It was no surprise that the government reverted to the old game of playing one community upon another after Sir CP came to the fore. As a previous Resident had stated during Mulam Tirunal’s rule, ‘To put the matter crudely, the sovereignty of the ruler is secured by the factions among the people, rendering any combination against the Durbar improbable in the extreme.’80 But while the Junior Maharani and Sir CP rewarded the Nairs with patronage for their support during the Regency, and openly promoted Hinduism, the time had long passed when others who faced the brunt of this approach would quietly pray and hope for better days. Travancore of the 1930s was a different place. The impartial policy of the Regency rule had allowed ‘the Christian elite’ to enjoy ‘an unusual degree of official favour’ after decades of overtly Hindu state procedure81 while the low-caste Ezhava community found doors of high employment opened to them for the first time, with even a general secretary of their strongest organisation and mouthpiece (the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana [SNDP] Yogam started by Sri Narayana Guru) appointed a magistrate by Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.82
To close doors now and repossess them into high-caste Hindu bastions was a move the minorities were determined to frustrate. For the first time low-caste Hindu groups, Christians, Muslims and others would rally together into a united front to rival Nair dominance. Inadvertently, thus, the Junior Maharani and the Maharajah would, by returning to communal state patronage, allow their opposition to unite into a singular, potent force, which was to herald the end of communalism itself, demanding instead a responsible government of the people, for the people and by the people before the end of the decade. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had, through her fair policy, set the wheels in motion, to remove from Travancore the idea of communalism and replace it (unwittingly) with one of nationalism. Temple entry was, then, a desperate attempt to fracture the alliance between the Christians and the Ezhavas, at a historic crossroads where the latter, with all their influence, could either join forces and march alongside the former, standing up to the communal regime, or be won over by a drastic and far-reaching reform to back the Hindu cause against the Christians by that very regime.
In 1932, in what was trumpeted as a revolutionary reform, the Maharajah inaugurated a bicameral legislature in Travancore, which was hoped to temper communal rivalries among politicians. The lower house, the Sri Mulam Assembly, was to have forty-eight elected members (with five from special constituencies) while the upper house, the Sri Chithira State Council, had twenty-two elected members (six of whom represented special interests). Franchise was extended to all owners or registered landholders paying not less than Rs 5 in tax per annum.83 ‘The liberal nature of this measure of reform was the result of the bold initiative of His Highness the Maharajah,’ lauded a state publication, ‘and the scheme and the details benefited a great deal by the advice of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, whose mastery of the underlying principles of modern constitutions and his long experience of the working of representative institutions are so widely known and appreciated.’84
But while the size of the electorate was effectively doubled by the Maharajah, the franchise was not as liberal as it pretended to be, with only 1,56,797 individuals in a state of five million being eligible to vote in the first elections of 1933.85 What was also disappointing to the minorities was that the franchise qualification of landholding or ownership advantaged the Nairs most, for Christians and Ezhavas who held land often did so on subordinate tenures, and not in their names, so that even those lands cultivated by them qualified tax-paying Nair or other Hindu landlords in the eyes of the law.86 ‘In a country where it has to be admitted with regret that even highly cultured men hardly rise above communal considerations in public affairs,’ it was lamented, ‘it is essential that no single community should possess a dominating influence in the Legislature and the Public Service.’87 The new rules did nothing to temper Nair dominance, and it was argued out that contributions of others, through commerce and industry, ought to receive consideration, where due to historic reasons their control over land had always been minimal.
What the minorities wanted, instead, was communal reservation, to which the government was entirely opposed, despite the fact that this was also now the agreed formula even in British India, accepted by Gandhi as well. In their defence the administration argued that reservations would only widen existing communal cleavages. The minorities, however, ‘contended that the reforms proposed by the government actually placed all other communities under the dominance of one group, the Nairs, and that this unequal distribution of power was the basic cause’ of communalism to begin with.88 If, they articulated somewhat naively, each community were given its rightful share, it would ‘have the beneficent result of gradually obliterating communal discord’ since every section would become ‘satisfied that it has its due and nothing more’ and the ‘raison d’être of the communal struggle vanishes’.89 The government, however, refused to respond to these concerns, let alone arrive at a compromise. It was then that the inconceivable occurred: the Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims came together to constitute an All-Travancore Joint Political Congress (ATJPC, not allied to Gandhi’s Indian National Congress) to ventilate as forcefully as possible their united opinions and ideas.
As early as 1914, a Dewan had noted how Christians, Ezhavas and Muslims, who for generations had complained of Nair predominance, could one day unite to seek redress and cause serious damage to the monarchy.90 And indeed, the combination was a formidable one, which nobody had ever before seen in Travancore, so beleaguered by petty communal divisions. While the Nairs and other high-caste Hindus together comprised 22.3 per cent of the population, the union of the Ezhavas (at 17.1 per cent), the Christians (at 18.9 per cent Syrians and 12 per cent non-Syrians), and the Muslims (at 6.9 per cent) created an unprecedented behemoth in terms of sheer numbers.91 In order to retaliate against an unresponsive government, the ATJPC decided to boycott the 1933 elections so that when results were announced they came as ‘a severe blow to the administration’.92 In three-fifths of the constituencies, no opposition was put up, and the Nairs won thirty-five of the fifty-nine general seats in both houses, while Christians, Ezhavas and Muslims, whom the government expected to receive nineteen seats, won fourteen. But these victors were not prominent members of their communities, who all sided with the ATJPC, and were instead government minions,93 or as another source put it, ‘government sponsored nobodies’.94 This did not please the Maharajah who had hoped the elections would be a sensational affair to showcase Travancore’s advances towards constitutionalism. ‘I am glad to inform you that the constitutional experiment that has been started,’ he had announced, ‘is being watched with sympathy and interest by many outside the state’ including the Secretary of State in London.95 The boycott took the sheen off the exercise, and the results proved the ATJPC right when Christians with a population of 16.04 lakh won ten seats; Ezhavas with 8.09 lakh won three; but Nairs with 8.68 lakh won a phenomenal thirty-five seats.96 Nothing more was needed to prove firsthand the undue influence of the Nairs.
As it happened, ‘with some encouragement from the Paramount Power’ the Maharajah was compelled to make amends and revise the new system.97 By 1935, the franchise was reduced to a tax payment of Re 1 instead of Rs 5, which alone tripled the electorate to half a million, and one-sixth of the adult population in the state.98 Fourteen seats in the Sri Mulam Assembly were reserved for Ezhavas, socially backward Christian sects and Muslims, so that by the elections of 1937 the ATJPC was in a position to capture twenty-six seats in the Lower House and eight in the Upper House, cutting Nair preponderance to almost half, overnight.99 They also succeeded in having the government implement a system of reservations in the public services, even though most important positions were still handed to high-caste Hindus.100 Yet, on the whole, the Nairs had to face ‘a painful loss of influence’ by the time of the 1937 elections, which were ‘free of the more extreme manifestations of communal tensions’ on account of the fact that the principal low-caste group an
d the Christians and Muslims were now firmly united against the Hindu state and its high-caste supporters.101 There was some grumbling about this, but as the Resident noted, ‘the Nairs will be very ill-advised to attempt to get the recent electoral reforms altered, as it will only once more revive communal jealousies and misunderstandings’.102 And due to a whole host of new problems that had emerged, the government could not afford to offend the Ezhavas in particular any more.
But these reforms on the part of the state had to be positively wrested out, and it made every effort to engineer the dilution of the ATJPC and its influence following the debacle in the 1933 elections that left the government fuming. Known at the time as the Abstention Movement, it had ‘as its backbone the unprivileged sections of the Hindu community’ sharing an ‘excellent rapport’ with Christians and Muslims.103 The Nairs were quick in denouncing the whole enterprise. ‘At no time in the history of Travancore,’ decried one leader, ‘did communalism stride like a colossus over the whole country and inflame baser passions and encourage fissiparous tendencies.’104 This was despite the fact that the Nairs seemed the only purely communal group now, with the others having united into the ATJPC, setting aside their differences. It became clear that this union was achieved by casting the Nairs, with all their overwhelming control over the state, as the common enemy. The strategy to counter it, then, was to find a new enemy and bring back the Ezhavas, who had equal numbers, not to speak of a powerful political presence, into a united Hindu bloc against Christians, resented equally by the Nairs and the regime. The contest transformed into one between the Nairs and the Christians. And the Ezhavas became both the clinching factor as well as the reward.
The Nairs were the first to react and cast the ATJPC as a Christian movement that ‘desired to convert Travancore into a Christian country’ by ‘seeking to destroy the power of the Hindus by creating splits among them’.105 This seems to have matched the outlook of Sir CP and the Maharajah as well, with paranoia exacerbated by the actions and statements of prominent Ezhava leaders themselves, who began to threaten mass conversion to Christianity. The very fact that this community of low-caste but statistically Hindu subjects of the state were willing to forsake the Hindu cause (justifiably, of course, since the Nairs had not shown any generosity in accommodating them so far) shook the government and its supporters. With nearly a quarter-million Ezhavas engaged in industry, they were fast becoming class conscious also, and as early as the Vaikom Satyagraha the Dewan had noted that they were ‘imbued with strong ideas of some form of communism’ and had begun to ‘talk of the equal rights of men’.106 To a crowd of 2,000 one leader had even declared: ‘Just as the Russians managed to obtain freedom by putting an end to their royal family, so the Ezhavas must also fight to the very end without caring [for] the guns of the sepoys, batons of the police, or even the Maharajah.’107 The Ezhavas seemed to be heading down a route that could prove disastrous for the establishment, all the while seemingly cheered on by their Christian allies.
The Ezhavas in the meantime had also turned into a tightly organised society, and in a space of thirty years their internal subdivisions had almost completely vanished. They also had a ‘long tradition’ of ‘flirtation with Christian missionaries’ and by the 1920s there was even talk of embracing Buddhism to escape the tyranny of the Nairs and other high-caste Hindus.108 As far back as 1905 the Ezhava paper Sujanandhini would state: ‘Many are contemplating a change of religion. It is under discussion whether Christianity or Mohammedanism will afford the necessary relief.’109 The community was perfectly aware of the effect that talk of rejecting Hinduism had on the Nairs, so that during the Abstention Movement, C. Kesavan declared openly at a meeting that ‘The Nairs are making monkeys of the Ezhavas’ by talking of a united Hindu cause against Christians. ‘We are not Hindus,’ he proclaimed, telling his fellowmen: ‘Renounce this Hinduism.’110 Then at a factory strike in Allepey, Ezhava workers shouted slogans like ‘Destroy the Nairs, destroy Nair rule, destroy capitalism.’111 When the government sometime later asked their principal organisation, the SNDP Yogam, to show cause for getting involved in political affairs when its charter promised to confine its activities to education and economic welfare, its general secretary quietly informed Sir CP that the government were free to dissolve the SNDP Yogam if they wished but he would ensure that its thousand branches were turned into a thousand branches of the opposition party. Sir CP had no option but to back down.112
The question of the Ezhavas turning against the Hindu cause seems to have even concerned Gandhi who remarked that while he didn’t mind that ‘Christian missions are flirting with the Harijans [i.e., low-caste communities]’, the great truth was that for the latter ‘there is no social equality, no real freedom anywhere except when it is first obtained in Hinduism’.113 Rameshwari Nehru, who visited Travancore, also expressed similar views when she said, ‘I am amazed to find missionaries of every religion rushing to Travancore thinking that the Ezhavas can be converted to one religion or [another]’ which was ‘a sad, humiliating spectacle’.114 Something had to be done, then, to prevent further inroads into the politically vital Ezhava numbers being made by Christians, even if it meant that the high-caste factions would have to reconcile to losing their longstanding religious privileges in the process. The Ezhavas had themselves already clarified that the ‘right to worship in temples was the test of their acceptance’ into the Hindu mould, and that no matter what other reforms the state passed, ‘as long as they were excluded from the temples, they were not fully accepted’ and would not embrace Travancore’s Hindu identity.115
‘The Christian threat to the character of a Hindu state could, in Ramaswami Iyer’s view,’ then, records Robin Jeffrey, ‘be overcome by uniting all Hindus into a single, devout community without distinctions of caste.’ It would serve the ATJPC a death blow and put an end to the first non-communal, organised opposition in the state. And, ‘Throwing open the government temples at the right moment could be a vital step in the process of consolidation.’116 By 1935, Sir CP was clearly awake to the perils of the situation, when C. Kesavan openly criticised Nair supremacy, declaring in no uncertain terms that Ezhavas might soon withdraw from the Hindu fold altogether.117 Added to their political alliance with the Christians, it was no surprise that the state began to pursue an anti-Christian policy through a series of efforts, causing the officialdom and government to be deplored as the ‘Engine of Oppression’ for victimising Christian communities.118 By August 1936 the Resident also noted that there was a clear flow of Ezhavas into a religious union with the Christians:
There is, I am convinced, no doubt at all that the Ezhavas will not any longer put up with their present condition which for many years past they have found intolerable. They are determined to effect a change. If the caste Hindus will give them political and social privileges and grant them temple entry, large numbers doubtless will be thereby induced to remain in the Hindu fold; but among the humblest and the poorest the tide has begun to flow, and if allowed free play, will gather force.119
The government were already acting desperate and the Resident further stated that a notice in July 1936 insisted that public peace was threatened by conversions through Christian missions. ‘This notice is regarded by the various missionaries as a very disingenuous move by the Government to put a stop to the present conversion movement,’ he added. ‘It is pointed out that it is a plain encouragement to district and police offers to take action to prohibit conversion activities on the ground … with the sure and certain knowledge that their actions will be officially supported.’120 But these were all moves to buy time and it was clear that a leap would have to be taken before the situation got even further out of hand, and the Ezhavas were forced to effect their threat of renouncing Hinduism. And thus, in November 1936, was passed the Temple Entry Proclamation. As Gandhi himself declared, ‘believe me, Travancore will go down in history as the saviour of Hindu religion which was in danger of perishing.’121
Even as wel
l-deserved praise for ending another conspicuous proof of social inequality was won from across India, there was no doubt of the political advantages of the proclamation at a very vital time in the state’s history. As a Christian memorial to the Paramount Power in 1946 would plainly remark, ‘Government unsuccessfully tried several methods, and finally as a last measure to counteract the wave of conversion, decided to open all Hindu temples to Ezhavas and other non-caste Hindus.’122 And indeed, as Jeffrey confirms, ‘From the government’s point of view, the proclamation had many of the desired effects. The movement for conversion ceased abruptly, and there were stories of recent converts returning to Hinduism.’123 The attitude of the Ezhava community towards the Dewan and the high castes was also ‘dramatically changed’ as a result.124
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. Gandhi himself revealed his awareness of the uncomfortable political background of the case by playing it down. ‘I regard it,’ he would remark, ‘as the performance of a purely religious duty of the State. And it should be taken and so treated by all … To give it any other colour will be to destroy its great spiritual purpose and effect.’126
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