Ivory Throne
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Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
In the six years I have spent putting together this book, I have received help, guidance and assistance from a number of people.
I owe my thanks, firstly, to my parents for their generous financial support in the early years of the project, when I did not have an income of my own, and for asking no questions as to what I was doing. I hope the result will not entirely horrify them as they finally discover what it is that I was working on these past several years.
I must also specially thank my sister Indrani for pulling me into reading and writing years ago at a time when I was happy to find less inspiring distractions!
In 2009, I began a long correspondence with Lakshmi Raghunandan, granddaughter to Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and author of At The Turn of the Tide (1995), a phenomenal volume that compiles all of the Maharani’s important correspondence and papers. This book is one of the foundations for my own work, and I am grateful to Lakshmi also for giving me access to the other material, some from the mid-nineteenth century, which she has with her. Lakshmi and her husband Raghu tolerated me for long hours at their home in Bangalore since our first meeting in 2011, sometimes permitting my intrusions even beyond midnight.
That same year, Lakshmi introduced me to Rukmini Varma, her reclusive sister and Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s favourite grandchild, who has been a most bountiful source of stories as well as all varieties of details about the Maharani. Since then, Rukmini, besides interviews that I formally had with her, has entertained hundreds of hours of calls, almost always made late at night, to clarify doubts and to answer questions that came up every now and then. I am particularly thankful to her for taking such an interest in my writing, since she does not normally receive visitors or have interactions these days outside family circles.
Rukmini’s son Jay has also, since 2013, been a great source of memories about the life Sethu Lakshmi Bayi led after she left the palace for Bangalore.
Similarly, Uma Varma, witty and irreverent, opened her doors to me, particularly with regard to her memories of the Valiya Koil Tampuran, and received many phone calls from me over the years from London. She too took more than a passing interest in this book and proactively followed up with me whenever there was something new that she thought would add to my research.
Her daughter, Radhika Varma Hormusjee, gave me a beautiful essay of her memories of her great grandparents and of the life the family led in Bangalore, and went out of her way to help photograph the paintings I wanted to include in this book.
Parvathi and Ravi Varma, Ambika Varma, Balagopal and Vidya Varma, and Devika Radhakrishnan offered valuable inputs that have enriched this book, as did the late Dr R.M. Varma and his wife Malathi. Kerala Varma, the Maharani’s son-in-law, who will soon turn a hundred years old, was also a store of information and spoke to me on several occasions despite ill health, for which I am grateful. I thank also Mr Prasad Bidapa and Dr Vanitha Dayananda for their contributions.
Divakara Varma, the Maharani’s nephew, corresponded with me over email and gave me answers to many questions, and in 2014 we met for an exhaustive discussion in Nagercoil before he returned to Canada. To him and for his phenomenal recollection of detail I express my gratitude.
Ambassador C. Ranganathan spoke to me over the phone about his own experience of knowing members of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s family and about his grandfather, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer. Urmila Devi, whose uncle was the last ruler of princely Mysore, also supplied me some material and told me of her recollections of the Maharani’s family after they had moved to Bangalore.
My friend and the distinguished author Vikram Sampath receives a special mention here for all his determined encouragement and help in Bangalore on each of my visits. Whenever I grew frustrated while writing or neglected my manuscript, it was Vikram who, through cutting emails, reminded me that it was too early for me to claim a writer’s block, and I would need to churn out more than one book to join that club!
I am grateful to Indira Varma, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s daughter, in Chennai for seeing me in December 2011 despite poor health and even though she was in mourning at the time following K.K. Varma’s death earlier that year. I am thankful to Shreekumar Varma and his wife Geeta for their interviews with me, as also to Shobhana Varma, who gave me a note about her grandmother’s principal accomplishments as ruler. Her husband Goda Varma, who is a nephew of Maharajah Chithira Tirunal on the side of his father, the Kochu Koil Tampuran, also gave me some comments that were of value.
In Chennai, I also met Prabha Menon, the Maharani’s niece, who regaled me with old stories, which were very valuable since they offered an entirely different perspective that was at once close but not as intimate as was the case with direct members of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s family.
I am grateful to Advocate Vijayaraghavan and his uncle Mr P. Ramji who belong to an old family of Tamil Brahmins in Alleppey, and who passed to me stories that were current in 1940s Travancore about its royal family and Dewan.
In Thiruvananthapuram, my thanks are due first to my friend Sharat Sunder Rajeev, who since 2008 has aided me in a number of ways with my research and guided me towards the right people, acting also every now and then as my Malayalam translator. Advocate Ayyappan Pillai, a nonagenarian who lived through the Regency years and vividly remembers the rule of Sir CP, and is one of the city’s most respected figures
, gave me honest perspectives on a number of matters. ‘Rosscote’ Krishna Pillai told me some interesting facts over the phone. I am also grateful to Abhed Kiran Kandamath for snippets of information he would send me occasionally, and to Soheb Vahab, who painstakingly unearthed material from dusty shelves in libraries scattered across the city.
J. Devika, whose incisive scholarship and brilliant mind never cease to amaze me, not only gave me an interview but also sent me unpublished proofs of her book, as well as pointed me to other valuable sources of information, without which I could not have got my head around a number of themes covered in this volume. Both in London and in Thiruvananthapuram we followed up on my research, and her guidance has been of singular value.
Mr Sadasivan Nair helped facilitate my access to the Kerala State Archives and aided me in navigating what initially seemed like a daunting, endless network of permissions from assorted officials.
Mr Sasidhara Varma’s carefully constructed family tree of the Mavelikkara Kolathiri line offered the material through which I was able to chart more easily the family tree that features in this book.
Dr M.S. Valiathan, the medical luminary who acquired Satelmond Palace for the Sri Chithira Tirunal Institute in the 1970s and observed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi during a poignant moment in her life, was frank in recalling that episode and his memories of the events leading up to it.
Linda D’Silva, a great-niece of M.E. Watts, the Dewan, contributed a number of details, and Robin and the late Nicolette Cotton, relations of C.W.E. Cotton, the Resident, hosted me for lunch at their charming house and provided me all the papers they had with them. Prof Adrian Mayer of the School of Oriental and African Studies, who was the last outsider to see the Maharani a few months before her death, also spoke to me at length about that episode at his house in London.
Arighna Gupta, my able research assistant in Delhi, combed the National Archives there diligently for an entire summer and helped me locate all the material I needed. In Pune, my friend Shivang Joshi took a proactive interest in the book and designed what I think is an excellent cover, for which I thank him.
Narayani Harigovindan of the French embassy in Delhi fished out for me her very well-researched postgraduate thesis on women in the Travancore state services, after the subject of my book came up quite out of the blue at a meeting.
I must also thank in particular Dr Shashi Tharoor, my employer in 2011–12, who was most encouraging about my writing. Lord Bilimoria in London, with whom I worked in 2012–13, went out of his way to enable me to focus on my manuscript despite the pressures of work by offering me a certain part of each month off, for which I am very grateful.
Jonathan Raymond Guillemot, on whom I inflicted broad overviews of the book and its story, offered inputs at critical moments, without which my writing would have evolved in a direction that, in retrospect, I think would have been heavily unsuitable.
Prof. Robin Jeffrey, without whose classic The Decline of Nair Dominance (1976) serious students of Kerala history would be poorer in their store of knowledge, read through parts of my manuscript and offered his comments. His book is the other source of information that is foundational to my own research, and for this and for producing one of the best books ever written on Kerala and its people, I express my thanks to him.
I was introduced to Prof. Jeffrey by our mutual friends, the delightful Khyrunnisa and Prof. Vijayakumar in Thiruvananthapuram, whose hospitality and friendship has been one of the enduring rewards I have received in the process of writing this book.
While working on this book I have referred extensively to the collections of the India Office Archives at the British Library in London, which form the primary source of material as will be seen in the endnotes appended to this book. What I subsequently discovered at the National Archives in Delhi had already been found in London, though I was able to unearth some records of interest at the Kerala State Archives. Besides the extensive collections of the British Library, I also referred to the library of King’s College London, where I was a student; of the London School of Economics; of the School of Oriental and African Studies; of the University of Oxford; and the University of California, Berkeley, among others.
At U.C. Berkeley, Lisa Hong’s assistance is appreciated, while Karen Robson of the library of the University of Southampton sent me some material from the archives of Lord Mountbatten, for which I remain grateful. Wendy Wilson of The Lady in London kindly sent me an image I had located in their archives, and Agata Rutkowska of the Royal Collection provided me valuable assistance in tracing other similar pictures.
My only regret has been that in writing this book the family of the Junior Maharani of Travancore chose for most part not to participate in my research. Her son, the last Elayarajah, whom I met on two different occasions, had his office acknowledge receipt of my formal interview request, but repeated reminders were ignored. He passed away in late 2013.
The Elayarajah’s daughter, Parvathi Devi, agreed to see me in April 2014 but at the last minute rang to cancel the appointment. The Junior Maharani’s only great-granddaughter, my friend, the refreshingly original Lakshmi Nalapat, took me out for several lunches and dinners, but also decided not to speak on record. Her brother, Rama Varma, too politely declined. The Junior Maharani’s nephew, the historian and scholar Dr R.P. Raja, however, spoke to me on record, and for being the first person to make an exception and to see me, I thank him. In 2015, the Junior Maharani’s eldest grandchild, Gouri Parvathi Bayi, also agreed to send me a written statement containing her memories and some anecdotes. Despite its briefness, I have referred to and quoted from it in this book and am grateful to her for offering me this in lieu of an interview.
This Gouri Parvathi Bayi did despite knowing that the primary records I had accessed for my book were frequently far from complimentary to the Junior Maharani. I also requested her to allow me to go through any papers her family might have at Kowdiar Palace, but this was declined. As she noted at the end of her statement to me:
None of this is probably what you want but this is the way my grandmother was and no old British papers can tell me and scores of other people who knew her, anything different. Is it not possible that some of the Britishers were prejudiced/resentful? As for the regency, I will not share with you any of the records that are less than complimentary or tell you anything negative about [Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s] branch of the family. At the end of the day that is what they are—another offshoot of our own family. Blackening your own is not what we were taught to do.
Implicit in this, I suspect, is a charge that my intention is to ‘blacken’ the family (or the Junior Maharani’s side of it) through this book. My belief, however, from the start has been that history, especially so many decades after its protagonists have passed away, must be an objective affair, and the strength of written records—official letters, confidential reports, fortnightly assessments of the Residents, and so on—cannot be discarded in order to preserve a popular image of historical figures. These British observers, it must be acknowledged, had their prejudices. But insofar as witnessing the internal dynamics of the ruling dynasty went, theirs is the view closest to unbiased objectivity. As A. Sreedhara Menon, the distinguished historian, noted in his final masterpiece, Triumph and Tragedy in Travancore (2001), the confidential records of British authorities ‘help us view the events of the period in their true perspective’.
In the eyes of history there cannot and should not be any sacred cows. However, I recognise and understand the position taken by Gouri Parvathi Bayi and her family.
Finally, thanks are due to my publishers at HarperCollins India for their enthusiasm and support for this book. V.K. Karthika, my brilliant editor, has been singular in her guidance. It has also been a pleasure working with her excellent team, especially with Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Amrita Talwar and Bonita Shimray. Together they have given me more attention and support than first-time authors can ordinarily demand, making the whole process of publishing this book more relaxed
and cheerful than I would have at first anticipated.
Maharajah Ayilyam Tirunal. Though lambasted as a ‘moral wreck and a sexual pervert’, he was a great moderniser and patron of the arts.
Maharajah Mulam Tirunal of whose reign a bishop reported: ‘Unworthy favourites rule and we hear of great scandals.’
Rani Lakshmi Bayi, of whom a French writer said: ‘it is only in old Indian miniatures that I have had a glimpse of such princesses.’
Lakshmi Bayi’s husband, Kerala Varma, the poet and scholar who was once jailed for treason, ‘an inclination to Christianity’ and a desire for ‘stronger narcotics’.
Mahaprabha, Rani Lakshmi Bayi’s niece, whose beauty and imperiousness spawned a family feud that would last generations.
Kuttan Tampuran, Mahaprabha’s husband, a quiet, scholarly man, whose diaries castigate the Maharajah’s slavish deference towards his favourites.
Raja Ravi Varma, the painter, with his attendant. Ravi Varma’s unhappy marriage provoked a battle royale with political repercussions decades after his time.
Kochukunji, Mahaprabha’s less attractive sister, with her husband, Bhagavan Tampuran. With a tendency to dabble in black magic, she and her children were considered a ‘thoroughly bad lot’ by the British.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi (standing) and Sethu Parvathi Bayi, daughters of Mahaprabha and Kochukunji respectively, before their adoption into the House of Travancore by Rani Lakshmi Bayi.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi with her brother R.M. Varma, who features in Ravi Varma’s famous painting, There Comes Papa (1893), with their mother Mahaprabha.
Kartyayani Pillai, after she was ennobled overnight as royal consort, in which role she had ‘every incentive to be as fat as Nature may let her grow’, a London magazine joked.