Chennai turns 370 today

By Gopal Ethiraj, Chennai

Chennai, 22 August (Asiantribune.com): It was on this day (22nd August) in 1639 that British East India Company Administrator Francis Day bought a small strip of land on the Coromandel Coast from the Vijayanagara King, Peda Venkata Raya.

This region was then ruled by Damerla Venkatpathy, the Nayak of Vandavasi, who granted the British earlier permission to build a factory and warehouse for their trading enterprises. A year later, the British built Fort St. George, which became the nucleus of the growing colonial city.

Chennai, as Madras recently came to be called, turns 370 years today. The founding of the city is being celebrated only for the past six years as ‘Madras Week’. The seventh edition of the Madras Day celebration commenced on August 16 and it will go on upto September 1. The organizers have crowded all important functions today, which is flanked by one week before and one week after celebrations in a fitting manner.

As the old history is ‘flash-backed’, the fortnight-long celebrations are marked with cultural and literary activities, intertwined with heritage walks, debates and contests, poetry, patti mandram, music, quiz, food festivals, rallies, photo exhibition and a wide range of events. Sure it brings back the glimpse of old Madras, the present Chennaiites never knew, otherwise would never come to know.

It was this day, the deal was struck by Francis Day, his 'dubash' Beri Thimmappa and their superior Andrew Cogan, with local Nayak rulers.

The original document relating to the purchase of the piece of land on the border of Bay of Bengal is said to have been signed at Chandragiri fort, near Tirupati in neighbouring Andhara Pradesh. And it was on this land the building of Fort St. George, a historic fort which was for a while the seat of power of the East India Company, came up. Robert Clive, founder of British empire in India, got married in a church inside the fort. His marriage certificate is still the prized possession of the museum in the fort.

Once the fort was established, settlements grew around it—the black township and the whites colony and all that. As the settlements grew with expanding trade and industry, the villages around it were absorbed into the newly formed city. One of them was ‘Madrasapattinam’, another was ‘Chennaipattinam’. The English name of the city seems to have been coined by the Britishers by shortening the former, while the Tamil name for the city was shortening the latter, the city got recently by the present rulers.

The idea of celebrating the founding day of the city (August 22, 1639), shaped six years ago. ‘Madras Day’ was an idea that three people put together — the city’s famed historian, S. Muthiah, journalist Sashi Nair and editor-publisher Vincent D’ Souza. Later, they have been joined by three others — senior journalist and editor Sushila Ravindranath, entrepreneur and writer-historian V. Sriram and journalist and web site entrepreneur, Revathi.

There had been a controversy regarding the exact day the land where Madraspatnam came up later was handed over to the British East India Company's Francis Day and Andrew Cogan. The actual date confusion is between 22 August and 22 July. The controversy arose since the agreement documents dates the records to 22 July 1639 rather than 22 August of that year.

It is often stated that since Francis Day and Andrew Cogan did not arrive to the coast which is now Chennai until 27 July 1639. The evidence comes from writings of Henry Davison Love, whose monumental three-volume history of Madras from 1640-1800 is the Bible of all searchers after Madras’s early history, which states that

"The Naik’s grant, erroneously styled a farman, which was probably drafted by Day, was delivered (to Andrew Cogan at Masulipatam on September 3, 1639… Three copies are extant … all of which are endorsed by Cogan. Only the last bears a date, 22 July, 1639, where July is probably a slip for August, since Day did not reach Madras until 27 July.”