Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  It was unfair to abandon them to ‘wolfish’ reformists, they argued, and made it clear that it was inappropriate to equate an Indian devadasi with a Western prostitute who sold her body for personal economic reasons. How, they asked, could they ‘be judged from the angle of western culture,’ passing ‘judgment on Hindu Society without understanding the genius of its construction’.21 It was clear that Indian zealots in an effort to purge Hinduism of anything that a Victorian might hold as immoral, were determined to divest the devadasis of their culture, and revise it without these women. But it was a battle they were destined to lose, and reformers were determined to succeed. As early as 1853 when Tanjore was taken over from its princely ruler by the British, the devadasis had realised that their final bastion of royal patronage had collapsed. In a desperate bid to salvage their art and their positions there, they took to singing ‘God Save the King’ in English, but history was against them, and so continued the decline of their ancient, somewhat decayed world.22

  In Travancore the movement against devadasis had caught on early in the twentieth century, with first the dedication of girls before puberty to temples being disallowed, and then, in 1921, all recruitment prohibited by an absolute decree.23 One cannot help but note in this a parallel with the demise of the matrilineal system that existed in Kerala, where also women were suddenly told that their breasts were meant to be covered, and not doing so meant they were unchaste; that the patriarchal ideal of the dutiful wife and mother was the pattern to live by; and that stoic widowhood was more becoming than the old polyandrous custom of taking, if they so desired, more than one husband. Nair girls did not dance and sing, but like the devadasis they too had enjoyed a social framework that offered them economic resources and freedoms; institutions that the new code of morality was determined to destroy.

  It was Sethu Lakshmi Bayi who passed that historic legislation in the state by which matrilineal families were abolished and patriarchal nuclear households given a boost as an intellectual ideal. The Maharani herself was something of a reformer who had adopted Western codes regarding the ‘proper’ behaviour of women. While she had grown up watching nautch performances by devadasis and others at court, by the time she came to the throne this was disposed of and a more austere, Victorian ethic given the place of honour. She had imbibed notions of womanhood that were now celebrated and, in fact, became an exemplar of the ideal Indian woman. This was why the Valiya Koil Tampuran was allowed a status superior to what custom decreed him, and as one Resident noted, ‘It is a matter of common knowledge that in the lifetime of the late Maharajah, he much disapproved of the Maharani Regent allowing [Rama Varma] to sit in her presence and to drive in the same carriage.’24 On another occasion when she was informed that her husband did not enjoy precedence at court and would have to be excluded from certain functions, she refused to accept it, stating that ‘the fact that he is my lawfully wedded husband and that our children are heirs to my family is all that is relevant to the question’.25 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was the epitome of the ‘good’ and ‘devoted’ wife, which is something even her worst critics admitted. One newspaper editorial that was otherwise ungenerous in holding her government to be full of ‘administrative blunders’ conceded that ‘the people had genuine and natural love and loyalty towards [the Maharani] on account of her womanly virtues.’ She was ‘always a loyal and dutiful wife first and foremost’ who ‘subordinated everything else to her unfailing duty to her husband’.26

  It was not especially surprising, then, that in 1930 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi during a visit to south Travancore balked at the prospect of being received at a temple by the local devadasis, who were now akin to prostitutes simply because their sexuality did not come with a marriage badge. She was ‘vexed’ to an extent that she ‘commanded on the spot that the system should go’.27 While her uncle proscribed the dedication of new devadasis in 1921, he had allowed existing participants to continue in service. The Maharani, however, put an end to even this, and no longer were these women to be seen in temples of the state. Their last day in that vocation was to be 15 August 1931, but in what was lauded as a generous move (by the puritans, since this was little consolation for the devadasis themselves), Sethu Lakshmi Bayi did not divest them of their incomes. ‘Her Highness,’ it was reported, ‘especially commanded that the women should continue to enjoy all the perquisites and allowances due to them’ during their lifetimes, so that they would not be forced to take to the streets.28 As in Madras, here also the devadasis objected and tried their best to prevent the Maharani from actually terminating their way of life. It was unfair, they argued, ‘to abolish their profession at the very moment in which women were being encouraged to enter the public domain through state support’ by the very same Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.29 But she was resolute and the reform was carried out, so much so that the forthcoming census report proudly, albeit somewhat indelicately, advertised that ‘no woman has been returned as a prostitute’ and that the abolition of the devadasi tradition had ‘contributed to this happy circumstance’.30

  She most likely thought of these women, in what was the general opinion those days, as prostitutes. This explains why she did not otherwise mind women taking part in the performing arts; in the 1940s she would train her own granddaughters in dance and music. In 1928 the first Malayalam feature film, Vigathakumaran, was released in Trivandrum. The lead actress was P.K. Rosy, a Dalit woman, whose duties included not only acting but also ‘cleaning up the kitchen and vessels’ on the sets. However, when the movie was released, high-caste audiences were incensed at having to watch a low-caste woman on screen. ‘They created a ruckus in the theatre, even burning down the screen. Rosy was heckled and her family ostracised. Once, Rosy even survived an attack against her when she went with her mother to the Chala market.’31 The Maharani promptly ordered police security for the actress, shocked at the horrific treatment to which she was being subjected.32 While Rosy never acted again, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s encouragement of cinema continued. She offered the makers of Vigathakumaran financial assistance for their next venture, a biopic on Martanda Varma. ‘However [they] put forward only one prayer before the ruler—that [they] be granted the opportunity to perform the puja of the film box of Martanda Varma at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple.’ The Maharani ‘not only sanctioned it, but assigned a portion of the cavalry to escort the film box, which was carried by an elephant, to the Capitol Theatre after the puja’. She also presented ‘a sword with the royal emblem’ to the lead actor, which became, apparently, ‘the first award in Malayalam cinema’.33

  If in the times of Gowri Lakshmi Bayi it was customary to grant government officials not only salaries and pensions but also female companions; by the days of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi even the last vestiges of this had been uprooted. But the cultural conservatism of the Maharani did not mean that she desired women to remain at home and withhold from participation in public life. While they were expected to be ‘ideal’ receptacles of the new morality, within those parameters she opened up spaces for them to occupy and to prosper. She herself, as successive Residents noted, always walked a step behind her husband and ensured that in all her meetings with men, he acted as chaperon. But in reality, she was more intelligent and capable than he was, and successfully negotiated that tightrope of running the government on the one hand, seeking his counsel on the other, but never offending his masculine ego. It was no surprise then that the cause of modern (patriarchal) women received an extra momentum during the Regency in Travancore, and unprecedented advances were made in a number of areas, including education, law, employment and more.

  Perhaps the simplest indication Sethu Lakshmi Bayi gave of her support to the cause of female education was a plain but unusual incentive. In the mid-1920s much excitement was aroused in Trivandrum when it was announced that all girls who went to college in the state would automatically be rewarded with an invitation to join their queen at her palace for tea.34 It was an attractive inducement, one that had its charms in a princely state with a
popular Maharani who was perhaps the only ‘celebrity’ available at the time. However, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi backed such symbolic gestures by actual proof of her commitment to female empowerment. Only months after her succession, the Maharani had elevated Dr Mary Poonen Lukose, Travancore’s first woman graduate and a product of one of the best medical colleges in the West, from being surgeon in charge of the Women and Children’s Hospital and her personal doctor, to the head of the Medical Department of Travancore. The news was printed in the Madras Mail under the heading of ‘Feminism in Travancore’, not least because at the same time Dr Mary was also nominated by the Maharani as a member of the Legislative Council, becoming the first woman to a take a seat in the house. It was the first time in India that a woman was being appointed the head of a major department, and also the first instance of a ‘Lady Legislator’.35 When she took her seat at the next session of the Council, ‘she was accorded an enthusiastic ovation and even after that there was a chorus of praise about the liberal and wise step’ taken by Sethu Lakshmi Bayi in opening these doors to educated women.36

  By 1928, the Maharani would nominate another woman to the legislature, one Mrs Elizabeth Kuruvilla, who would champion a motion to give equal chances to women in government appointments with men by the following year.37 By 1931 the Sri Mulam Popular Assembly, which represented local needs of the various classes of people in Travancore to the government, saw its rules revised so as to allow women to become members and to vote. As many as five women were immediately nominated into the Assembly, but ‘it is hoped’, announced the Dewan, ‘that at future sessions elected women will take their place’, fulfilling the Maharani’s ‘solicitude to advance the cause of women and to give them their rightful place in the political life of the country’.38 It was noteworthy that these five women belonged to various castes, high as well as low, in order to represent the needs of their respective sisters.39 Earlier in 1927 the Maharani opened up the study of law to female students, despite adverse comments, so that in a few years the state had in Miss Anna Chandy ‘the first woman judicial officer not only in Travancore but also in the entire Anglo Saxon world’.40 She began practice at Kottayam, stood for elections to the legislature (and lost), and went on to become a criminal lawyer in the High Court in Trivandrum by 1930. 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’! Yet there were also jealous remarks that she made use of her femininity to win cases, with one disgruntled colleague claiming: ‘If I also wore a blouse and a sari, I would have won.’41

  In 1927, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi raised the Women’s College in Trivandrum from second grade, where it taught intermediate and ‘ladylike’ but professionally useless courses, to first grade, obtaining affiliation with the University of Madras and starting classes on history, natural science, languages and mathematics.42 Trained lecturers and teachers from Europe were also acquired at considerable expense and brought down to Trivandrum. Not only were salaries high, but these professors were also given a number of other perks so as to induce them to stay on; a Dutch lecturer discovered to great happiness that she was entitled to a large bungalow (‘the bedroom suite has three rooms’), one butler, one cook, one cook’s assistant, two gardeners, one sweeper, one chauffeur, two personal servants, and even an ayah.43 Soon there were 232 women going to college in Travancore, with over 9,500 girls in English schools. Two women were undertaking legal studies, and fifteen were studying medicine in Madras. Indeed such was the explosion in women’s education that by 1928 about 450 qualified women were being churned out each year, and the Unemployment Enquiry Committee that the Maharani would constitute had, to the surprise of its members, to carry specific studies on the problem of female unemployment in Travancore.44 ‘A degree’, it would note in its report, ‘makes a daughter as valuable in the parents’ eyes as a son’, also expressing some amazement that women ‘look for employment as eagerly as men do’.45 By now the capital also witnessed the inauguration of a Travancore Lady Graduates’ Association, which became a lobby group for educated women. In an address to elected representatives Mr Watts had to announce:

  The other day a deputation of young ladies waited upon me and unfolded their tales of woe. It would appear that there are no less than 30 or 40 qualified but unemployed women graduates in the State. The seriousness of the position is apparent from the fact that some have even migrated to fill appointments outside the State. It is true that women are freely employed in the service of the State as teachers and school inspectresses; as nurses, doctors and vaccinators. But it would seem that the time is come when other avenues till now monopolised by men should be thrown open to women. Women in Travancore hold a position of their own and so the Government have decided to throw open certain other appointments to them ...46

  The promise was promptly acted upon. Women were soon being appointed as clerks, typists and secretaries in the posts, accounts and revenue departments, as well as at the High Court and in the government secretariat, hitherto the preserve of educated men with narrow communal loyalties. Earlier, in 1925 the Maharani had opened a special class for typing and shorthand in Trivandrum, so that even matriculates could pick up an employable skill, and indeed, by 1931, her government had on its payrolls not less than 412 women in the administrative machinery, excluding those who served as teachers and nurses.47 It was not a large number in absolute terms; there were only twenty-five women for 1,000 men. But it was ‘considerably better than in 1921 when there were no women employees at all’, and a tremendous figure considering that other parts of India were yet to wake up to the potential of employed women.48 Women’s health also concerned the Maharani and two classes of midwives were opened so that by 1927 their services were being requisitioned ‘even in remote villages’ and one-tenth of all births that year could be handled in a professional and safe manner.49

  Scholarships were granted to girls for advanced studies outside the state, but the proliferation of women’s education under Sethu Lakshmi Bayi resulted in demand always surpassing supply of funds. One Janaki Amma wrote a moving letter to the Dewan stating that unless she could find money, she would be forced to return from the Lady Willingdon Medical School in Madras to her village and discontinue her education. The authorities could do little, as ‘there are already two [girls] in the Madras Medical College and two in the Vellore Medical School for Women’ and allotments had run out. Indeed, by 1929, there was such a surplus of lady doctors in the state that the board for scholarships ‘do not consider it necessary to recommend any scholarships for medicine at present’, since it would only add to the list of unemployed doctors in due course.50 Yet applications came in, and one eighteen-year-old called V. Mary ‘on bended knees’ approached the Dewan to ask for a grant later that year. She was a Mukkuva girl, from the fishing community, demonstrating that across the board, interest in female education was steadily increasing.51 Muslims, Ezhavas, Christians and others applied eagerly and it was telling of the kind of diversity in terms of caste as well as economic background when a typical board recommendation read how a certain applicant could receive funds ‘similar to the one already granted to Amina Bee Sahiba or Miss N. Lakshmi’.52

  Of course none of this was easy for the Maharani to champion, for there was a great deal of resistance also to progress being made. ‘Our women who have received modern education are usually found negligent,’ ventured a female columnist, ‘in the performance of domestic duties. If a woman who has the fortune to be a wife and the mistress of a home surrenders the welfare of her spouse and children to servants and the preparation of food to hired cooks, then the home will itself suffer badly.’ Another critic was even more vociferous: ‘Respected sister! Have you ever contemplated on why we fuss so much over this totally meaningless higher education?’ It was, in the view of this writer, also female, that ‘As women, ou
r god-ordained duty is the care of the home and service towards our husbands. Government service and political activity are beyond its purview.’53 It was again merely a repetition of the new cultural outlook that women were meant to be devoted little homely creatures, caring for their husbands and children, their minds not meant to tackle any superior intellectual challenges. Officials too, despite the Maharani’s policy, were unprepared when it came to conceding actual space in jobs to women. By the end of her reign it was universally lamented that ‘the great majority of girls’ regarded their education ‘not as something of cultural value in itself but as a direct means of securing employment and competing with men in the open market’.54 But even the most chauvinist male officers had to quietly adapt to the changes unfolding in their plain view, and affirm how it was ‘quite in the fitness of things that this expansion of the scope of women’s work in the public service should come while the country is being ruled by Her Highness the Maharani Regent’.55 They may have cursed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi behind her back, but as always, once having made up her mind, there was no turning back and the cause of female education and empowerment continued ahead in full steam.

  While Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was, thus, fully immersed in issues of state and policy, the Junior Maharani was not partaking in the forces of social and economic liberation her cousin was unleashing to such acclaim in the state. She was, to be sure, an ardent feminist and in 1928 presided over the Travancore Women’s Conference, which Miss Watts had begun with her cousin’s encouragement. But these were activities carried out on the side, for her singular purpose during these years was, one way or another, to secure the creation of a Council of Regency (with herself on it) or, were this not possible, discrediting Sethu Lakshmi Bayi till the British authorities compelled the latter to resign. Relations between the cousins had barely improved in the previous year, although at one point it came close enough. In October a venerable friend of the family, Nilakantha Iyer, arrived from Madras to negotiate a reunion between the two Maharanis. The Junior Maharani was prevailed upon to call on Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, her first visit in years, and the cousins spent an hour together. ‘It remains to be seen how long these much to be desired relations will endure,’ mused the Resident.56 They did not, as it happened, last long. In November, for the Junior Maharani’s birthday, she invited Sethu Lakshmi Bayi for dinner but ‘omitted to invite the Valiya Koil Tampuran’, essentially clarifying that her ‘gesture of friendliness did not extend to the consort’. The invitation was declined, and the Junior Maharani ‘has therefore become more bitter against the Regent and her consort’.57 Peace between the palaces had lasted precisely one uneasy month and sometime later the Resident would report that while it was ‘difficult to say who is most in fault’ the ‘Junior Maharani loses no opportunity now of backbiting against the Valiya Koil Tampuran’.58