Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  Even though temple entry was intended to wean Ezhavas away from Christian influences, the ATJPC would endure, becoming the single largest party in the legislature in the 1937 elections. By 1938 it would rechristen itself, with a number of prominent Nairs joining the movement, as the Travancore State Congress (TSC). It was ‘the beginning of a new phase in the state’s political development; one in which the politics of pragmatic nationalism overlaid the politics of caste and community’.127 The ATJPC had won representation in the Assembly and Council, but realised that neither could really contain the autocracy of the government, which held on to all powers that mattered. Responsible government, then, became the stated objective of the party, and into the 1940s the Maharajah would face serious troubles through the Travancore State Congress, which also allied with Gandhi’s wider Indian National Congress. In 1944, for instance, one of their leaders would have the temerity to state openly in the legislature: ‘Sir, I want to assure the government that our attitude will not be dictated by a spirit of opportunism or sycophancy. We are not here to sing the panegyrics of the head of the administration.’128 It was not a tune that pleased the princely government very much.

  In the beginning demands for responsible government were brushed aside under the excuse that the Government of India would never allow it. But when it was declared in London that the Paramount Power ‘would certainly not obstruct proposals for constitutional advance initiated by a Ruler’,129 the administration had no excuses except the retention of power unto itself, not to speak of the old return that ‘Travancore was a Hindu State and it would not be possible to concede Responsible Government without diluting its Hindu character.’130 The Travancore State Congress became alive to the idea of a greater India and its struggles against British rule. The despotism of the Maharajah’s government, no matter how benevolent in its intentions or effects, was seen as merely an extension of the absolutism of colonial rule. The people no longer wanted generous monarchs; they wanted power for themselves. Their aspirations were given a fillip by Sir CP’s retaliations when, for instance, he ‘crushed’ a Christian banking concern and launched ‘Operation Sabotage’ against its influential owners, who opposed him politically, ‘at the behest of the Palace’.131 But after the initial shock, the only result was that communalism, once the bane of local politics which aspired at best for greater patronage from the state and thereby allowed the monarchy to sustain its overbearing authority, was forcefully ‘swept away on a tide of patriotic enthusiasm and Travancore was swept into the national movement’, one where the monarch had no place at all.132

  ‘I hope,’ expressed Gandhi shortly after the Temple Entry Proclamation, that ‘the Senior Maharani is rejoicing over the great change that has come over Travancore and over the fact that the Proclamation is being welcomed by all and sundry.’133 But when the Mahatma presumed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was celebrating, the truth was in fact to the contrary. Shortly after the Regency, the Maharajah retired Mr Iyer as the Dewan and asked him to head the Temple Entry Enquiry Committee, which placed its report before the government in 1934. It’s general thrust was that while indeed the public were more amenable than before to the idea of temple entry, a strategy of going step by step would be most advisable, commencing with the relaxation of basic rules by permitting low-caste groups to first approach the temple gates and flagstaff, and ultimately, opening the gates when the time was correct. In the meantime, a council of Hindu pundits could be constituted to determine the most uncontroversial way to execute temple entry, and adjust religious ritual accordingly.134 ‘But the Maharajah and his advisers,’ we are told, ‘did not believe in half-measures’. With their innate ‘courage strengthened by genuine conviction, and an outlook which no Indian monarch had been able to entertain for a couple of thousand conservative years,’ they decided to implement absolute temple entry in 1936.135

  Eleven years earlier when Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had met Gandhi, she had made it clear that while she was sympathetic to the movement, ‘it was still necessary to sound [high-caste] opinion and to convert it to the reform’.136 She was not, it is said, inclined to taking autocratic, unilateral decisions on such far-reaching subjects merely because she had the power to do so, and instead held a progression of reforms to be the appropriate method of implementing such ideas (though, of course, in the matter of the Newspaper Regulation she had proved perfectly capable of autocracy). Now, in 1936, the Mahatma was of the opinion that such progression had been achieved, even meeting the Maharani on his visit to Travancore the following year,137 and publicly expressing his thanks that she ‘did not remain idle’ in her years in power. It was, he declared, due to her ‘sustained efforts’ to ‘arouse both [low-caste] and [high-caste] public opinion’, that the reform had succeeded now, without which backing ‘even the Maharajah with all the goodwill in the world would have found it impossible to issue the Proclamation’.138 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, for all this suspiciously conciliatory praise was not, however, convinced.

  To be fair, as Gandhi pointed out, had the Maharajah and the Junior Maharani ‘reasoned out the pros and cons of the Proclamation’, they would have found several compelling reasons for postponing its promulgation.139 But this was one of those times in history where a leap had to be taken. Given the Junior Maharani’s personality it is not surprising that she was prepared to take that leap. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, on the other hand, largely so ponderous and cautious, was not. She opined that the ground was not prepared yet to embark on something as revolutionary as this, and that there would be a severe backlash.140 And indeed, there was; though Sir CP obtained an endorsement from the Tamprakkal in Malabar, the decision was ‘entirely resented’ by ‘the large majority of Brahmins in Cochin, as well as in Calicut,’ according to the Resident.141 In hindsight, this was misguided opposition, but at the time it was nothing short of outrageous that the highest Brahmins in Kerala (who resided in Cochin and Malabar) were prepared to boycott the state altogether. Temple entry was all good, but not at the cost of upsetting entrenched power interests across the coast.

  Besides, it has been argued that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was unable to reconcile to a unilateral decision of this nature simply because the administration felt threatened that its own partisan policy had backfired and endangered Travancore’s identity as a Hindu state. Ironically, Sir CP too had expressed similar views only a few years ago in 1931 arguing that the ‘problem could only be gradually solved’ and that ‘Shock tactics will not answer the purpose’ of preserving the ‘solidarity of the Hindu community’.142 He now did a volte-face, and even Ambedkar considered this more due to political expediency vis-à-vis the Ezhavas than to spiritual conviction.143 Either way, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi decided she would not be a part of the movement and never again, after 1936, set foot in the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple or any other shrine. Her family members would justify this controversial decision as due to personal humiliation (‘She was kept in the dark about temple entry, and her views as head of the family were not sought’)144 or as a result of a general withdrawal from outward religiosity (‘She wanted to live as a recluse, and stopped going to all temples’).145

  Reasonable whispers persist, however, that it was conservatism that prevented Sethu Lakshmi Bayi from blessing the proclamation. ‘Although the Maharani Regent had carried out many reforms,’ noted Louise Ouwerkerk, ‘she remained strictly orthodox.’146 She certainly was extremely conservative even in the recent past. In 1927, for instance, when the son of one of the Junior Maharani’s sisters died within Krishna Vilasam Palace in the fort, her chamberlain was upbraided severely, ‘as no natural deaths except of members of the Ruling Family are allowed to take place (and none have within living memory occurred) within the palace precincts. It is said that he should have made arrangements for the removal of the child before the end.’147 This was perhaps because the Maharajah’s tirumadampu ceremony, where he was invested with the sacred thread of the ‘twice born’, had just been concluded, though it was reminiscent of a painful episode from the Sethu Lakshmi
Bayi’s own childhood when the late Mulam Tirunal had the Junior Maharani’s sister sent away in similar circumstances, just before her death. In what was another mark of her unbending personal conservatism, her doctors complained to the Resident during her treatment for tuberculosis in 1930 that she could have been nursed better if only she did not insist on meticulously fulfilling her religious obligations. The disease, they felt, was ‘aggravated by Her Highness’ strict orthodoxy and temple observances’ that were invariably at odds with judicious medical counsel.148 Their pleas, however, fell on deaf years, and she would simply not listen.

  What also strengthens the argument that it was disapproval of permitting low-caste groups access to holy spaces which moved Sethu Lakshmi Bayi is that she was not the only one to cease visits to temples. As the Junior Maharani’s nephew states:

  There was an entire generation at the time that did not approve of temple entry. They were sympathetic to the aspirations of those who demanded equality and freedom from social prejudice, and individuals like the Senior Maharani did a lot to make things better for large numbers of people. But breaching the ritual sanctity of a shrine was akin to breaking a thousand-year-old law that had passed down so many generations. Temple rituals and the precise ways of worship they entailed were not to be tampered with. When it became inevitable that temples would have to be opened, they accepted it. But they chose to stand aside from the tide. For instance, in 1948 the Maharajah of Cochin would bow to the will of his people and implement temple entry in his state. He had his own Temple Entry Proclamation. But after making it public, he never went to temples again. This group included the Senior Maharani, the Maharajah of Cochin, the Zamorin of Calicut, and a number of other personalities in Kerala.149

  As a strong establishment figure Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had, during her reign, sustained every tradition and custom connected with her family and the monarchy. But her traditionalism had sometimes contradictory layers: on the one hand she would freely touch Nair and Christian relatives and associates, despite injunctions of caste, while on the other she clearly held extreme convictions about low-caste communities expecting sacred shrines to extend similar liberties to them. What did, however, stand out even in this situation was her lack of hypocrisy. While she personally refused to sanction the Temple Entry Proclamation, she had no qualms a year later about her daughters praying at the now ‘defiled’ family shrine; as the Resident noted, ‘it remains to be seen whether the Senior Maharani shows her approval of Temple Entry by herself worshipping [there] and by throwing open her own temples’.150 As Attingal Rani she controlled nine shrines, and the Maharajah’s proclamation was not allowed to extend to these. The decision was entirely hers, since the Valiya Koil Tampuran did not care much for caste, and not only interacted with all manners of people but even dined with tribal communities in the forest, caring little for issues of ritual and ceremony.

  In essence, the Maharani was happy to champion the cause of Dalit groups when it came to access to infrastructure, opening up secular opportunities such as jobs and universities, etc. However, in the matter of literally opening up the highest ritual spaces of the Hindu community, she went against the trending mood. Perhaps, as her nephew tells, it was due to the fact that ‘after the Regency, when she lost power, it was the orthodox elements that formed her support base. As her influence in real terms became more and more diluted, it was they who buttressed her moral position, which was a kind of consolation. The Junior Maharani was making too many changes at once, and such traditional circles related more to the Senior Maharani. And given the hostility she faced within the family, she needed that support.’151 This might explain (though not convincingly enough) why while she made a statement by personally staying away from temple entry, she let her family follow the Maharajah’s course. Altogether, then, there is something of a paradox in Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s reaction to the Maharajah’s most lauded, most widely celebrated, and Travancore’s most popular Act of State, despite the fact that she knew she was in a dwindling minority of opponents at a historic moment.

  It was a fact, however, that her visits to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple had declined several years before the proclamation was issued. ‘She never said why she stopped visiting the temple, but aunts and relatives mentioned that the Junior Maharani had changed a number of rituals, and she did not approve of this,’ remarks one granddaughter. ‘And years later when we asked her about it she would simply say Padmanabhaswamy was in her heart and she didn’t particularly miss looking at an image in a shrine.’152 It was after the Regency that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was told that though she was head of the royal house, she could only visit the shrine after the Maharajah, like juniors in the family.153 There was also a general withdrawal on her part from public activities because the Maharajah did not treat her, as she had already placed on record, in a befitting manner; as late as 1939 she would again observe that not even the peons promised in her settlement had been given,154 while the Resident noted that it was in 1938 for the first time that she was given ‘her proper precedence’ at a state banquet.155 Till then, the Maharani had been avoiding such banquets. The Maharajah also altered the general warrant of precedence; where the Elayarajah had once been subordinate to the Senior Maharani, Chithira Tirunal now ordered that his adolescent brother had precedence over his older, customarily higher-ranking aunt.156 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi found herself treated as a subordinate member of the dynasty, with no regard for her position as an ex-Regent or as matriarch of the royal house, not to speak of existing traditions being amended by the Maharajah to boost his side of the family at the cost of hers.

  The Maharajah found the Senior Maharani’s attitude taking the sheen off the act that would place him in the highest league of Hindu monarchs. In the legislature in Madras, for instance, it was openly stated that after initial enthusiasm, low-castes had stopped going to temples. It was also, more embarrassingly, asked whether it was true that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s private shrines had been excluded from the Temple Entry Proclamation’s purview.157 And since it was a fact that they had, something had to be done to correct this. A rather old dispute between the Senior Maharani and the Junior Maharani, then, offered the perfect pretext, and in 1938 the authorities would move unexpectedly to compel Sethu Lakshmi Bayi to toe their line and reluctantly, in her powerlessness, fulfil the scope of the Temple Entry Proclamation, whether she liked it or not.

  16

  The Ultimate Eclipse

  In December 1937, Princess Lalitha entered her fifteenth year and the Valiya Koil Tampuran decided that it was time for her to marry. It was plausibly due to reasons of state that such an early marriage was sought. The Maharajah’s sister, after two past miscarriages,1 was declared to be with child earlier that year, and in January 1938 would produce a male heir. ‘The infant will succeed,’ recorded the Resident, ‘to the [throne] after the Elayarajah, and there is now no question of the succession reverting to the family of the Senior Maharani after the Elayarajah’s death, as would have been the case had one of the latter’s daughters anticipated [the First Princess] in giving birth to a son.’2 In other words, the Junior Maharani had two sons and a grandson in the line of succession, while Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had none yet. It was also not particularly reassuring, as a future Resident would remark, that the ‘Junior Maharani is very strong minded in the pursuit of her own purposes, which is chiefly to ensure the [throne] to her descendants, as opposed to those of her rival, the Senior Maharani.’3 Only if Princess Lalitha married early would she be able to add numbers to this side of the family, and so Sethu Lakshmi Bayi welcomed her consort’s advice on the matter, and the question was taken up in all earnest.

  This also meant certain strategic concessions on the Senior Maharani’s part in the interests of conciliating her cousin. ‘The birth of a son to the Maharajah’s sister,’ wrote the Resident, who was now one Mr C.P. Skrine, ‘may result in a rapprochement between the Senior Maharani and Maharani Sethu Parvathi Bayi. The former has twice come into Trivandrum to perform c
ertain ceremonies connected with the infant in the presence of its grandmother, and it is understood on good authority that the two Maharanis got on quite well together.’ Mr Skrine had ‘reason to believe that the Maharajah and his mother were apprehensive lest the Senior Maharani should refuse to perform the ceremonies. The Senior Maharani on her part has more than once expressed fears to the Resident lest the Maharajah should refuse to assist at the marriage of her daughters, the elder of whom is now of marriageable age. The anxiety of Maharani Sethu Parvathi Bayi lest one of the Senior Maharani’s daughters should give birth to a son before her own daughter having been removed, there is every hope of a reconciliation between the two houses.’4 In private, however, Mr Skrine proved he could see through what was happening, hinting that current expediencies more than any desire for a real rapprochement lay behind the ongoing cooperation:

  You know how important, even vital, the religious ceremonies are in connection with a birth or wedding; well the Senior Maharani ‘played up’ generously and cooperated in the birth and other ceremonies following the birth of a son to the Junior Maharani’s daughter last January, so in return the Maharajah and his mother agreed to celebrate the marriage of the Senior Maharani’s daughter with exactly the same magnificence as they celebrated that of the First Princess in 1934. Hence the rapprochement.5

  In the meantime certain proposals had been made for Princess Lalitha, neither of which she fancied. ‘One of the candidates,’ Princess Indira would recall, ‘was the son of our father’s sister Ambalika, and there was another who I remember was called Unni Chettan. But my sister didn’t want to marry either, and since she was just as strong-willed as father, she set herself against it stubbornly till she had her way.’6 The Valiya Koil Tampuran wasn’t awfully pleased at his nephew’s rejection, but perfectly aware of his daughter’s determination made his peace, and joined the Maharani in evaluating alternative proposals. In the meantime, in October 1937, Princess Indira celebrated her eleventh birthday, and as was usual on such occasions, she and her sister were taken in procession around the fort with the usual parades of soldiers, officials and others. At one stretch of the route, then, they came across a crowd of young men waiting dutifully to view the royal procession. The boys bowed as the sisters passed them. But seated in her palanquin, Princess Lalitha spotted amidst them one particularly striking face. And there and then she made her choice: that, she decided, would be the man she married.7