Walking along Pondicherry’s Promenade on a rainy morning last week, I stopped by the Gandhi statue, quite a pedestrian art piece compared to DP Roy Choudhuri’s magnificent piece that graces the Madras harbour. But as always, what caught my eye was the set of eight columns that stand around the statue. These and several others that stand in the neighboring Ayi Mandapam/Bharati Park were all once at the Venkataramanaswami Temple in Senji and were then brought here by the French to decorate their beach. It is forgotten that there was once a colonnade of 32 columns which the French brought from Madras in 1746. The British took them back to Madras after the siege of Pondicherry in 1762.
These columns, all of Pallavaram gneiss, were owed to Governor George Morton Pitt who, during his tenure in the 1730s, had them erected in four rows from the sea to the entrance to Fort St. George. Although it was meant to be an ornamental and ceremonial archway to beautify the city (shades of Singara Chennai here), the arcade became the city’s first commodity exchange, trading in the spaces between the columns. A row of shops appeared on one side, and these, along with the colonnade itself, can be seen in a 1793 drawing by William Daniells.
The statues, once upon a time, were in the Venkataramanaswami temple at Senji. They were brought here by the French to decorate the beach | Photo credit: Sriram V.
A lot happened between their erection and that picture. First, the board of trustees in England was not satisfied with the cost incurred for the 1,600 pagodas, much of which was taken from the duties of the town of Conicopoly (read civic taxes). They felt that the money could have been put to better use than such “showy things”. But between the letter announcing the project to them (January 1732) and the reply (November 1732) much of the work had been completed anyway, so nothing could be done to recoup the cost.
In 1746, as already mentioned, the French carried them off and had them erected on their beach, only for the British to bring them back in 1762 and erect them exactly as they were, facing the sea at Madras, as seen by William Daniells. By this time, the exchange had moved to what is now the Fort Museum, so the columns had to be used for another purpose. In the early 19th century, the spaces between the pillars were walled off and the building that emerged was known as the Pillar Godown. With business houses rapidly moving from the fort to First Line Beach/North Beach Road (Rajaji Salai) from the early 19th century, the godown was put to government use.
It was a recording room for several years and therefore the forerunner of the present Tamil Nadu Archives in Egmore. Then it became the government press. It was probably in 1831 that the Madras Government set up its own press, which we know operated from the ground floor of the “Fort St. George Office” until 1888, when it was moved to the old mint building in George Town, from where it still operates today. After 1888 we do not know what purpose the Pillar Godown served, but it became known as the Old Banqueting Hall, which was a misnomer.
These sculptures are beautiful examples of Vijayanagar sculptures | Photo credit: Sriram V.
HD Love, in Vestiges of Old Madras (1913), notes that the name was of recent origin even then – a case of mistaken identity, as the pillars looked much older than they were, with several hoops in iron bands to prevent splitting. It was also believed that the Company’s officials ate their meals here before Edward, 2nd Lord Clive, built the Banquet Hall (now Rajaji Hall) in 1802. Even then there were false histories!
In 1910, the Pillar Godown/Old Banqueting Hall was threatened with demolition. A new Council building (currently the Assembly and Secretariat) was built and the old building stood exactly where the portico was planned. That’s when Governor Sir Arthur Lawley intervened. He believed that the pillars should be incorporated into the building itself, and that is exactly what happened. Even today we can see the columns, now sadly painted and unpolished to a shiny black, adorning the first floor of the assembly in sets of four. Love is careful to note that only the “best-preserved” columns were incorporated, meaning that some have disappeared.
In my opinion these pillars, magnificent no doubt, do not equal those of Pondicherry in beauty. These are beautiful specimens of Vijayanagara sculpture. The French took them from Senji Temple in the late 17th century. The pillars were arranged around the statue of Dupleix, which was now pushed to a corner of the beach and replaced by a statue of Gandhi.
(Sriram V. is a writer and historian.)
Published – 28 Jan 2026 06:30 IST
