68. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
69. See File H151/1924 of IOR/L/PS/15/60 for information on the award of the Kaiser-i-Hind to Bhagavathi Pillai, daughter of Maharajah Mulam Tirunal.
70. See Lucy Moore, Maharanis (Google Books)
71. Letter dated 10/06/1915 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 95).
72. Letters dated 06/07/1915 and 15/07/1915 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 95).
73. A.B. Clarke, In Kerala, p. 88.
74. Ibid., p. 91.
75. Ibid., p. 145.
76. Letter dated 15/07/1915 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, pp. 95–96).
77. Letter dated 23/07/1915 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 97).
78. Ibid.
79. Letter dated 31/07/1915 from the Maharani Gaekwar to the Senior Rani (TRF).
80. Letter dated 01/07/1916 from the Maharani Gaekwar to the Senior Rani (TRF).
81. The name of this mistress was Madame Grenier and she was ostensibly the Gaekwar’s secretary. In 1928 his daughter, Indira Devi, complained to the Secretary of State in London about how she could not travel with her father in the same boat because of the presence of this lady and her mother was ‘annoyed’ that she had already had lunch with the Madame once before. In a telegram from the Viceroy to the Secretary of State, the former noted that ‘the lady is a divorcee of Franco-Spanish extraction, and relationship with Gaekwar is not that of master and secretary. Maharani greatly resents the relationship.’ See IOR/L/PO/5/14 (II).
82. Author’s interview with Goda Varma, husband of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s granddaughter, Shobhana, who is also a nephew of the Junior Rani’s husband.
83. Letter dated 31/07/1916 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 99).
84. Mukundan Tampi was a disciple of Raja Ravi Varma’s who is reported to have commented that he ‘would brush us all off the face of the earth with his brush!’ It is supposed that Tampi could have attained much fame and success had he not been addicted to drink, which destroyed his career. He was also related to Rama Varma through his father, who was a Koil Tampuran of Harippad.
85. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
86. Kulathu Iyer, Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi Tirumanasu Kondu, p. 32 and author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
87. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 100.
88. The Senior Rani quoted in ibid.
89. Letter dated 06/02/1920 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
90. Author’s interview with Prabha Menon.
91. Letter dated 12/04/1920 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
92. This is not verified but was told to her granddaughter Uma when she visited the temple by the authorities there.
93. The Valiya Koil Tampuran quoted in Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 102.
94. Ibid. p. 103.
95. Ibid. p. 104.
96. Letter dated 25/04/1920 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
97. Letter dated 26/04/1920 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
98. S. Guptan Nair, op. cit., p. 38.
99. T.K. Velu Pillai, Travancore State Manual, Vol. II, p. 701.
100. The Senior Rani quoted in Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 104.
101. The Feudatory and Zemindari India, Vol. IX, No. 4, p. 184.
102. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
103. Ibid.
104. Letter dated 22/03/1922 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 105).
105. Letter dated 07/04/1922 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (Raghunandan, p. 105).
106. Letter dated 10/04/1923 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
107. See Uma Maheswari, Thrippadidanam (Malayalam).
108. This nephew would go on to become the renowned neurosurgeon Dr R.M. Varma.
109. Letter dated 08/09/1922 from the Senior Rani to Kuttan Tampuran (TRF).
110. The Senior Rani quoted in Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 105.
111. Author’s interview with Rukmini Varma.
112. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 106.
113. The Senior Rani quoted in ibid. p. 106.
114. According to Advocate Ayyappan Pillai, this name suddenly made the name Lalithambika very popular in Travancore among Nairs and others.
115. GCSI: Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India and GCIE: Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire; these were both British honours conferred on Mulam Tirunal.
116. Gouri Lakshmi Bayi, op. cit., p. 160.
117. Letter dated 05/10/1917 from the Maharajah to the Viceroy (IOR/R/1/1/616).
118. K.P. Padmanabha Menon, History of Kerala, Vol. II, pp. 2–3.
CHAPTER 5: HER HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJAH
1. This is the famous slogan of the Tourism Department of Kerala.
2. Quote from ‘Report on the Fourth Tour of HE The Hon. Sir Arthur Lawley GCIE, KCMG to Cochin and Travancore’, p. 58 (Sir Arthur was the Governor of Madras, 1906–11).
3. The author’s own great grandmother is said to have found a corpse in her town house upon a visit after the floods. The whole place was sealed off, the property sold, with the lady returning to her ancestral home in the country, mentally unable to come to terms with what had happened.
4. Chief Secretary’s Press Note dated 02/08/1924 (Bundle No. 217, File No. 509/27 KSA).
5. Report of the Mannar Flood Relief Deputation dated 28/08/1924 (Bundle No. 217, File No. 509/27 KSA).
6. Chief Secretary’s Press Note dated 02/08/1924 (Bundle No. 217, File No. 509/27 KSA).
7. Chief Secretary’s notification dated 28/08/1924 and Income Tax Commissioner’s circular dated 25/08/1924 (Bundle No. 217, File No. 509/27 KSA).
8. Report of the Land Revenue and Income Tax Commissioner (Raghunandan pp. 122–24).
9. See Resolution on Principles to be observed during Minority Administrations in Native States (IOR/R/1/1/615).
10. Vikram Sampath, Splendours of Royal Mysore, p. 517.
11. K.P. Padmanabha Menon, History of Kerala, Vol. IV, p. 324.
12. K.K. Nair, By Sweat and Sword, p. 299. Indeed, this attitude would come up in Bhopal also, where the local female rulers would have a tough time convincing the British of their rights. See The Career of an Indian Princess by Sambhu Chandra Mukhopadhyaya.
13. R.P. Raja, New Light on Swathi Thirunal, p. 197.
14. M.E. Watts, Circumstances of the First Regency in Travancore (Raghunandan, Appendix A, and letter dated 30/04/1926 from the Dewan to the Resident in IOR/R/1/1/1532 (1)).
15. I. Matthew, ‘Travancore a Hundred Years ago: The Times of the Ranees and Colonel Munro’ published in The Kerala Society Papers II, Series 8.
16. James Welsh, Military Reminiscences, Vol. II, pp. 144,146.
17. Ibid.
18. See Appendix to Notes quoting Col. Munro in IOR/R/1/1/1532 (1).
19. See Sir T. Sadasiva Aiyar’s judgment in Lakshmi Narayani vs. Kanakku Padmanabhan Parameswaran 1906 cited in IOR/R/1/1/1532 (1).
20. Letter dated 19/09/1924 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec., GOI (IOR/R/2/884/161).
21. Ibid.
22. See Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., pp. 112–113.
23. Ibid.
24. See Kulathu Iyer’s Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi Tirumanasu Kondu.
25. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had been told an hour before the durbar about the honour.
26. See, for instance, Gazette Extraordinary issued on 23/10/1926.
27. See Chapter 16 for more on this.
28. Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance, p. 77.
29. The Maharajahs who enacted these changes did so only half-heartedly as Robin Jeffrey explains in his seminal The Decline of Nair Dominance.
30. There was every hope for victory. In the 1880s converted Christians obtained the right to use temple roads like ‘high-caste’ S
yrian Christians when they complained to the Resident when some Nadar Christians were beaten up for using temple roads. When the Resident was told they were low caste, he thundered: ‘I could not admit that Her Majesty the Empress or any person holding the Christian faith should be called “low caste” because of the religion they hold’ and the government had quietly but promptly allowed all Christians access to these roads. See Louise Ouwerkerk and Dick Kooiman, No Elephants for the Maharaja, p. 56.
31. Perhaps one of the more striking public processions involved one where a Nambutiri was mounted on an elephant with a Pulaya, holding an idol, and paraded around Vaikom to send out a message of solidarity between the highest and the lowest.
32. Quoted in S. Raimon, Selected Documents on Vaikom Satyagraha, p. 5.
33. See Robin Jeffrey’s ‘Temple Entry Movement in Travancore’, Social Scientist, Vol. 4, No. 8 (1976), p. 15.
34. Gandhi quoted in The History of Freedom Movement in Kerala, Vol. II, p. 153.
35. Reference is to Visakham Tirunal.
36. P.K.K. Menon, The History of Freedom Movement in Kerala, Vol II, p. 161.
37. Dewan quoted in The Madras Mail dated 12/03/1925.
38. Rama Varma, in the words of his grandson Shreekumar, ‘hated the Congress, hated Nehru’, and disagreed with the nationalist movement. His other grandchildren also attest to this.
39. In complete contrast to her husband, the Maharani’s grandchildren remember her as idolising Gandhi and being an ardent admirer of Nehru’s, whose every speech, every book and every essay she collected.
40. Quoted in J. Devika, Her-Self, p. 85.
41. J. Devika, En-gendering Individuals, p. 206.
42. Apparently the idea was indeed Gandhi’s.
43. ‘So strong,’ Louise Ouwerkerk would remark, was the tradition that the ruler stood above the actual business of administration, that although his consent to the carrying out of a death sentence was necessary, the death warrant was always signed by a special palace official, so that the wrath of the gods would not fall on the Raja.’ See Louise Ouwerkerk and Dick Kooiman, op. cit., p. 64.
44. T.K. Ravindran, Vaikkam Satyagraha and Gandhi, p. 99.
45. P.K.K. Menon, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 382.
46. O.M. Thomas, Under the Knife, p. 21.
47. P.K.K. Menon, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 382.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. See Young India for 26/02/1925.
52. Ibid.
53. P.K.K. Menon, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 382.
54. See Young India for 19/02/1925.
55. Dewan Raghavaiah quoted in Young India dated 26/02/1925.
56. See letter dated 26/01/1925 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec., GOI (IOR/R/1/1/1530 (2)).
57. Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., p. 128.
58. Quoted in T.K. Ravindran, op. cit., p. 196.
59. Gandhi also understood this. In his speech dated 03/04/1925 in Palitana, he said that he had ‘seen in Travancore that if the subjects do their duties, the Maharani will manage to do hers. But if the subjects remain recalcitrant, the Maharani cannot do anything, however much she wants.’
60. Letter dated 18/03/1925 from Gandhi to the Police Commissioner of Travancore quoted in S. Raimon, Selected Documents on Vaikom Satyagraha, p. 160.
61. See Young India for 02/04/1925.
62. P.K.K. Menon, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 354.
63. See Pioneer Mail and Indian Weekly News for 25/09/1925.
64. The roads, it should be noted, were always open to non-Hindus. The population figures are from the 1921 Travancore Census Report.
65. Nihal Singh’s profile of the Maharani in The Baltimore Sun dated 23/03/1929.
66. Quoted in T.K. Velu Pillai, Travancore State Manual, Vol. II, p. 716.
67. See Lakshmi Raghunandan, op. cit., pp. 131–32.
68. See Young India for 02/04/1925.
69. Gouri Lakshmi Bayi, Thulasi Garland, p. 382.
70. A. Sreedhara Menon, Kerala History and its Makers, p. 209. It is crucial here to understand that merely allowing people into or around temples, which was socially a great gesture, is not greater than giving them economic and educational facilities. The author’s own opinion is that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi ought to be remembered for these latter aspects of her reign, instead of because of the former alone. The intentions of the reformers, including Gandhi, in allowing low-caste groups into temples is today questionable, as they seem to have been eager to unite the Hindu community for political purposes, rather than on purely compassionate grounds. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, in fact, did her best to prevent this seeing minority groups as political aspects in their own right rather than constituents under a Hindu umbrella.
71. See Young India dated 26/04/1925.
72. Story related by Goda Varma.
73. Letter dated 20/09/1924 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec., GOI (IOR/R/2/884/161).
74. See The Pioneer dated 05/09/1924.
75. Letter dated 19/09/1924 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec., GOI (IOR/R/1/1/1530 (2)).
76. Letter dated 26/01/1925 from the Resident to the Pol. Sec., GOI (IOR/R/1/1/1530 (2)).
77. The Madras Mail dated 23/04/1925.
CHAPTER 6: A CHRISTIAN MINISTER
1. The Rani quoted in Shungoonny Menon, A History of Travancore, p. 378.
2. Ibid. p. 365.
3. For a while Col. Munro was formally appointed Dewan of Travancore. In what was unprecedented, he was permitted to make proclamations and issue Acts by his hand and under his seal.
4. I. Matthew, ‘Travancore a Hundred Years Ago: The Times of the Ranees and Colonel Munro’ in Kerala Society Papers II, Series 8.
5. Quoted in Appendix to the Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company 16 August 1832, p. 289 (available on Google Books at https://books.google.co.in/books?id=lEBmQbMae1gC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 02/10/2015)
6. Ibid. pp. 296.
7. Eventually the Rani did give birth to a son and the grateful colonel presented a silver umbrella to the temple, which is used in ceremonies to this day. Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, of course, was prompt in announcing that she had ‘placed this child of mine on the bosom of the Company’.
8. Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, p. 285.
9. Shungoonny Menon, op. cit., p. 383.
10. As the Chief Secretary of Fort St. George wrote to the Resident on 23/08/1814, he was to ‘carefully abstain from any open interference in the administration of the country…continuing however at the same time to afford privately, both to the Ranee and the Dewan, but invariably in terms of conciliation and respect, the reasonable assistance of good Council, with a view to the permanent interests of the alliance, and to the progressive improvement of the country.’ See Michael H. Fisher, Indirect Rule in India, p. 215.
11. Reference is to Swathi Tirunal (1829–1846), who was prevented from doing so by his aunt and brother, but who could not see eye to eye with the Residents.
12. Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance, pp. 56–57.
13. Ibid. pp. 57–58.
14. Letter dated 21/11/1855 from Lord Harris to the Rajah (TRF) Also see Parliamentary Papers Vol. 25 (1859), p. 32 (available on Google Books at https://books.google.co.in/books?id=VvQSAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 20/08/2015).
15. Letter dated 30/12/1855 from the Rajah to C.F. Kohlhoff, Conservator of Forests in Travancore (TRF).
16. Robin Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 84.
17. Ibid., p. 66. Visakham Tirunal, for instance, had once lamented that Travancore was India’s most priest-ridden country, but as he lay on his deathbed in 1885, he wouldn’t let even his Nair wife come near him, and surrounded himself with these very priests so that he would find his way to heaven unblemished.
18. Quoted in ibid. p. 66.
19. This was an all India phenomenon actually. See M.J. Akbar’s Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan (2012) (New York: Harpe
r Perennial).
20. K.R. Ushakumari, Changanassery Parameswaran Pillai, p. 28.
21. S. Guptan Nair, C.V. Raman Pillai, p. 33. As late as 1934 in a memorial submitted by the Christians to the government it would be ‘admitted with regret that even highly cultured men hardly rise above communal considerations in public affairs’. See Travancore: The Present Problem (1934).
22. The exception was Nanu Pillai (1877– 80). Until 1872 the Dewans were a train of Raos (i.e., Tanjore Marathi Brahmins) after which some Tamil Brahmins were also thrown in. It was only in 1914 that the next and last Nair Dewan was appointed in the form of Sir M. Krishnan Nair.
23. George Mathew, Communal Road to a Secular Kerala, p. 53.
24. With economic competition mounting, ‘sons of the soil’ is an often-heard expression even in the twenty-first century, as demonstrated, for instance, in the state of Maharashtra by the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena.
25. Robin Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 234.
26. This ‘outsider’ issue was raised in other states also, such as Mysore, where Sir M. Visvesvaraiah was the first ‘native’ Dewan.
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