These days I am addicted to reading the diaries of Dubash Ananda Ranga Pillai. We celebrate Samuel Pepys as the greatest diarist of the 17th century. I would rank Pillai as the greatest, a century later.
His writings deal with the Coromandel Coast and therefore are more relatable. The Carnatic Wars, for instance, are as dramatic as the Great Fire of London. And while much of what Pillai writes centres on Pondicherry, Madras, being the rival town, is not far behind.
The Tamil is not easy, for Pillai uses words that have long gone out of fashion. And there are thousands of routine matters you need to wade through before you hit that occasional gem. One of my learnings was the sheer volume of Indians that were in the employment of the European traders.
And that brings me to the term dubash — those wily translators who operated as go-betweens for vital negotiations and battened in the process. Was everyone a dubash? That this was not so is clear from Pillai’s writings on both Pondicherry and Madras. There were all kinds of openings available and only a select few made it to being dubash.
Each European of note and his wife had one in their personal service and the dubash attached to the mem was often more powerful than his counterpart with the husband. The Company itself had a dubash and the establishment, by which I mean the Town and Fort, had a Chief Dubash to whom the most sensitive of negotiations were entrusted. Thus Pillai we find dealt with the Nawabs of Arcot, the Niza.
