LATE RAO BAHADUR S. S. TALMAKI

LIFE SKETCH

Late Rao Bahadur Shripad Subrao Talmaki was born on 25th December, 1868 at Honavar, North Kanara. He finished his vernacular four standards there. He had to go to Kumta to finish his English four standards and was under the care of his maternal uncle. He later went to Karwar and got admitted to the fifth standard in the High School, with Kannada as his second language. He passed his Matriculation in November 1887. The same year he was married. The next year he spent in studying Sanskrit upto the Matriculation standard. At the beginning of 1889, he was admitted to the Wilson College. He passed the First Year in Arts examination that year, but failed in Sanskrit in the I.B.A. For this reason and also because the University revised the curriculum for B.A., so as to require two years instead of one year’s study after I.B.A., Shripad went to Poona and joined the Engineering College in 1892. To add to his financial worries, due to sale of the family property at Kembre towards liquidation of his father’s debts, his wife delivered of a daughter and died a week later, Shripad’s brother-in-law came to his financial aid and Shripad appeared for and passed that year both the first examination in Engineering and the first B.A., as the University held the latter examination under the old regulations, as a concession to students who had failed to pass the previous examination. He then returned to the Wilson College, joined the B.A. Class with Science as his voluntary subject and passed the B.A. in 1893. In 1894, he married Kalyanibai, daughter of Nadkarni Anandrao. Working as a part time teacher in the Wilson High School, he also secured a private tuition to meet his expenses while studying for the LL.B. examination. He passed the First LL.B. examination in 1895, his Second LL.B. in 1897 and began practising as an advocate at Kumta. Soon after, Shripad’s father died on 2nd June 1898.

Life in Bombay : Shripad, however, felt life in Kumta too circumscribed, dull, depressing and even irksome. In the later days of 1902, Shri V. V. Tilak, the then Deputy Registrar of the High Court, who as Sub-Judge of Kumta, knew Shripad well, offered him the post of Assistant Sheristedar (Kannada Branch). Shripad readily accepted it and joined his duties on 10th September, 1902. Bombay offered him a vast field for varied activities for his pent up energy. He was a devoted admirer of the late Shri Shamrao Vithal Kaikini who was well known as a liberal supporter of learning and fine arts and had given many unmistakable proofs of his great practical concern for the educational and economic advancement of our community, but could not carry out his schemes for want of workers, or lack of enthusiasm amongst them. Talmaki, however, was fortunate to be foremost amongst them and with his natural flair for cooperation became a pioneer and prophet of the co-operative movement.

Co-operative Work : Talmaki’s mind was disciplined but not subdued by the routine of official duties. Such a single-track routine was repugnant to him and to break its tiresome evenness, any useful outside work was welcome. The Co-operative Societies Act was passed towards the close of 1904 and came into operation in 1905. He was the first amongst us to visualise the potentialities of cooperative effort and thought of making it the lever to improve the social and economic condition of our people. He did not remain long in musing contemplation but decided swiftly to act. He got together eight friends to join him in registering the Shamrao Vithal Urban Cooperative Credit Society on 27th December 1906, which was the first of its kind and which soon became a model institute of its type. This is SVC Bank today which perpetuates the name of Shri Shamrao Vithal as a great lover and leader of our Community. Gradually the circle extended, the horizon enlarged. Under his guidance, this Credit Society started a Consumers’ Stores in 1909 and, may be, it contained the seeds of our present day Consumers’ Cooperative Societies.

For some years before the Society was started, Talmaki used to collect small monthly contributions, from members of our Community, with the object of building up a fund to impart vocational and technical training to our young men. Progress was slight. He, therefore, had a meeting called, presided over by Shri Shamrao Vithal. Over 200 circular letters were sent inviting contributions, but the only response was from Shri Hattiangadi Naraina Rao promising to contribute. But soon after, Shri Shamrao died and his scheme fell through. Talmaki, however, never lost sight of the idea. At the Fifth Annual General Meeting of the Cooperative Society, sanction was obtained to the creation of an Education Fund by setting a part of the net profits of the Society. Thus were laid the foundations of the Saraswat Education & Provident Cooperative Society, which was registered as a separate Society under the Cooperative Society’s Act in 1923. As is well known, the Friends’ Social Club, started by the late Shri G. V. Sirur, Shri S. N. and Shri R. N. Kalbag and others, blossomed into the Kanara Saraswat Association, receiving the name at Talmaki’s suggestion, at a meeting convened to determine the scope and further work of the Club. Talmaki was elected the first President of the Association, and he commended his idea of taking a census of the community, to the General Meeting of the Association on the 10th January 1912.

Talmaki now plunged into the cooperative movement with insatiable appetite. He obtained from England and elsewhere all the literature he could get on various aspects of cooperative work and began preaching the cooperative gospel with proselytising zeal and was able to convert a few friends to his fervent faith. Having taken Shri Shamrao Vithal for his pattern, Talmaki felt all well-wishing to be futile which did not express itself in action; for though an idealist in the field of thought, he was a materialist in the field of action. Before the Cooperative Conference held in Poona in September 1913, he read a paper on “Cooperative Housing”; as a result, the Cooperative Housing Association was started in Bombay with Sir Prabhashanker Pattani as the President and Talmaki as Secretary, to organise Housing Societies on cooperative lines and help them with advice and guidance. The genesis of our own Cooperative Housing Society at Gamdevi was a paper read by Talmaki to a meeting of the Kanara Saraswat Association held at Hirabag on 24th January 1914, under the Presidency of Mr. B. W. Kissan, I.C.S., Special Officer, Salsette. Talmaki, basing his argument on the statistics of monthly income and rents paid, as disclosed by our Census taken in 1912, made a strong and successful plea for a Cooperative Housing Society of our people; Mr. Kissan said “the census which you took, I consider a triumph of organisation carried out, as it was, without coercive powers such as government finds it necessary to use when it takes a census. I say, if any one could make a Cooperative Housing Society, you ought to be able to do it”.

The Saraswat Cooperative Housing Society at Gamdevi thus came into being and was registered on 28th March, 1915 and this can be said to be the first Co-operative Housing Society in India, if not in Asia. Three buildings with two upper floors, with two four-room tenements on each floor, were constructed and occupied on the 1st January 1916. Sir Prabhashankar Pattani, Member of the Governor’s Executive Council and President of the Bombay Cooperative Housing Association, had announced a loan of Rs. 24,000/- at 4 percent interest for ten years to the first Cooperative Housing Society to be registered in India and our Society got the loan as the first such society. Two more buildings comprising 24 tenements likely to be attained when all start with a common tradition and a common culture based on a particular countryside”.

Talmaki was one of the founders of the Bombay Central Provincial Cooperative Institute which is now called the Provincial Cooperative Institute, and worked as its Honorary Secretary for 14 years. He was actively connected with the Bombay Provincial Cooperative Bank, the Agricultural Sale Society, the Bombay Provincial Land Mortgage Bank and the Bombay Cooperative Insurance Society. He was a member of the Editorial Board of the ‘Bombay Cooperative Quarterly’ started a year before the Institute. He prepared a scheme of cooperative housing for the industrial workers of Bombay. And some years ago when the Mahars of Bandra thought of starting a housing society, they sought out Talmaki from his retirement to preside over and guide their deliberations. He was greatly interested also in rural reconstruction and with the cooperation of Sir Chunilal V. Mehta, Shri A. V. Thakkar and Dr. Harold Mann, started a Rural Reconstruction Association which did useful work at its two centres, namely Balasa in the Panch Mahals and in Waki in Sholapur Dist. To give to the public at large the benefit of his accumulated knowledge and experience he crystallised them into a practical guide entitled ‘Cooperation in India and Abroad’ which was published in 1931 and which is a standard book and used as a text book wherever the subject of Cooperation is taught. In recognition of his signal services to the cooperative movement, Government conferred on him the title of ‘Rao Sahib’ in 1914 and of ‘Rao Bahadur’, 1916. He was known as the ‘Father of the Cooperative Movement in India.’

Other Social Work : Talmaki retired from service as Assistant Registrar, High Court, on the 1st August, 1930. In 1931, when he had a nervous breakdown, he went to Deolali for rest and recuperation, and returned after two months much improved. But he was an indefatigable worker. He was for years collecting information from every available source about Saraswat families and the Konkani dialect. He published Saraswat geneologies from the founder of the House to the most recent descendants, in parts: Part I in December 1935 and Part II in February 1939. A collection of Konkani Proverbs (and paradoxical sayings) with explanation of their origin, as throwing light on our social evolution, was published in two parts: Part I in 1932 and Part Il in February 1936. These publications were his exclusive work and will remain as a monument to his spirit of inquiry and research, as well as his matchless industry. He remained in Bombay till April 1942 and went to Belgaum during the Second World War scare. In 1944 he shifted to Dharwar. Here his last days were clouded by suffering his own and his wife’s. He suffered from Prostrate gland trouble, and she from physical breakdown. After a brief illness he died at Dharwar on the 28th January 1948. Sometime before his death, the Santa Cruz Housing Society decided to return the share capital of members who were not its tenants. Talmaki who had become a member in the initial stage of the Society, as an encouragement to others, suggested that his share money be directed to some charitable purpose, preferably, education; and the Committee of Management shrewdly enough made it a nucleus of an Education Fund, which they named after Talmaki’s mother who died at Santa Cruz in October 1927.

Conclusion : Talmaki was called to his rest, long after his life-work was completed, though he had a couple of irons in the fire. He was known to be working hard to compile a Konkani English Dictionary and a History of Saraswats. The enduring work by which he will live enshrined in the affection and gratitude of our people is, doubtless, in connection with the housing of our middle class population in this city. All the Saraswat colonies will be a perpetual reminder of his far sightedness and sagacity as well as his quenchless zeal for the social and economic uplift of his fellow men. Such response as his to the vital needs of city life is not evoked by worldly leisure, but by a compelling inward impulse coupled with steadiness of purpose and unyielding determination.

As we look back, our appreciation of the benefits accruing is enhanced beyond words; when we think of the present difficult times with the acute shortage of housing accommodation and the frantic legislation that has followed in its wake, we value beyond words the cheap convenient and comfortable modern type tenements, and generations of our people who will reside in them will bless Talmaki for this great gift. He thought not in terms of the individual, but of the community of which he was one. He wanted nothing for himself that others might not share in common with him. So, he conceived and carried out the idea of people living in the congenial atmosphere of convenient colonies and working harmoniously for common ends, for common benefits; he thus taught us to live our life in the light of the whole to which we belong, and live it from the point of view of its significance to life in general.

Appreciation : Talmaki’s life was simplicity itself; rather, simplicity, verging on austerity. The idea of luxury was alien to his nature. He practised severe personal economies of which he would let his familiar friends have occasional glimpses; his frugality in the matter of dress was a good humoured jest among his friends. He was entirely unfashionable in his tastes and his sole recreation was a long walk. He was slow thinking, but prudent, resourceful, conservative in habits of mind, patient under misrepresentation and strong enough to resist the temptation to retaliate. There was something sincere about him, something proudly indifferent to what you thought, yet something comforting and humane. He always led a busy life, reading or writing, orderly in all that he did, distributing his time with rigorous economy. His hand was operative in all our institutions, wherever it was not visible; rest to him was amply provided by a change from one bundle of papers to another. He had to rub shoulders with plenty of pettiness on every scale and in every hue, but he always kept his eyes well above it. He not only pulled us out of ourselves but lifted us above ourselves.

In the stress and turmoil of actual existence, we are often unable to see beyond the moment or think beyond the day. But he taught us to take a long view of life. He thus made us hopeful about ourselves and about our outlook. It is said that great ideals and great qualities abide, even after those that exhibited the qualities and cherished the ideals pass away. It is justifiable hope that Talmaki’s shining example will continue to inspire generations of his successors to emulate him. For he sowed the seed and those who are with us and those who will come after us will continue to reap the harvest. Our hearts should, therefore, blossom with thankfulness to God who gave him to us, as well as to those who lead us along the path chalked out by him. As we review Talmaki’s activities, our hearts thrill with involuntary admiration. For his work was lit with life and his life was made sweet with work; his work endeared the present and made the future bright; and we mutter to ourselves “Blessed be his memory and may his kind increase”.