Blood-tainted ice cubes and a famine in Madras

In the sweltering heat of colonial Madras, British rulers and the city’s elite raised glasses of Scotch whisky, chilled by ice cubes floating in their drinks.

The huge blocks of ice were naturally formed in the lakes of New England in the U.S. and imported to India. In Madras (now Chennai), the ice bars were brought to the Ice House in Triplicane, where they were stored and cut into smaller pieces for evening drinks.

The Ice House, even today, remains a popular reminder of a place where the British sold ice. Behind that luxury, however, lay a darker history of labour, exploitation, and suffering.

A tale of exploitation

The story of the ice was also the story of the workers who handled it. Scheduled Caste (SC) labourers were employed to cut, move, and handle the massive blocks under punishing conditions. Tamil writer Jeyamohan brings this little-known world alive in his novel Vellai Yaanai, set against the backdrop of the Great Madras Famine of 1876-78, which wiped half the SC population. The book is translated in English as White Elephant by Priyamvada Ramkumar.

The novel is part-fact and part-fiction. Jeyamohan said the idea came to him during a conversation with the late Anbu Ponnoviyam, a scholar belonging to an SC community, who told him about “a protest that took place during the Great Madras Famine at the Ice House – a protest by and for the Dalit workers.”

Drawing on oral accounts and historical material, he sought to reconstruct the experiences of workers and an episode of labour unrest that, he argues, has received little attention in conventional histories of Madras.

“The White Elephant” is a metaphor for the giant blocks of ice imported from America. Jeyamohan has described the novel as “a war against India’s historical amnesia and amnesias that sculpt our everyday lives.”

Oppression and resistance

Present-day Chennai knows Vivekananda House and remembers it by its earlier name, Ice House; yet the history associated with it is largely outside the city’s popular memory.

Built in 1842 by Frederic Tudor, the Ice House was used to store naturally formed ice cut from lakes in New England and shipped across the seas to India.

The ice blocks, packed with insulating material such as sawdust, wood shavings, or rice chaff, were a remarkable example of a colonial-era trade in a commodity that was otherwise unavailable in the tropics.

Jeyamohan’s protagonist, Aiden Byrne, is an Irish police officer in Madras. His encounter with two labourers employed by the Tudor Ice Company mercilessly beaten in the countryside forces him to confront the brutality of the imperial system of which he is a part. He inspects the Ice House with his platoon and is appalled by the conditions in which the workers are made to labour.

In the novel, the workers handle the ice in darkness and with little protection. Working in the abysmal conditions left the workers with “ash-like lesions, open sores and peeling skin on their fingers and toes. Their legs were bent and twisted in myriad ways, resembling a strange thicket of thorns,” writes Jeyamohan.

The blocks themselves are described as weighing as much as “30 tonnes – the weight of ten elephants” and sliding unpredictably when unpacked. “The White Elephant rumbled, lowered its crown, and moved forward, baying for blood. The workers shrieked in panic,” describes the novel.

Jeyamohan places this story of labour exploitation alongside the devastation of the Great Madras Famine. Aiden travels to witness the migration of the SCs from Chengalpattu towards Madras and encounters the full horror of famine – bodies lying by the roadside, many of them children, with people starving and reduced to begging for food.

Everything Aiden has witnessed so far begins to make him question the imperial order he serves. With the help of Kathavarayan, a young activist from the oppressed community, he organises the workers at the Ice factory to demand better working conditions for them.

The character Kathavarayan is based on the historical figure Pandit Iyothee Thass, whose original name was Kathavarayan.

Iyothee Thass’ influence

Jeyamohan has deliberately chosen the real character of Pandit Iyothee Thass, an SC scholar. Here, however, the boundary between history and fiction becomes important.

Iyothee Thass was also a Siddha practitioner, Buddhist revivalist, and social reformer. He lived in Royapettah and later emerged as one of the most important voices challenging caste hierarchy and the social exclusion of the Paraiyars and other oppressed communities.

But there is no established historical evidence that Iyothee Thass organised workers against the Tudor Ice Company or played a role in a trade union movement involving its SC labourers. That part of Vellai Yaanai is Jeyamohan’s fictional reconstruction.

The distinction is particularly significant because Iyothee Thass was known personally to several prominent figures of the period.

Tamil scholar and trade union leader Thiru. Vi. Kalyanasundaram, popularly known as Thiru-Vi-Ka, was familiar with him. Yet, in his autobiographical writings, Thiru-Vi-Ka makes no reference to any trade union activities by Iyothee Thass.

What he does record is Iyothee Thass’s reputation as a Siddha practitioner. Recalling ailments he suffered during his youth, Thiru-Vi-Ka describes how Iyothee Thass successfully treated him on more than one occasion, including an injury to his hand sustained while breaking coconuts during a festival.

There is, however, a striking historical parallel between the fictional Kathavarayan’s rejection of Hinduism and Iyothee Thass’s own intellectual journey.

Iyothee Thass’s encounter with caste discrimination led him away from Vaishnavism towards Buddhism. In the novel, Aiden is puzzled to see Kathavarayan without the usual Vaishnavite mark on his forehead.

Kathavarayan says he has “renounced” it and “the religion, the god, and all the associated identities.”

Pandit Iyothee Thass met Theosophist Colonel H.S. Olcott and expressed his desire to embrace Buddhism. With Olcott’s assistance, he travelled to Ceylon and, on his return, helped establish the Sakya Buddhist Society, also known as the Indian Buddhist Association, in Madras in 1898.

The movement established a presence in Royapettah and became a centre for the study and propagation of Buddhism. Thiru-Vi-Ka, in his writings, recalls listening to Buddhist teachings, including lessons on the Tripitaka. He also records the opposition the movement encountered because of its criticism of established religious traditions.

Thus, even where Jeyamohan fictionalises the historical record, the novel draws upon a genuine historical transformation: that of a man who confronted caste oppression and eventually sought an alternative intellectual and religious tradition in Buddhism.

The novel seeks to remind the people of Chennai of the real story behind the Ice House and of Pandit Iyothee Thass, the scholar who walked the length and breadth of the city, wrote and preached, yet remains known only to a few.