50. The leader of these mercenaries was one Ponnu Pandya Thevan.
51. Desperate times, however, called for desperate measures. The Thekkumkur Rajah, a Nair prince ruling from Changanassery, tried to keep the Travancore armies at bay by assembling a vanguard of Brahmins. Traditionally, as the premier caste in society, Brahmins were inviolable and enjoyed immunity from military assault. But here again Martanda Varma shoved custom aside by ordering his men to shoot them all down and engage with the unprepared Thekkumkur soldiers cowering behind. In 1750, the Thekkumkur family also went into exile in Calicut. Even the Brahmin Rajah of Purakkad, a small but prosperous principality with its capital at Ambalapuzha, was not spared, despite the fact that he had been a Travancore ally. As the Dutch commander in Cochin lamented, ‘Who would have thought that Travancore would not have spared Porca in acknowledgment of his assistance, the more so because he was a Brahmin.’
52. Cochin actually had been involved in earlier wars as well against Travancore, and in 1746 its Rajah was particularly irked when Martanda Varma attacked the Tiruvalla Temple, of which the former was protector. His soldiers began to harvest the paddy from the temple’s fields, but the Brahmin trustees formed a guard and beat the soldiers out using sticks and brooms, and warded them off. See Mark de Lannoy, op. cit., p. 123. As for the fall of the Dutch, Martanda Varma defeated them in the famous Battle of Colachel in 1741. The event has since been cast as a great national event, and as the ‘first’ example of an Indian ‘power’ defeating a European naval force. But as Ibrahim Kunju remarks, ‘as a military affair, it was nothing spectacular’ and Travancore’s victory was partly due to good luck. ‘On 7th August, a red-hot ball fired from the Travancore side fell into a barrel of gun powder and caused a conflagration in the [rice] stockade [of the Dutch, during the battle at Colachel]. The whole rice supply was consumed in the conflagration. Unable to get supplies from their ships, the Dutch were forced to surrender. The Dutch evacuated the stockade and a large number of muskets and a few pieces of cannon fell into Travancore hands.’ See Ibrahim Kunju, Rise of Travancore, pp. 41–42.
53. Such was the psychological importance of this victory over an otherwise formidable Tipu Sultan that his personal standard, captured by the Nairs, is still brought out during processions of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the most important shrine connected with the Travancore family.
54. V. Nagam Aiya, Travancore State Manual, Vol. I, p. 367. In 1880 Martanda Varma’s descendant, Maharajah Visakham Tirunal would remark: ‘One of my illustrious predecessors, the Maharajah who died in the Malabar year 933, corresponding with the year 1757, the year in which that master-architect, Clive, laid the foundation-stone of the British Indian Empire in the field of Plassey, calling his successors to his bedside, gave them his last words of advice to the effect that “These Englishmen appear to be destined to rise to such power and glory as are hitherto unparalleled. Be it your constant aim and endeavour to secure their friendship and support.” These precious and prophetic words ring in my ears as clearly as when they were uttered a century and quarter ago. May those words continue to be the most prized heirloom in my family to the remotest posterity!’ See India’s Women: The Magazine of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, Vol. I, p. 29.
CHAPTER 1: A PAINTER PRINCE
1. The uncle was Rajaraja Varma, a painter and pupil of Alagiri Naidu of Tanjore.
2. E.M.J. Venniyur, Raja Ravi Varma, p. 5.
3. Ibid.
4. Erwin Neumayer and Christine Schelberger, Popular Art, p. 39.
5. C. Rajaraja Varma quoted in Rupika Chawla, Raja Ravi Varma, p. 46.
6. S. Ramanatha Aiyar, A Brief Sketch of Travancore, pp. 167–168.
7. Venniyur, op. cit., p. 8.
8. Ibid. p. 6.
9. This patron was Kizhakke Palat Krishna Menon, the father in law of Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair, who would go on to become President of the Indian National Congress.
10. Author’s interview with Rosscote Krishna Pillai and Advocate Ayyappan Pillai. Kalyani Pillai’s father, Nadavarambath Kunjukrishna Menon, was a friend of Punnakkal Easwara Pillai, who already had more than one wife in Trivandrum at the time he married her. One of his descendants was the consort of Prince Asvathi Tirunal.
11. One local story in Trivandrum tells that Easwara Pillai one day returned home early and found the Maharajah sneaking out through the window. He just sighed and took Kalyani Pillai to the palace and handed her over.
12. Read Deepanjana Pal, The Painter.
13. Venniyur, op. cit., p. 15.
14. Ibid., p. 21.
15. Ibid., p. 23.
16. This included dressing in a sari, and judging from an 1868 photograph, Kalyani Pillai was probably the first Malayali woman to wear one.
17. Nagam Aiya, Travancore State Manual, Vol. III, p. 335.
18. Letter dated 20/01/1909 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF). As early as two years after Ayilyam Tirunal’s death, a missionary in Trivandrum would note the following about Kalyani Pillai: ‘The late Maharajah’s widow has received me four times. She is too busy with her adopted daughter’s children, who seem almost always to be ill, to have time for regular study, but is still glad to see me, and to read the Bible whenever I go. Her eyes are beginning to fail her, though she is not an old woman, and yet I think she reads little by herself. She is very thin and delicate looking, and has lost much of her beauty; then of course she wears no jewels now, and that changes a native woman’s appearance very much. She seems so friendless and lonely that I feel very sorry for her, and long, O so much, to get her to trust in the best of Friends; but she is so bound by Hindu chains that nothing but God’s grace can set her free.’ See India’s Women: The Magazine of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, Vol. II, p. 34.
19. P. Ramakrishna Pillai, Visakhavijaya, p. 149. Ayilyam Tirunal, in the words of his brother, who of course had his own axe to grind, ‘had never subjected himself to strict moral discipline, either extraneous or self imposed’ and we are told that ‘he used to make indiscriminate advances to women, which are indicated in some old verses’ and also in local gossip in Trivandrum.
20. The Lady dated 11 January 1912.
21. Henry Bruce, Letters from Malabar, p. 79. The missionary Augusta Blandford decades before also lamented how ‘This most extraordinary law has led, as could be expected, to much misery and jealousy and family dissension in the long course of its continuance in Travancore; and even to strangers it is painful on state occasions to see the Rajah’s sons standing among the attendants behind their father’s throne while the Princes, their cousins, are seated on chairs of state!’ See India’s Women: The Magazine of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, Vol. I, p. 25
22. Samuel Mateer, Native Life in Travancore, p. 118
23. The Lady, op. cit.
24. Letter dated 19/09/1924 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec. GOI (IOR/R/1/1/1530 (2)).
25. Divakara Varma’s note on life in Satelmond Palace. Divakara Varma is a great grandson of Raja Ravi Varma and nephew of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
26. Letter dated 19/09/1924 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec. GOI (IOR/R/1/1/1530 (2))
27. The Lady, op. cit.
28. Visscher quoted in Binu John Mailaparambil, Lords of the Sea, p. 40.
29. The East India Company also paid a pension, called malikhana, to the family.
30. It may be of interest to know that the Rani had cancer of the mouth but would not allow outside doctors to diagnose the area. So it was Ravi Varma who sketched the insides of her mouth for the durbar physicians, although these grotesque works now appear to be lost.
31. Pierre Loti, India, p. 56.
32. I am grateful to Lakshmi Raghunandan for allowing me access to her extensive collection of the personal letters of Lakshmi Bayi. The Travancore royal family’s interest in the English language appears to have been an early one, and Martanda Varma’s successor, popularly called Dharma Rajah, was apparently conversant in
the language. Dutch records noted in 1787 that he ‘reads the English newspapers of London, Madras, and Calcutta whereby he has acquired much knowledge which would be sought in vain in other Malabar princes’. See Selections from the Records of the Madras Government, Vol. 13, p. 38.
33. For her loyalty to her husband she was invested with the Order of the Crown of India in 1881. As Augusta Blandford noted: ‘This substantial acknowledgment from the Queen of her admiration of the Rani’s virtues will, I feel sure, do good to the cause of morality; and the women of Travancore will long remember to tell their children of the noble Rani who waited in sorrow and widowhood five years for her absent husband, and was publicly honoured by England’s Queen Empress.’ See India’s Women: The Magazine of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, Vol. II, p. 33
34. Pierre Loti, op. cit., p. 56.
35. Letter dated 20/02/1895 from the Senior Rani to her niece Mahaprabha (Raghunandan, p. 2).
36. Letter dated 06/03/1896 from the Senior Rani to Sir Sheshiah Shastri (Raghunandan, pp. 12–13).
37. Reference is to Kunjaru Rajah who was an ancestor of Dr M.S. Valiathan.
38. There was in fact one more sister between the Ranis and Kochupanki, but she died.
39. This person does not wish to be named.
40. Letter dated 18/12/1899 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/892/278). Augusta Blandford also refers to alcoholism in the family and in general among wealthy women when she speaks in 1882 of the death of the brother of Kochupanki and the two Ranis of Travancore ‘who had been suffering from some time from abcess (sic) in the liver, brought on by his own intemperance. European brandy is the curse of most of the rich idle men in this country, and I fear the evil is increasing rather than diminishing. They are forbidden by their Sastras to indulge in strong drink of any kind, consequently all they take is in private after dark. They sometimes shut themselves up for days, with the enemy close at hand, and feign sickness so that their drunken state should not be found out. I know one rich family where the old father and all his sons drank deeply; the daughter, a lovely girl of sixteen, a favourite pupil of mine years ago, was married to a man of rank, who drank till he died; then she was given to another hard drinker, who also spent much of his time in gambling, and has, I fear, taught the poor girl to play cards and drink too. Her coarse bloated features are a sad sight to one who remembers her former beauty and girlish light heartedness. I little thought when I saw her in her cloth of gold dress on her wedding day that she would come to this.’ She also adds how the Junior Rani had ‘been speaking words of warning to her sons’ on the matter of drinking. See India’s Women … op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 33–34.
41. The unnamed source mentioned above.
42. See Rupika Chawla, op. cit., p. 30.
43. Venniyur, op. cit., p. 29.
44. Rupika Chawla, op. cit., p. 32. His full name was Pururuttathi-Nal Kerala Varma Tampuran (1876–1912), while the younger boy was Revathi-Nal Rama Varma Tampuran (1880–1971). Ravi Varma himself was also Pururuttathi-Nal.
45. Uma (1882–1971), lovingly called Kochomana, remains forgotten in many biographical accounts on Raja Ravi Varma.
46. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma, great-great granddaughter of Raja Ravi Varma and granddaughter of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
47. His full name was Pooram-Nal Kerala Varma Koil Tampuran and he was the author of the Amarakosa Padartha Prakashika.
48. His full name was Tiruvonam-Nal Kerala Varma Koil Tampuran of Paliyakkara.
49. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma. Men could be quite touchy about the size of their kudumis and there is a story about the Rajah of Cochin who ruled from 1895 to 1914, who once met a Nambutiri Brahmin with a kudumi better than his, and promptly had the man chop it off!
50. Lakshmi Raghunandan, At the Turn of the Tide, p. 2.
51. See Kulathu Iyer, Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi Tirumanasu Kondu.
52. According to Mahaprabha’s great-granddaughter Rukmini Varma, this room was ‘a dark, cave-like birth room at the back of the nalukettu. I remember experiencing the strangest, most eerie sensations when I looked within. I felt as if icy cold ghostly fingers were running down my spine! It had a haunting aura about it. The woman who had just given birth could not rise from her bed and had to be attended by special servers who had to enter and exit through separate doors to avoid coming into contact with anyone. Only the midwife had free access to the lady. Very many unfortunate health issues cropped up as a consequence, but nobody dared eschew age-old customs!’
53. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 4.
54. Charles Allen and Sharada Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes, p. 31.
55. Letter dated 06/02/1896 from Sir Sheshiah Shastri to the Senior Rani (Raghunandan, pp. 9–10).
56. Letter dated 18/11/1896 from the Senior Rani to Mahaprabha (Raghunandan, p. 8).
57. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 14.
58. Prince Revathi Tirunal Kerala Varma died soon after the birth of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, on 5th December 1895.
59. Ulloor S. Parameswara Aiyar, Progress of Travancore, p. 101.
60. The Senior Rani quoted in Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 13.
61. Ibid., p. 14.
62. Expression used in letter dated 14/08/1890 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. quoted in Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance, p. 313.
63. Letter dated 18/12/1899 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/892/278).
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Letter dated 12/12/1899 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/900/390).
67. Letter dated 18/12/1899 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/892/278).
68. The father of Lakshmi Bayi, Parvathi Bayi, and Kochupanki was Tiruvonam-Nal Koil Tampuran of Kilimanoor.
69. Letter dated 18/12/1899 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/892/278).
70. He intended, therefore, to veto the adoption by citing a legal precedent from a noble family closely allied to the royal house. This was the Vadasseri Ammaveedu, which was one of the exclusive houses from where the princes of Travancore were permitted to take wives. In the early 1880s there had arisen a need for adoption here, and the last surviving male member had organised a suitable arrangement. But some distant nephews of his, connected to the Ammaveedu in the matrilineal line, objected to the idea, and the then Maharajah had, therefore, disallowed the move. This, the Elayarajah pointed out, showed that senior members of the family could not proceed in such matters without the absolute consensus of all affected parties.
71. Letter dated 16/01/1900 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/892/278).
72. The Prince and Kuttan Tampuran were about the same age and had studied together for the BA exam some years previously.
73. See Dewan’s memorandum (Raghunandan, pp. 17–18).
74. Venniyur, op. cit., p. 46.
75. Letter dated 13/01/1900 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/900/390).
76. Letter dated 12/12/1899 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/892/278). The Elayarajah had reason to be spiteful. Partly due to the intrigues of the palace bureau, the Maharajah had been on bad terms with the late Prince Revathi Tirunal, and many suspected foul play in his early demise. Since then Chathayam Tirunal also became hostile to Mulam Tirunal, who reciprocated in kind. He would humiliate the Elayarajah on ceremonial occasions by not allowing him to sit next to him, and stopped giving him the customary gifts during festivals and important religious occasions. Chathayam Tirunal was also unhappy because the Maharajah would not defray the expenses of his daughter’s wedding from the Civil List, as she was not from an Ammaveedu (i.e., one of the select families from where alone princes could choose spouses) and hence unrecognised by the state.
77. Letter dated 30/04/1900 from the Chief Sec., GOI to the Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/900/390) The British were eager to ensure legality and the o
pinion of the Advocate General of Madras, confirmed the Maharajah’s stand.
78. Letter dated 17/08/1900 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/880/56).
79. Letter dated 05/08/1900 from the Resident to the Elayarajah (IOR/R/2/880/56).
80. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 26.
81. Letter dated 18/12/1899 from the Elayarajah to the Resident (IOR/R/2/892/278)
CHAPTER 2: THE QUEEN OF THE KUPAKAS
1. Ulloor S. Parameswara Aiyar, Progress of Travancore, p. 106. Curzon was rather uncharitable to Indian princes and acted in a generally high-handed manner, deposing or curtailing the powers of some fifteen rulers during his time as Viceroy.
2. Rumour in Trivandrum still has it that he was poisoned, but the Resident’s letters show that Asvathi Tirunal, like his brother, was very unhealthy and obese.
3. Letter dated 12/12/1899 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/892/278).
4. Letter dated 07/06/1901 from the Resident to the Chief Sec., Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/900/394).
5. Letter dated 07/06/1901 from the Resident to the Chief Sec. Madras Govt. (IOR/R/2/900/394).
6. Valiya Koil Tampuran’s diary entry dated 15/06/1901 (Raghunandan, p. 29).
7. In the nineteenth century, Ayilyam Tirunal Gowri Lakshmi Bayi succeeded as Senior Rani in 1808, aged eighteen; Uttrittadhi Tirunal Gowri Parvathi Bayi in 1814, aged thirteen; Pooradam Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi in 1854, at twenty-five; and Bharani Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi in 1857, aged nine.
8. Author’s interview with Shreekumar Varma, a grandson of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
9. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
10. The consecration occurred on Avittom day in Mithunam month of 482 Malayalam Era.
11. Some believe the adoption was made by his successor Udaya Martanda Varma.
12. P.K.S. Raja, Mediaeval Kerala, p. 59.
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