The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

by Manu S. Pillai

condescension. A later Resident, for instance, declared most local politicians ‘as lousy a lot’ as possible, who were ‘lying, mean, cowardly, conceited, intriguing, and packed full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. I wish,’ he added, ‘they could be deported en masse to Abyssinia and have a taste of real repression and oppression by a really totalitarian government.’

‘The petition,’ Mr Vernon dryly commented, ‘can hardly be called representative of the people of Travancore.’

The English, however, were determined to convert these hills into a plantation district. ‘The story of the transformation of the hills of Central Travancore,’ it is said, ‘is well worth the telling, for it is a story of enterprise, courage, and self-reliance.’

The Syrian Christians, famously ‘dynamic and flexible’, paved the way in making use of these opportunities, but the old-fashioned Nairs, who controlled most economic resources, looked down at unconventional agriculture and commercial undertakings with ‘lordly disdain’.42 Ensconced within the bubble of self-sufficiency provided by their (rapidly diminishing) ancestral holdings, they sneered at trade and anything involving ‘vulgar’ notions of profit.

Sethu Lakshmi Bayi realised that economic independence was the only sustainable formula for social change among the quarrelling classes of Travancore.

Travancore was, even in the 1920s, decades ahead of much of the subcontinent.

The Maharani was, in fact, remarkably cognizant of the long term and many of her contributions were oriented towards setting the stage for crucial future happenings. This far-sightedness previously manifested itself in her endorsement of the Cochin Harbour Scheme, which proved to be a great success.

Travancore’s rights over the disputed water, agreeing also to pay a royalty for every unit of power they generated from it. They also withdrew a previous claim that only they had a right to set up a power plant, with the result that the state was now in a position to build a hydroelectric station in the hills, ‘if and when the need arises’.57 In other words, the Maharani successfully cleared the path for the establishment of the state’s first power station. And indeed when the Pallivasal Hydroelectric Plant was opened in 1940, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would look back with satisfaction at having persuasively closed that old battle with the company, something her uncle had failed to do, without which the project could never have taken off,

Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had ‘the courage of her convictions’ and guided by her idealism and intelligence alike, did her best to firmly overcome all these obstacles.

The Regency has devolved upon her under a law of succession peculiar to this and the neighbouring state of Cochin, and her enhanced position necessitates both now and after the Regency has terminated considerably greater expenditure than if she had continued merely as Senior Rani. And a further reason for treating her generously now is that as she is not the mother of the minor Maharajah, she is unlikely to receive any special consideration upon the latter attaining his majority.82

Something, naturally, had to be done to quell this dangerous hatred for the new king. It was here that Martanda Varma’s shrewd genius unearthed a weapon more formidable than any other from the chronicles of history, deploying it masterfully to render all resistance to his power morally impotent. The Maharajah discovered the power of faith.

In 1659 the ruler of Tanjore had passed through a golden cow into the arms of the wife of his chief priest, the lady playing ‘the role of midwife, rocking and caressing him while he cried like an infant’.

The overriding theme of these kind of writings was to construct a superhuman royal image of the kings based on origin myths, dynastic traditions, genealogies, etc. to legitimise their right as hereditary rulers. Even this aspect of divinization of monarchy to invoke religious symbolism and thereby legitimise political power was absent in Kerala.

A final, desperate effort to recover their lost prestige was made shortly after a young, indolent prince succeeded to power in 1798 and surrounded himself with a coterie headed by a ‘stupid and unprincipled’ Brahmin. His cabinet, a ‘triumvirate of ignorance, profligacy, and rapacity’,25 offered in the guise of economic reforms such tyrannical measures that a rebellion was provoked in the state, showing that the Nairs still had enough fight left in them. Its leader, Velu Tampi, was a Nair of superior family standing, who camped outside Trivandrum with a vast militia (something that Martanda Varma would never have allowed, and which was a sign that the royal family’s grip was slipping).

‘If Velu Tampi was the most unscrupulous in his designs,’ one historian notes, ‘he was undoubtedly also the ablest man of his time. He knew how to lead his countrymen like sheep and how to work upon their fears.’

He had a ‘disarming naivete’ about him, and was genuinely concerned about the welfare of the people, but could not assert himself for the actual implementation of the causes he assumed so fervently.

I am perfectly sensible of the direct and indirect consequences of your threatened precipitate action, and perhaps the most humiliating and painful of them all would be to face the inevitable taunt that the very man in supporting whose nomination I went out of my way and raised a storm in the country, unprecedented in its violence and extent, eventually fell out with me.

Even M.S. Subbulakshmi, the doyenne of Carnatic music in the twentieth century, who arguably did more to popularise Indian music around the world than anyone else, was descended from a line of accomplished and highly talented devadasis.14

The idea of a woman advocate drew much attention and also some scorn; in one amusing incident an ignoramus Brahmin was so astonished that he went around insisting that Chandy had to be a man in women’s clothing ‘since no woman could possibly argue cases with such ruthless vigour’!

but what pleased everyone more was that the training seemed to be doing the Maharajah good. In only a matter of days it was reported that ‘in a small but significant way’, the boy had ‘shown his relief at being released from the bondage of his mother’s apron strings’.

Parukutty Neithiyar Amma.

But the Viceroy, it was told, had become ‘very anxious’ to personally carry out the investiture ceremony, also wishing to inspect Cochin Harbour in the course of the same trip (where his wife and he would name the reclamation ‘Willingdon Island’).

‘I emerge a wiser woman from the Regency,’ she ruminated in a pensive letter to the Valiya Tampuran of Cochin, ‘and have learnt that often in this world one gets kicks for honest, selfless work, while the canting self seeker wins half pence.’166

They would then greet her by throwing their sacred threads over the shoulder to the elbow, ‘and then first doing a namaste and then moving both hands outwards and in again in a fast motion, meaning “Many, many greetings”’.

But in spite of grandfather’s continuous disapproval of mother’s rebellious and unorthodox outlook on life, she remained his favourite. He never stopped censuring her, and she never stopped flouting his orders.61

To those shocked by the battle between the two royal women in the twentieth century, these antecedents of their forbears proved that this was all perhaps a natural component of the troubled heritage of the ruling dynasty.

sedulously

Velu Tampi, by now Dewan, ordered the customary ceremonies in the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, asking the Elayarajah to represent the Rani. But ‘rejecting with disdain his Ministry in that capacity, she rose from her couch to offer the [rituals] with her own hands’ and returned from the temple and ‘expired the same day’.19 Even as she went to the grave in 1808, thus, the Attingal Rani withheld recognition from her hateful mother’s chosen heir, preserving for her own descendants the title to the throne.

… the difficulty in present Travancore politics … is the existence of a ‘trinity’— His Highness, Her Highness his mother, and Sir CP; and it is almost like a three-card trick in trying to ‘spot the knave’ … What they want is [for] Sir Muhammad to resign.

The ‘private’ door that Lord Willingdon opened to the Maharajah in 1931 through Sir CP to put an end to the Regency had now come to stab an utterly astonished Government of India in its own back.48

It was reminiscent of an episode in 1928 when one of Chithira Tirunal’s tutors asked him, after saying goodbye before his departure, if he would write to him sometime. The sixteen-year-old Maharajah innocently responded: ‘I must ask my mother first.’53

Temple entry was, then, a desperate attempt to fracture the alliance between the Christians and the Ezhavas, at a historic crossroads where the latter, with all their influence, could either join forces and march alongside the former, standing up to the communal regime, or be won over by a drastic and far-reaching reform to back the Hindu cause against the Christians by that very regime.

The people no longer wanted generous monarchs; they wanted power for themselves.