Ivory Throne
Page 41
On the other hand, a reversal of taxation in kind was proclaimed on the Crown lands of the Maharajah and on the Sripadam Estate of the Maharani, which together covered 35,000 acres, having hundreds of thousands of tenants. Although government revenue had for decades been collected in cash, due to customs and tradition, rent on these private lands of the royal house continued to be required in kind. The system, however, was fraught with corruption and difficulties, and farmers were often forced by tax collectors to give them commissions and cuts over and above due rents. Eight hours before the birth of Princess Indira in 1926, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had put an end by a special proclamation to this, therefore, and a money rent, well below the market rate, was fixed in place of paddy. In taking this decision she was ‘fully aware of the loss’ to the royal family’s coffers, especially to the Sripadam treasury that covered her personal expenses. But she was ‘not actuated by a meticulous balancing of profit and loss’ as much as by the goal of giving relief to her tenants, and the new measure was promptly implemented.44 ‘This great agrarian reform,’ one fortnightly would remark, ‘has been reckoned as an achievement of far-reaching importance and is the best evidence of the sympathy and beneficence of Her Highness the Maharani Regent’ who was hailed for her ‘large-hearted and broad-minded policy’ for mass welfare.45
Education was another department that received special focus. Already in 1925 it was noted that there was one primary school for every 1.9 square miles of the country, and for every 1,000 heads of the population.46 The allocation for this rose from Rs 35 lakh in the first year of the Maharani’s government to Rs 49 lakh by 1930,47 so that ‘of all the provinces and states of India, Travancore’ commended the Resident, ‘spends the largest percentage of her revenue on Education’.48 The ‘special’ schools that existed for backward castes and communities were brought into the mainstream by 1928, and a new policy was formulated where schools received aid only if they freely admitted students irrespective of social background. ‘The rapid growth of literacy in Travancore and Cochin began only after the complete removal, in the late 1920s, of the caste restrictions on admissions to primary schools.’49 Midday meals for children from poor families was implemented and this was responsible ‘for the rapid increase in the voluntary enrolment in primary schools’, also giving a boost to literacy and its spread along the coast.50 Since 68 per cent schools in Travancore were privately run, a system of grants-in-aid was put in place where any expenses above incomes of upto 50 per cent for boys’ schools and 75 per cent for girls’ schools was provided by the state. To ensure that the teachers taught well, lesson plans were sent out regularly from the capital, and teachers’ organisations were encouraged. Salaries were increased, so that headmasters received anywhere between Rs 200 and Rs 300 per month, while teachers made from Rs 25 to Rs 120 per month.51
In Mr Watts’s words, ‘The Government begrudge no money to the schools, for nothing but good can come of universal literacy in the State and there can be no question but that a widely spread middle school education operates to the advantage of every branch of human activity in a civilised State.’52 Indeed, such was the degree to which education had caught on and become a medium of social and economic advancement that
… the cult of the shirt [of the educated man] is an inexorable bar to manual labour. Every boy fixes his eye on a college degree or a school final certificate; and fond parents are ready to sacrifice all, thus, to equip their sons for Government employment. So we have an army of graduates and certified youths besieging the Government for appointments. Hence the cry of unemployment.53
Unemployment was not a problem with educated men alone, but also with rising numbers of women, and soon after the Maharani opened up the legislature to women, the ladies were also ‘agitating for the gates of the Municipal Councils’ to be thrown open, ‘as also the offices of Bench Magistrates in the Village Panchayat Courts’.54 But because Travancore was hideously communal in its politics, unemployment only led to greater divisions in society, and distributing opportunities and vacancies in the state administration had to be done as fairly as possible. The Maharani had already been practising this policy, despite its unpopularity with dominant castes, but in 1931 work began on constituting a Public Service Commission, which would go on to be established in 1932 for a proper system of job allocation.55 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, however, protected the minorities, who reciprocated with gratitude. ‘We have only to say,’ one eulogy went, ‘that the rights and privileges of all classes of Her Highness’ subjects are safeguarded, and justice between man and man [is] meted out by Her Highness most fearlessly.’56
The Maharani also enabled a greater democratisation of the manner in which the government functioned, involving as far as possible members of the public in running even important departments. In 1926, for instance, she reorganised the Economic Development Board (EDB), which was hitherto a panel of bureaucrats, into a body with five officials and seven non-official members, of which four were elected by the legislature from among the people’s representatives, and three nominated by the government from among distinguished members of the public.57 The Medical Department, similarly, was also reconstituted by 1927 so that two official government doctors led it alongside one non-official doctor with the aide of a bureaucrat secretary. This way, one member could always travel, inspecting health facilities even in rural parts of the state, while other affairs of the department did not suffer.58 It was a rather bold experiment at the time, with many critics saying that such a way of running the government was unheard of. But it proved a success. ‘The association of a non-official in the management of an important department,’ the Dewan would proudly declare, ‘is an innovation in Travancore.’59
Similarly, since Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was widening and improving infrastructure in the state, it was felt that the system of sequestered bureaucrats in the capital taking decisions from afar needed to be ended, and the public allowed to guide them in using scarce resources as best as possible. By 1927, a Central Road Board was constituted in Trivandrum, with 108 subordinate local boards, all of which included on them private citizens.60 The principle behind this was to marry ‘official experience and local knowledge as well as wishes of the people’s representatives’ in determining where the people wished to have roads and bridges built.61 Local councils and other bodies were encouraged to construct small roads on their own, ‘the department merely advising alignments and constructing bridges and culverts’.62 But cooperation between the public and the government was the ingenious rule, and ‘The question of future road development’ would depend on these 108 boards and their studied ‘deliberations and recommendations’ that enabled the government to spend its public works budget as wisely as possible, while satisfying local needs.63
A number of important legislative measures such as the epochal Nair Regulation, the Ezhava Regulation, the Nanjanad Vellala Regulation and the Malayala Brahmin Regulation were passed by Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, ‘calculated to advance the social and material interests of important sections of the people’.64 Counted with economic and other reforms passed by the ‘socially enlightened’ Maharani, these would all become part of a ‘long list of liberal changes’ that ‘influenced and enforced schemes that became catalysts for vast changes in social structure in the successive generations’.65 For all this, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s name rose to tremendous heights in India as an exemplar of good administration and wise public policy, not to speak of fearless social reform. That is why when late in 1929 the Viceroy Lord Irwin came to Trivandrum, in what was also an endorsement of the Government of India’s staunch support to the Maharani, he declared in an open address his pleasure that he was visiting ‘at a time of unexampled prosperity in the state’, adding:
I think, I may safely say, that during Your Highness’ five years of Regency, the highest proportion of advancement has been seen [in the entire history of Travancore]. Your unflagging devotion to State affairs, your personal attention to every detail of the administration, and your constant
desire to treat all communities in the State alike with fairness and impartiality have borne the richest fruit in the contentment of your people.66
He then invested the Maharani into the Order of the Crown of India, an honour that was ‘given but rarely and only given in cases of outstanding achievements’ to the leading female dignitaries of the British Empire by the King Emperor of England.67 It was, in its day, the highest decoration for women, counting among Indian recipients the Begum of Bhopal and the Maharani Regent of Mysore, both distinguished women administrators, and in Europe a number of members of the British royal family as well as illustrious ladies who had excelled themselves in public service during the Great War. But Lord Irwin was not the only Viceroy to sing Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s praises; years later India’s last Viceroy and the final representative of His Britannic Majesty, Lord Mountbatten, would extol the Maharani’s ‘quiet elegance, her innate dignity, and the fact that she endeared herself to one and all. No one who had ever met her,’ he would say in London, ‘could ever forget her. She stands as a shining example to womanhood as a great queen and as a great woman.’68
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, with all her old-fashioned modesty, did not make more of such praise or imperial baubles than necessary; as her adoring daughter would later tell,
She was truly a person of high thinking and gracious living. She used to be praised for her extraordinary beauty, her position, the power she had then wielded in just the correct way—the list seemed endless, but all this did not impress her in the least. She never thought there was anything out of the ordinary about herself. It was as though she were asking, ‘What is there to be praised because one is not a bad individual?’69
But those around her thought it eminently well merited in recognition of her hard work and untiring efforts to rule well. ‘She deserves it,’ wrote a Women’s College lecturer in a private letter. ‘For sheer devotion to husband, children, and country, it would be hard to find her equal.’70 A prominent journal circulated among princely states similarly remarked how the Regency, far from being ‘a period of marking time, which most people feared it might be’, had been one of ‘quiet but incessant activity, calculated to forward the welfare of the people in every way’.71 That is why Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer, the poet laureate of Travancore and a leading intellectual of the times, was universally believed when he declared that the days of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s government would ‘be recorded in letters of gold by the future historian of Travancore’.72
A few months before Lord Irwin’s visit to Trivandrum, a Dutch lecturer called Louise Ouwerkerk was appointed to teach at the Women’s College in Trivandrum. A lady of impressive personality, with an incisive approach to local politics, she took a serious interest in chronicling contemporary Travancore, which she would later compile into a stimulating manuscript. With no reservations in expressing inconvenient opinions about the state, she would fall out of favour with the government when the Junior Maharani’s son came to power some years down the line. But early on, she was to record her first impressions about the land and its feuding royal family. Her views about Sethu Lakshmi Bayi were positive, but writing about the Junior Maharani after their first meeting, she expressed more mixed feelings in a candid letter to her mother:
I was going to tell you about my visit to the Junior Maharani and the Maharajah. She is the younger cousin of the Regent, on whom I have already called, and owes her prestige to being the mother of the Maharajah. What rivalry exists between the two is obvious from the nature of the case; the Junior Maharani has no power now but oh! Won’t she get her innings in a couple of years’ time when the little boy comes of age! So she is carefully tying him to her apron strings in preparation for those glorious days. She is an ardent feminist, lively, well read, talkative; and she pinned me down in my chair and fired question after question at me concerning the State of Things in England. She pumped me from 7:45 am to 9:15 am, and sent me away longing for my breakfast and horribly conscious of having talked a lot of drivel in order to satisfy her thirst for blood. And all the time the poor little Maharajah was sitting fidgeting on the edge of his chair listening to his mother saying simply dreadful things about men. I caught his eye once or twice and he smiled weakly, but he is used to that sort of thing. She tries it on everybody she can get to talk about the subject. Nonetheless, I did really enjoy that interview, being brought up against a remarkably lively and penetrating mind, and getting a chance moreover to discuss the College with someone who will have immense power in a couple of years’ time. Miss Gomey, freshly returned from Oxford with a large crop of Western ideas, had an interview with her the next morning and said exactly the same things I had been saying … the little Maharajah himself is highly intelligent when Mama is out of the way.73
While the Junior Maharani’s electric energy and enthusiasm made an impression on Ouwerkerk, the latter’s remarks about her rapport with her son were not flattering. But it was a view that corresponded with opinion even in high places, and many felt the Maharajah for his mother was merely a means to satisfy her own ambitions. The occurrence of black magic, with the alleged objective of making the boy as dependant on her as possible, did not help her case, and both his tutor, Captain Harvey, as well as his private secretary informed the Resident of their judgement that ‘the Junior Maharani is obsessed by the idea that she must maintain control over His Highness, not so much from the point of view of a mother’s desire to control her child, but from the view of a woman of the world determined to maintain her control over a future Maharajah of Travancore’.74 This was not entirely outlandish, and elsewhere in India also, the British had to grapple with women in the zenana attempting to control minor princes for purposes that could be antithetical to those of the Paramount Power.75
For over two years now the Junior Maharani had been attempting to obtain some clarity on her son’s future political position, and when the galling Regency might end. In August 1927 Mr Cotton had noted with amusement how the Nairs were ‘cock-a-hoop’ with joy because the Maharajah’s mother had successfully secured a meeting with the Viceroy in Ooty and, reportedly, ‘got all she wanted out of him’. Rumour at the time had it that it was ‘only a matter of weeks’ before the Government of India ordered Sethu Lakshmi Bayi to relinquish absolute power and accept a Council of Regency.76 As it had really happened, however, the meeting between Lord Irwin and the Junior Maharani had been strictly formal, with Mr Cotton present. ‘She only had almost a quarter of an hour with His Excellency,’ he reported, ‘and spoke about her son’s education and the date on which the Regency was likely to terminate.’77
She also submitted a memorandum with ideas on his administrative training in the future, but more importantly, received considerable bad news from the Viceroy. The Government of India had enunciated a policy along with the body known as the Chamber of Princes that young Maharajahs ought not to receive full powers at the age of eighteen. As Mr Cotton was informed, the authorities were ‘averse to giving powers to a young prince before he is 19 ½ at the earliest’.78 So when Sethu Parvathi Bayi asked Lord Irwin whether she could presume the Regency would terminate in 1930 when her son turned eighteen, ‘I told her she could not,’ noted the latter in his minutes, ‘and that the general policy of the Government of India was to defer grant of full powers till 19 ½ or possibly 20’ years of age.79 In other words, the Regency was to continue in Travancore beyond 1930, at least until August 1932, when the boy Maharajah turned nineteen-and -a-half-years old.80
This information troubled the Junior Maharani, for it extended her cousin’s reign by nearly two years, and she argued that it could lead to friction between her son, who would resent his powers being withheld, and the Regent. But the argument was not accepted. ‘Regencies are seldom if ever popular,’ Mr Cotton observed, ‘and when as in Travancore, the Maharani Regent is not the mother of the minor Maharajah, the Junior Maharani, who is without any authority, is not unnaturally impatient to see her son invested with ruling powers, and encouraged by those intereste
d in widening the breach between her and the Regent, to exaggerate the anomaly of her position and the disabilities under which she and His Highness labour.’81 Moreover, before the Maharajah could assume control of the state, he had to become independent and obtain sufficient training in matters of governance. This would mean removing him from the Junior Maharani’s household once he grew up, and ‘If [she] protests, as she almost inevitably will, the obvious retort is that a Maharajah who cannot be allowed out of his mother’s sight is obviously unfit to be entrusted with the responsibilities of a grown man.’82