A Second World Chess Champion from Madras?

The possibility that Madras, now known as Chennai, is likely to produce India’s second World Chess Champion in the next few weeks would come as a surprise to some. But it should not be, if one considers the two hundred year long association of Chess with Madras revealed through the journalistic work of Howard Staunton of England in mid 19th Century. Even before the arrival of the English in India, and before Indian chess activities were published in newspapers and Chess journals in England and Europe, Chess, probably with native Indian chess rules, had flourished in Madras and what is now Tamil Nadu.Lacking a central chess organisation, Indian chess rules obtaining throughout India varied from place to place and from time to time. With no standard rules in the country, tournaments were impossible to organise.

G.R. Kulkarni’s article in The Hindu dated December 28, 1929, “Spotlights on the Game of Chess” based on a (then) recently discovered article in Sanskrit, mentions an extraordinarily talented Tamil Brahmin in the temple town of Tirupati called Trivengadacharya Shastree (about 1764-1826). Trivengadacharya was a poet and an ashtavadhani, a person who could perform eight different things at the same time. Adept at both Indian and Modern Chess, he is said to have had the distinction of never having been defeated by a European. His chess acumen was such that he could play four blindfold games simultaneously. And he was a great composer of almost unsolvable chess problems.

He had authored a book Vilas-mani-manjari (Collection of Chess Gems) when he was the protégé of the last Peshwa (Prime Minister), Baji Rao II of Pune. In 1814 that book was translated to English and published as Essays of Chess in Bombay for him by M.D. Cruz. Trivengadacharya did not give the solution to the problems, only hints on how to solve them. After more than a hundred years T.R. Dawson (1889-1951) a famous British Problemist solved one of the problems which had defied solving till then, and had it published in the British Chess Magazine in 1943.

Madras-Hyderabad Match, 1828-29

The very first documented instance of Correspondence Chess (CC) games played in India is from the Hyderabad-­Madras CC Match of 1828-1829. This happened to be the second oldest CC Match ever played in the world!

The Nizam of Hyderabad, reputed to be the world’s richest man in the past, and a group of his noblemen, negotiated the terms of the CC Match. Two games were to be played with International rules, not the unclear native rules which were then popular among the Indian masses. Hyderabad was led by Shah Khusru Anushirwan Khan, alias Shah Sahib, a renowned player in the whole of Deccan, with one Rao Sahib whose real name is unknown.

Madras had Ghulam Kassim and James Cochrane. Kassim was a gifted player who attracted international acclaim with his 1829 book, An Analysis of the Muzio Gambit published by Courier Press, Madras. James Cochrane (1770-1830) was of the Madras Civil Service, having served as Collector of Ramnad and Tinnevelly from1803 to 1806 besides other assignments.

Unfortunately, soon after the start of the match, Shah Sahib, the key player for Hyderabad, died. Fortunately the match was not cancelled. The match had already attracted world-wide betting with more that Rs. 10,000 wagered, a mind boggling amount when you realise it was 1828 and not 2024. Howard Staunton reckoned as the father of British Chess ran The Chess Players’ Chronicle (CPC) in mid 19th century in London. In 1841 CPC recorded that when Shah Sahib died all bets were called off as Rao Sahib, the survivor, was a vastly inferior player to Shah Sahib and always received rook odds from him!

 In 1828 there were no railways, and electricity had not come into use. A romantic but unlikely story is that the moves were despatched by golden ­caparisoned elephants carrying a private postman wearing a crimson turban and pearl-grey livery holding a blue lantern! Madras won the match 2-0. Both games were published in Europe and are available in Indian Chess History (2014).

After this match, Cochrane collaborated with Kassim in the production of a book on the Muzio Gambit. Kassim died in Madras in 1844.

Staunton’s CPC also made several mentions of a Vencut Ayar, a Brahmin, as a chess celebrity from Tanjore, now Thanjavur. Two of his games against a European in the service of the East India Company were published by Illustrated London News on September 23, 1848. Staunton’s correspondent in India referred to Vencut as the ‘forgotten Indian chess star of the 19th Century’.

The Era, a British weekly established in 1838, in its issues of November 8 and 29, 1857, quotes two games played by one S. Iyengar from the Madras Examiner. The Era in its November 8, 1863 issue published another game played in Madras, where Iyengar in his game against ‘Mr X’ undertook to mate with his ‘h-pawn’, and he did so, on the 55th move!

Around the 1920s, the Vepery YMCA in Madras was organising chess tournaments regularly. Prominent players of those days were Charles Theobald (The Mail), R. Chandrasekar Iyer (known as RCS Iyer), S.V. Martin, et al. Later, the Esplanade YMCA took the lead in organising chess tournaments.

In the 1930s, The Hindu Chess League, based in Madras with R.C.S. Iyer as Secretary, organised some Correspondence Chess Matches to keep the city’s chess life alive.

T.A.Krishnamachari (1899-1956)

In February 1935 T.A.Krishnamachari (1899-1956), a ­Madras lawyer and a tireless chess organiser, popularly known as TAK, organised the first League chess tournament in Madras called the “City Chess Tournament”. Till then it was only held in the knockout format. TAK rose to prominence as the chess editor of The Hindu and its weekly, Sport & Pastime. In a feature in the January 1940 issue of British Chess Magazine, T.R. Dawson wrote: “The Madras paper, The Hindu, has easily the largest chess column in the British Empire ….in size it was often four, five or six columns long.”

Thanks to TAK’s excellence in composing chess problems, a group of problemists from Madras were inspired to composing chess problems and have achieved International acclaim: M.R. Parameswaran (1928-2023), C.G.S. Narayanan (born 1947), M. Parthasarathy (1929-2020), R.C.S. Iyer, et al.

Madrasi Chess

Abdul Jabbar Karwatkar (1937-1998) was a creative ­genius who won laurels in International Problem Composing Contests with his invention ­“Madrasi Chess” which made waves in Europe. The German Chess magazine Feenschach brought out a special issue on “Madrasi Chess” and organised Composing Contests with the “Madrasi Chess” theme. ­Karwatkar named his invention “Madrasi Chess” when he could have named it after himself.

In 1936, the Triumph College chess tournament in Madras was won by P. Krishnachar in a knockout format from 9-year old S. Balachander.

S. Balachander (1927-1990) was a child chess prodigy who could not only play good chess but also composed chess problems that were published by The Hindu in 1937. But very quickly he quit chess and took to music and a very successful career in cinema playing multiple roles like hero, producer, director, story writer, lyrics writer, composer, singer, etc. Yet in 1966, he quit cinema completely and became a devotee of Saraswathi Veena. Popularly known as Veena Balachander, he was given the Padma Bhushan Award in 1982.

In 1937 the YMIA (Young Men’s Indian Association) held it’s Open Tournament in Madras which was won by P.S. Sundara Sastriar, a quality Chess Problemist and a strong player.

During the early 20th Century the Chennapuri Andhra Maha Sabha (CAMS) based in Victoria Public Hall, situated between Ripon Building and Madras Central Station was a popular meeting place for chess lovers. A news item in The Hindu dated February 27, 1966 stated that the CAMS would stage its Golden Jubilee Ratnam Memorial Chess Tournament from March 1. Therefore the first Ratnam Memorial must have been held at least in 1916. Records of winners of this tournament are available only from 1940 to 1964.

Madras Chess Club to TNSCA:

Four months before India attained Independence from Britain, on April 26, 1947, five chess enthusiasts – TAK, C. Theobald, S.K. Subramaniam, P.S. Vaidyanathan and A.V. Sriramulu – met at the Chennapuri Andhra Maha Sabha and founded the Madras Chess Club. This Club, at a later meeting on May 20, 1947 re-named itself Madras Chess Association. One of the objects of this Association was to form the All India Chess Federation. In 1951 the Madras Chess Association changed its name to Madras State Chess Association which later on became the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association which now has many Life Members, including V. Anand.

The very First Madras State Chess Championship held in 1952 was jointly won by G.S. Dixit and S. Venkataraman. Dixit belonged to Pithapuram in current Andhra which was bifurcated from Madras State in 1953.

1st Madras State Championship participants. Standing (from left): T.S. Narayanan, N. Suryanarayana, T.R. Jayaram, P. Tilak, T.A. Suri (Tournament Director), V. Rajagopalan (Tournament Committee Member), P.S. Vaidyanathan, A.V. Sriramulu. Sitting (from left): N. Krishnamacharlu (Tournament Committee Member), K.V. Nilkantham, S. Venkata Raman (Joint-winner), T.A. Krishnamachari (President, Madras State Chess Association), G.S. Dixit (Joint-winner), S. Palaniswamy (Tournament Committee Member), C. Theobald.

Available information on some of the men who participated in the Madras State Championship:

S. Venkataraman (1902-1974) became State Champion in 1954. He played for India on the 4th Board in the 1956 Moscow Olympiad. P.S. Vaidyanathan (born Jan. 1, 1929) jointly won the State Championship with me in 1955 and also outright in 1962. Aged 95, he now lives with his daughter in Bangalore.

K.V. Nilakantham who retired as Post Master General was a chess addict.

G.S. Dixit (1915-1991) was an immensely talented player who won the Andhra Chess Championship twice and the 1950 Ranade in Pune. His combinations were so unpredictable and scary to opponents that Maharashtra players called him “Bayankar”.

A.V. Sriramulu (1919-2016) was a great player who was Secretary of the Madras Chess Association for many years since its founding in 1947.

C. Theobald was a generous Anglo-Indian who loved chess and worked for The Mail, a Madras eveninger.

Kasturi Srinivasan.

From the 1930s, The Hindu, encouraged chess in various ways, mainly because its Managing Director, Kasturi Srinivasan (1887-1959) was a chess lover. He was President of the Madras State Chess Association from 1957 till his death in 1959. The Kasturi Cup Chess Tournaments in Madras attracting the best players from all over India ran from 1942(!) to 1984, though not every year.

S.K. Narasimhan.

Though the All India Chess Federation (AICF) was formed in 1951 it had no legal entity till 1958 when S.K. Narasimhan (1918-1982) of Madras, as Secretary of the AICF got its accounts audited from inception, finalised it’s constitution, registered it with the Registrar of Societies in Madras North. Known as SKN, he was one among the few in India who believed that Indians can compete with the Russians and Europeans on equal terms if given the chance.

Accordingly SKN organised the West Asian Zonal match in 1959 between Suren Momo of Mongolia and me which I won 3-1 at the Nehru Stadium in Madras, and following that, the Asian Zonal Final between C.J.S. Purdy of Australia and me in the Madras Esplanade YMCA in 1961 which I won 3-0 to become India’s first International Master (IM).

The AICF was in its infancy with absolutely no funds. But for SKN’s faith in India’s ability, his persistent correspondence with FIDE, Mongolia, Australia, and the All India Council of Sports in Delhi, I would not have become an IM.

SKN was an accountant in a small hardware company in Linghi Chetty Street. And he wrote for The Hindu on chess. He should have been honoured for all that he did for chess in India, but was not. In 1959 and 1960 he was elected Vice-Presidents of both the International Correspondence Chess Federation and FIDE. Importantly, he never aspired for these posts and he never left the shores of India.

In the 1960s, Ramani Press in South Mada Street in Mylapore became a central point for chess lovers in the city.

Manuel Aaron.

In the 1960s and 1970s, I (Manuel Aaron) dominated not only Madras chess but also at the national level. I became India’s first International Master in 1961 and the Government honoured me with the Arjuna Award in 1962. I was born in 1935 to Tamil parents in Burma and we came to Madras in December 1941 as refugees of World War II.

In hindsight, I feel that my greatest achievement was not becoming India’s first IM or winning the National championship nine times, but setting up the Tal Chess Club in the Soviet Cultural Center in Madras during the run up to the Spasky-Fischer Match in 1972. This Club, which automatically became the centre of Madras chess, provided V. Anand (born in Madras in 1969) with strong opponents who he vanquished with ease while still eight, nine, years old. Both S.Vijayalakshmi and her sister Meenakshi of Madras who became Women Grandmasters and National Champions also had their chess initiation in Tal Chess Club.

V. Anand

A 1988 picture: V. Anand being felicitated on becoming India’s first Grandmaster by two Presidents of the Tamil Nadu State Chess Association, A.N. Parasuram (1902-1995) and Dr. N. Mahalingam (1923-2014).

The rise and rise of V. Anand, born in Madras, who won the World Chess Championship five times in different formats, is old history now. His charm and extraordinary chess genius made him an every man’s favourite chess player, not just in India but all over the world including Russia. A belief often expressed was that “Good guys do not win Championships!” You have to be ugly and mean! Anand proved it wrong!

Now we have young Dommaraju Gukesh, born in Madras on May 29, 2006, knocking at the doors of the World Chess Championship. He does not come from a vacuum, he is backed by Madras which has 200+ years of chess history!