To the South, Another India
By Barbara Crossette; Barbara Crossette is the New Delhi bureau chief of The New York Times.
Published: October 21, 1990
Think of India. What does the mind's eye see? The Taj Mahal, the desert fortresses of Rajasthan, the teeming ghats of Varanasi?
Think again. There is another India, of brooding Dravidian temples, old towns where fresh spices perfume the evening air, tropical beaches, shaded inland waterways and a softer, sweeter way of life. This is South India, the land below the hills called the Vindhyas.
Most foreign tourists never get this far south, to the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. South Indians will be quick to tell you why they think this is so: the tourism industry, like politics and government, has been long dominated by the Hindi-speaking North.
This state of affairs won't last long, however. South India is becoming directly accessible to the outside world through international flights to Madras or Trivandrum by Air-India, Airlanka, British Airways and Singapore Airlines, among others. The Indian South is a land of beginnings. Today around the pleasant, modern city of Bangalore, Indian science and industrial research are heading into the next century. On the Keralal coast, Ernakulam has become the first town in India to be able to declare that virtually all its people are literate and in reasonable health.
Centuries ago, South India was the center of old Hindu empires and a civilization that, in many pockets, never fell under the control or influence of the Islamic conquerers from the Northwest Frontier or their descendants, who conquered most of the rest of India. Much earlier, the South was the first corner of India to welcome Muslims from the trading nations across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Jewish settlements sprang up too. And, according to history that slips into legend, St. Thomas the Apostle brought Christianity to India in the first century, long before most Europeans practiced the new faith.
Finally, and significantly for the South, where English is still widely spoken, the British Empire in India began here in the 17th century, with the establishment of a trading post at Madras.
The South, though predominantly Hindu like most of India, remains the country's most successfully polyglot region spiritually and linguistically. Strong and growing Christian churches were established well in advance of the arrival of foreign missionaries, and here and there a shrine to a Christian saint will attract worshipers of all religions. On the other hand, Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh and formerly the seat of the nizams, an inconceivably wealthy line of Islamic kings, has some of the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern city. This is most noticeable in the architecture and the bustle of the nighttime bazaars, especially the bangle market, where literally millions of brilliantly colored bracelets for women are sold. Also, there are quite a few men wearing Moslem prayer caps. But under and all around South India, Hindu temples and rituals shape much of the life and landscape.
Madras seems the logical place to start a southern adventure. Your plane touches down almost in the shadow of St. Thomas Mount at an airport with a new terminal.
Madras may be India's most attractively situated large city, strung along a wide Bay of Bengal beach from Fort St. George at the northern end of town to the estuary of the Adyar River near the south.
The buildings of the Fort complex, the oldest dating to about 1650, now house government and military offices and are not especially interesting. However, there is a small museum that displays some remnants of the British Raj, a largely commercial empire run by the East India Company here for more than 200 years.
The first British (Anglican) church in India was built in the Fort in about 1678. Still home to an active congregation, it displays many historical plaques, one commemorating Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University, who worked in Madras as a clerk and worshiped here. An overgrown British cemetery whose tombstones poignantly catalogue the losing battle against plague and pestilence is a few miles away. It is hard to find without a detailed map or a good taxi driver.
The Madras seafront - the Bay of Bengal is to look at, but unsafe to swim in - is also the setting for Madras University and other educational institutions as well as the splendid icehouse built in 1840 to receive India's first shipment of ice blocks from America.
Madrasis go to the beach to walk, bathe or wash their clothes, eat at vendor stalls, or to be photographed by a statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the nationalist leader. The long, wide sandy beach, punctuated by gardens, never seems crowded, except for occasional nighttime political rallies, complete with colored lights and a general carnival atmosphere.
There is much else to see: the museums on Pantheon Road, the Kapaleeshwara Hindu temple, a shrine to Siva, and the San Thome Cathedral, on Beach Road, a Roman Catholic church that houses what are said to be the remains of St. Thomas the Apostle.
Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, is an intellectual and cultural city where theater, music and dance are frequently performed. Much of the theater is in the Tamil language, as are films in this mini-Hollywood. Madras also has good bookshops, the best of them a tiny but overflowing treasure house called Giggles, off the lobby of the Connemara Hotel. For listings of cultural events, read the English-language Indian Express or The Hindu.