Several kilometers from the villages of Chettinad, lies
an Ayyanar temple which we visited next. In
South India, particularly Tamil Nadu, the Hindu village god Ayyanar is a
popularly worshiped deity. He is known as the protector of rural
villages and uniquely, the priests are usually non-Brahmins.
The temple we visited was crowded with large whimsically painted clay horses. Our guide explained that the horses are offered in gratitude to the Gods for good crops or good luck. If you have a good year, you contract with the local potter to create one of these wonderful creatures and donate it to the temple.
The temple was a delightful change from the huge formal complexes we've been touring. Worship takes place outside - it all seems so much simpler and more attractive than the complicated rites and ritual involved in traditional Hinduism. An architect who took us through one Hindu temple told us he had to hire a consultant priest to keep track of his religious obligations: birthdays (which change every year), anniversaries of deaths, births, weddings.
We spotted the two ladies with the beautiful saris entering the water and asked if they'd mind having their photos taken. They were delighted. The immersion has something to do with religion, not recreation.
Reluctantly, we tore ourselves away from the temple and returned to the Bangala for another great meal, this time a wonderful lunch of local food served on a banana leaf. The we stuffed ourselves back into the van and headed for Madurai, two hours away.
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| Lunch at the Bangala |
Geographical Magazine: Putting the houses in order
During the Raj, the Chettiars of Tamil Nadu built thousands of palatial
homes, but after the end of the colonial era, the houses fell into
disrepair. Now, many are being restored to their former glory, writes Luke Duggleby
Money
was no object; only the best would do. Tiles were brought in from Spain
and Japan in their millions, thousands of tonnes of teak arrived from
Burma, and marble and extravagant crystal chandeliers came from Italy.
Mirrors were imported from Belgium, the steel came from the UK, and the
whole lot was combined with millions of hand-baked roof tiles and paint
made of hundreds of thousands of eggshells.
But the palatial
abodes built from these international ingredients weren’t one-offs, the
odd individual looking down on his less-fortunate neighbours; there were
tens of thousands of them, scattered across an area of 1,500 or so
square kilometres.
These are the mansions of Chettinad, an arid
land of bush and scrub located in the heart of Tamil Nadu in southern
India. Very little grows here; summer temperatures frequently exceed
40°C and the baked earth holds few resources of any value. But none of
that mattered to the Chettiars; this parched backwater was a safe place
for them to live, free from interference and in the lap of a
self-created luxury.
Distant origins
The Nattukottai or
Nagarathur Chettiars are a sub-caste of the Vaishya, the third-highest
of the Hindu social classes. Their early history is sketchy at best,
with no firm historical evidence to explain their origins. One legend
suggests that a tsunami destroyed their coastal town and, fearing a
repeat, they fled inland to the driest place they could find.
Following
their arrival in this desolate part of Tamil Nadu, they made a modest
living doing business locally, specialising in trade and banking. It was
with the arrival of the British during the 18th century that their
fortunes changed. British expansionism was rapidly engulfing South and
Southeast Asia, country by country, and when the East India Company set
up shop in Madras (now Chennai), the capital of Tamil Nadu, it brought
the British and the Chettiars together. The British needed reliable and
honest middlemen through whom they could deal with the locals, and the
rajahs of southern India recommended the Chettiars, who had a reputation
for reliability and honour.
Early business dealings primarily
involved local transactions of modest sums, but in 1774, the
headquarters of the East India Company was moved to Calcutta as the
company looked to expand into Burma. The British ruled Burma from the
1820s to the 1950s, and the Chettiars were never far behind, doing
business on an enormous scale. ‘The Chettiars understood the political
and geographical context of this period and took full advantage,’
explains Michel Adment, a French architect who, along with his partner,
Bernard Dragon, has lived in Chettinad since 2004. ‘The British
essentially opened up these countries one by one, giving the Chettiars
access.’
But despite trading in exotic and foreign materials in
distant lands, the Chettiars always based their operations in Chettinad.
‘The Chettiars were very worldly, but their society was held together
by very strict rules, such as marrying within the caste and land
ownership,’ Dragon says.
At the height of the Chettiar’s
success, they numbered more than 110,000, living in 96 villages and
towns scattered across the region. They used the wealth they accumulated
to build enormous, ornate mansions; the total number is difficult to
ascertain, but is believed to have been as high as 60,000.
When
Adment and Dragon arrived in Chettinad in 2004, the population was
relatively unchanged, but the number of Chettiar villages had decreased
to 73 (as well as two cities) and the number of mansions had dropped to
about 25,000. ‘Houses are currently being demolished at a rate of 20 per
month, and many more are ready to come down,’ says Meenakshi ‘Madame’
Meyyappan, a hotelier based in Karaikudi – the largest city in Sivaganga
district and the unofficial capital of Chettinad – and the wife of a
wealthy Chettiar who worked mostly in Malaysia. Others dispute these
numbers, but Meyyappan is adamant: ‘How do you get all these warehouses
full of our antiques if our heritage is not disappearing?’
Starting over
So
what went wrong? While the Chettiars had made fortunes making Burma the
rice bowl of Asia and developing coconut and rubber plantations
throughout Southeast Asia, they also acted as local moneylenders. But
during the first half of the 20th century, the development of
nationalistic movements in Southeast Asian countries, the growth of
legislation restricting indigenous banking and the increase of
industrial opportunities within India for non-British businessmen all
began to eat away at the Chettiars’ business empire.
But if
there was a single action that could be held responsible for the
ultimate crash, it was the British withdrawal from Burma. Almost 70 per
cent of Chettiar wealth was concentrated there, and in the eyes of the
new regime, the Chettiars were the accomplices of an unwanted ruler.
They were forced to flee, leaving behind everything for which they had
worked. Vast tracts of paddy field and business interests were abandoned
as the Chettiars returned to Chettinad with nothing but the houses
their fortunes had built.
Few Chettiars had bothered to invest
in India, distrusting the country and disgusted by the endemic
corruption, yet they now found themselves back there, unable to compete
in areas where other businessmen had grown strong in their absence. The
Chettiars essentially had to start from scratch. ‘No-one was able to
continue because they had no money to lend, so they began educating
their children, and are now becoming successful again,’ says Meyyappan.
But
where did the money come from to educate this new generation? The
mansions. One by one, they began to be dismantled and sold in the vast
furniture and antique markets of Karaikudi and Chennai. With some
properties containing more than 1,800 tonnes of teak alone, there was
plenty of money to be made by selling the homes and their contents to
India’s newly rich.
By 2006, more than half of the mansions had
already been torn down. Dismayed by the rapid disappearance of this
forgotten corner of India’s architectural heritage, Adment and Dragon
contacted Dr Minja Yang, director of UNESCO’s New Delhi office. ‘I was
aware of the Tamil traditional house layout of the succession of
courtyards, but I did not know about Chettinad,’ Yang explains. ‘I must
say, I was impressed when I first saw the town-planning ambition of
these Chettinad villages – their wide streets, the buildings aligned in
an orderly manner.
‘Looking at the facades of “hybrid” style,
that funny mix of Europe and Asia, it made me think of the “native”
colonial style of some buildings in Vietnam,’ she continues. ‘When I
walked into the Chettinad houses, I was blown over by the harmony and
the tranquil beauty, despite the rather busy decorative features in some
of the houses.’
Yang immediately set to work, attempting to
convince the national, state and local authorities to protect, conserve
and enhance the villages and towns of Chettinad. ‘We decided to “adopt”
Chettinad as one of the UNESCO cultural itinerary routes in India, and
started to multiply our contacts and official meetings with the cultural
and tourism authorities of the Tamil Nadu state government,’ she says.
Rescue mission
In
2006, the newly formed Revive Chettinad Development Project
successfully petitioned UNESCO to place Chettinad on its watch list for
the World Monument Fund. As the project gained momentum, it began to
receive backing from the French government, as well as the state
government of Tamil Nadu and the Indian Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Once funding had been secured, the next hurdle was figuring out
exactly how to save the mansions. ‘There was no real conservation plan
in an urban context in India. Chettinad was really the pilot project,’
Dragon explains.
Because of the region’s remoteness, and lack of
any local written records, no-one knew how many mansions there had been
to begin with, nor how many were left. There weren’t even any maps. So
the first step was to carry out a detailed survey of the whole of
Chettinad, a group of architects and urban planners, as well as a French
geographer working for six months to document what was left.
The
next step was to start work on saving the mansions themselves. Here
they faced another set of obstacles. First, there was the Chettiars
themselves. Many still lived abroad or in one of India’s major cities.
Many also had little interest in their old family palaces, having left
them in the hands of housekeepers and butlers, who dealt with the
day-to-day upkeep but had no power when it came to decisions about the
property.
Then there was the issue of multiple ownership. As
these were family homes, ownership was split between the male heirs, and
any decisions about sales or restorations could only be made with the
agreement of all of those heirs.
Some outsiders were lucky. When
the Indian hotel group CGH Earth, which specialises in heritage
properties in southern India, decided to rent and restore one of the
properties in the village of Kanadukathan, it discovered that it only
had one owner, who readily agreed. Between 2005 and 2007, the company
carried out a meticulous restoration of the 80-year-old art-deco-styled
building using traditional techniques. Thus was born the Visalam Hotel,
the first hotel opened by non-Chettiars in the region.
‘When we
opened, all the Chettiars came to see,’ says Johny Peter, the hotel’s
general manager. ‘They didn’t stay or come to eat, but just to have a
look. Now they all call CGH Earth and ask if we want to lease their
mansion.’
Peter acknowledges that the mansions are in a
dangerous position, but sees the Chettiars themselves as the ultimate
hurdle. ‘Their attitudes have to change, and the Visalam leads through
example,’ he says.
Great potential
Tourism is vital in
bringing much-needed capital into the region. The Visalam may lead, but
others are now following. ‘The Chettinad region has a great potential
for heritage-based development because of the diversity of its tangible
and intangible heritage,’ Dragon explains. ‘Sustainable tourism should
be an opportunity for the development of the region, but local
authorities have to make the region ready for such a development by
improving infrastructure, implementing conservation and protection plans
at regional and village levels, and helping the inhabitants by giving
grants for the restoration of their homes.’
Yang is more blunt.
‘It seems absolutely crazy to allow the incredible built heritage of
these towns and villages to decay,’ she says. ‘It’s like allowing oil to
spill into the open sea without capping it and making use of it.’
But
saving a mansion is a lot more work and far more expensive than
destroying or even maintaining one. And with people regularly knocking
on their doors offering to buy the valuable resources inside, there is a
constant temptation for the Chettiars to simply take the money and run.
So the question now is, will they take as much pride in saving their
heritage as their ancestors did in building it?
October 2011
The lobby of the Vivante hotel in Goa is open-air and looks out at the ocean. As
we settled into our chairs waiting for the check-in process to complete,
the quiet was shattered by a group of 12 youngish Indian men and women
bustling into the space. The air around them crackled and I swear I
caught a whiff of Bangalore/Mumbai outsourcing parfum as they glided by.
Most were wearing khaki 
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