THE FIRST MALAYALI ICS OFFICER

It Was Not K P S Menon

It is a mystery that why Kerala still believes K P S Menon was the first Malayali to be selected to the Indian Civil Service ( ICS).It is not true-Justice A P S Ayyar was the first Malayali to get into the ICS.

Ayyar ,born in 1899,was selected to the ICS in 1921 at age 22.K P S Menon,who was born in 1898,was selected to the ICS in 1922,at age 24.Menon secured the first rank in the combined Civil Services Examination.Ayyar was from Madras province,while Menon was from Travancore.Ayyar was in the same batch as Subhas Chandra Bose,but Bose resigned,feeling I C S is not good for public life.

N R Pillai and M C Balachandra Koman belonged to the 1923 batch.

The biography of Justice V R Krishna Iyer,written by P Krishnaswamy,Says:

"Ayilam S Panchapakeasa Ayyar was the first candidate from the Madras province to be selected as an ICS officer.In the year when A S P Ayyar was selected as ICS officer,13 out of 17 were Indians and the majority of them were from Madras province.

"To Krishna Iyer,A S P Iyer was a friend,philosopher and guide throughout his life as a lodestar and source of inspiration.

"Incidentally,A S P Iyer was the father in law of V R Lakshmi Narayanan,younger brother of Krishna Iyer.

"Krishna Iyer never failed to consult A S P Iyer during crucial times.A S P Iyer was foremost among those who convinced Krishna Iyer to become a member in the first communist ministry in Kerala.

It then a quotes a part,PURITY of Tagore's Gitanjali as the prayer of A S P Ayyar ( this was the Iyer spelling he used in his writings ) when he joined the ICS:

I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing

that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing

that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my

love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it

is thy power gives me strength to act.

A S P Ayyar

V R Lakshminarayanan,  one of the most distinguished IPS officers in the countrywas Tamil Nadu Police Director General.A 1951 batch IPS officer, he had started his career as Assistant Superintendent of Police in Madurai.As Joint Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), soon after the Emergency had ended, on the orders of the Morarji Desai government, Lakshminarayanan had arrested former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Lakshminarayanan’s nephew A. Ranganathan pointed out that recalling the event in his memoirs ‘Appointments and Disappointments’, the IPS officer had said upon going to her house, he had requested Rajiv Gandhi to urge his mother to surrender. “I don’t want the rude hands of a policeman to be laid on the sacred person of a lady who was a former Prime Minister and who also happens to be Nehru’s daughter,” he told Rajiv Gandhi.

After a while Indira Gandhi emerged from her room and asked, “Where are the handcuffs”. “I had served you loyally and well and got two medals from your hands for meritorious and distinguished service,” he told Indira Gandhi and added that he had since become lazy and forgotten to bring the handcuffs.

After the Emergency period, Indira Gandhi wanted to make him Director of CBI, but MGR (former Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran) wanted him back in Tamil Nadu and appointed him as Director General of Police.

He was known for his charity. When he retired his pension was more than the salary he earned during his service. He felt this was not right. Hence he donated to different causes. He even donated during the Kerala floods.He died on 23 June,2019.

Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran former Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles.is the grand son of A S P Ayyar.He was the medical examiner during the O. J. Simpson murder case and testified during the criminal and civil trials. Sathyavagiswaran also testified in the trials of Dean Carter and Phil Spector,as well as in the wrongful death suit brought against the Los Angeles Police Department by the family of Emil Matasareanu.

Sathyavagiswaran supervised the autopsy on the body of Michael Jackson on 26 June 2009.

Following the unexpected resignation of Sathyavagiswaran′s successor Dr. Mark Fajardo in March 2016, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to appoint Sathyavagiswaran as interim coroner even though he retired 3 years earlier.

Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran

I C S had a judicial branch-It is generally acknowledged that the ICS men in the Judicial Branch contributed significantly to both sustaining and enriching the Indian legal system, pre and post-1947. While only one, Kailas NathWanchoo (ICS, UP, 1926) headed the Supreme Court of India (1967– 68), several other ICS Judges have adorned that Court; the names of Justices SK Das, KC Dasgupta, Raghubar Dayal, V Ramaswami and Vashistha Bhargava come to mind. In Punjab, the first four Chief Justices, post-Independence, were from the ICS, namely Eric Weston, a European ICS, AN Bhandari, GD Khosla and Donald Falshaw, another European ICS, who left in 1966. In 1958, Justice H.K. Chainani (ICS, 1927) – approximately the same seniority as Justice KT Mangalmurti, ICS – succeeded MC Chagla as Chief Justice, Bombay High Court. Other ICS Chief Justices, RL Narasimhan in Cuttack, DE Reuben in Patna, MC Desai, VG Oak and Dhatri Saran Mathur (an engineering graduate from Roorkee) in Allahabad, NDK Rao in Hyderabad, Jagat Narain in Jodhpur, PT Raman Nair in Kochi and VB Raju in Ahmedabad have added lustre to the status and dignity of the judiciary in independent India.

M Anantanarayanan (ICS, Madras, 1929) retired as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 1969.Another contemporary, Justice V Ramaswami (ICS, Bihar & Orissa, 1929) was elevated to the Supreme Court in January, 1965.

Satyendranath Tagore, elder brother of the poet, the first Indian to win his way into the ICS, served in the judiciary in the then Bombay Presidency which covered parts of present-day Maharashtra, Gujarat and Sindh. The third Indian to join the ICS (in 1869), Behari Lal Gupta, became the first Indian Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta in 1872, an appointment that sparked off a serious debate in regard to an Indian being appointed to this position in the colonial State, leading to the Ilbert Bill controversy of 1883; he retired as an Officiating Judge of the Calcutta High Court in 1907. 

The Ilbert Bill was a bill introduced in 1883 during the Viceroyship of the Marquess of Ripon, which was written by Sir Courtenay Peregine Ilbert,the law member of the Viceroy's Council. According to this act, Indian judges could try Europeans.It was named after Courtenay Ilbert, the recently appointed legal adviser to the Council of India, who had proposed it as a compromise between two previously suggested bills. However, the introduction of the bill led to intense opposition in Britain and from British settlers in India that ultimately played on racial tension before it was enacted in 1884 in a severely compromised state. The bitter controversy deepened antagonism between the British and Indians and was a prelude to the formation of the Indian National Congress in the next two years. There was also a strong protest among Europeans.

Behari Lal Gupta

The first two Indians to enter the ICS in the Madras Presidency became Judges – AC Dutt (District Judge, Cuddalore) and V Venugopal Chetti (District Judge, Nagapattinam).

In 1938-39, Ronald Francis Lodge (ICS, Bengal, 1910) was on a three-member Bench of the Calcutta High Court hearing the appeal in the sensational Bhawal Sanyasi case in which the majority view upheld the identity of the second Kumar, Romendra Narayan Roy; Lodge, who gave a dissenting judgment, went on to become Chief Justice of the Assam High Court in April, 1948 and, briefly, Acting Governor upon the demise of Sir Akbar Hydari. 

Till India’s Independence in 1947, around one-fourth of the ICS officers served in the judiciary becoming, in time, District and Sessions and High Court Judges. The rationale of transferring an ICS officer after about ten years of service to the judicial cadre was to ensure that those entrusted with the responsibility of resolving disputes and dispensing justice had direct knowledge (having been Assistant Collectors and Sub-Collectors) of the ground realities and of matters of tradition and custom. Post – 1947, a few Indian ICS officers like Kerala Christian A L Fletcher (Punjab, 1933) who had been the District Judge, Gujranwala (now in Pakistan) moved from the Judicial Branch to the Executive, worked as Commissioner, Jullundur Division and had a long stint as Financial Commissioner at Chandigarh.

Anthony Leocadia Fletcher, son of Peter Fletcher and Helen Fletcher, was born on 9 December 1909 in a Christian family of Kerala. He completed his school education from St. Joseph's Higher Secondary School, Trivandrum. He did his B.Sc. from University of Madras and M.Sc. from University of Nagpur. Then he went to School of Oriental Studies for further education and joined as Indian Civil Servant in London,in 1933.

Fletcher was appointed the first Vice-chancellor of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University on 29 March 1970 and served until his death on 14 December 1974. He was also the founder of Campus School CCS HAU, Hisar present inside the university premises, a school that caters to the children of university employees. The administrative block of the University is named after him as Fletcher Bhawan.Nomenee Robinson, Michelle Obama's uncle has worked under him in 1961.Fletcher was married to Patricia Fletcher and had one son and two daughters.

Of the small number of European ICS officers who opted to serve on the Indian side of the Radcliffe Line, a few were in the High Courts, such as Basil Reginald James (1954 – 60) and William Broome (1958 – 72), son-in-law of Sir Hari Singh Gour (eminent jurist and founder of Saugor University) at Allahabad. When a vacancy of Chief Justice occurred in the Nagpur High Court in the early fifties, a replacement was brought in from Patna, since the senior most puisne judge, CR Hemeon, a European ‘nominated’ to the ICS (in recognition of ‘war service’) was found to be “not good enough to be promoted as Chief Justice and not bad enough to be superseded in his own Court”.

The image of the ICS officer as ‘ruler’ runs through many accounts of British Raj in India. While the Executive and Judicial branches of the Service had a clear demarcation of functions, they maintained, in broad terms, a common identity; the ICS origins were always important. On the judicial side, there were distinguished personalities like Sir BN Rau (ICS, Bengal, 1910) who served in the Calcutta High Court and, later, as Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir State,as also Judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

KVK (Kalyana) Sundaram (ICS, CP & Berar, 1927) displayed such legal ability at an early stage that the Judicial Commissioner, Sir Robert McNair, later commented that “Sundaram was one of the few junior legal officers whose recommendations he would take in disposing of a case without appraising it himself”. Sundaram was appointed as Union Law Secretary in 1948 and was, thereafter, the second Chief Election Commissioner of India.

V R Lakshminarayanan

The High Courts had an array of ICS officers. Among them were Justices Sir Barjor Jamshedjee Dalal (1925-31), Harish Chandra, SB Chandiramani, Atma Charan (he was the Special Judge in the Mahatma Gandhi murder trial), BN Nigam at Allahabad, Justices ASP Ayyar (Ayilam Subramania Panchapakesa Iyer-an eminent literary figure and father of former Foreign Secretary, AP Venkateswaran), K Srinivasan Iyer at Madras, HR Krishnan in Bihar (and Indore in Madhya Pradesh) and SS Dulat in Punjab. Justice AK Mukherjea (Judge, Supreme Court, 1972-73) who joined the ICS in 1937 and worked in the Ministry of Transport, Government of India, and as Secretary, Radcliffe Commission, opted for premature retirement in 1951; later, he returned to judicial service as a puisne judge of the Calcutta High Court.

While the ICS members of the higher judiciary in the subcontinent did not exactly set the Thames on fire, their integrity and sincerity were unchallengeable. Some of the very highly regarded personalities at the Supreme Court of India – Justices Patanjali Sastri, BK Mukherjea, Vivian Bose, Gajendra Gadkar, Hidayatullah, JR Mudholkar, SM Sikri and VR Krishna Iyer, illustratively speaking – had no links with the ICS.

One ICS District Judge (IM Lall) faced compulsory retirement; Justice SB Capoor of the Punjab & Haryana High Court was among the last ICS members to leave in the late sixties.

Like Fletcher,the legendary A S P Ayyar is never identified as a Malayali,but his son A P Venkateswaran,was referred to as a Malayali.A S P Ayyar ( 1899-1963 ) was born at Ayilam,a Palakkad hamlet.K P K Menon has written a biography of him.He himself wrote his service story-Twenty five Years as a Civilian.M C Balachandra Koman was the first Malayali ICS judge in the Madras Highcourt ( 1945-1946).

Of the only five Indians of the I.C.S. cadre who sat on the Bench of the Madras High Court , the order of precedence would be as follows: Justice V.Pandurang Row I.C.S. (1933) ,Justice M.Shahabuddin I.C.S. (1943), Justice M.C. Balachandra Koman I.C.S.(1945-1946 ),  and Justice P.V. Balakrishna Aiyar; I.C.S. (1949),Justice A.S.Panchapakesa Aiyar I.C.S.(1950-1959 ).

Muthuswamy Iyer

T ( Thiruvarur ) Muthuswamy Iyer ( 1832-1895 ) was the first native Indian to be appointed as judge of the Madras High Court. He also acted as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 1893.Iyer served as a judge of the Madras High Court from 1877 till his death in 1895.Muthuswamy's appointment was vehemently condemned by a Madras newspaper called The Native Public Opinion.This prompted a strong reaction from Indian nationalists who founded The Hindu newspaper to voice public opinion against the outrage.

During his early career, Iyer also served as the President of the Malabar Marriage Commission. During his tenure as President of the Commission, he campaigned for the legal recognition of Sambandham and other forms of marriage practised in Malabar. In 1872, Iyer established the Widow Remarriage Association in Madras and advocated remarriage of Brahmin widows.

A Palakkad brahmin,T S ( Tarakat Subramania ) Narayana Iyer ( born 1898 ),was Chief Justice of Cochin.After that he became dewan during 1925-1930.As Diwan, Narayana Iyer presided over the first session of the Cochin Legislative Council. He was also responsible for the construction of water pipelines to Trichur, Mattancheri, Nemmara and Ayalore.

T S Narayana Iyer

A S P Ayyar was born on 26 January,1899 at Ayilam village,Palghat Taluk,Malabar district.He was the son of A S Subramanya Ayyar and akhilandeswri Ammal.In May 1919 he married Vedanayaki Ammal went to England in October of the same year.Passed the I C S Open competitive exam in 1921 and took his MA degree at Oxford University.He became a member of the Inner Temple;took a Certificate of Honour at the Bar examinations and won the Langdon medal.He returned to India in December 1922.

Joining the Judicial branch of ICS,he became District and Sessions Judge,Visakhapatanam.He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of the UK in 1933.He authored several books:Indian After-Dinner Stories,In the Clutch of the Devil,An Indian in western Europe,Baladitya:A Historical Romance of Ancient India,Sense in Sex and Other Stories of Indian Women,The Finger of Destiny and Other Stories,Panchatantra and Hitopadesa Stories,Sita's Choice and Other Plays,A Mother's Sacrifice,Three Men of Destiny-Alexander,Chandragupta and Chanakya,Layman's Bhagavad Gita.

A S P Ayyar presided over  the sensational  Alavandar murder case.M C B Koman was the single sessions judge who pronounced the verdict in the Alavandar case-the appeal was heard by the bench presided over by Ayilam Subramania Panchapakesa Ayyar.

Alavandar  case is a murder trial which was conducted in the Madras State in the early 1950s. The cause of the trial was the murder of a businessman and ex-serviceman named Alavandar whose headless body was found in one of the coaches of the Indo-Ceylon Express. After a trial which became a cause célèbre, Alavandar's ex-lover and her husband were found guilty of the murder and had been sentenced to brief terms of imprisonment.

C. Alavandar, 42,a pen salesman from Chennai was reported missing on August 28, 1952, by his employer Cunnan Chetty (the owner of Gem and Co). The next day a headless body was discovered in a third-class compartment of the Chennai-Dhanushkodi (Indo-Ceylon boatmail) express. It was found after passengers complained about a foul-smelling trunk when the train was nearing Manamadurai. Police investigating the complaint, opened the trunk and found the headless body. An autopsy done at Manamadurai concluded that the body belonged to a 25-year-old male. Since it was circumcised, the investigating police officer K.Khaja Syed Mohideen decided that the murder victim was a Muslim based on Circumcision. After a few days, police discovered a severed head in Royapuram beach, Chennai. It had been buried in the beach sand but was exposed due to tidal action. The head and body were sent to Madras Medical College for forensic examination. Dr. C. P. Gopalakrishnan who performed the examination concluded that both belonged to the same 42-year-old male. Alavandar's wife later identified them as her husband. Alavandar had served in the British Indian army and his fingerprints were on file there. They were used to conclusively prove that the murdered man was Alavandar.

He was romantically involved with many women. One of them was Devaki Menon,22, from Kerala,whom he met in 1951,in the shop.She used to take Hindi tuition to students. In 1952, Devaki broke off her relationship with Alavandar and married  Prabhakara Menon,a clerk in Premier Insurance Company,who began editing a paper called Freedom. But Alavandar continued to haunt her and Prabhakaran found out. To stop Alavandar, Devaki and Prabhakaran decided to murder Alavandar. Devaki called Alavandar to her house at the cemetery road on August 28, 1952. There the couple murdered Alavandar, cut his head off and buried it at Royapuram beach in Chennai. They put the body in a trunk and left it in the Indo-Ceylon Express. Then they left Chennai for Bombay.

The couple was arrested in Bombay and brought to Chennai for trial. The trial caused a sensation and large crowds thronged the hearings.

The trial came up for hearing at the Madras High Court Original Criminal Sessions before the renowned Judge,  Justice A. S. P. Ayyar.

The eminent lawyer S. Govind Swaminadhan was the State Prosecutor. Advocates B.T. Soundararajan and S. Krishnamurthy appeared for the two accused.Govind was the son of lawyer Subbarama Swaminathan, an Iyer Brahmin, and his Nair wife Ammu Swaminathan. He was the oldest of three siblings, the others being Lakshmi Sehgal or Captain Lakshmi and Mrinalini Sarabhai .He had his education at Madras and Oxford and qualified as a barrister from the Inner Temple in 1935.

The trial by jury was then in force in Madras High Court. A panel of nine jurors, some of whom were noted citizens of Madras, was sworn in.

Large crowds thronged at the hearings of this sensational trial. On March 13, 1953, according to the Indian Express, “… the crowd in the courtroom became unmanageable, delaying the proceedings.”

The next day was no different. The veranda, leading to the court hall, was so crowded it made entry into the court hall difficult. The police bundobusts (arrangements) were meagre, and reserve police were called in.

The prosecutor Govind Swaminathan built up a strong case of a planned murder of Alavandar by the couple. He stated that the servant boy of the Menons told the police that he heard Menon and Devaki discuss the ways to get rid of Alavandar and that Prabhakara Menon had pressurized his wife to bring Alavandar to their house so that he could give the devil his due. It was a case of killing the snake that strayed into one’s home.

Lawyer B. T. Soundararajan, appearing for the defense, argued that it was a homicide and not murder as there had been "grave provocation". He argued that the killing was not pre-meditated as suggested by the prosecution. Prabhakara Menon was provoked to murderous fury by the playboy who assailed his wife Devaki in their own house, with the intention of having sex with her against her will. The defence lawyer stated: “It was done out of grave provocation and in self-defence. It is a homicide and not murder.”

Justice A. S. P. Ayyar, a person ingrained in the ancient Hindu tradition opined that the victim, Alavandar, the scallywag, was a disgrace to humanity and deserved to be eliminated. He considered the killing as a “justifiable execution of an unwanted rascal.”

After the lengthy trial, Justice A. S. P Ayyar’s summing-up to the jury swerved in favour of the two accused. He accepted and supported the sudden and grave provocation theory put forward by the defence, taking into consideration the interests of the society and its morals. However, some people felt that his indulgence towards the accused couple from Kerala prejudiced because he too hailed from Kerala, from the agraharam in Ayilam Gramam, 320 km from Palakkad. However, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of ‘guilty’ against both the accused.

On August 13, 1953, Justice A. S. P Ayyar , awarded a seven-year rigorous imprisonment sentence to Prabhakaran for culpable homicide and sentenced Devaki to three years in prison.They ran Devi hotel in Palakkad after the case.

Menon wanted to appeal against the sentence. But his lawyer, B.T. Soundararajan, advised him not to, now that he had escaped with a light sentence thanks to the judge. Menon accepted his lawyer’s advice and did not appeal.

The Menons were released early due to their good conduct in prison, and they shifted back to their native state, Kerala. In their prayer room, the couple placed a photo of Justice A.S.P. Ayyar along with the gods and goddesses venerated by them.

On Alavandar, film historian and writer Randor Guy, said, “Whenever I went to YMCA Esplanade to play table tennis, I would see him there. He would walk in, wearing a bowtie, and with a girl in tow. He sold plastic goods from a portion at Gem and Company. He was not interested in business, only in women. He also sold sarees on instalments, just to connect with them."

A S P Ayyar was never popular with the British,often derided them and hence was denied promotions.He was kept a district judge for long;otherwise he would have preceded Koman,who became a Judge of the Highcourt in 1945.Ayyar became one only in 1948.After independence Ayyar became the first permanent Indian Chief Justice of Madras High Court-the first Malayali ICS Chief Justice.Both Ayyar and P T Raman Nair were denied a position in the Supreme Court.

Ayyar was President of the Music Academy of Madras.For the annual day of the Academy,B V Keskar,the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting ( 1952-1962 ),was invited to preside.The minister came full one hour behind schedule and began with profuse apologies for being late.He bagan," You must be all waiting for me..."

Said Ayyar, "please do not worry,Sir,we were waiting for our coffee."

A S P Ayyar's assessment that Alavandar was a disgrace to humanity,was based on his convicton founded on Hindu texts,on which he has written a lot. Justice Ayyar in his book, ‘Sri Krishna – The Darling of Humanity’, says: “Alexander the Great once asked a Brahmin scholar in the 4th century BC. “How can we know a man to be God?” and the scholar replied “When he does what no man can ever do.”

He then adds,"To illustrate this divine point, I would refer to how Krishna saved the chastity, dignity and honour of Draupadi at the Royal Court of Hastinapura."

© Ramachandran