T P PILLAI: SPIDER, SPY AND THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT

He was killed by the British

A letter in the October 22, 1908 issue (no 2034, vol 78) of the reputed science journal, Nature, by India's first Araneologist, T Padmanabha Pillai, begins thus: (1)

"On Saturday, September 5, I found a small spider with light green, transparent legs and a brown body with silver flutings. I bottled it quickly and hurried up to my friend Mr Strickland, and on examining it there under a magnifying glass observed a frequent change of colour in its eyes. I took it home, and on examining it for about six hours consecutively found it to have the faculty of changing the colour of its eyes at its own free will. In an instant, it changed the honey-coloured eyes into shining black. While it changes the eyes, a bright dot or streak appears and vanishes all at once".

It is a long letter and it proves the author's felicity with words as well as his scientific prowess. Arachnology is the scientific study of arachnids, which comprise spiders and related invertebrates such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and harvestmen. Those who study spiders and other arachnids are arachnologists. More narrowly, the study of spiders alone (order Araneae) is known as Araneology, and Padmanabha Pillai was involved only in the study of spiders.

Padmanabha Pillai

But, history has never been generous towards Padmanabha Pillai, because his name always got appended to that of the Indo-German revolutionary, Chempaka Raman Pillai, who was his cousin and soul-mate from the Thiruvananthapuram school days. The revolutionary zeal in both the friends was discovered by the British communist spy, Walter William Strickland, on a visit to the then princely state in India, Travancore. He is the person mentioned by Padmanabha Pillai, in the letter quoted here.

Disciples of Thycaud Ayya

Padmanabha Pillai was born in a Vellala Pillai family on March 21, 1890, to Thaivanayakam Pillai and Parvathy, in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Travancore, in India. He went along with Chempaka Raman, cousin and neighbour, to study at the Tamil preparatory school, near the Gandhari Amman Kovil, Thampanoor and then to the Maharajas School, which is now the University College. There, Padmanabhan fell in love with the History and Literature classes handled by a teacher called Cherian. Quite often, the teacher enlightened the students on the ongoing freedom struggle.

Inspired by the struggle and curious to be part of it, Padmanabhan and Raman bought the pictures of Lala Lajpat Rai, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who were leaders of the freedom movement, and pasted them on the walls of their respective homes. These pictures were available in a kiosk nearby and the boys spent their entire pocket money on them. 

The two boys were agitated by the arrest of Tilak, following the partition of Bengal, spearheaded by the British Viceroy Lord Curzon in 1905. Tilak had led the nationwide protests, in the aftermath of the partition. Padmanabhan and Raman organized a protest march in their schools, with the help of a dozen students. It was in these protests that Raman coined the slogan, Jai Hind. 

The school authorities acted swiftly by alerting the police. They caught the two boys, took them to the station, and beat them up. The boys were freed with a strict warning not to indulge in such seditious activities. The pain that Padmanabhan suffered that day, ignited the revolutionary spark inherent in him.

One day, while the boys were returning from school, they met a shabbily dressed, dishevelled European, who appeared with a bottled cockroach. He introduced himself as W W Strickland. It is believed that Strickland had come to Travancore to spy on the alchemy experiments of the reputed spiritual guru, Thycaud Ayya Swamikal.

In a book he wrote in 1931, Travel Letters From Ceylon, Australia and South India (B. Westermann Co., New York), the anarchic Marxist, Strickland remembers an incident involving two boys and the Thycaud Ayya Swamikal. Strickland writes: 

"One-day Ayya guru was very impatient and restless, walking round and round. The spy asked him what the matter was. The guru told him that he was expecting two of his disciples who had gone to meditate at Maruthwamala to bring a certain plant which he needed for some experiment. After some time two boys entered the scene. The guru eagerly asked, "Did you bring what I had asked you to bring ?"

"The senior of the two boys with some hesitation said, "We have brought what you wanted" and took out something from his mundu and placed it on the table. It was a gold coin which probably they had purchased from the market. The guru's face became red with anger. Seeing this, the boys made a quick exit. The spy asked, "Sir, you should be happy since they have gifted you a gold coin. Why are you angry ?"

"Then the guru said, "They are making fun of me. They think I am greedy for gold. They do not understand my real purpose. What I need is a certain plant for an alchemical experiment. The plant is only for cleaning the brass coin. The real transmutation process is psychical". The spy grabbed the golden opportunity. He offered to bring the plant. The guru at first was reluctant, saying that being a foreigner he may not be able to converse with the local people and get the plant. But the spy was very enthusiastic and at last, the guru told him the name of the plant. The spy hired a horse-drawn carriage, went to Maruthwamala and brought a carriage full load of the plant. This pleased the guru and he included the spy in the experiment in place of the two boys who never showed up again."

Some scholars had wrongly guessed that the two boys in this story are Chattampi Swamikal and Sree Narayana Guru, but the guess is absurd because Chattampi was born in 1853, and Guru in 1856, and they were not boys, being in their 50s. The two boys were undoubtedly Padmanabhan and Raman. 

Raman, alias Venkidi was born to a Vellala couple, Chinna Swami Pillai and Nagammal on 15 September 1891, in Thiruvananthapuram in a house where the present Accountant General office is situated.  As we have already seen, even during his school days he rallied against the British inside the school campus. Fearing retribution, the Principal called in the police. A Constable, Chinnaswami Pillai was sent to investigate the misdemeanour of the erring student. For the constable, the culprit turned out to be his own son.

In 1908, the British Biologist cum spy, Stickland was camping at Thiruvananthapuram and he claimed he had come to study butterflies that were found in the Western Ghats. On one of his field trips, he met the boy, Padmanabhan. The boys became friendly with Strickland and visited him regularly at his rented home. Padmanabhan fell in love with Strickland's lab, and for the first time, he saw a microscope. There were plenty of bottled spiders and cockroaches inside the lab. 

One day, walking back to his home from school, Padmanabhan caught a brown spider and observed it under the microscope. He saw the small spider undergoing a frequent change of colour in its eyes. Strickland instructed him to write to Nature. The journal published it and thus Padmanabhan became India's first araneologist. Strickland was impressed by the skills of the 18-year-old boy.

Strickland

Soon Strickland revealed the truth to the young boys-he is not only an Arachnologist but a spy too. A Britisher working as a German spy, leaking British secrets to Germany. 

The spy recruits the boys

Strickland (1851- 1938) was the eldest son of Sir Charles Strickland, 8th Baronet and the only child of his first marriage to Georgina, daughter of Sir William Milner. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was known as the Anarchist Baronet because he wandered around the world for much of his life espousing radical causes. 

He wrote several books and pamphlets and translated works of the Czech poet Viteslav Halek, Moliere and Horace. He has been linked with the mysterious Voynich manuscript, which was in the possession of the Polish revolutionary, Wilfrid Voynich.

Strickland spent some time in Russia and in 1923 became a citizen of Czechoslovakia, renouncing his British citizenship and the Baronetcy. Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English states:

"The virtually unknown English eccentric was a traveller and free thinker with a taste for anarchism and Buddhism, but he managed to find time to learn Czech and to translate poems. The quality of the translation is rather good but again the impact on the British public was nil and they are long out of print".

He had libertarian, socialist and atheist ideas. After 1912 Strickland did not live in England. Eventually, he settled in Java and became a strong opponent of imperialism. He gave Sun Yat Sen £10,000 "to help him start a revolt against the Emperor of China". During the First World War, Strickland donated £10,000 to his friend Tomáš Masaryk's Czechoslovakian Independence Movement. He funded Guy Aldred, founder of the Glasgow Anarchist Group. He left Aldred £3,000 in his will and with this money he bought some second-hand printing machinery and established The Strickland Press.

Strickland's two works of some interest are Sacrifice; Or, the Daughter of the Sun (1920), a tale with Lost Race implications, and the more ambitious Vishnu Or, the Planet of the Sevenfold Unity (1928), in which a distant planet, whose inhabitants are divided into seven Sexes, is visited.

Strickland told Padmanabhan and Raman that his mission in Travancore is over and he has to go back. He offered to take them along, fund their higher studies and equip them for the Indian revolution. Though Raman accepted the offer instantly, Padmanabhan was hesitant. 

Padmanabhan accompanied Strickland and Raman to Quilon, en route to their trip to Europe. There, Strickland once again placed an offer before Padmanabhan. If he joins them on the trip, he will be gifted the microscope. Though Padmanabhan fell for it, he left the ship and returned to Travancore from Colombo. Padmanabhan spent sleepless nights, till a letter from Strickland arrived with an offer for studies at Munich university. In Munich, Padmanabhan was admitted to the BSc Forestry course.

Raman continued his education in Zurich and Germany. That he studied in Zurich, not Italy, and Strickland financed it, is confirmed by Harald Fischer-Tine, in the biography, Shyamji Krishnavarma: Sanskrit, Sociology, Anti-Imperialism.

Along with his studies, Padmanabhan got enrolled in the revolutionary Indian Committee set up in Switzerland by Raman and in the Berlin Committee led by Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (Chatto, brother of Sarojini Naidu), and Bhupendranath Dutta (brother of Swami Vivekananda). He was in charge of the propaganda machine of the Berlin Committee and he strived hard to spread the message among the overseas Indian workers and POWs.

Naturally, Padmanabhan made it into the list of conspirators and rebels prepared by the British administration at Travancore and they intercepted the letters sent by him to his home. His family members were put under the lens of the police. 

When the First World war erupted in 1914, the Director of Criminal Intelligence in India published an order banning the entry of Indian revolutionaries abroad, to India. Though Padmanabhan was not on the first list, he smelt his name would be there on the next list, and to avoid the ban, he returned to Thiruvananthapuram. The police spared him since there was no credible case against him.

Since he wanted to move on with the revolutionary activities, Padmanabhan decided to have an outer garb of a scientist and applied for the post of curator at the Museum. The royal family helped him, and at a monthly salary of 75 rupees, he was assigned to compile data on the plants and animals in Travancore. Besides, he also organized secret meetings of revolutionary activists.

In 1915, Padmanabhan took leave for a year and travelled to Afghanistan. A Provisional Government of India-in-exile had been set up in Kabul, Afghanistan on December 1, 1915, by the Indian Independence Committee with support from the Central Powers. Its purpose was to enrol support from the Afghan Emir as well as Tsarist (and later Bolshevik) Russia, China, and Japan for the Indian Movement. Established at the conclusion of the Kabul Mission composed of members of the Berlin Committee, and German and Turkish delegates, the provisional government was composed of Mahendra Pratap as President, Maulana Barkatullah as Prime Minister, Deobandi Maulavi Ubaidullah Sindhi as Home Minister, Deobandi Maulavi Bashir as War Minister, and Champaka Raman Pillai as Foreign Affairs Minister. This government assigned Padmanabhan its propaganda machine, to spread the policies and to raise new members to the Committee.

Though the provisional government was there for four years, Padmanabhan returned within six months and got married to Rajammal, daughter of the Travancore palace physician, Sankara Murthy Pillai. They had two children, Sankaran and Sarojini.

Padmanabhan stayed at his wife's house, pursuing revolutionary activities. Sankara Murthy, who became suspicious of the midnight deliberations, chastened him. Once again, Padmanabhan left for Europe, to present a paper on frogs, at the University of Bern.

At this time, the Britishers chalked out a programme to exterminate the Indian extremists, and Padmanabhan was on the list. On the return journey, Padmanabhan found one person following him, watching his actions. To avert the enemy's plan, Padmanabhan disembarked at Penang, Malaysia, to continue the trip in a ship called Bonn. While he was leaving the deck to sleep in his room, a man jumped on him, trying to strangulate his neck. The assailant pushed Padmanabhan over the ship's railing, into the boisterous ocean. 

The official version was that, on his way back, Padmanabhan disappeared without a trace. His coat was retrieved from a beach in Thailand; his leather bag with his belongings was recovered from the Colombo coast. 

Pillai with wife Rajammal

Rajammal received a telegram after a few days, saying Padmanabhan has gone missing from the ship. 

A severely shocked Rajammal wrote a letter to Strickland. He conducted an investigation in which it was revealed that it was a planned murder operated by the Britishers. Following this, to secure the family's future, Sankara Murty burnt all the documents related to Padmanabha Pillai. Thus, India lost a valuable treasure of a revolution.

Padmanabhan's grandson Dr Padmarajan lives in Chennai, after retiring as a neurosurgeon from the Madras Medical College. He painstakingly gathered biographical details of his grandfather, from Europe and other centres. It is his wish to erect a statue of his grandfather, which will be an everlasting tribute to him.

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1. Here is the Nature article of Padmanabha Pillai

On the Change of Colour in the Eyes of an Attis Spider

T Padmanabha Pillai

On Saturday, September 5, I found a small spider with light green, transparent legs and a brown body with silver flutings. I bottled it quickly and hurried up to my friend Strickland, and on examining it there under a magnifying glass observed a frequent change of colour in its eyes. I took it home, and on examining it for about six hours consecutively found it to have the faculty of changing the colour of its eyes at its own free will. In an instant, it changed the honey-coloured eyes into shining black. While it changes the eyes, a bright dot or streak appears and vanishes all at once. 

I am quite sure that the animal actually changed something inside the eves. The cornea-as one may call it is circular. The two corneas stand in a vertical plane so that they face the observer like a pair of gig-lamps, or, still better, as those in front of a railway locomotive. Behind each cornea is a conical sack, in shape much like an ordinary butterfly net or a jelly bag. Taken together with the cones, the pair of eyes look like a pair of field glasses. The spider was found to wag the conical portion of the eyes every now and then. Fortunately, the head in this species being translucent, the mechanism by which the colour-change is effected can be easily seen by means of a good pocket lens. The spider itself was 6 mm. in length, and it is conical eye one millimetre.

 I put the spider in a· small, thin, clean test-tube, and stopped the mouth of the tube with a little bit of cotton wool. Having done this, I took the tube to a powerful table lamp and examined it with a pocket lens in that light against a white background. A thin strip of white paper serves very well as a background. When I first took it near the spider, it seemed to be startled and ran about. It was at this moment that I saw it wagging the conical part of the eye all the more. The spider ran a few paces, then stopped, and began moving its eyes very vigorously. On closer examination, I found that the outer and larger end of the cone was a· transparent honey colour. The inner tapering portion of the cone was jet black. The light and black halves were divided by a well-marked ring. The change in the colour of the eye is caused-as will be explained immediately-by the wagging to and fro of the two posterior cones.

Reference to the diagram will show that the cones can be in such a position (A, A) that their axes are parallel to one another and in the line of sight of the spectator facing the cornea, or they can converge to a point just halfway between the two eyes in question (B, B), or the axis of one eye may con-verge while that of the other will remain unchanged. It is to be observed that the apices of the cones never diverge. 

Roughly speaking, the black extends only one-third of the whole length of the cone from its tips. Consequently, when the spectator faces the eyes, and the axes of the cones are parallel, he sees into the depths of the two cones, and the eyes necessarily appear jet black. When the two tips of the cones converge the line of sight strikes the honey-coloured outer portion of the cones, and then the Eyes in consequence appear honey-coloured. Lastly, the spider has the power to cause the tip of only one cone to converge inward, and then only that eye appears honey-coloured, while "the other one remains black. It has been stated above that when the spider changes the colour of the eye a bright line or dot traverses the cornea. This is due to the ring formed where the black and honey-coloured portions of the cones unite traversing the cornea as the colour of the eye changes from light to dark, and vice-versa. It must be well borne in mind that in all these cases the cornea of the eye remains perfectly unchanged and immobile, the change of colour being wholly and entirely due to the movement of the cones behind it. 

When the line of sight from the observer's eye to the cornea is· at right angles to the latter the eyes invariably appear honey-coloured. The reason is obvious, namely, that the line of sight strikes only the honey-coloured portion of the conical sack behind the eyes: Hence it follows that the axis of the cones must be either above or below the line of sight. But as a matter of fact, it is above it.

( This article has two diagrams with it-Ramachandran)

© Ramachandran