Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  The Travancore State Congress responded to the invitation by first terming it ‘definitely retrograde and undemocratic’. But behind the rhetoric they were exhausted, and perhaps driven by the ambition of some of their own leaders, proved willing to negotiate terms with Sir CP.14 Others, however, were not anxious to play. Trouble arose not so much from the State Congress as from a new element in the state’s politics: communists. They were backed mainly by the Ezhava community, in alliance with ‘agricultural workers, boatmen, fishermen, and various other lower occupational groups’.15 The Ezhavas, ever the bane of Sir CP’s glory in Travancore, had become even stronger by the 1940s, after successfully battling for temple entry in the last decade. And their emergence was married to industrial successes in the two important districts of Alleppey and Shertallai in north Travancore, which also boasted the first trade union in the state, the Travancore Labour Association. By now it had transformed itself into the Coir Factory Workers’ Union, and with 7,400 fee-paying members, this was perhaps the biggest of fifty unions in the state; Shertallai alone had eleven with 15,000 out of 20,000 local workers registered.16 All of them, it became clear, were prepared to stand up to the Dewan and scotch his latest flirtations with the State Congress.

  The workers had initially, in fact, supported the State Congress during its agitation for responsible government in the late 1930s. But the crushing of that movement and the subsequent loss of steam, on Gandhi’s instructions, alienated their faith in what they now perceived as a bourgeois party. By 1940 it was happily, then, that a new Travancore branch of the Communist Party of India (CPI) assumed control of the unions and the thousands of workers affiliated to them.17 It was these very workers and skilled labourers, not the educated middle classes, who now obstructed the compromise contemplated between the State Congress and Sir CP, determined to demand complete and absolute responsible rule in Travancore. As always, when the Dewan’s calculations floundered due to an unexpected contingency, he utilised all the forces at his disposal to have his way. As one scholar states:

  The government of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer prepared to face the threat with a combination of the carrot and the stick. First it unleashed a reign of repression aimed especially against organised labour, both industrial and agricultural. Shertallai was made the centre of these repressive measures. The area had a number of big landlords who had become angered at the new activities of the agricultural labourers and provided full support to the government, offering even their residence and other buildings for use as police and army camps … The All Travancore Trade Union Congress (ATTUC) expressed its protest against these by organising a one-day general strike. In October 1946 C.P. called a tripartite conference at which he offered the ATTUC representatives what is said to have been an attractive economic package as well as representation in [the new] parliament on condition that the unions accept his proposed constitutional reforms and call off their political agitation. The offer was rejected. Within days after this, the two taluks of [Alleppey] and Shertallai were filled with units of the police, the reserve police, and the army, who set up camps at various centres throughout the region.18

  In response to the Dewan’s intimidation, the unions set up ‘people’s camps’ of their own, with volunteers armed with spears and country weapons; the five camps in Shertallai alone had 2,378 workers, ready for a confrontation with the government.19 On 22 October the unions struck work, days before the new ‘American Model’ was to come into force. Things took a violent turn when on 24 October a group of what were now considered rebels attacked a police camp in Punnapra. In the skirmish that followed, a number of policemen and many workers were killed. Sir CP immediately declared martial rule and took personal charge of the police and army. ‘Rivers of blood’, as the Valiya Koil Tampuran put it, were about to flow in Travancore.20

  On 27 October the army surrounded a camp at Vayalar, where they encountered stiff resistance from the rebels. Machine-gun fire was then ordered and more than 150 people lost their lives. Similar attacks were mounted on other camps, killing another 130 individuals elsewhere that same day. ‘It is estimated that about a thousand people lost their lives [altogether] in the Punnapra-Vayalar outbreak,’ remarks the historian Sreedhara Menon.21 As the CPI would later declare, this agitation became ‘a bright page’ in the ‘revolutionary memories of Kerala’ and a ‘red signature in the history’ of the land in ‘a struggle of resurrection of self righteous workers against all injustices of a repressive, exploitative state’.22 Equally significantly, it was the first time since the rebellion of Velu Tampi against an unpopular monarch and his government in the early nineteenth century that the people of Travancore had resorted to arms against the dispensation now ruling them. The distance of the regime, in an ivory tower of its own, shielded loyally by Sir CP, was perhaps most evident in that while the streets flowed with the blood of his subjects in Punnapra–Vayalar, the Maharajah was busy in the capital making merry with the Governor of Madras and other distinguished guests at a grand banquet.23

  With the army entering the fray, and with many lives lost, the movement quickly disintegrated. But it had won a moral victory. Punnapra–Vayalar was ‘a rude shock to public opinion all over the State and stiffened the attitude of the people against the Dewan’, who was now more despised than ever.24 By 31 October the strikes were called off and more than sixty organisations were banned, including the ATTUC and the CPI. ‘Many leaders and participants of the revolt were jailed and tortured, many went underground, and the movement seemed to have been crushed for the time being.’25 But it cost Sir CP the goodwill of the Congress too, not only in Travancore but also outside. During an event he attended in Bombay, ‘a thousand Malayalis’ came to demonstrate against him with posters bearing the words ‘Punnapra-Vayalar’ and the man was compelled to use the back door to leave the venue. ‘Hatred,’ noted Louise Ouwerkerk, ‘was swelling to bursting point.’26 Given the outrage among the public, all hopes for the new ‘American Model’ fell through unceremoniously. When the offer was first made, workers had declared: ‘American Model, Arabikadalalil’: take your American Model and dump it in the Arabian Sea. While Sir CP didn’t quite do that, it became clear there was no way his constitutional reform was going to succeed now. So Travancore returned to the absolute rule of its Dewan for all practical purposes as it ventured into the historic year of 1947.

  On 18 February 1947 the great patricians of Britain assembled in Parliament with the elected representatives of their people to hear from their Prime Minister, as historians have termed it, ‘a funeral oration for the British Empire’.27 ‘His Majesty’s Government,’ announced Clement Attlee, ‘wishes to make it clear that it is their definite intention of take the necessary steps to effect the transference of power into responsible Indian hands by a date not later than June 1948.’28 It was a stunning declaration. The fabulous journey of a small mercantile nation from its tiny, frosty island to building the world’s greatest and most imposing empire had come to an end. ‘The loss of India,’ Winston Churchill had years before warned, ‘would be final and fatal to us. It could not fail to be part of a process that would reduce us to the scale of a minor power.’29 He was correct. Britain’s days of glory were coming to an end, it’s decline hastened by the ravages of war.

  The task of relinquishing British rule in India was entrusted to the thoroughly flamboyant and famously charming Lord Mountbatten, a great grandson of Queen Victoria, cousin to the reigning (and final) King Emperor, not to speak of a dozen other European monarchs, and an accomplished naval figure and wartime hero. It was an unorthodox selection for a lofty office that had hosted such glacially cold characters like Lord Curzon. Many considered Mountbatten ‘a playboy who used his royal connection to slip out of his dinner jacket into a naval uniform, and temporarily abandon the dance floor of the Café de Paris for the battlefield’.30 He was wealthy (mainly through marriage to a glamorous heiress) and had the looks of a Hollywood film star, an extraordinary contrast from the sedate and soldier-li
ke Lord Wavell, his predecessor in Delhi. He himself was at first most reluctant to take up the job, trying to persuade the king to find someone else. But that was not to be. In divorcing Britain from its greatest treasure in the East, George VI hoped to project his best face. And Louis Mountbatten was that chosen face.

  Having arrived in India, Mountbatten got down to business and parleyed with all the important national leaders. He struck a close friendship with Nehru, and found Gandhi, who inflicted his favourite, but fairly revolting, goat’s curds on him, to be ‘rather like a little bird’.31 He even struggled to charm his way to win Jinnah’s trust. In what was perhaps inevitable, eventually the bloody partition of India was announced, and the Mountbatten Plan, as it was called, was declared to the world on 3 June 1947. The princely states were told that, at least in theory, the Paramount Power’s relationship with them would terminate, and they would be free to choose their own destinies. In effect, this meant picking either India or Pakistan for most Maharajahs. Some, however, like Hyderabad, Kashmir and Travancore decided they would elect to stay independent, unique as they were in their own ways. On 11 June, therefore, Sir CP ambitiously, and as it would turn out, wishfully, announced that on 15 August 1947 when Britain officially resigned the Government of India, ‘In law as well as in fact, Travancore will become an independent country.’32

  As Sreedhara Menon states, in doing this, the Dewan ‘was only echoing His Masters’ Voice or to put it more correctly, that of Their Royal Highnesses of Travancore, the son and the mother’.33 A few days later the Maharajah featured on local radio to declare personally that ‘Travancore will reassume its independence and sovereignty in full measure.’34 The news was not received with enthusiasm in any quarter, save a dwindling handful of royalists. The declaration of independence, the Resident informed Delhi, had become a subject of ‘sharp controversy’ though Sir CP explained that the decision was taken ‘when the [Indian National] Congress accepted the partition of India’, adding untruthfully that it had the blessings of ‘a vast majority’ of the people.35 Travancore was again, then, launched into ‘the vortex of a political struggle’ as the Congress rejected this quest for freedom, and ‘the government resorted to a series of repressive measures to meet the situation’.36 The Dewan in the meantime hopelessly entertained grand plans of seeking United Nations membership, even defending his stand to London by playing on fears attendant upon the slowly materialising Cold War. ‘Travancore,’ he announced, influenced by his first-hand hatred of communists, ‘cannot be forced to join a Dominion whose leaders have at this critical juncture in world history established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Republic.’37 The State Congress in the meantime was treated roughly, as a telegram from one of its leaders suggests:

  Terrorist organisation composed of goondas formed throughout the State under control of police and other Government agencies to wreck public meetings and assault public men … Life of public men in danger. Members of [these] organisations parade public streets arms with lathis, knives and other weapons … Life and property insecure … Condition rapidly degenerating into widespread violence … Travancore subjected to unbridled dictatorship by an irresponsible non-Travancorean Dewan.38

  While agitation picked up around the state, Sir CP met with representatives of the British Crown to whom he complained that the Paramount Power was pushing the princes around hastily. ‘He then went on to say that Travancore had no wish to have anything to do with the communal questions which had split [India]. They had no quarrel with either India or Pakistan but wished to be left alone. He was convinced in his own mind that civil war was more or less inevitable—that it would take place within a short time’ and that ‘even Mr Gandhi must inevitably come round to this view’.39 The Dewan was invited to Delhi to confer with the Viceroy, who knew that his scheme for independence was a dangerous one and decided to coax him to get the Maharajah to accede his state to Nehru’s India.

  But Sir CP ‘was going to the meeting determined to reject any such proposal outright. He was, however, concerned about the threats of an economic boycott of Travancore by India.’40 By this time with his characteristic, though in this instance misguided, proactive zeal, the Dewan had even negotiated an agreement with Jinnah ‘for the supply of foodstuffs from Pakistan’ and ‘it had already been agreed to exchange representatives between Travancore and Pakistan. He would also send representatives to other countries, for example Turkey. Whether His Majesty’s Government recognised what he was doing at this stage did not immediately concern him.’41 Mountbatten found Sir CP, ‘who has been bombarding me with telegrams and issuing statements to the press’, very emotionally agitated about the whole affair and sought to calm him down first.42

  At my meeting with him on the 22nd July he started off by presenting his own case through the medium of a series of files. The first of these contained a number of rather amusing cartoons, to which he took the greatest exception, and in particular one published that very morning showing him being spanked by me at this very meeting! The next contained a number of rude cuttings about himself. I advised him to follow the example of Lord Balfour and not to read the newspapers if he was going to let himself get upset in this way. The next file contained cuttings to prove that Gandhi was a dangerous sex maniac who could not keep his hands off young girls. He considered him to be the most dangerous influence in India, and said that if he insisted on backing the unstable Nehru against the realistic Patel he would break up the Congress Party within two years. Sir C.P. said that he was not prepared to ally himself with such an unreliable Dominion.

  By the end of an hour, Sir C.P. had worked off his emotional upset. He claimed that the statements which he himself had made were devised for the consumption of the people of Travancore itself, who were the highest educated in India. He declared that Travancore would never accede to the Dominion of India: he had indeed already made preliminary terms with Mr Jinnah, including a trade agreement. I pointed out to Sir C.P. that there could be no objection on the part of the Dominion of India to a trade treaty between Travancore and Pakistan. I went on to say that the States have never controlled their own foreign affairs and defence; and to emphasise the advantages of accession on these two subjects and on communications.43

  Finally, declared the Viceroy with characteristic modesty, ‘after I had worked on him for more than two hours, he came round as far as to say he might consider a treaty with India. I felt that we had made some progress and let him go and sent V.P. Menon to work on him.’44 But by the next day Vallabhbhai Patel made it clear that Travancore could have no special treaty with India and would have to accede like all the other principalities. Mountbatten also informed Sir CP that money was already being channelled into the State Congress ‘in anticipation of starting internal trouble’ should the Maharajah not accede by 15 August, ‘and that I was confident that there was more to follow’. The Dewan then asked the Viceroy to write the Maharajah a letter with all his proposals. ‘As I gather the Maharajah is completely under Sir CP’s thumb, I cannot but feel that this advice has at least left the door open for Sir CP to come in at the last possible moment, provided he finds that I have been able to get every other State into line.’45

  Within ten days of this meeting between the Dewan and the Viceroy, however, the Maharajah cabled ‘though not without hesitation’ his consent to accede the state with India.46 A number of events and considerations led to a change of heart after those early, and ill-adviced, public declarations of independence. The Maharajah at some level seemed to have calculated that the Paramount Power would assist princes like him in preserving their sovereignty. But as Sir CP warned him two years before, ‘English character in general and Englishmen in particular will always swim with the tide. To rely upon British help and advice would be unwise.’47 But perhaps what affected the Maharajah more was an incident on 25 July. Sir CP was the chief guest at a music concert, where as usual he reasserted the impending ‘new era of sovereign independent status for Travancore’. The music be
gan and ended, and the time of his departure came. That is when the lights suddenly went out and an assailant attacked the Dewan with a billhook. Only the angavastram wrapped around his neck in his usual style, and trained breath control saved Sir CP as he was rushed to his doctors.48 Rattled, in the palace the hitherto cocooned Maharajah realised he had to change his mind. On 28 July the Dewan wrote to him a serious (and historically fascinating) letter from his hospital bed:

  On my return from Delhi and after reading the narrative I deliberately advocated the cause of accession subject to the conditions and concessions made by the Viceroy, so that you may not hear only one side. The next day I gave you my own point of view. The alternative is either accession i.e. becoming a part of the Dominion or treaty or alliance or being independent. There is no middle course and no face saving formula. This was clear from my talk with the Viceroy. If you accede you get some advantages but are not different from Baroda, Gwalior and Patiala except as to customs and some financial matters. If you do not accede, you will have to fight a hard battle with some assistance from Jinnah in the forthcoming civil war in India (which is certain within six months). I expect the rise of half a dozen principalities in India (as in the 18th century) after the massacre of the Congress leaders (in November and December). Those who can fight out the terrible battle will emerge as rulers but the risk of life and property is 75 to 25. I realised this some months ago and made it clear to Your Highness and you then decided to fight it out. … The events that have happened must have made a great impression on you. They have not changed my mind but made me fully realise that your lives are in jeopardy and those of persons near and dear to you. It is either death or victory … If you consider that your people are not ready for a fight and that they are not worth fighting for, the path of compromise is inevitable. Such compromise or concession should, if it is to be effective, be wholehearted. Accession as suggested by the Viceroy with the concessions made by him is the first essential.49