Bob Hardgrave (1939-2023): A friend of India

A renowned scholar, his research focussed on the Dravidian movement and the Nadar community.

Robert Hardgrave was one of the first academics to examine and study the intersection of cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu, alongside his other areas of interest.  | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

South Indian studies were sweeping American universities like a wave in the 1960s. After Mao Zedong closed the doors of China to Western academics, they turned their attention to India and Jawaharlal Nehru welcomed them. The Peace Corps scheme got hundreds of American youngsters interested in India and many of them came back as researchers. Western scholars interested in South Indian studies paid attention to caste groups, temple architecture, epigraphy and Sangam Literature. Some were attracted to the interaction between cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu. Among them was Robert Hardgrave, a doctoral student from the University of Chicago. It was the poet A. K. Ramanujan who got Hardgrave interested in Tamil studies. In fact, Hardgrave was the poet’s first student at the university. (The other scholar Ramanujan guided was Eugene F. Irschick, who studied the non-Brahmin movement in South India.)

For his degree, Hardgrave chose Political Science as the subject and specialising in Indian Government and politics. In 1958, a short note in a magazine on the Dravidian movement that came to his notice made him take up an examination on that movement for his postgraduate studies. With a grant from the Rotary Foundation, he landed in Madras in 1960, toured around Tamil Nadu, and met leaders such as C.N. Annadurai, E.V.K. Sampath, and K. Veeramani. With some of the politicians, he developed a lasting friendship. The result was a thin book, of 96 pages, titled The Dravidian Movement published in 1965. (This has since been republished by Routledge.)

While working on this topic, the involvement of Dravidian leaders in the entertainment industry intrigued him. To have a closer look at the issue, he returned to Madras in 1968 and was supported by a Ford Foundation grant. That was when I—developing my own interest in Tamil cinema at the time—met him for the first time in what was the then Connemara Hotel and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Hardgrave had met Sivaji Ganesan in 1962 when the latter was touring the US as an invitee of the American Government. When Hardgrave began his research on Tamil cinema, he met M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa many times. He managed to interview M.R. Radha while he was serving a prison sentence for shooting MGR in his residence in 1967.

Hardgrave wrote a series of ground-breaking articles on cinema and politics in Tamil Nadu which appeared in journals like Economic and Political Weekly—”Film and Political Consciousness in Tamil Nadu”and “When Stars Displace the Gods: The Folk Culture of Cinema in Tamil Nadu”were some of the articles. These essays opened up a new area of research for scholars. The scholarly community in India had completely ignored cinema. It was not considered worthy of any serious study. But this was also when subaltern studies were gaining momentum in the academic circles in the West. Cinema, being a major preoccupation of the common people in Tamil Nadu was an appealing subject for study. 

Cover of A Portrait of the Hindus by Robert L. Hardgrave. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

For his doctoral study, Hardgrave decided to look at a community in South India. After reading about the Nadar community of Tamil Nadu in the works of Robert Caldwell and also the section in Edgar Thurston’s Castes and Tribes of Southern India, he chose to study that community. The rise of the Nadar community, in the last 150 years, despite severe social challenges, drew his attention to them. His research culminated in a book published in 1969 titled The Nadars of Tamil Nadu: The Political Culture of a Community in Change (the Tamil translation came out a few years ago). Hardgrave’s research highlighted the area of studying a particular community as a subject to Western scholars who followed suit. The book itself served as a model for similar studies. Along with some of the scholars Hardgrave founded the Association of South Indian studies which is active to this day.

Another of his works that has left a lasting influence on Indian studies is India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation which he co-authored with Stanley A. Kochanek. It has seen seven editions and serves as a standard reference for students specialising in Indian studies.

In 1984, Hardgrave found himself in the centre of a debate. He wrote an article about the political situation in India wherein he raised the question about the country’s leadership following Indira Gandhi. Following her assassination, a journalist suggested that Hardgrave probably knew about the plot. In India, some called him a CIA agent, a frequent accusation against American scholars. But the Indian government ignored these insinuations. Hardgrave told me that the Indian Embassy in the US routinely waived his visa fee. He was considered a “friend” of India.

Cover of The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change by Robert L. Hardgrave. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

After his retirement Hardgrave shifted his attention to a completely new subject: British period paintings, paying particular attention to the Flemish artist François Balthazar Solvyns (1760-1824) who was in Calcutta for thirteen years and painted, mostly, the boats in the river Hooghly. He collected 36 etchings of this artist and brought out Boats of Bengal: Eighteenth Century Portraits by Balthazar Solvyns in 2001.  Each etching had a detailed commentary by the author. He went on the write more on this subject and published in 2001 Portrait of the Hindus: Balthazar Solvyns & The European Image of India. In Indian historiography visual material has been traditionally discounted as a source of information. Hardgrave said that for him, as someone specialising in India, this artist is of special interest in what he reveals of India 200 years ago.

Hardgrave—Bob to his friends—displayed personal charm and intellectual modesty. He had an unquenchable curiosity in exploring new areas of research. He wrote an article on the Moplah rebellion of 1921 and published it in the Cambridge Journal of Indian Studies. In fact, a British officer named Hitchcock published a report a few years after the rise. Hardgrave traced it and republished it with his introduction.

Another new interest he acquired post-retirement was bird watching, to which he was drawn after a trip to the Galápagos Islands. With the zeal of a convert, he travelled extensively sighting new species. We used to exchange notes on the birds seen. It was on his counsel that I went to Bruny Island—located off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, Australia—considered the mecca for bird watchers. That turned out to be my most memorable birdwatching trip. I sighted the Wandering albatross. The last mail I had from him was about the greater adjutant stork, which I had observed in Assam and wrote about. He wanted a copy of the article. I was still searching for it when I got the news of his end.

Theodore Baskaran is a film historian and wildlife conservationist from Tamil Nadu. His book, The Message Bearers (1981), is a standard reference work on early south Indian cinema. His other book The Eye of the Serpent: An Introduction to Tamil Cinema (East West, 1996) won the Swarnakamal Award.