Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  The British authorities first made an attempt to see if consensus could be built, and Mr Mackenzie even called on Chathayam Tirunal to convince him to change his stand. But the latter did not budge and made it clear that he would never support an adoption from Mavelikkara.75 Unfortunately for him, the Resident formed the opinion that this whole problem arose because the Elayarajah, out of stubborn spite, simply wished to pique the Maharajah and the Rani and did not really have any substantial objections.76 He thus added the weight of his own support to the Rani’s proposal and by April 1900 the Government of India in Calcutta wrote to the Madras Government that ‘His Highness may be informed that the adoption will be recognized and confirmed’, overruling all objections to the contrary.77

  The Elayarajah did not intend to take defeat easily, however. He offered now to personally visit the Viceroy, who was the supreme adjudicator and representative of the British Crown, to convince him to invalidate ‘this illegal adoption’.78 But the Government of India was firm in its stand. It advised Chathayam Tirunal to stop taking a narrow view of matters and made it clear that contrary legal precedents, even when valid, could not apply to the royal family as they might to private houses.79 The matter was closed, as far as they were concerned, and no further representations from the Elayarajah were entertained. And thus, Lakshmi Bayi, after months of unpleasant, rather pedestrian, bickering and haggling won this battle against her nephew, and obtained sanction for the adoption of her great-nieces.

  The Elayarajah turned out to be sore in defeat, though. Typically the entire royal family ought to have been present at the adoption ceremony and the attendant functions. But to embarrass the Maharajah and the Rani, and to make public his disapproval of these proceedings, Chathayam Tirunal absented himself from the ceremonials that day and disrupted tradition by leaving the capital ostentatiously for a tour. Last-minute alterations had to be made in the ceremonies to cloak the attendant discomfiture. It was decided, thus, that at the temple ceremonies in the morning the Maharajah would not attend and Prince Asvathi Tirunal took his place. Similarly, the Rani did not appear at the durbar in the afternoon. This, it was hoped, would evade the awkward questions that might have arisen had the Elayarajah been the only member of the family to excuse himself from the various functions of the day.80

  The adoption ceremony went off well, despite the hint of a bitter taste, and the two children were welcomed into the royal family with euphoria and tremendous public approval. But the departing words of Chathayam Tirunal rang in the ears of Lakshmi Bayi, almost like a vengeful curse on their future. ‘These babies are the children of two mothers,’ he had ominously written, ‘and each will exert a most deleterious influence on the peace of the family.’81 Mahaprabha and Kochukunji were both young and capable, and Chathayam Tirunal could foresee great rivalries and intrigues these daughters of the ambitious Ravi Varma would spawn in a contest for power, prestige and authority. It was an uncomfortable suggestion, full of forbidding potentialities. But once again the Rani simply shook such thoughts away, and taking the name of her family deity, left everything to fate.

  God had given her the two Sethus. But how long would his blessings linger?

  2

  The Queen of the Kupakas

  The careers of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and her cousin as princesses began on an extremely unpropitious note. For no sooner had the fanfare and pageantry accompanying their adoption ceased than a grim epidemic of death descended upon the royal family. In the months that followed the Sethus’ arrival in Trivandrum, three of its original four members were unexpectedly obliterated from the world by a cruel twist of fate. There was great public sensation at these happenings. The orthodox in the capital whispered of evil curses and blamed the gods, bemoaning the baneful plight of their royal house. Intelligent others offered slightly more rational suspicions, holding unholy conspiracies and a liberal use of poison responsible for these abrupt tragedies. In any case, by the monsoons of 1901, the royal family (or what was left of it) had much to mourn, with the thundering heavens and incessant rain adding visual melancholy to their gloom and bereavement.

  The first victim of misfortune was Asvathi Tirunal who died quite suddenly on 10 October 1900, a little over a month after the adoption. His death was sincerely lamented in intelligent circles, for he was popularly held as the gem in the royal family. The first Indian prince to obtain a graduate degree, among other accomplishments, he had won legions of admirers across the subcontinent after an extensive study tour with Raja Ravi Varma. Even the notoriously derisive Lord Curzon, then Viceroy of India, who famously declared India’s Rajahs and Maharajahs ‘on the whole a disappointing study’, was decidedly impressed by Asvathi Tirunal; he was, in what was one of Curzon’s most flattering reviews of a ‘native’, ‘an amiable and accomplished prince, a man of culture, of travel, and of learning’.1 Much store, naturally then, had been laid by the day when Asvathi Tirunal would have succeeded as Maharajah, but all such aspirations turned out to be futile. Whether by the designs of destiny or the machinations of lesser men, Travancore was denied what could have been a great rule by a great ruler in the years to come.2

  Eight months later death called once again on the royal house. This time it claimed the haughty Elayarajah, whose loss, however, was somewhat less lamented. Chathayam Tirunal was certainly gifted and intelligent in his own right but too mulish and undiplomatic a character to claim any particular popularity with the people. He was also a diabetic who did not take care of his health, and was known more for the ample proportions of his body than his felicity. ‘He has given up all exercise,’ the Resident had observed, ‘and round the pupil of each eye there is well marked that white circle, the arcus senilis, which I have never seen in so young a man.’3 The usually upfront and fervently argumentative Elayarajah had also become strangely quiet after the death of his brother. When Mr Mackenzie met him in May 1901 at a tennis party, he appeared to be in very bad shape, and by the end of that month his diabetes worsened and he was clearly moving rapidly towards his end. This came on 6 June. ‘There is now no prince to succeed to the title and position of Heir Apparent,’ the Resident bleakly reported to his superiors. ‘The Travancore family now consists of the Maharajah, the Senior Rani, and the two young princesses who were adopted last year.’4

  In less than ten days, however, Mr Mackenzie would be forced to revise his list and add yet another name to his princely obituaries. For soon after the death of the Elayarajah, Rani Lakshmi Bayi too, shockingly, followed her nephews to the grave. The demise of Asvathi Tirunal had distressed her considerably and even the long-yearned company of the Sethus failed to serve as consolation. It is also likely that the Rani was suffering from cancer or some such ailment like her late sister, which diminished her fettle. By November 1900 she had already taken to bed and her condition deteriorated with each passing day. In spite of the hostility between them, it was Chathayam Tirunal’s death that struck her the final blow. She had tried to placate him after the adoption, only to be scorned and ignored. ‘Her Highness,’ wrote her consort, ‘felt this neglect.’5 Nine days after his passing, on 15 June 1901, Lakshmi Bayi’s husband painfully scribbled in his diary: ‘My angel, my life, my darling, my all and all, my pride, my idol, my sweetheart—alas! and what not—expired quietly at 8 PM.’6 And thus, in the ten months that followed the Sethus’ arrival at the palace, one half of the royal line was swiftly carved out from the pages of history.

  The result of these unforeseen eventualities was that little Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was instantly pressed into the limelight. Among the male members of the family, the reigning Maharajah Mulam Tirunal survived this sinister spate of deaths, preventing a crisis of government in Travancore. But with the female constituents of the dynasty, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi now stood foremost, with a role and ceremonial prerogatives that were equal to those of the Maharajah himself. At the age of five, she was propelled into the seat of the Senior Rani of Travancore, becoming the youngest person to occupy that exalted station in all its histo
ry.7 It was a disquieting proposition. The idea of having to fill the shoes of her illustrious great-aunt and to exercise all that was expected of her as Senior Rani was a trepidatious one. Only yesterday she had been an ordinary child, cocooned at home in Mavelikkara, surrounded by family and friends. And here she was today, plucked from her roots and installed as queen of three million subjects who looked upon her as an object of the greatest veneration. As her mother would impress upon her, she was no longer a little girl; she had become an icon and an institution, the traditions and honour of which she was bound to preserve for life. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi did not, at this time, appreciate entirely how much her individuality would recede behind the onerous charge thrust upon her. But she did realise, as her grandson later remarked, that ‘playtime was over’.8 She had become Her Highness the Rani Pooradam Tirunal. Nobody, not even her father, would call her Sethukutty again.

  On 27 June 1901 the new Senior Rani was taken in procession to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple where, as the sound of the conch and drums resonated through the sacred premises, she was consecrated as the Attingal Mootha Tampuran. Proclamations to this effect were issued across the state, and a durbar was held for the grandees and nobles of the land to pay obeisance and demonstrate fealty to their new queen. While for most attendees it was the ceremonies in Trivandrum that marked the commencement of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s life as Senior Rani, what was an equally if not more important function was her installation at the temple in Attingal. It was this place, after all, that gave the Ranis their title and it was from here that generations of queens had once ruled with the blessings of their warrior goddess, Tiruvirattukkavu Bhagavathi. Unlike the benign deity of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, this was a fiery goddess who represented vigour, power and blood. Her legends were of raging anger and deadly wars, intimidating the more pious among her worshippers. She was the celebrated patron goddess of the Ranis of Travancore, and like them, she too had her roots in the lands of the Kolathiri dynasty, whence she had been brought and installed in Attingal after the first princesses of that house traversed the coast to become queens in the south.

  The legend goes that long ago in the territories of the Kolathiri Rajah there was a brigade of asura savages who inflicted great suffering on the royal house and its people. The chief of these demons was Daraka, a foe so powerful and mighty that the Kolathiri Rajah was compelled to seek divine intervention to rid the land of his menace. After enduring terrible hardships, the cries of these suffering supplicants were heard and the goddess Bhagavathi revealed herself before the Kolathiri Rajah. When she discovered his troubles, she became livid with rage and assumed a frightening form, known as roudra bhava. With all her supernatural powers, she fell upon Daraka and his band, slaying him after a great and momentous battle. The Kolathiri Rajah was pleased. But his pleasure promptly descended into fear when it was discovered that despite bathing in Daraka’s blood, Bhagavathi remained furious and deadly. With the assistance of oracles and priests, she was eventually conciliated into settling within a great temple consecrated at Payyannur, where to this day there are housed two ancient idols symbolising the goddess in her usual peaceful form as well as in that vengeful, warlike avatar. The image immediately behind the altar is regular, depicting a beautiful deity. But looming further back in the darkness is the daunting form of Bhagavathi, trident held aloft, with one foot set upon the crushed head of her fallen adversary. She could never be worshipped through Sanskritic traditions alone; she needed blood and flesh, and through the ages her temple became known for a number of gory sacrifices and fascinatingly frightful rituals, marking it as the greatest shrine in the region to the cult of the goddess.9

  When the first adoption from the Kolathiri dynasty into Travancore took place in the fourteenth century, those early princesses, as a mark of their roots in the north, brought with them their family deity and installed her in a temple in Attingal.10 Through the ages that followed, their successors worshipped Bhagavathi with great fervour, drawing inspiration from her gripping legends and tales of her enormous power. Every year they propitiated her in a great ceremony and it was the Senior Rani who took the lead in this. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had now succeeded as that principal devotee of this formidable goddess, and it was to endear herself to the glorious Tiruvirattukkavu Bhagavathi that she performed an installation ceremony at her temple on 30 June 1902. She was now, in the fullest sense, the Attingal Rani, scion of a riveting legacy that had lent Kerala its identity as pennu-malayalam, the kingdom of women.

  As principal Attingal Rani and as Senior Rani of Travancore, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was heiress to an ancient line of queens, whose legends are preserved in lore and song. Their origins lay in the inceptive fourteenth-century adoption from the Kolathiri dynasty, when a celebrated ancestor of the Travancore family, King Sangramadheera installed two princesses as his successors.11 At the time Travancore was known as the Kupaka kingdom and was not considered strictly Malayali in culture. Its rulers and people had a stronger affinity towards Tamil society, and Sangramadheera himself had married a Pandya princess, also winning his proudest victories beyond the eastern frontiers of Kerala. The Kolathiri Rajah, therefore, is believed to have been loath to send two of his sisters into a near-Tamil family, and it was through clever deception and artful intrigue that Sangramadheera orchestrated their acquisition.12

  Perhaps as a consolation, however, it was decided to protect the adoptees in an insulated cocoon of their own, away from the Tamil influences they so abhorred. A portion of the Kupaka kingdom with its headquarters at Attingal was carved out and a miniature version of the Kolathiri country was skilfully designed within.13 Not only was Tiruvirattukkavu Bhagavathi consecrated here as the principal goddess, but even soldiers, retainers, artisans, craftsmen, slaves and other mortal factors were brought all the way from the homeland of the princesses, instead of being recruited locally.14 This was intended to lend Attingal an authentic Malayali feel, with familiar Kolathiri influences constantly enveloping the adopted Ranis; a northern home transplanted into the alien south. But this decision to constitute a separate demesne for the ladies would come to be gravely regretted by the heirs of Sangramadheera. For from this small territory granted them, the Attingal Ranis would spread their wings and go on to achieve a regional prominence unprecedented in India.15 They would emerge as women to reckon with along the Kerala coast, even holding Travancore to ransom from time to time.16,17

  Under the matrilineal system, women always enjoyed great power. In the early sixteenth century, for instance, the queen of Quilon (ruled by a branch of the Kupaka family) had considerable influence over the foreign policy of that port and enjoyed independent commercial relations with the Portuguese. In 1502 she invited the foreigners to come to Quilon and even let them build a factory in her territory. By 1519, however, relations between the Rani and the Portuguese soured, and in alliance with a neighbouring princess, also of the Kupaka clan, she mounted a vehement military campaign against them. This confederate neighbour was none other than the Attingal Rani, and together the two women had a force of 20,000 soldiers at their disposal.18 None of these troops was enlisted by male members of their dynasty, and the soldiers vowed their loyalties to these queens independently. Their autonomy is clear also from a telling episode from some years before. In 1516, Lopo Soares de Albergaria, the third Portuguese Governor in India, signed a treaty with the queen in Quilon. Soon afterwards he approached her with a request for a religious endowment, and this is what she said to him:

  We are going to invade our neighbouring kingdom of Travancore, for which we start tomorrow. As we are now greatly pressed for money, please do not ask us about the church endowments now [sic]. As the clerks and Nairs are all accompanying me, everything has to be settled in my presence only after our return from victory. Please do not ask me about them before I return.19

  In this campaign too, the Attingal Rani is believed to have joined forces with her cousin in Quilon.20 Thus, the Kupaka princesses not only had independent armies under thei
r control, but also proactively led their soldiers into battle. Moreover, the intention of this particular lady was not to subjugate just any random neighbour, but Travancore itself, which was probably ruled by her son, brother or cousin at the time. This was not the only such instance and a mediaeval ballad records a tragic fratricidal battle between the Attingal Rani and a prince of Travancore. The story goes that the prince was on a pilgrimage and needed to pass through Attingal (‘a land of Amazons’) to reach his holy destination. The Rani, to his exasperation, prohibited an armed escort from accompanying him, as it offended her sovereign prerogatives; only she, it was imperiously declared, could bear weapons in Attingal. And in the course of events that followed, royal egos were royally bruised, occasioning large-scale slaughter in a terrible battle, and both protagonists were killed.21