Late Dr Subramaniya Iyer

Lahore, Wednesday, December 10, 1924

IF the passing away of any man, who had died full of years and of honours, can be rightly mourned by his countrymen, that of Dr Subramaniya Iyer is so mourned by the whole of India today. Dr Subramaniya was in his own Province the sole survivor, and in India as a whole one of a few survivors, of generation of mighty actors who made public life in India all that it was until a few years ago it was further transformed by two still mightier actors. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress and of the Mahajan Sabha, the premier political organisation in the Madras Presidency. He had taken a conspicuous part in the Congress movement before he became a Judge of the Madras High Court and had actually been elected President of the Nagpur session of the Congress in 1891, though he could not preside over it owing to his elevation to the bench; and after his retirement from the bench he resumed his duties as an active Congressman. He took an equally conspicuous part in the Home Rule movement of 1914-16 and actually renounced his Knighthood as a protest against the internment of Dr Besant, the leader of that movement. To his letter to the President of the United States we have referred already. However opinion might differ regarding its propriety from a strictly technical point of view, no one could fail to be struck either by its note of independence or by the burning love of country and of freedom of which it was the expression, an independence and a love of country and freedom which the distinguished patriot evinced still more clearly at the famous interview he had with the Viceroy and the Secretary of State when they were on their visit to Madras in connection with the Reforms.