The Ivory Throne Quotes

“We want our Public Service to be public and a service,”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“My visit to Her Highness was an agreeable surprise for me. Instead of being ushered into the presence of an over-decorated woman, sporting diamond pendants and necklaces, I found myself in the presence of a modest young woman who relied not upon jewels or gaudy dress for beauty but on her own naturally well formed features and exactness of manners. Her room was as plainly furnished as she was plainly dressed. Her severe simplicity became an object of my envy. She seemed to me an object lesson for many a prince and many a millionaire whose loud ornamentation, ugly looking diamonds, rings and studs and still more loud and almost vulgar furniture offend the taste and present a terrible and sad contrast between them and the masses from whom they derive their wealth.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“avuncular”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Cabral sacked an Arab vessel, provoking retaliation from Muslim merchants who burned down his warehouse and killed between fifty and seventy Portuguese men. Cabral took to the safety of the sea and looted every ship he could find and, in what was meant as a lesson to the Zamorin, bombarded Calicut from afar for an entire day, killing nearly 600 people.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“As a commentator in the Madras Mail noted in 1905, ‘we have the Brahmin interest, the Nair interest, the Syrian interest, the Ezhava interest etc., and … there are journals to support each one’s cause”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“After the end of the war, Princess Lalitha did the unthinkable: she moved out of the palace, in pursuit of her own freedom. ‘It sounds very simple now,’ tells her cousin, ‘but at the time it was an extraordinary thing to do. Most people aspired to live like princes, with servants and luxury and all that wealth, but here was this young woman running away from it; giving up her golden spoon for something much more ordinary.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Travancore, an awkward entity created with the devoted assistance of Tamil Brahmins, went down also with one of the greatest Tamil Brahmins who ever lived. And its dynasty’s most loyal adherent became also its ultimate gravedigger.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Dewan had even negotiated an agreement with Jinnah ‘for the supply of foodstuffs from Pakistan’ and ‘it had already been agreed to exchange representatives between Travancore and Pakistan. He would also send representatives to other countries, for example Turkey.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“their emergence was married to industrial successes in the two important districts of Alleppey and Shertallai in north Travancore, which also boasted the first trade union in the state, the Travancore Labour Association. By now it had transformed itself into the Coir Factory Workers’ Union, and with 7,400 fee-paying members, this was perhaps the biggest of fifty unions in the state; Shertallai alone had eleven with 15,000 out of 20,000 local workers registered.16 All of them, it became clear, were prepared to stand up to the Dewan and scotch his latest flirtations with the State Congress.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Mysore, one of the greatest princely states, was famously progressive and more industrialised than any other part of India. In Baroda, the British did its people a favour by deposing a Maharajah who spent his time commissioning carpets of pearls, and installing in his place a young prince who would earn the love and respect of his subjects by far-sighted policy. In the 1940s, the ruler of Jaipur imported a minister from Mysore and sought to replicate its successes in his desert principality, starting schools, abolishing purdah, and so on. And, of course, in the south there was Travancore, guided by a line of fairly enlightened rulers into the higher echelons of progressive governance, winning appreciation from all quarters.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“while the tide was flowing towards greater democratisation and ultimately to India’s independence, the royal family were blinded by their own autocracy, revelling in obsolete notions of prestige and glory and in pursuit of impotent emblems of princely greatness.77 Indeed, even five decades later, the Junior Maharani’s son would refer to the 7,600 sq. miles of land that was Travancore as a veritable ‘empire’.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“I was wrapped up in lotus leaves, which served as a make-believe womb, and held against mother’s stomach. I presume our priests recommended this peculiar ‘remedy’ to the problem that I was born but wasn’t supposed to be born without permission! Anyway, I was packaged like that, and the Maharajah performed the ceremonies he was meant to do months before my birth. And then the leaves were opened and I was laid on the ground. The maids and women there were all instructed to come forth with these joyous ululations and loud exclamations, and so there was a great hoo-ha about my so-called ‘birth’. Then the Maharajah ‘recognised’ me and proceeded to the naming rituals. To her dying day mother couldn’t stop laughing when she told us this story, though on that day itself she was firmly instructed not to betray any emotion lest offence be taken.14”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“While Gandhi and Rajagopalachari celebrated the proclamation, the all-India leader of the low-caste movement, Dr B.R. Ambedkar himself expressed a more lukewarm response. He was not, he made it clear, convinced that spirituality or emancipation were the real intentions of the Maharajah’s historic proclamation. Instead, it was knowledge that the ‘cessation of so large a community would be the death-knell to the Hindus’ and the fact that Ezhavas by their recent actions had ‘made the danger real’, that compelled the state to act in a substantial manner.125 If it were not for these political pressures, Travancore might never have changed.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“His Highness is ever on his guard as though he has been carefully tutored beforehand and is afraid to say anything … Apparently this attitude is inculcated by Her Highness, his mother.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“The principle of [Malayali] law is that the whole [estate] property belongs to her and the [senior male] is simply the manager on her behalf”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“could go wrong on the way did—the plane was delayed”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore