K. B. (Bush) Gulati, George Brown College

 “Well, Rajan, you’ve had your chance to serve the nation.”

“There are other ways to serve the nation, Sir.”

hose were the words exchanged in Professor Balachandra Rajan’s last interaction with Jawaharlal Nehru, as he had gone in to take his leave of the Prime Minister who also held the external affairs portfolio. Stressed and humiliated by bungling that was not of his making, Rajan had once before tendered his resignation, but then he had complied with Panditji’s request to withdraw it. With those last words and Panditji looking on quizically, he severed his relationship with India’s ministry of external affairs that had been his bower for thirteen years. He did so knowing full well that the end of all our exploration is to arrive where we started, at the beginning of a new search prompted by what is heard, half heard.

Born on March 24, 1920, in Toungoo, Burma, where his father Arunachala Thyagarajan, a member of the Indian Civil Service, was serving as a judge. He was five years old when he was sent to Madras to board with his much older sister and brother-in- law in Madras.

After matriculating, he registered in the intermediate arts program at Presidency College, with hopes of studying English literature. On the first day of class, he found out that his brother-in law, who was the principal of the college, had de-registered him from the arts program and re-registered him in the science program, and so he de-registered himself from the science program and re-registered in the arts program. Once again his brother-in-law de-registered him from the arts program and re-registered him in the science program. At this point, he resigned himself to the study of physics, chemistry, mathematics and one required course in English, for the next two years.

He passed the intermediate exam in the first division, but this was not considered good enough by his father because there were “six hundred others who had also passed in the first division.” His father’s second disappointment was that Rajan was denied a distinction in English because the university lacked a precedent.

His father then sent him to Cambridge, where he had stood first in the mathematics tripos and held the distinction of being the last “senior wrangler in mathematics.” The epithet was unceremoniously jettisoned when it dawned on Cambridge authorities that “senior” wranglers were always south Indian Brahmins.

Rajan had not studied Latin in India. That absence rendered him ineligible for admission to Cambridge. Four months hence, he passed the Latin entrance exam after studying for it at a “crammer” school.

His father had wanted him to follow in his footsteps. His gene-based probability computation was that his son would score nothing less than one hundred percent on any mathematics exam. That would ensure him the first position in his class, which in turn would pave the path to a comfortable berth in the civil service. But Rajan wanted to study English. His father was indignant. He viewed the study of English and the humanities with contempt since no candidate had ever achieved a score of one hundred percent on any exam in these subjects.

Continue reading the full article: PROFESSOR B. RAJAN_ IN MEMORIAM

• Pirzada Qasim, A Burning Lamp
• TRIBUTE TO PAUL COPELAND
• Majrooh’s Lament (To His Cross-border Cousins)
• FIVE POEMS
• PROFESSOR RAJAN, MY MOST MEMORABLE TEACHER