Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  In 1788, there was a reason why this lady’s second and third daughters were adopted into the Attingal line, and not her eldest. This was because the latter was at the time already married, whereas custom in Travancore was to acquire unmarried females. By 1799, however, this eldest daughter of Chathayam Tirunal had a son, and his cunning grandmother determined that he offered the most perfect conduit for her forthcoming intrigues. When the Junior Rani died, she tried to have this grandson of hers, technically a member of the Kolathiri family, perform her funeral ceremonies. But the Senior Rani, aware that this would result in a problematic acknowledgement of dynastic openings between an Attingal Rani and a Kolathiri prince, resisted, and had the infant son of her late sister conduct the ceremonies under her own guidance. ‘The child did not,’ however, ‘long survive his mother, and the successive deaths of all the children who stood in the way of [the eldest grandson of Chathayam Tirunal] have excited strong suspicions against [her] whose character attracted suspicion,’ Munro would record some years down the line.7

  Luckily for the indefatigable old lady, in the new regime of a weak, easily swayed ruler, the Senior Rani did not enjoy much power and was increasingly cornered. All influence was vested in the Brahmin Dewan, resented as ‘the associate and minister of his debaucheries’ whose ‘most flagrant extortion and tyranny’ would provoke Velu Tampi’s ascent shortly.8 The Dewan, it was also reported, had ‘a passion which he is said to have entertained’ for the eldest daughter of Chathayam Tirunal (the mother of her stooge grandson),9 and exploiting this and ‘by presents and promise’ the old lady persuaded the man to orchestrate the adoption of her grandson into the royal family and his installation as Elayarajah or heir apparent.10 She was evidently ‘incited to this proceeding not only by the implacable enmity which she cherished against her daughter’, the Senior Rani, but also ‘by a hope of succeeding herself to the dignity’ of Attingal Rani ‘if she could procure the adoption of her eldest daughter’s son into the family of Travancore’.11 In other words, Chathayam Tirunal could not care less for tradition and custom; her endeavour was plainly to obtain for herself and her own faction and chosen heirs future power in Travancore, her home in exile.

  When she heard of what her mother was conniving to do, the Senior Rani ‘sent for the Rajah and in a tone of authority and dignity enjoined him to desist from their prosecution’. But the monarch was entirely in the hands of his Dewan and so he ‘promised whatever [the Rani] desired’, but promptly went back and ‘immediately afterwards sanctioned all that she had inhibited’.12 Disgusted by this weakness and treachery of not only her mother but also the ruling prince, the Senior Rani next ‘summoned the [Dewan] to her presence and commanded him to relinquish his intentions, but he treated her with disrespect and insolence’.13 Pushed to the wall, and powerless against the combination of her mother, the minister and the ruler, she then approached her last resort: the authorities in the temple without whose cooperation the proposed adoption could never take place. To her great relief, ‘they considered it to be their duty to obey her orders’ and ‘solemnly promised to refuse’ the adoption and ‘adhered faithfully to their engagement’.14 The Dewan and Chathayam Tirunal, however, had no intention of giving up and the former himself took the grandson of the latter to the temple ‘where he made some offerings and then conducted him to the [Senior Rani] to receive her benediction in the character of his mother’.15

  She refused to see him or to give any sanction whatever to the proceeding. The [Rani] was then far advanced in pregnancy—two other [princesses], her daughter and her niece, were alive—the reigning Rajah was in the prime of his life and there was no pretence or excuse for the illegal and arbitrary measure which he sanctioned. The unfortunate [Rani] tore her hair, refused all nourishment for three days, and lamented with expressions of poignant sorrow the cruelty of her fate in being separated from her own house, and rejected by that into which she was adopted. Nor was her grief unreasonable: the adoption [of Chathayam Tirunal’s nominee] by the single authority of the Rajah if permitted to pass into precedent would be effectually subversive to all the rights and privileges of the [Attingal Rani]. The succession to the Musnad would not then be conferred to the offspring of the [latter] but be regulated by the caprice, the affections, or the enmities of the Rajah and his ministers. The [Rani] deeply sensible of these considerations sedulously avoided any measure that would indicate her concurrence in the adoption…16

  Her spiteful mother, however, was unrelenting. The grandson now began to claim for himself the title of Elayarajah while Chathayam Tirunal, barely concealing her glee, ‘threw aside all disguise and openly wrote letters and issued orders in the character of [the Attingal Rani]’.17 This, however, was treasonous, and ‘formed the Rajah to banish her and her three daughters’ to Mavelikkara. The Elayarajah, in the meantime, tried on every occasion possible to obtain some semblance of acceptance from the Attingal Rani. On completing the ceremonies and wearing the ‘twice born’ thread, he approached the latter to seek her blessings as his adoptive mother. But the Rani ‘indignantly repulsed him, desiring him to go to his real mother’.18 Sometime later, when she fell ill and it became clear she would not survive, 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.

  It was after this that the ruling prince died and a succession dispute broke out between the pretender Elayarajah and the eldest surviving daughter of the dead Rani in 1810. She carried on her mother’s campaign to have the former’s so-called adoption nullified and declared illegal. Munro decided after a thorough investigation that it was ‘universally admitted that according to the established Law and usage of Travancore’ only the sons of the Attingal Ranis were ‘legal heirs to the Musnad’. He established ‘beyond controversy that the mother of the person styled [the Elayarajah]’ had never been an Attingal Rani, and though he might have himself been, through some ceremonies, made a member of the royal house, he could not claim the throne unless he was the son of an Attingal Rani.20 Travancore, then, was entrusted into the hands of the late Rani’s eldest daughter, none other than Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, and her pretender rival was expelled to Chingleput. Chathayam Tirunal herself spent the remainder of her days in Mavelikkara, thwarted ultimately in her vendetta against her daughter and her issue, dying there in obscurity in 1832, decades before descendants of her line from her youngest daughter, Princess Arya, were absorbed into the royal house and installed as Attingal Ranis, a title she herself had failed to obtain.

  The court in Travancore, thus, was often all about potent combinations that could even prevail over the strict letter of tradition and custom, though ultimately it was the law, after several twists and turns, that triumphed. Once the Attingal Ranis had been great queens, but by the end of the eighteenth century, influential factions thwarted them in their own households. In the years that followed, the power of the senior female member in the royal family became more diluted than ever before. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, in what some deemed her idealism and others her naiveté, always looked to the law and to the correctness of custom to protect her position. The Junior Maharani, who understood the lessons of history better, on the other hand realised that power could never be exercised without strong allies. And no sooner had her son’s reign begun, than she attached to herself perhaps the greatest single ally and loyalist in all of Travancore’s history, one who was to not only bend the letter of the law to his own advantage but cleverly ensure that this time round, the Attingal Rani would not triumph at the cost of his sponsors.

  It was rather telling that in 1932 when the Maharajah deemed it sufficient to offer his aun
t a pension in retirement of Rs 75,000, after seven strenuous years of running the administration, he also created a post of Legal and Constitutional Adviser, granting the candidate a princely Rs 72,000 per annum.21 It was an unprecedented office in Travancore, more exorbitant than even the Dewan, and was created specifically to retain the valuable (and inordinately expensive) services of the ‘trusted friend’ of the Maharajah’s family, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer.22 In the long run it was a beneficial investment, for numerous schemes for the benefit of the principality and its ruling house could not have succeeded without the brilliance of this man. Some other schemes like an ill-fated bicameral legislature, however, saw lesser success. The appointment in itself, though, instigated much resentment among the public and the press. ‘Life in Indian States is intolerable,’ began the Princely India with its undisguised sarcasm:

  Take for instance Travancore. The people of the State were post haste to see the young Maharajah on the [throne] when the Maharani Regent was managing the affairs in a quiet way. People believed blindly and foolishly that the Junior Maharani and her son would remove all maladies of the people … But the maladies which the Junior Maharani herself was subjected to were greater than those of the people. She first of all realised that without a Constitutional Adviser she couldn’t pull on. And Sir CP’s stars were in the ascendant. Rs 6,000 a month as salary and various other allowances! Sir CP could be the Constitutional Adviser [whether] he remained in Simla or Sylhet, London or Lausanne. What a nice job to boot! … But who invented and wanted a Constitutional Adviser? The late Maharajah Sri Mulam Tirunal managed the State administration a thousand times better than all his contemporary ruling Princes without a Constitutional Adviser. The Maharani Regent never went in for a Constitutional Adviser. But the Junior Maharani, from the experience she gained in her free, itinerant life, discovered that with the aid of a Constitutional Adviser the State could be converted into a Paradise. Yes, a Paradise to her, and hell to the people.23

  While the Princely India was prone to exaggeration (in another piece it went on to indelicately compare Sir CP to ‘a squeezed lemon’ and suggested that the Junior Maharani, who had ‘been trying to become a perfect actress’, lacked ‘what the Senior has in abundance—that [which] can be had only by the grace of God’),24 there was a significant quantum of truth in that the institution of such an inflated title for Sir CP was not received well. His presence in the state by October 1932 was ‘becoming more and more unwelcome’, noted the Resident, and there was ‘no doubt that his appointment’ had been ‘all along exceedingly unpopular’.25 His superior salary and precedence over the Dewan, his residence in the Vellayambalam Palace, as also the glaring fact that his official contributions were deemed ‘totally incommensurate’ with his high pay and that such work ‘has always been carried out by the Dewans’ in the past, all placed Sir CP into a singularly inauspicious setting, further convincing many that he was merely being rewarded for services to the Junior Maharani.26

  Some of the resentment was also due to his unusual friendship with the royal family, i.e., the Maharajah and his mother, which is perhaps why he was not given an official bungalow but a whole palace for his use. ‘His friendship with the Maharajah’s mother had given rise to gossip for decades,’ wrote Louise Ouwerkerk,27 and the fact that when in Simla the Maharajah actually stayed with him caused, on account of his ‘unenviable reputation’, ‘much adverse comment’.28 The royal family had ‘stood out among other Ruling Houses for its simplicity of life, purity of morals, and devotion to duty; and the people were saddened by the blot on its reputation.’29 Indeed, persons like Malcolm Muggeridge believed that Sir CP (‘famous for his lechery and debts’) enjoyed ‘great power nowadays in Travancore’ by the simple virtue ‘of being the Junior Maharani’s lover’.30 Extravagance as well as association beyond formal necessities of the new regime with Sir CP caused great anguish not only among the orthodoxy but also the public in general.

  It also did not help that the Dewan, seemed wholly powerless. Soon after the Regency, Mr Iyer had resigned and a British ICS officer called Thomas Austin was appointed (for all the criticism in 1925 about selecting Mr Watts, also a Christian, to the post). But what was meant to be the highest executive office in the state suddenly found itself answerable to more than one overriding authority in the form of the Legal and Constitutional Adviser. The Maharajah himself was, of course, never blamed, for ‘it was widely realised that his mother had a dominating influence over him and interfered in matters of state where he ought to have been acting on his own initiative’.31 And Sir CP, as the source of power behind the Junior Maharani in turn, was considered the real problem, as the Resident noted:

  This was, in the first instance, due to the fact that he was considered to be nothing more or less than an adventurer, whose relations with the Junior Maharani were not above suspicion, but I think that the present mood, and it is, I believe, the mood of the bulk of the intelligentsia, is largely due to the indisputable fact that the State is being run by him and the Junior Maharani, with the Maharajah, who is completely dominated, and is likely to remain so until he marries, well in the background, and Austin, the Dewan, almost out of the picture. It is Austin’s influence which the people would like to see brought out to bear on the Maharajah and not of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, and that Austin has, through no fault of his own, cut comparatively little ice has, I know, been a cause of keen disappointment. I am quite confident that Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer interferes in matters which do not come within his province, and Austin must know this.32

  By 1934, a thoroughly vexed Dewan handed in his notice and departed. Sir M. Habibullah was then chosen, also fated not to last very long in Travancore, due to the same difficulties that haunted his predecessor. For ‘any advice he gives is criticised by the Legal and Constitutional Adviser’.33 ‘Both Mr Austin and Sir Muhammad Habibullah have complained to me bitterly,’ reported the Resident, ‘of the influence and interference exercised by Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer’ and ‘complained that Sir CP’s influence often works against that of the Dewan, who is held responsible by public opinion for resultant action.’34

  It is unpleasant for me to have to record anything against Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, for I must admit that my relations with this man have always been cordial, and he has, so far as I am aware, been of material assistance to me in my relations with the Palace. I respect Sir CP’s mental attainments and I like him personally; but I am forced to face the fact that he is exceedingly unpopular in South India; it is clear that nobody trusts him, and that his present association with Travancore tends to make His Highness’ administration suspect and unpopular. More than this, it is obvious that we shall never get a reliable and capable Dewan to stay long in Travancore while a Legal and Constitutional Adviser, acting with no public responsibility whatever, is able to influence all [of] the Maharajah’s decisions.35

  By 1935, Sir Muhammad had confided to the Resident that ‘we cannot depend on his services for more than a few months longer’ since he was ‘very dissatisfied with the existing conditions’. He was a man of great ability and had all those qualities that Mr Watts had once shown. ‘He is just and impartial, courteous and accessible to all, and there is no doubt that he has hitherto commanded public confidence to a large extent, but the public are losing faith in him through no fault of his own, and I think he is sensible of this.’36 This was mainly because the palace now wished to execute a pro-Hindu policy, replacing the Regency-era decision to be above board in communal matters. Sir Muhammad, on the other hand, was inclined to be fair and unbiased. Communal trouble was naturally provoked, then, and the Resident sided with the Dewan in warning that ‘The remedy lies in an impartial yet firm administration.’37 ‘The present regime,’ he added, ‘does not inspire confidence, for the Travancoreans are quite intelligent enough to see that though they have all the trappings of constitutional and popular Government, there are concealed behind these trappings influences they dislike and mistrust, and which sometime operate in opp
osition to justice and fair play.’38

  In the meantime, efforts were devised in Delhi to somehow extract Sir CP from Travancore. Lord Willingdon promptly nominated him to the Government of India’s Secretariat Committee, popularly known as the Wheeler Committee that was to help revitalise the Indian bureaucracy. Sir Muhammad, as a result of his rival’s forecasted departure from active involvement in the state, was persuaded to stay on as Dewan. But by the end of 1935 in the three months that followed his move to Delhi, Sir CP made three separate visits to Travancore, demonstrating every intention to continue intervening in local affairs. ‘I should like His Highness to be very clearly given to understand,’ wrote an irritated Resident, ‘that these continued visits of Sir CP are not beneficial to His Highness’ interests and the sooner they are stopped the better for His Highness and the State.’39 Additionally, he pointed out,