“The Gokhale Hall has been the scene of great achievements in oratory and public speaking as well as music and the fine arts. It has received with open arms persons of every description without distinction of caste, creed, colour or political persuasion. The Hall ever reminds us of the voice of its founder and no one associated with it can ever forget the inspiration of that voice,” Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, once said in a tribute to Gokhale Hall on ­Armenian Street.

Annie Besant

Annie Besant (1847-1933), the founder, is a name that will forever be associated with India’s struggle for freedom. She was well-known in Britain as a suffragist. By the time she arrived in India in 1893 she was an ardent Theosophist. She became President of the Theosophical Society in 1907 and was re-elected three times. In between she found time to found the Benares Hindu University in 1898. ­Joining the Indian National Congress, she became a strident champion for Indian freedom. She edited a newspaper, New India, and its articles demanding independence for India ensured it was banned by the British.

In 1914, Mrs Besant founded the Young Men’s Indian Association which was meant to provide “a political gymnasium, as it were, to equip the youth with a strong body, an informed mind and a noble character to inherit and imbibe the country’s glorious tradition and to take their rightful place as leaders of the future.” In keeping with these ideals, Mrs. Besant planned a home for the Association which would have a hostel for needy students to stay in and pursue their higher education in Madras city, a library, a canteen, a gymnasium and an oratory which would later become Gokhale Hall.

Her close associate, A. Ranganatha Mudaliar, writing in the Besant Centenary Volume said that Annie Besant had confided in him that she meant the venue to be used “when, in times ahead, there would be difficulties for free expression of opinion for want of a hall whose authorities were prepared to resist official pressure and let it be used freely even if it was to severely criticise the policy and methods of the Government.” Mrs Besant was clearly foreseeing intensification in the struggle for Indian independence and was meaning to build a suitable venue for its spokespersons in Madras city.

C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar

The first office bearers of the YMIA were Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, Sir Pitti Theaga­raya Chetti, Sir V.P. Madhav Rao, G.A. Natesan, Sir T. Sadasiva Iyer, F.B. Tyabji, K.S. Chandrashekhara Iyer and Sir S. Subramania Iyer. Mrs Besant personally funded the construction of the YMIA’s home. In the words of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, “If Rs. 1000 was needed for it, she contributed Rs. 999 out of that.” The actual construction cost Mrs Besant Rs. 3 lakh. The foundation stone was laid in May 1914 by C. Jinaraja­dasa, noted Theosophist and writer, and the construction was supervised by Rao Sahib G. Subbiah Chettiar, Hony. Magistrate and Auditor, Madras Customs. The entire building was completed by the end of 1915 and, as Annie Besant’s close friend, that eminent patriot, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, had passed away by then, the oratory was named after him. In time, Gokhale Hall was to become the face of the YMIA.

Gokhale Hall, with its magnificent dome, large wooden balcony and large windows providing good ventilation, became the centre for artistic, cultural and literary endeavours. In an era when George Town was the hub of the city, Gokhale Hall was soon in demand. It regularly attracted the attention of the law, with its management often being hauled up before the Courts for allowing “more than the number of people permissible.” The first such instance, known as ‘The Gokhale Hall Case’, ended on August 15, 1918 and with a fine of Rs. 2 being imposed, after Sir CP had argued for the Hall.

Under Annie Besant, the Hall became one of the two foci of the Freedom Struggle in Madras, the other being Tilak Ghat on the Beach. At Gokhale Hall, on September 3, 1916, Annie Besant began the Home Rule League in response to Lok­manya Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Home Rule Movement which began a year earlier in Poona with the demand that Indians be allowed to govern their own country. It was in Gokhale Hall that Mrs Besant delivered her famous ‘Wake Up India’ series of lectures, asking the average Indian to rise and realise what his country was going through. During this period, she also organised mock parliaments in the Hall, to train youth in public speaking. Sarvepalli Gopal, in his biography of his father, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, mentions that he (S. Radha­krishnan) often attended Mrs Besant’s lectures here and was inspired by them to become a powerful speaker. In response to her Home Rule League, the Government served an arrest warrant on her in 1916. A formal meeting, with one of the largest gatherings in Madras till that time, was addressed by her in Gokhale Hall just prior to her internment.

In 1917, Sarojini Naidu addressed the Madras Students’ Convention about her vision of Freedom. On October 2nd the same year, Annie Besant unveiled a portrait of Gandhiji in Gokhale Hall, on his birthday.

Annie Besant organised to send out to the U.K. in 1918 several Home Rule deputations to lobby with the British Government. Each deputation was seen off from Gokhale Hall after a formal farewell event.

In 1919, Annie Besant set up the 1919 Club to study the proposals made under the Mon­tague Chelmsford reforms. Her speeches attacking the Act were heard by audiences in rapt attention in the Hall. So strident were her criticisms about the Act that she incurred the wrath of everyone in the Establishment, including the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford.

Over the years, Gokhale Hall has witnessed speeches by Jawa­harlal Nehru, S. Satya­murthi, Morarji Desai, K. Kama­raj and others. Nonagenarians today remember climbing onto the dome of the Hall and looking down through the windows just to get a glimpse of Nehru and other great leaders. In particular, Pandit Nehru’s speech on October 8, 1936 on ‘Socialism and the Indian Struggle’ drew a record participation.

The Hall played an important role in language politics as well. The Hindi movement in South India was started in 1918 by Mahatma Gandhi. The movement was inagurated by Annie Besant at Gokhale Hall. The first Hindi class was held there by Devdas Gandhi. Later, in the 1950s, the hall became the venue for anti-Hindi demonstrations as well, with C. Rajagopalachari addressing mammoth crowds in favour of Tamil. Tamil language issues were discussed here, too, when, in 1940, the Madras Presidency Government decided to appoint a committee headed by the Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastry to look into the development of a standard lexicon to facilitate teaching of science in Tamil schools. A very important development was the formation of the Madras Presidency Tamil Sangam which met here on August 31, 1941 to protest against the recommendations of the Sastry committee which had included several Sanskrit words. The meeting was addressed by Sir Mohammed Usman, then Vice-Chancellor of the Madras University, and such scholars as Arul Thangiah, T.P.­­ Mee­nakshi­­­­­­­­­sundaram Pillai and S. Muthiah Mudaliar.

The Labour Movement in Madras too used Gokhale Hall as a venue, with B.P. Wadia addressing a large gathering of workers there in 1917. One of the biggest demonstrations by the workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills was held here in the same year.

Gokhale Hall played venue to the rise of the Self Respect movement as well. One of the earliest speeches by Periyar EVR was made here in September 1917, when he stressed the need for a Self Respect movement. On April 15, 1929, Sir A. Ramaswami Mudaliar spoke in the Hall on the occasion of the first anniversary of the founding of the Dr. T.M. Nair Literary Association. His theme was ‘The evils of the caste system’. The Justice Party, which was the forerunner of most of the other self-respect movements, often held its meetings in Gokhale Hall.

In the field of Fine Arts, the Hall remained a famed venue for long. The Indian Fine Arts Society, which turned 75 last year, held programmes here from its inception. Prior to that, the Hall was home to several of the older sabhas, such as the Muthialpet Sabha, the Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (not the pre­sent one), and the Tondai­mandalam Sabha. It was here that the seeds of the Tamil Isai Movement were sown when patrons such as Rajah Sir Anna­malai Chettiar and writers such as Kalki R. Krishnamurthy highlighted the fact that Tamil was not given due importance on the Carnatic platform. This brought Tamil into greater focus and led to the founding of the Tamil Isai Sangam, which soon built its headquarters not far from here.

Truly is Gokhale Hall a vital part of modern Madras history and a memorial to the beginnings of the Freedom Struggle.