The memorial then did itself a disservice by listing an exaggerated assortment of grievances against Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s reign. Mr Watts, it stated, was selected as Dewan only because he could be counted upon as an accomplice in the ruler’s evil designs. She herself was not acting in the best interests of the state, an example being that she was restructuring Satelmond Palace using public funds. ‘Favour or disfavour having become the bases of action,’ it went on to say, ‘efficiency of the state services has considerably suffered.’ But then, after haphazardly beating around the bush with a plethora of random complaints, the memorialists came out with their second major grouse: the Valiya Koil Tampuran.
We are far from suggesting that Her Highness the Maharani Regent is personally responsible for this state of affairs. Her Highness is a devoted wife, and the influence of Her Highness’ consort is an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Wise, just, and impartial advice is hardly available to Her Highness whose sex, inexperience and peculiar position make the need of such advice absolutely indispensable. We have reason to believe that any proper advice that may be offered in the present circumstances would get refracted through the medium of influence that surrounds Her Highness.120
It was contended that Rama Varma no longer ‘disguises the part he plays in the destinies of Travancore’ and that though he had no formal authority, he was helping himself generously to power, ‘taking undue advantage of his position of trust and confidence’. Ceremonially also, sycophants had started addressing him with the Malayalam titles and honorifics used only in the case of sovereigns. He had secured an income-tax exemption, which was a concession denied him by Mulam Tirunal during the last government. He consistently slighted young Chithira Tirunal and was alleged to be the source of the ‘unseemly squabbles’ between his wife and her cousin, whose reputation he deliberately always attempted to malign. In every sense, Rama Varma was, therefore, a negative influence not only on the Maharani but also on the administration, and needed to be shown the door.
The Valiya Koil Tampuran has practically usurped the reins of power. He has become the only channel of communication between the Maharani Regent and her officers. He controls admissions to the royal presence. It is suspected that Her Highness is allowed access only to such channels of information and organs of public opinion as he deems fit that she should have. The Maharani spends most of the year outside the capital and no responsible officer, not even her own Private Secretary, is allowed to accompany her in camp on such long sojourns. The position is peculiarly dangerous when it is remembered that all important papers have to receive the sanction of the Maharani Regent and that all such sanctions have to be communicated over the signature of the Private Secretary. What passes behind the scenes is no longer a mystery; and it is suspected with some reasons that sanctions and orders emanating from the palace have not always been personally approved of by the Maharani Regent herself.121
The memorialists then went on to alert the authorities that Rama Varma and his tendency towards ‘power without responsibility’ even threatened to disturb ‘public tranquillity’ in the principality. They also listed some more miscellaneous grievances regarding appointments that were ‘unfair’ (interestingly enough, these positions were all those recently given by the Maharani to Christians and Brahmins). The lengthy representation ended, then, with a plea that the Viceroy should correct this state of affairs in Travancore and politely put Sethu Lakshmi Bayi in her rightful place as a powerless figurehead, just as it did elsewhere. In that, it was dramatically concluded, lay the salvation and future happiness of Travancore.
There was some serious hope among the memorialists that the Government of India would swiftly swoop down on the Maharani after receiving their representation and throw out her ‘dictatorial’ government. Disappointingly for them, however, the authorities did not share their enthusiasm. It was noted that of the mere thirty-four signatories to this petition, twenty-eight were Nairs, four Tamils and two Brahmins. Neither the Christians, nor the Ezhavas, Muslims or other minorities were involved. ‘The petition,’ Mr Vernon dryly commented, ‘can hardly be called representative of the people of Travancore.’ He felt it was ‘merely a verbal expression of the age-long feud between the Nairs and Christians aggravated at the moment by the apparently pro-Christian tendency of the present regime’. He did, however, feel that there was a ‘very considerable substratum of truth’ when it came to the ‘unlawful activities’ of the Valiya Koil Tampuran and the disaffection surrounding the Newspaper Regulation (and this certainly seems to have been the case). But beyond that the memorial was all stuff and nonsense.122
There was, in fact, a reason why Rama Varma suddenly seemed to enjoy too much power. Since the inauguration of her government, the Maharani suffered from an occasional illness that caused her to collapse into a febrile state and take to bed in great distress. After convalescing for a few days, she would recover just as suddenly and resume official business again with a zealous tenacity. This would continue for a long, positive stretch before that debilitating fever returned to immobilize her for yet another brief span. It was initially dismissed as induced by stress, but soon afterwards, having observed an uneasy pattern, Dr Mary decided to run some more tests. She had a vague suspicion what the ailment might be, but it was too dreadful to articulate until further investigation. It did not help that despite her illness Sethu Lakshmi Bayi chose to carry on with her interminable tours among the people. Indeed, while Dr Mary’s suspicions were aroused as early as March 1925, it would be July before the Maharani was convinced to find the time for an examination by two experts in Nagercoil.123 And when results came back in September, Dr Mary’s worst fears were confirmed: Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was suffering from tuberculosis. However, Dr Mary’s timely suspicions permitted its discovery before things got out of hand and the correct treatment was initiated promptly.
Owing to the social stigma attached to the disease, though, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s illness was kept a carefully guarded secret, so that even many in her family were deliberately kept in the dark.124 Her medical files were very possibly destroyed, and even successive Residents, who usually had a good network of informants in the palaces, found only ambiguous information on exactly how far the disease had progressed. While Mr Cotton knew about the initial diagnosis in 1925, by December 1926 he was no longer certain of where things stood. The Maharani, he thought, now ‘looked well’ and ‘had grown stouter’ which suggested the disease was in remission.125 She would, however, suffer from the distressing effects of carrying the infection for at least a decade ahead, and the disease would subside fully only into the 1940s. But for the entire duration that she had to bear such severe bouts, nobody ever articulated the word tuberculosis; it was always referred to it as simply ‘the illness’. And the Maharani never acknowledged having the disease and positively made it a point to go about her ordinary routine as though all was well, despite the protests of her physicians. As her future specialist Dr Noble would complain in 1930, when she had a particularly serious outburst of ‘the illness’, the problem was definitely ‘aggravated by Her Highness’ strict orthodoxy and temple observances’, which she was unwilling to relinquish even temporarily.126 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was determined that her illness should not handicap her responsibilities, both temporal and religious.
But having to live with a deadly disease as a perpetual companion was not an easy affair. As one survivor from Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s times would recount, having tuberculosis ‘changed my entire life’; people ‘pitied me, stared at me, and treated me differently’.127 And while the Maharani was spared social opprobrium, mental anxiety could not have evaded her. To have tuberculosis, for which no real medical treatment was available until the 1940s, was to come to terms with living with the persistent possibility of an unexpected, untimely death. Naturally, therefore, the Maharani had to bear with considerable mental stress, notwithstanding the anxieties of government. Supporters of the Junior Maharani were quick to capitalise on the situation too, and a
s early as 1925 Mr Cotton had recorded ‘sensational rumours’ being ‘broadcasted to create the impression that she was too ill to continue’ and to ‘strengthen the demand for the immediate creation of a Council of Regency’.128
It was thus perhaps that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi turned a blind eye or even let her husband exercise power deliberately. Decisions had to be taken, and during her illness she could only turn to her husband, even if his judgement on matters of state did not always match her own assessments. In 1926, however, they were lucky, for in the matter of the ‘Memorial from the People of Travancore’ there were no harmful repercussions. With news of the memorial leaking out to the public, a second one was despatched from Trivandrum, which, however, was a show of support for the Maharani’s government. With 184 prominent signatories from all classes and communities, including the Nairs, Christians, Brahmins, etc., this new memorandum more than evened out the stakes as far as Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was concerned.
From the clandestine manner in which the [other] memorial has been prepared and presented, it will, we feel sure, be clear to Your Excellency, that the memorial does not in the least represent public opinion in Travancore, but that it is only an attempt on the part of a few designing individuals to bring discredit to Her Highness the Maharani Regent and Her Highness’ Government, and we beg most emphatically to protest against the action of the memorialists. As the Travancore public is kept in the dark about this memorial we are not in a position to refute these allegations or insinuations, if any, contained in it. Our object in submitting this memorial is to acquaint Your Excellency of the whole-hearted loyalty and devotion of the people of Travancore to Her Highness the Maharani Regent, and their entire confidence in the present administration of Travancore.129
Having received these two contradictory petitions, the Government of India took some months to arrive at its conclusions. But meanwhile in Trivandrum, a rattled Rama Varma was shocked by the sheer quantum of antagonism the Nairs harboured against him. While his indiscretions and carelessness were the undeniable cause for all this, he also realised that he had unwittingly become a scapegoat for politicians to mount attacks on his otherwise highly popular wife; he, of all people, had given cause for the public to doubt their monarch, against whom few had anything but good to say. His desire to gratify his ambitions had been the provocation for all this and it was his conspicuous swagger and misguided indulgence that aroused resentment in many. This patently injudicious, even presumptuous conduct had played right into the hands of the Maharani’s adversaries and he was completely despondent at having let her down.130 ‘He had authoritarian tendencies,’ his nephew notes, ‘and an eye for detail. While the Maharani was concerned with policy and the broad canvas, she took his advice on the nitty-gritties of implementation. In that sense they complemented each other. But he was action-oriented and where there is action, there are bound to be repercussions. Some liked it, but many did not, and so in some circles he was always unpopular.’131
But he was not one to repeat his mistakes. And so, almost instantaneously, he began to make amends and saw to it that his shortcomings and blunders would never again embarrass his wife, setting himself on a whole new course. Having learned the hard way about the necessity for subtle discretion and tact, he decided to consciously recede into the background, never again to be seen interfering in the administration. ‘He may take a leaf out of the book of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria,’ recommended O.M. Thomas, adding that ‘Of all the subjects of the Maharani Regent, he must be the most interested in the unqualified success of Her Highness’s rule; we can rely on that interest to steer him clear of the rocks and shoals which beset her course.’132 And indeed he did. He would continue to advise the Maharani but unobtrusively so, within the private confines of the palace, bound by the limits of his role as a consort.133 His eagerness to participate met with political maturity, and he learned to show himself more properly in the eyes of the public.134 When, for instance, an official press note drafted by a sycophantic secretary declared that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was ‘fortunate in the company of Her Husband Prince, who is every inch a king in word, deed, and mind, and in whose qualities of head and heart there is hardly a parallel in the history of the State’, Rama Varma had the common sense and wisdom to strike it out.135
Soon enough he won the respect and approval of the Government of India. By November Mr Cotton happily reported that the Valiya Koil Tampuran was behaving ‘much more correctly’ and that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, having delivered her child, was ‘once more taking an active part in the administration’.136 The authorities began to sympathise with Rama Varma’s complicated position now that he backed into the shadows, and as a later Resident stated, ‘the fact that Her Highness consults him, her own husband, is only reasonable’. It would have been much worse if she had some favourite like Sankaran Tampi, and her husband was nowhere as bad. ‘My experience shows,’ the same Resident would continue, ‘that Her Highness is by no means unduly swayed by the Valiya Koil Tampuran … [who] is a good husband and father … [and] bears an excellent character morally.’137
Similarly another representative of the Government of India would add that there was no need in the least to worry about him secretly dictating Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s decisions. ‘The Maharani Regent,’ he pointed out, ‘is a stronger character and has more ability than her husband.’ Though in small matters she conceded him space, wisely not hurting his masculine ego, ‘in important questions of policy she is capable of taking and does take her own line’.138 The Valiya Koil Tampuran thus found himself an uncontroversial niche in the administrative arrangements of the country and henceforward consistently steered clear of trouble. In the years to come, ‘his critics would find it difficult to prove any definite interference in State affairs,’ as yet another Resident put it, and that was that.139 The only downside of all this good behaviour was that the Maharani’s opponents now lost their favourite enemy. Indeed, as early as December 1926 Mr Cotton informed the Political Department that as Rama Varma already kept ‘very much in the background’, the ‘coterie of disgruntled Nairs’ were forced to discover new vistas, and were now concentrating on attacking the Dewan instead.140 Rama Varma began to appear rather harmless and to the Dutch lecturer who met him in 1929, he even seemed simply bored with not enough to do. At her audience at the palace, ‘somehow the [consort] and I got arguing heatedly about the prospects of a religious revival in Russia’, and she thought he was just a ‘quick witted, argumentative Indian man who was overjoyed at having someone to listen to his pet theories’.141
As for the infamous memorial, it met with an inglorious end at the hands of the Government of India. The political grievances contained therein were neither given official cognizance nor real consideration. The Maharani was adjudged free to govern Travancore as she had been doing for nearly two years with enormous success and much acclaim. As for the renewed demand for a Council of Regency, the Political Department had already expressed that since Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was ‘a very remarkable lady’ who was ‘perfectly capable of carrying on the administration’, a rare ruler who was ‘industrious, intelligent and devoted to the interests of the state’, she would ‘do her best if given full responsibility’. There were many inefficient princes in India whom the authorities had to worry about, but Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was not one of them. And so they had no intention of standing in her way. ‘Without a Council,’ it was concluded, ‘the State would get her best output. With a Council it will not.’142 The Government of India thus clearly held the Maharani in high esteem and their dependable support became her pillar of strength, reinforcing in her time of need that umbilical bond that existed between the princely states and their colonial masters. Reassured, thus, that she could always rely upon those in Delhi to back her, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi continued her reign with confidence and courage, issuing reform after reform in Travancore, and working tirelessly to improve the lives of her five million subjects. Nothing, it seemed, could shake her in this endeavour.
Tha
t is, until she introduced her next project.
8
Tea and Troubles
Legend has it that during the heyday of the Pallava emperors in south India, there was born in the sixth century a prince destined not for mighty conquests and military vigour as for legendary piety and spiritual resolve. Dharma, as he was called, was not an adherent of the Hindu creed, choosing instead the light of the Buddha, already flickering in the land of its inception. It was perhaps thus that he departed the realms of his forefathers, renouncing his patrimony for the shimmering court of the Liang emperor of China. Buddha’s teachings were still a powerful force here and Dharma acquired much fame and standing as a great master in this foreign land. One day, however, he decided to seek ultimate spiritual salvation, the path to which lay in deep, unwavering meditation. He began a nine-year penance, vowing to deny himself sleep during all this time, seeking to conquer desire and comfort, and to discover for himself the inner peace that the Buddha had achieved.
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