Murder on the High Seas

Tale of a Fiery Indian Patriot and his Gory End

The daring exploits of India’s fiery freedom fighter, Chempakaraman Pillai, is fairly well-chronicled, at least in South Indian narratives. However, the story of his boyhood friend, Padmanabha Pillai, who was equally dedicated to the cause of Indian independence and tragically ended up paying for it with his life, is far less known.

The name of Padmanabha Pillai finds only cursory reference, as the boyhood buddy of Chempakaraman, in most narratives on the latter, including the one penned by the author earlier on this platform. Nevertheless, it is time to revisit the life and times of T Padmanabha Pillai, the staunch patriot, thanks to a research paper published by Shweta George, an independent researcher in International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IRJAR), an international open access, peer-reviewed and refereed journal, in May 2022, which throws light on the topic.

Born of Shri Thaivanayakam Pillai and Smt Parvathi at Thiruvananthapuram in March 1890, Padmanabha’s tryst with Indian independence began during his high-school days at the Maharaja’s Free High School (presently the University College), Thiruvanthapuram, in the company of his close friend, Chempakaraman Pillai. Inspired by leaders of the nationalist movement like Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the duo set out on their own patriotic pursuit by collecting whatever pictures of such leaders they could lay their hands on and demonstrating their solidarity with the freedom movement by decorating the interiors of their houses with those and passionately following the developments on the national scene through whatever literature available.

The backlash to the partition of Bengal ordered by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, in 1905, resulting in the arrests of several prominent nationalist leaders, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, triggered an overwhelming resentment in the two boys, and assembling a small group of likeminded friends, they organized an anti-British demonstration within the school campus. As cries of ‘Jai Hind’ – a slogan coined by Chempakaraman, which would eventually be adopted by Netaji Subash Chandra Bose as the form of greeting for the cadres of his Indian National Army and, after independence, find its place of honour as the official form of greeting within the Indian armed forces – reverberated the air, the school authorities panicked and called the police. The police arrived and, of course, as was their wont, broke up the demonstration by force, although another amusing version of the story, relates that the police squad was led by Head-Constable Chinnaswami Pillai, who was Chempakaraman’s father, which apparently led to a swift closure of the case.

For all his passionate commitment to the independence movement, Padmanabha was also a brilliant student, who avidly pursued his academics. A meeting he had with an Englishman, Walter William Strickland, who was in Thiruvananthapuram purportedly as a naturalist researching on butterflies of Western Ghats but essentially a radical with strong anti-imperialist views, in 1906 was to profoundly influence the course of his life thence (A baronet by birth, who never used the title in his lifetime, Strickland was such an outspoken liberal of the times that he was often referred to as the ‘Anarchist Baronet’, which probably led to his being labelled a German spy in several accounts, including the research paper referred above). Padmanabha, who had an intrinsic passion for insects and reptiles, happened to observe the strange phenomenon of a spider changing the colour of its eyes and managed to have the finding published in the science journal, ‘Nature’, in a paper titled “On the Change of Colour in the Eyes of an Attis Spider”. The paper earned Padmanabha the honour of being India’s first arachnologist, as indexed by S F Harmer and A E Shipley, both renowned British Zoologists of the period.

Impressed by young Padmanabha’s scientific proclivity, the Englishman offered to take him to Europe to pursue further studies. Either on the youngster’s request or to help him overcome his reluctance to leave Indian shores alone, Strickland agreed to take his close friend, Chempakaraman, also along for the journey. As it turned out however, when the trio had travelled up to Colombo, Padmanabha’s natural apprehension to leave home got the better of him and he chose to return to Thiruvananthapuram, leaving his friend to continue with the journey to Europe. That journey would take Chempakaraman on a lifelong saga of anti-British activities, commencing while a student in Switzerland, through a two-decade period of life in Germany when he rose to fame as one of the fiercest Indian expatriate freedom fighters, until his death in Italy in 1934, believed to have been due to gradual poisoning by the Nazis for his having fallen out with Hitler.

Padmanabha too eventually set out on his journey to Europe, after Strickland wrote to him with an offer to be enrolled at a German University. Joining the undergraduate course in forestry at the Royal Ludwig Maxmillian University, Munich, Padmanabha found his opening to hone his scientific skills. His academic pursuits did not however deter him from actively participating in the myriad movements for India’s freedom that gained ground, championed by a galaxy of Indian expat leaders in Europe, including his friend Chempakaraman. Padmanabha soon gained prominence with his exemplary work in promoting awareness of the need for India’s freedom among Indian labourers in Europe and other expat Indians and Indian POWs, as part of the agenda of the Berlin Committee, which spearheaded India’s freedom movement in the continent.

Meanwhile, the British Intelligence was busy blacklisting Indian expats in Europe suspected of nationalist sentiments, and Padmanabha’s family in Thiruvananthapuram naturally came under close surveillance, including confiscation of his letters home. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Criminal Intelligence Directorate in India published a list of Indian expat revolutionaries, banning their entry into India. With inclusion of his name in the list looming an imminent possibility, Padmanabha sailed home to escape the net.

Although the police sniffed around and even paid him a visit at his home in Thiruvananthapuram, in the absence of any concrete evidence, they could not implicate or arrest him. Meanwhile, Padmanabha cleverly made use of his academic qualifications and professional experience to find an excellent cover for his revolutionary activities, by landing a government job. Promptly selected for the post of Special Scientific Assistant to the Director, Department of Museums & Gardens he applied for, he found himself in his favourite vocation, nominated to undertake the statistics of the flora and fauna of Travancore, even while earnestly continuing with his pro-independence activism by organizing secret meetings of fellow revolutionaries.

Unable to suppress his revolutionary fervour for long, Padmanabha availed a year’s leave of absence and travelled to Europe once again in 1915. That was the period when the Berlin Committee of expat nationals, now named the Indian Independence Committee, succeeded in their efforts to set up a government in exile in Kabul, Afghanistan. Joining them enthusiastically, Padmanabha took on the task of propagating the new government’s policies and enlarging the membership base of the committee, as well as enlisting personnel to raise an army to foment a rebellion in India. The government in exile raised a 12,000-strong army of Afridi Tribesmen they deployed on the India-Afghanistan Border.

Returning home, he gave into familial persuasion to enter into matrimony with Rajammal, daughter of the then Royal Physician, Shri Sankaramurthy Pillai. She bore him two children, a son, Shankaran and a daughter, Sarojini. Padmanabha, despite having had to shoulder household responsibilities, consequent to his taking up residence at his wife’s house after marriage, continued with his pro-independence activities. His secret meetings with fellow revolutionaries in an outhouse of his residence that often went on past midnight raised suspicion in his father-in-law, who was a government loyalist, invariably causing friction between the two.

An opportunity to travel to Switzerland to pursue his doctoral work at the behest of the King of Travancore came as a relief for Padmanabha, although he was sad of being separated from his wife and the two children. The prospects of more active involvement in the freedom struggle while being overseas propelled him to leave home once again. Along with his doctoral studies at the University of Berne, he renewed his association with other freedom fighters and went about the nationalist agenda with vigour and zeal. The British Intelligence had meanwhile launched a strategy of assassinating Indian independence activists, whenever and wherever possible and prepared a hit list. Unknown to Padmanabha, his name figured prominently in the list.

Completing his thesis on “Evolutionary History on Artillery Fungus” in 1923, Padmanabha set out on his voyage back home. Alerted of the assassination strategy of the British, Padmanabha turned apprehensive while on the high seas that he was being followed and chose to disembark when his ship berthed at Penang. He switched vessels boarding the ship ‘Andrew Le Bon’ headed for India. That was his final voyage, because he was thrown overboard by British assassins, probably when he stepped over to the deck for some fresh air at night. Rajammal, his wife, was telegraphically intimated by the shipping company that her husband was ‘missing’ from the ship and his belongings were to be collected from their office at Colombo, which his brother, Neelakanda Pillai subsequently did. There are different versions of when and where exactly Padmanabha was murdered, but the watery grave of the young Indian patriot could very well have been in the churning waters of the Malacca Straits or anywhere on the high seas between Penang and Colombo. It was later reported that his jacket was washed up at the Siamese Coast. Strickland, on his part, investigated the tragedy in its aftermath and unequivocally confirmed Padmanabha to have been the victim of a diabolic, British assassination plot.

Sankaramurthy, Padmanabha’s father-in-law, while distressed by the sudden widowhood of his young daughter with two children, being a staunch government loyalist, was also fearful of his reputation being tarnished for having had a rebel for his son-in-law. He had no qualms in burning every bit of document he could lay his hands on that linked Padmanabha to the independence movement. With that mindless act, the legacy of such an ardent freedom fighter was largely lost to the entire nation.