the efforts of Scotland Yard to stop his flight. A decade after the first visit to India, he has reached the U.S. in December 1916 with his art collection and bulk of inherited fortune. He has served Boston Museum of Fine Arts for the next three decades. While describing him one of his colleagues, Dr. Eric Schroeder said, “He felt interest in present history, the industrialist rape of Asia and the prostitution of Western intellect to the contingent, but his delight was in metaphysics.”
Thereafter AKC neither returned to Britain nor to India. Exactly before his death, after an interview, Dr S. Chandrasekhar wrote that he was planning to return to India after an absence of three decades. AKC wanted to settle down at the foot of the Himalayas and also to join the vanaprastha and sanyasa ashram. Right after his death on September 9, 1947 his wife Dona Luisa Coomaraswamy returned his ashes to the Ganga. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts has paid fifty million rupees to procure remaining parts of his collection from its heir.
In 2015, the Indian High Commission has bought a house in London where Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar lived as one of the students of London School of Economics on behalf of the government of Maharashtra. Today the governments of India and Britain need to think similar about the Norman Chapel to pay tribute to its one time owner, AK Coomaraswamy. His memorial museum in Britain will be a kind of tribute to the seer, who has introduced the West with art and culture of Indian subcontinent.
By Kaushal Kishore
(The content of this article reflects the views of writers and contributors, not necessarily those of the publisher and editor. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Delhi/New Delhi only)
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