Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  Relationships could be remarkably free and an anecdote from 1881 recorded by the Rajah of Cochin who ruled from 1895 until 1914 is telling. ‘In the Palliyil house in Trippunithura,’ he wrote, ‘there was a girl who was the step-daughter of the late Rajah.’ She was sixteen at the time and already had ‘a regular husband’. ‘I proposed,’ he declares very matter-of-factly, ‘to become paramour to her, and, as the husband raised no objection to this course it was done so. This kind of things [sic] was not considered improper at the time.’83 What is interesting here is that this late Rajah’s wife already had a daughter from a previous husband, (indicating that even princes married widows or divorcees) and this girl, even at the highest social station in the court of Cochin, could keep two men at the same time. In Travancore, Queen Ashure, as alluded to previously, is said to have even taken an English lover in the seventeenth century while Gowri Parvathi Bayi in the early nineteenth, some say, had two husbands. Mulam Tirunal’s marriage to Sankaran Tampi’s wife was preceded by his uncle’s taking Kalyani Pillai as consort, when she was herself attached to a famous Kathakali actor, who in turn had several other ladies to attend to as well.84 The author C.V. Raman Pillai wedded his late wife’s sister, for whom it was the fourth marriage in a line that included two dead husbands and one divorce.85

  Traditional Kerala society never frowned at all this for the simple reason that such sexual relations were not taboo. It was customary and made perfect sense within the historical and economic context of the land. But what did happen by the nineteenth century was the impact of Christian missionaries with their prudish Victorian notions of decency and morality, aided by the colonial enterprise to ‘civilise’ India. Greater interaction with other parts of the subcontinent where patriarchy was the norm also added fat to the fire. To these modern-day observers Kerala’s marriage practices were a source of outrageous horror and in 1901 Augusta Blandford in her book on Travancore took exception to the Nairs and their marriage system as ‘very revolting’.86 As J. Devika records, a ‘general picture of decay and backwardness’ was conveyed to the world, and Malayalis as a whole came to be ridiculed for their ‘peculiar system of inheritance’ and their ‘obnoxious system of promiscuous marriage or no marriage at all’.87 Licentious, as a superlative, would have suited Kerala perfectly according to these modern accounts, and the 1875 Travancore Census Report was most apologetic when it spoke of the ‘looseness of the prevailing morals and the unbinding nature of the marriage tie, which possesses such fascination for the majority of our population’.88

  It must be remembered, additionally, that this was also the time when Nair men were out studying at the new English colleges and schools, exposed to these foreign opinions. ‘The Malayalis as a class are the most idle and homesick of the whole Hindu community,’ decided a Madras newspaper, ‘owing to the enervating influence exercised on their character by their peculiar system of inheritance and their obnoxious system of promiscuous marriage.’89 Hitherto local practices affected no Malayali as odd. But now he had to face derogatory comments about their repulsive ‘backwardness’. ‘And it became worse,’ Saradamoni tells us, ‘when sambandham was equated to concubinage and the women to mistresses and the children called bastards.’90 Suddenly Kerala was told that the female ought be a paragon of Victorian virtue, which meant her rampant sexuality begged to be controlled, and that the man-wife-and-children format of family was what was eminently desirable and correct. One particularly interesting debate from these times, highlighted by Devika, pertained to the attire of women. It was quite normal for Malayali women even in the twentieth century to move around bare-breasted, just as Malayali men also wore nothing above the waist. In other words, nobody in Kerala saw covering the torso as anything worthy of discussion or special interest.91 However, by the end of the nineteenth century, with the woman’s body becoming subject to so much scrutiny, her bare-breastedness began to be condemned. Male bare-breastedness continued (and indeed still does) but suddenly women’s breasts became a matter of embarrassing social concern. Nobody expressed this as well as Mannathu Padmanabhan when he declared in a speech to the Nairs, ‘We need to keep our women in place by making them virtuous.’92 Matriliny suddenly became an atrocious repository of sin and debauchery, and a national humiliation for Kerala.

  Alongside all this, the economic management of matrilineal households was also deteriorating, turning them, as Robin Jeffrey quips, into ‘pressure cookers’.93 The Nairs and other high castes lived in large joint families known as taravads where property was owned collectively. In other words, division of land and resources on individual basis was not permitted. As the communist leader A.K. Gopalan remembered, it was much like living in a community hostel. One got fairly comfortable spaces to reside in, with food, clothing and other requisites, but that was that.94 Cash allowances were not permitted and the elders of the family took all the decisions for everybody. It was not unusual for thirty or forty people to be living under the same roof of a taravad and in some families like that of the outrageously wealthy Paliyam in Cochin, hundreds lived together, with their own school, dining halls, hospital and other amenities. But while the taravad granted security to its inhabitants, it could not always tolerate changes. Sending young men to college, for example, was not seen as an urgent need, even if those youngsters desired it. And, what was worse, if they were sent to college and got jobs, all their earnings would go to the taravad for everyone’s benefit. This created resentment and the new generation of Nairs, educated on Western lines and with a good understanding of the advantages of individualism, found it exasperating to see their money go into the coffers of an autocratic establishment of elders and half-educated cousins.

  By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, educated Nairs began to call for the reform of the marriage system and for the right to claim individual shares in ancestral taravad properties. Both were very vehemently opposed by orthodox sections of society but as the political clout of these educated men grew, some legal breakthroughs were gained. In 1896 the Government of Madras allowed for sambandhams to be registered as ‘proper’ marriages, and the Nairs out to ‘reform’ the community rejoiced. The community itself, however, responded coldly; in the first fourteen months after the enactment, in the entire Malabar district only fifty-one sambandhams were registered and in the decade that followed only forty-nine were added.95 In other words, while the young men, ashamed of their traditions, sought to emulate the ‘civilised’ world and cultivate women in the image of the Virgin Mary, society had far too much at stake to abandon the existing system without an alternative plan.

  But pressure continued to be applied and cracks began to appear. In 1912, Travancore gave its first boost to nuclear families, modelled on the patriarchal style (virtuous wife and all) when it allowed men to bequeath part of their self-acquired property or money to wives and children instead of the taravad. More importantly (and not a little judgementally), it gave women the right of maintenance from husbands, so long as they did not ‘live in adultery’ (i.e., have other partners).96 In what was seen as ideal, the man became the breadwinner and the woman and her children, his dependants. Of course, this did not mean she lost rights in her own taravad, which remained as backup, but agitation continued. By 1923 the call was final: matriliny should be abolished and individual partition was to be the weapon of choice. P. Thanu Pillai, who piloted a bill in the Legislative Council, argued as follows:

  As a result of a careful diagnosis, the disease of the taravads was traced to the evil effects of the joint family system, in which the individual has no defined right or responsibility; where the incentive to personal exertion is the happiness of other people (the sister’s children, not one’s own) … The object of the bill is to eradicate once for all the evils in the [matrilineal] system with a view to better the moral, economic and industrial conditions of its followers, by giving each member full scope for individuality and personal endeavour, by holding him responsible to take care of himself and his wife and children;
in short to compel him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow or in the alternative to beg or to starve … to give him a definite share in his taravad property as well as in his father’s property. This will lead to the substitution of taravads by families in the real sense of the word, united by the bonds of natural love where children will look up to the parents with affectionate regards for support and guidance.97

  This is most interesting, for this was the educated Nair man’s reform and all the proposed gains were for ‘him’. The ‘individual’ here is male and the call was to dismantle a system where females would be affected most. It is worth asking whether this ardent desire of men to establish nuclear families with themselves as the central characters in them stemmed from a lack of identity. In the old days, the Nair man went out to war and was always training for it. But with the coming of colonialism, he was reduced to squatting at home, under the authority of family elders, with nothing much to do. So the taravad, that had earlier created spaces for both women and men, now seemed to serve the purposes of the former only. ‘Masculinity’, so stressed upon by the West, became a touchy point for the Nairs as jibes from the Brahmins (who, importantly, had sexual access to the Nairs’ sisters) and others began to mount. So it was most essential for the Malayali man to rehabilitate his identity by the ‘sweat of his brow’ and by controlling his woman, in order to gain respect in the modern (Victorian) world. And none of this was possible so long as the taravad continued to shelter women, their rights, and their ‘immoral’ lifestyles.

  On the side, as Devika has detailed, women were also now asked to cultivate an image as humble, passive and in need of protection. ‘Womanly qualities’ were championed, with special emphasis on sexual virtue and loyalty to a single husband.98 Colonial authorities actively promoted this and it is noteworthy that Queen Victoria conferred upon the late Rani Lakshmi Bayi the imperial distinction called the Crown of India to commend her moral integrity when she refused to divorce Kerala Varma Valiya Koil Tampuran at the height of court intrigues in the 1870s.99 In the famous novel Indulekha by O. Chandu Menon, a landmark in Malayalam literature which became very popular with women, the protagonist Madhavi is a prototype of the new Malayali lady. She has all the qualities of a self-assured woman but (and this is crucial) she is tremendously dedicated to her one man, has the graces of an English lady, and is horrified when her virtue is questioned. Women’s magazines also began to make their appearance in Kerala, promoting the domesticated, dedicated, motherly lady. ‘We will publish nothing related to politics,’ declared the Keraleeya Sugunabodhini in 1892, adding that entertaining tales, ‘writings that energise the moral conscience’, cookery, biographies of ‘ideal women’, and ‘other such enlightening topics’ only would be covered.100As late as 1926 the Mahila Mandiram, for instance, would strongly argue that a woman’s role was as mistress of the (husband’s) household, and as a caretaker and that she should leave everything else to the superior competence of men. Propaganda was at its peak.

  To be fair, of course, there were serious systemic problems with the taravad as well. As families grew large they became unwieldy and domestic quarrels became the bane of every Nair family across Kerala. The senior male member, who managed affairs, could often be more partial to his immediate relations at the cost of everyone else in the taravad. Favoured nephews might get perks like an English education while others would be denied opportunities. In major taravads it was also not unheard of for impatient nephews to connive to assassinate senior kin to obtain sooner rather than later the advantages of their rank and position. Enterprising men looking for capital to start business ventures could find no support from taravads, owing to joint ownership of resources; between 1897 and 1907 alone an average of 487 suits were brought to court by nephews against the managing senior uncles of their taravads.101 And in general, many intelligent men of the day began to see a dangerous pattern in allowing young boys to remain comfortably ensconced in the security of the taravad, wasting all productivity. By the 1920s, thus, it became quite obvious that something radical would have to be done. Some moderate Nair leaders only called for reducing the size of taravads by dividing them into more manageable branches. But as always, moderates were rarely heard and the more extreme clamour for individual partition was set to succeed.

  Inevitably, the issue was raised in the legislature in Travancore and it was obvious that there was complete political support for the proposal. Any opposition was put down by moralistic arguments against which there could never be any defence; those standing in the way were admonished for holding on to antiquated, uncivilised beliefs. And so in April 1925 the Legislative Council passed a bill terminating matriliny, permitting partition of property, ‘legalising’ all sambandhams, and essentially inaugurating the age of the patriarchal family in Travancore. It was sent to the Maharani for her assent and on 13 April she signed the historic Nair Regulation of 1925, giving matrilineal kinship the unique distinction of being the only system of inheritance and family in the world to be abolished by law.102 Similar Acts were passed for the Ezhava and Vellala communities also, sections of which were matrilineal. The Government of Madras would follow her lead in 1933 and do the same in Malabar, while Cochin would issue corresponding orders by 1938.

  It is not entirely certain what Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s private views on the matter were. Her conservative education and outlook, shaped by Victorian characters like Miss Watts, indicate that insofar as the moral argument was concerned, she was definitely for it. For a woman whose crest celebrated Sola Nobilitat Virtus (Virtue Is The Only Nobility) the idea of multiple partners was abhorrent and so both polygamy and polyandry were abolished. So too she would end the practice of women walking about with uncovered breasts in public, especially in temples. As for the (patriarchal) sanctity of marriage, she was a staunch believer as clearly seen from the fact that she had no qualms in going against the head of her own taravad, Mulam Tirunal, in supporting her husband, who was technically an outsider. In other words, she clearly felt change was necessary among matrilineal communities in Kerala with regard to marriage and family. But that said, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s policy towards women was not one of domestication. And as will be seen ahead, she did a great deal to ensure that women retained their independent spirit and power even when the taravads, that had once enshrined it, perished at the altar of patriarchal modernity.

  One of the most iconic representations of these epochal social changes was that old award-winning painting by Raja Ravi Varma of Mahaprabha, holding in her arms her eldest boy. As G. Arunima tells us, There Comes Papa was painted in the early 1890s when the role of the ‘papa’ was still uncertain. ‘What is the significance of the painting called There Comes Papa when the subject and the artist are both products of a matrilineal society?’ she asks. ‘The absent yet approaching papa signifies the crisis in Nair matriliny in the late nineteenth century. The fact that Ravi Varma chose to celebrate conjugal domesticity and the nuclear family at a time when these were comparatively unknown among large sections of the matrilineal population reveals his growing patrilineal sensibilities. There Comes Papa becomes akin to a clarion call for the end of matriliny.’103

  And it was. If a generation earlier, Ravi Varma painted the approach of the papa, it fell to his granddaughter to open the doors and let the man in as master of the house. In the five years that followed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s historic legislation, 33,000 taravads were partitioned in Travancore and property worth over four crore rupees was divided among the Nairs.104 Matriliny began to fade into the memories of grandmothers and into the pages of history books. It would continue, till feminists redeemed it, to be decried as an immoral, barbarous system that served only to corrupt ‘family values’. Covertly, however, women in Kerala would always remember the good old days when the taravad gave them a place and a voice against the unmistakable chauvinism that replaced attitudes towards the female, a problem that endures to this day.

  In September 1925, the Maharani completed her first year in power
; and it had been a year of great successes. Happily enough then, the final months of the year turned out to be a merry affair, with a train of celebrations presenting themselves one after the other. The first of these was occasioned when the Viscount George Goschen of Hawkhurst, who had succeeded Lord Willingdon in Madras, came on a state visit to Travancore. It was the norm for princely states to host such tours, packed with tiger hunts, garden parties, dazzling balls, and all other splendours associated with ‘Oriental Courts’. But the present excursion was short, being chiefly to commemorate the signing of the Four-Party Alliance. After enjoying the entertainments in Cochin, thus, the Governor and his lady arrived in Trivandrum on 19 October. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi received them with due honour and following the usual courtesy calls and returns, treated them to a sumptuous banquet the next day. The Governor took the Maharani into the hall on his arm, not something she was accustomed to, but to which she happily consented in the interests of custom and good etiquette. Toasts were raised, pretty speeches were made, and unwavering loyalty, etc., to the British Crown was proclaimed. But what was more amusing was how, as the Resident noted, the Maharani was so ‘greatly interested in seeing Europeans eat meat for the first time in her life’.105 Her eyes widened as she watched, with an almost childlike enchantment, her distinguished guests carve their meat and tear it with their forks and knives. Wine was generously served, with the Hindu guests drinking plain coloured imitations. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was in fact a little self-conscious at the banquet, for it was her first ever, but she played the hostess charmingly enough and the visit was declared a success, concluding with a picnic and shikar organised by the Valiya Koil Tampuran the next day. The Governor and his ménage took the Maharani’s leave on 22 October and returned to Madras.