I never really knew my father’s father. Not surprising, really, since he died on 12 March 1959, when I was all of sixteen months old.
I have nothing that belonged to him. A few photographs of him, yes. Some memories, possibly false, heavily influenced by what I’ve been told about him since, primarily by his wife, my grandmother, who outlived him by nearly 50 years. She died in April 2006, a real survivor. I remember being sad when told she was going to die of a tumour….. in 1966.
I never really knew my father’s father.
And so, for the last few years, I’ve been running an experiment. “Forensically” reconstructing him. Using the web. And only the web. Primarily book and magazine extracts that make their weary way on to the web. Trying to see what I learn as a result, not just about him, but about the web as well.
It all started nearly four years ago with My Grandfather’s Teeth, a passage I found in a book I came across online. Here’s the extract.

I now have a copy of the book. The incident of coming across the passage gave me the idea that I would, on a regular basis, trawl the web for evidence of my grandfather’s life, and, based on what I found, reconstruct a profile of the man. [In turn, I hope the exercise would inform me about my father, whom I knew well and yet in some ways didn’t know at all: he died when I was 22, sadly and suddenly. And as I learnt about my father, I hope to learn more about myself.]
So here are some of the things I’ve learned so far:

So now I know that he died of coronary thrombosis, in Calcutta, on March 12, aged 65. I can assume 1959, given the date of the publication. So I also know that he must have been born in 1894 or so. I now know that he was Managing Editor of Indian Finance [yes of course I knew that already, it was the family business, he founded it, and I was its last Editor and Publisher. But the point is to reconstruct the profile using the web and the web alone]. I also know that some people thought he would be missed, and that he was a picturesque and patriarchal figure in the world of Indian….
What else? My father starts making an appearance soon after that, not in chronological terms, but in the sequence in which I came across the web spoor. Here’s an extract from the introduction to the Silver Jubilee issue of something, in 1953. Although the cover is illegible, I can surmise that it is a commemorative volume to do with Indian Finance, the family-owned journal started by my grandfather in 1928.

So now someone else thought that people did not sufficiently recognise the greatness of the founder of Indian Finance, this someone’s old friend and colleague, my grandfather. The writer goes on to say: I do not know of any greater exponent of current economic and financial problems than Mr CS Rangaswami, whose place is now gradually being taken by his brilliant son Raju. [That’s my father, he would have been 24 at the time].
By finding the excerpt below, I can get an idea that my grandfather was considered a quotable expert on aspects of finance. Here he appears in a review of the silver market by the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, in 1932:

I then learnt that when he arrived in Calcutta, he had just a couple of rupees in his pocket. That he stepped into a dazzling world of maharajas and magnates. And that he was picked by the late Maharaja of Darbhanga as his Secretary, as shown below:
This view, of his having very little money when he arrived, is endorsed by the snippet below, calling him a self-made financial expert. And I get further endorsement that he started the magazine himself.

I begin to form a picture of the man. And then I find out he is listed amongst those in the press who struggled for India’s freedom, as shown below:
I learnt that he spent time teaching people, and explaining things to them:
I learnt that his opinion was sought by government committees and appeared in research journals:
I learnt he was befriended by many people also held in high regard, and that they wrote for the journal:

I learnt that he was a man of some humour, some scathing wit, someone who liked playing with language. An unprovoked compliment. I do like that turn of phrase!

The idea that he had something to do with the freedom movement is reinforced in the snippet below, evinced in his friendship with the Asaf Alis, with Maulana Azad and with Pothan Joseph. Something else I was told, that he’d harboured and protected Muslims in his palatial home during the Partition riots, that statement assumes more significance when I see the Azad and Asaf Ali names here. But I shall wait to “discover” that properly. [I was named after one of his friends, Jayaprakash Narayan, JP to his friends. Apparently he was my godfather; there’s a photograph somewhere of me in his arms. But I have no memory of him, and what I know is what I learnt living in India between 1957 and 1980.]

So what do we have? Let’s see. Born around 1894. Arrived in Calcutta penniless. Worked for the Maharaja of Darbhanga as Secretary. A self-made man, founder of a respected magazine, living in a palatial home, his opinion and advice sought on many matters by governments and politicians, hobnobbing with maharajas and magnates. Was part of the freedom struggle. Assisted by a brilliant son. Died of coronary thrombosis in 1959.
Everything hunky-dory? Not quite. What about this, found in the National Archives here in the UK?
A player. As I look further into the archives, I find out about letters sent from Grosvenor House here in London, and from the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. Letters asking various cabinet and board members to support Osborne Smith, to push back against Griggs. Here’s where it gets meatier:
So now my grandfather’s up to some intrigue or the other, appearing in classified documents, and there are copies of documents sent by him, but in the handwriting of the person he’s attacking. All this in letters from the head of the Police Office to the Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Hmmm.
And then Special Branch gets involved. [A bit cheeky of me, I haven’t yet proven to you in this post that PR Srinivas is my grandfather’s partner, but there is web proof of this].

And suddenly the Viceroy’s involved, with letters intercepted and returned….

That’s it for now. A lazy Saturday post, showing you how one can construct a profile of someone just using the web. Genealogy with a twist. Let me know what you think.
Addendum: Found evidence that he spent two months in the UK, ostensibly in November and December 1938. He wrote this in Singapore on his “way back from the UK”.
Like this:
Like Loading...