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Residents of Madras have for years viewed it as the chess capital of
Asia - and that status was confirmed recently when the city’s favorite
son, Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, won the
World Chess Championships in Tehran. Half of India’s Grandmasters and two thirds of her International Masters are from
this southern city. The reasons for this success aren’t clear-cut but speculation is rife. Some point to the chess infrastructure said to be a result of the close Indo-Soviet ties in the 1960s; others say the “relative intellectual superiority” of
South Indians make the triumphs inevitable.
 At a flat in the south Indian city
of Madras - young children are hunched over chessboards. They play at an alarming speed. The best and fastest player in the room is just
seven
years old - Srinath’s style and method of play are already being compared to his hero Viswanathan
Anand. “When I heard Anand had won the world championships I was delighted. I immediately thought that I wanted to achieve
that - to become another Anand. To do that I am constantly competing against other children and I am also playing my computer.”
 Srinath
(born February 14, 1994) is a second standard student of P S Senior
Secondary School, Mylapore, Madras. And he is following in the footsteps of many great players from Madras. The first world famous one was
Manuel Aaron who in 1961 became India’s first International Master, a ranking just below Grandmaster.
Aaron, a nine times national champion, says, that chess was always popular here but it only really took off after independence - when the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru encouraged close ties with the Soviet Union, which brought unexpected benefits. “During the sixties and seventies India was a most
favored nation for the Soviets. They were bringing in a lot of propaganda material, giving it away very cheap or free. So one of the things they brought in here were chess books. They also wanted to show that they were having a very good collaboration with the Indians in different
fields - so chess was one of the things in which it was very easy for them to collaborate.”
Soviet money paid for the
Tal Chess Academy in Madras. Named after the Russian chess genius and
former World Champion, Michael Tal, it became a training ground for the city’s young masters. One of the children who played there was the future world champion, Viswanathan Anand. But for Jayaranjan, an academic at the Institute of Development Alternatives, the local clubs are only a small part of Madras’ chess success. “We have a long tradition in terms of working on mathematics and physics. Even earlier the very philosophy and the music that we have is more in the abstract form rather than very explicit. If you take the Carnatic music and compare it with the
Hindustani, the Carnatic music is a very abstract one”.
But Murali Mohan, a joint secretary at the Tamil Nadu Chess Association - thinks that residents of Madras, now officially known as Chennai, have a “natural” advantage “If you compare with a North Indian - say a person from Punjab and a person from
Madras, the person from Punjab will be very sturdy physically and they will be fit to play hockey, basketball and other very sturdy games that require physical strength. Generally
South Indians are not physically strong but they are very mentally strong. Probably that is one of the reasons why
Madras children pick up chess much faster than they pick up other games.”
But the local talent wouldn’t have flourished without financial support. Businessmen have backed the game and the
Madras based newspaper "The Hindu" has given chess
excellent coverage - something that is assured whilst Viswanathan Anand is
World Champion. Vijayalakshmi
Subburaman India’s first female Grandmaster is also from the
city of Madras. “After what Anand has done it is not an improvement only for
Madras - I would say that it is an improvement for the whole of India and Asia also. He is the first person from the Asian continent to become a World Champion in chess. So I think it is a very big encouragement and inspiration for many of the players.”
Anand’s victory has been a particular inspiration for children like
Srinath who are learning and mastering the game across Madras. They are developing the skills that will ensure a rich chess heritage
continues - it is a proud tradition that will keep the city at the top of the sport, and may in the future bring another world champion to south India.
Source
: Mr Crispin Thorold, BBC Correspondent & Mr C L Narayanan
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