Ivory Throne
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By 1808 Tampi’s honeymoon with Macaulay was mouldering, since the latter pressed for payment of arrears incessantly. While he was an efficient and exacting man, the proud Dewan was not used to being threatened, and decided to cast off the Company’s yoke now. He assorted a number of allies. He had the Resident’s Brahmin assistant murdered through some aides, while the consort of the Maharajah gathered for him palace secrets through pillow talks with her royal husband.29 The hereditary Nair minister of the Rajah of Cochin, known as the Paliyath Achan, joined forces with him and together they sought to capture Macaulay. The Resident escaped by boat, but a full-fledged rebellion, with the Nairs at its head, broke out in Travancore and Cochin, while in Malabar the titular Zamorin, now an impotent pensioner of the Company, was also invited to participate.30 Then, in what was the most momentous aspect of the revolt, Velu Tampi issued a proclamation to the people of Travancore. ‘It is the nature of the English nation to get possession of countries by treacherous means,’ he thundered, before going on to list a litany of grievances. ‘If Velu Tampi was the most unscrupulous in his designs,’ one historian notes, ‘he was undoubtedly also the ablest man of his time. He knew how to lead his countrymen like sheep and how to work upon their fears.’31 Charged with betraying his country only a few years ago, Velu Tampi was now the undisputed leader of its Nairs.
The rebellion, like numerous others against the British in India, however, was destined for spectacular failure, even if it earned for Tampi retrospective distinction as a martyr. Cornered in a temple and surrounded by the enemy troops, he cut his throat before the goddess, really going down in history as the final of the great Nair heroes of the past. Never was one of them to rise again in such a forceful manner. And the British made sure the Nairs had learnt their lessons. ‘Several men of position were hanged and banished from the country for being implicated in the insurrection,’ and Tampi’s own kin were exiled or killed.32 The Nairs lost their military vigour in the years that followed, not least because the army was disbanded, leaving behind a faint skeleton force called the Nair Brigade, and the Company assumed complete control over the defences of Travancore. ‘I never beheld a more dastardly crew,’ wrote one observer, adding that ‘they did not deserve the name of soldiers’ any more.33 By the third decade of the nineteenth century, the Nairs were reduced into an agrarian class and ‘that warlike, refractory, and turbulent temper for which the Nairs of Travancore were once so remarkable’ had ‘totally disappeared’.34
Following the quashing of Velu Tampi’s rebellion, the influence of the British Resident grew by leaps and bounds. It was Col. Munro who followed the irritable Major Macaulay in Trivandrum, and while he had the full cooperation of the royal family (for their very survival now depended on keeping him pleased), he practically assumed all power, even serving as Dewan for some years. By 1814, however, the Company decided to withdraw from the direct administration of Travancore, and the Resident was informed to merely offer, ‘invariably in terms of conciliation and respect, the reasonable assistance of good counsel’ to the ruler, ‘with a view to the permanent interests of the alliance, and to the progressive improvement of the country’.35 This meant, in practice, however, that nominees of the British were appointed Dewans, so that they took their orders not so much from the Maharajahs as much as the Company. Munro, for instance, sent his candidate with a reference to the then ruler ‘suggesting the propriety of appointing him’ as Dewan.36 And naturally ‘friendly’ guidance thus offered was followed without question.
The rise of the Resident cost Nairs most in terms of power. Company officers often brought with them Marathi Brahmins (‘Raos’) who were English-educated and served as their assistants. And over the years, these protégés were ‘ensconced in many of the cosiest niches the administration had to offer’, all at the instance of their British masters.37 Some were individuals of respectable efficiency, but the sole qualification of many was merely a slavish loyalty to their sponsors. Despite the express orders that the Resident ‘will carefully abstain from an open interference in the administration’, this was complied with only on paper.38 One particularly colourful individual, General Cullen, was notorious for so many libidinous activities during his twenty-year tenure, even as he became a permanent headache to the Maharajah. He insisted on reports and updates from government departments, and devoted such attention to harassing officials, that the administration became a ‘tyranny of the Resident’.39 He too brought with him a Rao whom he placed into a plum position in the state service on a handsome salary, before the latter, with Cullen’s active connivance, went on to intrigue his way into the Dewanship itself. Martanda Varma, who had spent decades accumulating power for the monarchy, would have turned in his grave, if he had one. The Maharajah was by now a mere cipher in the hands of the Resident, who emerged as the sole fountain of all meaningful promotion and patronage in Travancore. As for the Nairs, all this was another blow, having lost in a century their traditional influence, and now even claims to senior positions in the state machinery. As the Madras Mail would caustically remark some decades later, ‘Whenever any vacancy occurs, one need only refer to the long list of Rows [sic] to choose the right person, and it is only a question between one particular Row and another.’40
This propensity of outside Dewans to serve the Resident caused such trouble and humiliation to the Maharajahs that one of them during Cullen’s tenure prepared to abdicate, before he was dissuaded from executing this dire threat.41 Even as late as 1871, when the popular Ayilyam Tirunal was in power, the Resident could find a way to throw his weight around. By now, however, things were not as easy for the British as before. Ayilyam Tirunal and his precocious Dewan, Sir T. Madhava Rao (the most prominent in that train of Marathi Brahmins), understood early on that the pretexts inviting hated British interference were indebtedness of the government or reports of maladministration. As late as the 1850s the threat of annexation had been openly employed, and to avoid a repetition, both were determined to exceed all expectations of the ‘Paramount Power’, as the colonial state was pompously known. Madhava Rao ‘knew what the British wanted and he was able to give it to them; he played them successfully at their own game’.42 He also understood the ‘art of self advertisement’ and was soon churning out reports of his government’s administrative schemes and their successes, even as revenues mounted. The British endorsed all this and called Travancore a ‘Model State’, as schools were opened, roads built and reforms proclaimed (even if not implemented with the same enthusiasm always). But there was a reason why this particular Rao was more loyal to the Maharajah than to the Resident; his first job in Travancore had been as tutor to Ayilyam Tirunal, and during those years both men had developed an excellent rapport, allowing them to cooperate in a manner that none of the previous ‘foreign’, British-deputed Dewans and Maharajahs had managed.
In 1871, however, the British quite unexpectedly secured a handle to interfere in Travancore when it became known that Ayilyam Tirunal and Rao were no longer on amicable terms with one another. The Maharajah was determined to send his Dewan packing after twelve excellent years together, but such was the reputation built up by the latter, and his importance to the smooth functioning of the administration, that the Governor of Madras was aghast at the prospect. He promptly despatched a mediator between the quarrelling prince and his minister but Ayilyam Tirunal was ‘unalterable’ in his position. And if there were any intentions to compel him, it would, he pointed out, be so ‘very painful’ that he would be forced to contemplate abdication. While this was not something the Governor desired, the Maharajah was reminded by the Resident of the relevant provision in his treaty with the British where it was explicitly implied that he would always follow the ‘friendly’ advice of the Paramount Power.43 For the time being the Maharajah had to hold his fire, even as the Dewan wrote him an ostensibly conciliatory letter. But behind the scenes, both negotiated a clandestine deal under the terms of which Rao departed from Travancore quietly with a handsome pension fo
r life and other terms settled in advance. In terminating their relationship too, thus, the two men succeeded in excluding the nose of the ubiquitous Resident, something the latter did not obviously appreciate.44
Dewans like Madhava Rao were extremely useful in implementing schemes in benefit of the state. They were products of English education that was making its way around India, and perfect examples of that famous ‘class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and intellect’. Subscribing to this British ideal had its benefits. Rao was aware, for instance, that great opportunities awaited him on the all-India stage, and Travancore was but the beginning of his career in that wider framework of colonial patronage. His ‘personal object was not money … but Fame’.45 However success was necessary for this, as was the building of a loyal network of supporters. In Travancore, when he embarked on modernisation and attendant projects, hitherto unknown in the region, he needed qualified men to support him. The local Nairs were hardly able to implement new, British-style state policies on education and trade, still steeped in their old feudal ways. So Western-educated bureaucrats were sought, no matter what their origins. And thus continued the stream of Marathi and Tamil Brahmins, with a critical distinction; the first tide of immigrants were sponsored by Martanda Varma in his state-building project that could not be entrusted to the suspect loyalties of Nairs; the second arrived with Residents as their agents; but this third proceeded at the invitation of the Maharajahs and their Dewans who needed them to pre-empt British interference by sustaining good governance.
Thus, ‘under cover of the need for outside expertise, a number of the Dewan’s relatives and castemen became established’ in the Travancore service.46 In the late 1880s, for instance, the Rao in power employed his son as his private secretary, his brother as a palace officer and the uncle of his daughter-in-law as a judge.47 These men rose swiftly within the nepotistic ranks so that even as more Nairs obtained educational degrees to rival them, giving up the sword for the pen, the former had the advantage of experience and years in service. The fact that they were Brahmins allowed them to socialise freely with the royal family, and in 1857 it was openly stated that a Nair could not become Dewan due to the handicap of his caste.48 While Nairs enjoyed access to lower-level jobs, the cream of the government positions was monopolised by Brahmins. In 1890, the Dewan was none other than a cousin of Madhava Rao’s; of the four subordinate Dewan Peishkar positions, Tamil Brahmins occupied three; out of eighteen judgeships in the state, foreign Brahmins, who comprised 145 of 231 licensed lawyers and pleaders, held a majority of ten; fifteen out of twenty-nine tahsildars, and seventeen out of thirty English schoolmasters, were also outside Brahmins.49 Indeed, in all these decades the only Nair to have obtained the Dewanship was Nanu Pillai, the immediate successor of Madhava Rao. But the sole reason Ayilyam Tirunal chose him was that he was afraid that any outside Dewan or a Rao would somehow be connected to his last Dewan, whom he despised.50
The Nairs were not willing to take this lying down, however, and by the end of the nineteenth century were bombarding the Maharajah with petitions. As the most famous of these, the Malayali Memorial, would note, the Nairs as ‘the most loyal portion of Your Highness’s subjects, as they are in point of intelligence, general culture and attainments not behind any other class in the country, as they were from the earliest times till within the last few years the ruling race in the land, as it is they that mainly contribute to the resources of the state … their claims on Your Highness’s Government are far stronger than those of any other class in the country’. Foreign Brahmins, they added, ‘regularly and systematically … without exception not only introduced their relations, castemen and friends into the State, but tried their best to oust the Nairs’, which was ‘all the more deplorable when it is remembered by Your Highness that they were from time immemorial till within the last few years the chief administrators of the State’.51 One fiery activist would directly accuse the Maharajah: ‘to serve the royal man as his menial … Malayalis alone are wanted and Malayalis alone could be found. But to enjoy the comforts of the country, to fill all the higher appointments in the State, to obtain the highest honours of the land, to deserve all the gifts, donations, and rewards, foreign Brahmins alone are wanted and Brahmins alone are sought.’ The Nairs, he vociferated, were ‘held in subjection by a class of foreigners who have not conquered them by the sword … who are not intellectually their superiors nor physically their betters … can Travancoreans never expect to rise’, he thundered, ‘to that personal distinction and that political influence which were the glory, the pride, the richest heritage, and the brightest possession of their ancestors’?52
With Nairs raising voices against these imported premiers and the prejudice it caused them, the Brahmin Dewan in the early 1890s arrived at an accommodation with them, offering them better and higher positions in the government. But this did not put an end to the predominance of foreign Brahmins, what with even the Maharajah’s then favourite, Saravanai, being one of them. It was the rise of Sankaran Tampi that gave, then, the next fillip to the Nair cause, and by 1903 an observer would write how ‘Brahminical interest is latterly much on the decline, the Nairs having organised themselves in what are really anti-Brahmin clubs all over Travancore to resist the Brahmins everywhere, believing themselves to have been victimised by the Brahmins for centuries’. It was also, he added, significant that ‘The all-powerful favourite, Sankaran Tampi is a Nair and not a Brahmin,’ who ‘uses his influence against Brahmins.’53 Yet the highest office of Dewan eluded Nairs, until Mulam Tirunal appointed Sir Krishnan in 1915. But he was, after all, an aristocrat from Malabar, where the Nairs were different in culture and outlook from those in Travancore. And in any case, another Brahmin, the despised Mr Raghavaiah, followed him, and for his entire term Nair politicians were hard at work to boot him out.54 To their great discontent, when Sethu Lakshmi Bayi finally disengaged him, she brought in his stead not a Nair or even, more predictably, a Brahmin, but a Christian, upsetting the calculations and the forty-year-old campaign of the Nairs to recover the highest executive office in Travancore for themselves. As the Maharani herself had reported with surprise, ‘The vigour of the opposition put up against the proposed appointment and the manner in which the Nairs and Brahmins, setting aside their traditional enmity, applied themselves to the task are without a parallel in the history of Travancore.’55
Writing about the political currents a typical Dewan of Travancore would have to navigate, a later Resident would note that the people of Travancore
… have two weaknesses in a marked degree, namely communalism and the worship of power. To them the community is everything and the State very little … Again their worship of power makes it essential for Travancoreans to be ruled by one who is seated firmly in the saddle with no fear of being ousted at any moment … It is a fact that no Dewan in the past has ever been able to enforce obedience for a single day after the security of his tenure has been seriously threatened. Once the idea gets about that the Dewan intends to retire or has lost favour, he must either go at once or be confirmed in his post by the Ruler emphatically and for a definite period. There have been cases of Dewans fallen from favour who, though still holding the appointment, have been unable to get [even] transport to take themselves and their families out of Travancore.56
Projecting power and authority, thus, had to be an article of faith for Dewans in Travancore. And unfortunately, insofar as maintaining discipline through this went, Mr Watts proved fairly disappointing. One of the reasons for all the turbulence and political agitation that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s reign witnessed was not only that hers was an interim government, but also that her Dewan was eager to please everybody. Even before his appointment the Maharani had informed Mr Cotton that the purpose of having a Dewan who did not pledge loyalty to any of the warring communities in Travancore was to strengthen executive power. But in his usual manner, Mr Watts appeared more a magniloquent talker than an undaunte
d leader who could command authority in the choppy communal waters of Travancore politics. Some called him modest, which was not really a compliment for a Dewan of Travancore. At the time of his appointment, he called for cooperation from all sections, stating (ominously) that ‘Were it not for such cooperation, whole hearted [sic] and sincere, my task here would be futile and it would be best that I lay down my office and quit.’ Further, he added, ‘if I am to achieve anything, do anything, leave anything behind me to be remembered by, it must be, and shall be due wholly to the cooperation of the people of this State.’57 He continued:
There will be many difficulties which I may have to face here, and never before having been Dewan, I shall make mistakes. I am sure I shall blunder at times. But do not for a moment believe that I will pretend that I have not made a mistake. Do not think I will throw the blame on somebody else. I shall own up my mistakes and trust to the goodwill of the people of Travancore to help me correct the mistakes.58
This was a gentlemanly attitude to take, but surrounded by politicians who had made life even for the gritty Mr Raghavaiah difficult during his tenure, Mr Watts revealed himself as a soft target. It was no surprise, then, that even his smallest mistakes were blown up for ‘correction’ by his numerous opponents. In an interview to Reuters he spoke of how his appointment would serve as an opportunity to bring about greater cooperation between the European and Indian races. Many naturally complained that this demonstrated an attitude of condescension towards Indians. At his first budget session in the legislature he had not been as thoroughly prepared as he ought to have, so that, in the words of one observer, ‘The President of the Council whose duty it is to call “honourable members” to order, had to be called to order by Members!’59 He had a ‘disarming naivete’ about him, and was genuinely concerned about the welfare of the people, but could not assert himself for the actual implementation of the causes he assumed so fervently. On one instance he promised to reverse a government decision when he heard first-hand from a public deputation about the difficulties it would cause, only to vacillate on its execution, no doubt due to pressure from his officials. ‘Has he again bent his knee,’ asked a critic, ‘to the paladins of the Secretariat?’60 Reviewing the first six months of his tenure, O.M. Thomas decided that