The Oldest Library in India

India got its oldest library through a stowaway. What do we mean by that? A stowaway is one who smuggles on to a passenger vehicle without a valid ticket to cover the fare. We have to go back one hundred and eighty years, when a young British Anglo-Indian, Abel Joshua Higginbotham was thrown out of a ship at Madras Presidency. Being a librarian, he got a job as a store manager of Wesleyan Book Shop. This store was patronised by local theologians and it sold mostly religious works and scriptures. The year was 1846. Around 1854, the store was shut down as the missionaries who ran it, also ran out of profits. They offered the Store Manager, Abel, the option of buying the stock of books from them. Who was Abel Higginbotham? He was born in Scotland and after completing high school; he became a seaman. He was not suited to the rough life on sea. He then tried to abandon the ship that he was employed on but was caught and as a stowaway; he was forced to work as an apprentice. When the ship boarded at Madras in India, he ran away and escaped. When the Wesleyan Book Shop offered him the option buying the stock, he took the opportunity and started calling the store, `Higginbothams’. The store gained popularity in time for the quality of its books and the diversity of subjects. Abel was adept and used his knack of tracking down and buying rare books that were in popular demand. The evidence of this is found in a guide book that was published in 1859 by John Murray. It was titled, `Presidencies of Madras and Bombay’. They listed `Higginbothams’ as a `premier book shop’. For all book lovers who lived in Madras, the name `Higginbothams’ became synonymous with not just a good book store but THE book store to go to. Even to the present day, this book store’s name is bound to trigger many memories. All those who visited this bookstore would remember the quality of books this store housed and the famous chequered visual floor patterns, its wooden railings and the high arches. It used to serve upscale families, mostly of royal lineage, ministers and their institutions for more than a hundred years. It is known today as India’s oldest bookstore and it is still in business in major centres of the country even after one hundred and seventy-five years. The bookstore chain opened its unit in Bangalore at Mahatma Gandhi Road in 1897 in a double-storeyed Greco-Roman style building. This is the oldest bookstore in existence in Bangalore, today. In 1869, Britain helped open the Suez Canal and it provided direct access to Asia in considerably good time. What was a three-month journey from England to India was now possible in a matter of three weeks. Tourism and trade grew and ships that were carrying foreign goods came into India at a faster rate. Large crates for the bookstore, `Higginbothams’, were regularly offloaded at Madras Port. They were precious cargo of books and publications which were on the top of the bestseller lists in the United Kingdom and Europe. This helped Higginbothams in becoming the largest bookstore chain in India in the nineteenth century and the reputation grew. The Prince of Wales who went on to become King Edward VII was an avid reader. Higginbothams was appointed as his official bookseller when he visited India in 1876. They were designated to provide the Prince with sufficient reading material after his arrival at the Royapuram Station in Madras. This indirectly helped the bookstore in attracting a large elite clientele. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Higginbothams had turned into the official book supplier for the government and it expanded its trading by publishing cookbooks with recipes. Its clientele ranged from the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to the Maharaja of Mysore, Jayachamaraja Wodeyar. It was not a surprise then that Madras Curry Powder and Mulligatawny Soup became the legacy of the British Raj; only after Higginbothams printed their recipes. A.J. Higginbothams died in 1891 and left his son, C.H. Higginbotham in-charge of the bookstore. After the son took over, he spread the legacy across the whole range of Southern India. The store shifted to its present location at Mount Road (which is now called Anna Salai). This white building is one of the landmark structures as a form of heritage in the City of Madras (now Chennai). By the nineteen forties, Higginbothams had started stalls at the Central Railway Station in Madras and at Ernakulam Junction Railway Station in Cochin, making books available to interested travelers. In 1949, after India gained independence, S. Anantharamakrishnan, belonging to the `Amalgamations Group’, purchased the bookstore and made it into an Indian company. Today, in the digital age, people do not appreciate the fact that physical books do retain their charm. To Higginbothams, regional language publications have always remained important. The shop in Chennai has an exclusive section for books in the Tamil language. This group has more than twenty stores spread all over Southern India. The store in Chennai is important in a historical perspective as the first and the oldest bookstore in South India. It was at Mount Road in Madras in the year 1844 that Abel Joshua Higginbotham purchased spare office space and established this bookstore which is perhaps the oldest bookstore in the country. More About the Family Abel Joshua Higginbotham was born in Cannanore in Kerala, India, in 1819. His father Joseph Higginbotham served in Bangalore as part of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment. This regiment’s Indian sepoys had rebelled in the 1815 Vellore mutiny. Joshua Higginbotham’s mother died when he was only twelve years old and as his father passed away in a few years; he was adopted by missionaries of the Church of Scotland. He became a seaman as soon as he completed his schooling. The rough life at sea and its monotony did not appeal to him. He tried to abandon his ship and return to India but was caught and forced to serve out his apprenticeship. He became a stowaway at Madras Port. There, he worked in a bookstore and later became its manager. This bookstore belonged to the Methodist missionaries. He became passionate about collecting books. He recognised that he had developed the skills to converse about books and he was resourceful in tracking down rare books that were in demand. He managed the bookstore in the basement of the chapel. Initially, it sold only religious works. He decided to shift the store to Mount Road. In March 1859, Lord Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras at that time, wrote about the bookstore to Thomas Macaulay. He talked about it as “one of the many elusive and indescribable charms of life in Maras City. The following year, many noticeable renovations were made to the shop by John Law, a recognised builder and an architect. As time went by, in 1875, Higginbotham and Company were registered as bookseller and stationery supplier to the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) when he visited India. During the visit of the King, Higginbotham began publishing its own books as well as some classics in ancient Hindu Law and other well-known works such as Colonel Todd’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Mark Wilks’ Sketches of South India and Francis Buchanan’s Mysore. The popularity of the bookstore brought the popularity of Higginbotham to the limelight. Civic officials sought him out for his knowledge. In 1890, he served as the Sheriff of Madras for a few years before his death. The bookstore scaled big heights under the supervision of Charles Herbert Higginbotham. It had become the city’s go-to place by 1904 and it had by then completed almost six decades since its inception. It started to sell apart from books; stationery and related supplies. Another store was opened in Bangalore and subsequently; bookstalls were set up at railway stations serving the Madras and South Indian Railways. Charles Higginbotham kept up the publishing interests of his father and carried on his legacy. Some of the first curry recipe books in India were published by Higginbotham and Company. Some of the titles were `Sweet Dishes’ and `A Little Treatise on Confectionery’. Charles Higginbotham died in 1930. In 1949, there was a merger with Associated Publishers which was part of the Madras business group of Amalgamations Group. Higginbothams remains a legendary name and a landmark in its accomplished history of one hundred and seventy-four years at various railways stations and cities across India. Several decades ago, when brick-and-mortar bookstores were struggling to survive or were locked some decades later in a fight with e-commerce big-shots, Higginbothams continued to be a big draw and lured customers who had passion for books that attracted its founder, eighteen decades ago.