Musings from Antique Origins

Autograph of Sir AR Banerji ICS D uring the early eighties, I was working as the manager of one of the branches of a nationalized bank in India, beside the Banerji Road in Eranakulam. Despite my work of almost five years in that address, little did I know about “Banerji” except that he was a Diwan of Cochin. Very little information is obtained from the books published in Kerala or India about this distinguished ruler and civil servant who had some of the most important assignments in British India as a member of the elite Indian Civil Service. It does not speak well of us as Indians or Keralites that we know very little of our people and heritage and that after sixty years of independence a lot more work needs to be done on events and personalities of yore. Sir Albion Raj Kumar Banerji (1871-1950) was the son of Sasipada Banerji who was a doyen of the Brahmo Samaj (The Society of God) founded by Raja Rammohun Roy in AD 1828 and a great social reformer in his own right. Sasipada Baner

Jacob, Abraham and Anto Tharakans are on the left I was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Abraham Tharakan sent a mail presuming that I was in Kerala and then inviting us over to the Tharakan home in Olavipe. From my ancestral home in Chenganda in Cherthala, the tiny beautiful hamlet of Olavipe is not far away. I presume that before the land reforms came, the entire Olavipe might have belonged to the Tharakan family. The title “Tharakan” seems to have been given to this ancient and aristocratic family of Syrian Christians by Maharaja Marthanda Varma (AD 1706-58), the founder of modern Travancore.The Maharajah was ably assisted in conferring such titles by his selfless Diwan (Prime Minister) Ramayyan Dalawa. My wife Sindhu and son Mithun accompanied me to the Tharakan estate some 15 kilometers away through the country roads. The landscapes had not changed much over the last few decades and I could show the NSS College at Pallippuram to my wife where I had spent 5 years of my college life