Ivory Throne
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Accordingly, in January 1928, the Junior Maharani was officially informed, further to the Viceroy’s verbal confirmation, that her son would be installed and the Regency concluded, only in August 1932 after he had turned nineteen-and-a-half ‘as the experience of the Government of India has shown that the earlier age of 18 puts too severe a tax on youthful discretion and capacity’.83 Confidentially, Delhi also informed the Resident that after the Maharajah’s administrative training began, ‘he should be provided a separate establishment and [should] no longer live with his mother’.84 By August 1928 the Resident conveyed both these points to the Junior Maharani, and informally also let Sethu Lakshmi Bayi know.85 This is a crucial point, as years later partisans of the Junior Maharani would insist that it was intrigue on the part of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi that led to the extension of the Regency, whereas the fact was that both women were informed at more or less the same time about this decision taken unilaterally by the Government of India in pursuance of a general policy.
The Junior Maharani, however, was determined to try and do what she could to prevail, and to bring about her son’s installation at eighteen. While individuals like Sir Vasudeva Rajah, and later even K.M. Panikkar, had been assisting her in representing her views to the Government of India, in 1927 she had formed a friendship with a phenomenal lawyer and luminary of that generation, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer. And it was he who, more than anyone else, proved to be of real service to her. In the words of a future Resident, he was a genius who would ‘talk the hind leg off a horse’ and one of the ‘cleverest men in India’.86 Born in 1879 into a Tamil Brahmin family in the Madras Presidency, he followed in the footsteps of his father and entered the legal profession, where his rise was ‘breathtakingly meteoric’, allowing him to become one of the wealthiest and most sought-after lawyers of the Madras High Court.87 ‘Forty-two minutes, my Lord,’ he once announced to a judge who asked him how much time he would need to finish a case.88 Soon he was elected to the Legislative Assembly and also became a member of the Executive Council of the Governor, and such were his first-class brain and formidable intelligence, that in the future he would be nominated as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council on two separate occasions.89
Sir CP, as he was popularly known, had several old connections with Travancore. He had fought high-profile cases for the government and the late Maharajah, but his interest now in championing the cause of the Junior Maharani was seemingly triggered by a combination of mutual friendship and personal ambition. As early as January 1928 it was revealed that the Junior Maharani had secured his assistance ‘in preparing a fresh memorial’ against the Regency, and there were rumours that he was ‘anxious to come to Travancore as Administrator [i.e., Dewan]’.90 In the words of a biographer, ‘prolonged, intense lobbying and long, complicated manoeuvres’ commenced soon after he became interested in the Dewanship at some point in the 1920s.91 It seems likely, for Sir CP was extraordinarily rich in this period, and his ‘weakness’, in the words of a contemporary, was ‘for power and fame, and not money’.92 With his shrewd far-sightedness, he might have perceived a better opportunity in becoming Dewan when the Maharajah came of age, than now, when an interim administration was in place. Either way, he accepted the Junior Maharani’s cause with pleasure and applied his formidable energy to realising her wishes. In fact so allied had the two become in recent times that in 1928 and 1929 the ‘friend’ connected by uncharitable gossip with the Junior Maharani, and to whom Captain Harvey had taken exception while the Government of India clandestinely ordered a report, was none other than Sir CP. And indeed, throughout their association, scandals and rumours about there existing a romantic liaison would hound them. These were probably ‘completely unfounded’ but as the aforementioned Louise Ouwerkerk would remark, ‘the political fact was not their truth or untruth but the fact that they were universally believed’.93
In 1929, after the black magic episode, it was decided to remove the Maharajah from ‘the somewhat doubtful influences prevailing in his mother’s Palace’.94 While ordinarily he would have commenced his administrative training towards the end of 1930, this was now brought forward, and detailed plans began to be drawn about how his time would be employed until 1932. There were not inconsiderable fears that the Junior Maharani would ‘object most strenuously’ and ‘try to enlist aid from whatever quarter she can’.95 But the Government of India had made up its mind, also clarifying that there was ‘no question’ of the Maharajah’s mother accompanying him during his period of training.96 Several pros and cons of the proposal, however, had to be borne in mind seriously. The points in favour of sending him away were, in official records on the subject: ‘(1) the recent “black magic” affair; (2) the liaison apparently existing between the Junior Maharani and Sir CP [Ramaswami] Iyer; (3) the general desirability of giving the boy a new outlook on life’.97 On the other hand, there were also concerns that the Maharajah was not yet seventeen, and removing him from his familial environment could backfire. But in the end, whatever was to be decided, ‘it seems clearly desirable’, noted the Political Secretary, ‘that the Maharajah should be separated from his mother’s influence for a time’.98
The Junior Maharani, embarrassed and aware that the black magic incident had really pulled her down in the estimation of the authorities, tried now to present a good and positive impression, so that during her meeting with Mr Crosthwaite to discuss her son’s training he noted, sarcastically, that she was ‘affability itself ’.99 She promised to send him in writing her views on the subject within ten days. But this, incidentally, was merely an attempt to buy time. For at the same time plans had been made for Sir CP to travel to England and raise the Junior Maharani’s case with none other than the Secretary of State, the British Cabinet minister responsible for India, who was, in a way, the Viceroy’s boss. Since Lord Irwin was not amenable to her representations, it was hoped that his superiors could perhaps be persuaded otherwise, and to grant a verdict in favour of the supplicant. As it happened, news about this reached Sethu Lakshmi Bayi through one of Sir CP’s aides in Bombay who claimed to know ‘what has transpired in Ooty and Bangalore [where meetings had been held between the Junior Maharani and Sir CP], and what is likely to happen in England’.100 The Resident too received information that a withdrawal of Rs 50,000 from the Junior Maharani’s bank account when she was in Bangalore was spent in order to fund this commission to London and back.101
While all this occurred at the end of August 1929, on 5 September the Junior Maharani wrote to Mr Crosthwaite asking for another ten days to allow her to convey her views on her son’s administrative training.102 This was granted, but the Resident reported to the Government of India that the request was mainly due to the fact that she wished to consult Sir CP as to what she should say; her letter had reached him just as he was leaving for England and she had to wait for his response to be posted from Aden when his ship, the SS Cravocia, docked there.103 By 17 September, Mr Crosthwaite had still not heard from the Junior Maharani, and after a gentle reminder, she finally sent him her memorandum on the Maharajah’s education. She felt that while there was no ‘insuperable objection’ to his going away from Travancore for some time, it must be temporary, extending only two months at a time, and altogether not lasting more than six.104 She claimed to have more ideas, which she promised to express in person to the Viceroy when he was to visit later in the year, but she did point out, aware that a separation from her was in contemplation for her son, in the interim that
… I must insist that there should be no break in the continuance of family and maternal influences and company on His Highness at a time when deleterious and extraneous influences are likely to be prevalent and harmful. I must also make it quite clear that without motherly watching over his health and welfare and moral upbringing, anything may happen to him between now and his assumption of Ruling powers.105
In other words, the Junior Maharani very much intended to be with her son while he trained outside the state so as to pr
event bad influences affecting him, even as the Government of India held her to be a source of such influences. The Resident thanked her for her views, without committing to subscribe to them.106 In the meantime Sir CP’s mission in London had proved to be a comprehensive flop, and the Secretary of State did not reverse the Viceroy’s decision. ‘All the influence he could exert in New Delhi and Whitehall could not effect a speedy termination of the Regency,’ in the words of a biographer,107 and far from putting a speedy end to Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s rule, the Viceroy, who was also in London at the time of Sir CP’s mission, visited Trivandrum later that year and publicly endorsed her work and her government, besides investing her with the insignia of the Order of the Crown of India. As for the Junior Maharani’s views on her son’s training, ‘little or no consideration’ was ordered by Delhi to be paid to it,108 and her demand that he should not stay away for longer than six months was turned down.109 Permission, however, was given for him to be able to visit his mother now and then, but certainly not at the two-monthly intervals that the Junior Maharani had in mind. And even decisions regarding these meetings would be taken in Delhi.110
As the mission to London had failed, and since it was now official that the young Maharajah would receive his powers only in 1932, Sir CP and the Junior Maharani in haste began to contemplate other measures to somehow prevent the Regency from continuing beyond 1930. In November 1929, therefore, another memorandum was prepared by the former ‘at the instance of and under instructions from Her Highness the Junior Maharani’ and given to Mr Crosthwaite.111 Beginning with a description of the adoption of the two cousins in 1900, it told how the Junior Maharani had two sons and Sethu Lakshmi Bayi none, ‘so that it may be said that the future succession would normally be in the line of [the former’s] descendants’.112 Pointing to Hindu law, it was argued that the Maharajah had actually already attained majority at the age of sixteen, but since eighteen was now universally held as the age of adulthood, the Junior Maharani acquiesced to this. However, when he did turn eighteen, the Maharajah would be the senior male member of the royal house in effect, and ‘will be entitled to the rights and privileges appurtenant to the headship’ of his family, ‘this being quite irrespective of any conventions or rules that may be formulated by the Paramount Power with reference to the conferment of powers of administration on a young Ruler’.113
In other words, while the Government of India had decided to withhold the grant of power till 1932, the Maharajah would in fact become an adult in 1930 and was to take over rights of headship in his family from Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, even if he did not enjoy sovereignty. This being the case, it was argued, ‘arrangements might be and should be made by which, the Regency being terminated, a transitional system should be devised whereby, while the Maharajah’s legal position is recognised, yet in actual administration he does not exercise plenary powers, but acts either through a Council of Regency or in such other manner as may safeguard those wider interests which the Paramount Power has been accustomed to keep in view’.114 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, it contended, ought not to have objections, as in any case she initially expected to rule only till her nephew turned eighteen. Besides,
One cannot ignore the disequilibrium and embarrassment, to say nothing of other practical consequences, that would flow from the fact of one branch of the family, with no immediate or prospective reversion to the throne, exercising ruling powers, while in strict theory of law and by long usage, such powers inhere in a person belonging to another branch.115
This was something of a bizarre proposition, as while Sethu Lakshmi Bayi did not have sons and, therefore, no immediate successors to the throne (after herself) she did have daughters, whose sons would in fact be prospective heirs. That is why the Political Secretary in Delhi in any case did not bite the bait and refused to countenance hopes of a ‘transitional system’ or a Council of Regency. It seemed to them that since efforts to secure an early succession for the Maharajah had failed, the Junior Maharani was again attempting to have a Council constituted. By January 1930, then, the authorities wrote to the Resident about the lines along which their decision was to be conveyed to the Junior Maharani:
I am to explain that the ordinary rules of succession under Hindu Law do not apply in the case of jurisdictional States, and His Excellency has accordingly decided that the existing Regency arrangements in the State should continue until the Maharajah himself is invested with powers in August 1932. His Highness should, however, be assured that the delay in granting him his powers after he has attained the age of 18 years is not due to any action or influence on the part of the Maharani Regent, but is in pursuance of the general policy of the Government of India not to grant powers to young Princes until they have reached the age of at least 19 ½ years.116
This decision was despite the fact that yet again a memorial by a group of Nairs had been submitted against the Regency. Nothing new was stated in this, so that it too would meet the fate of previous representations in being thoroughly ignored. The gist, however, was that the ever-hectored Rama Varma was ‘an impecunious adventurer’ whose ‘towering ambition’ and ‘passion for official recognition’ had entirely disabled the government. With ‘spying watchfulness’, he coerced his wife, who was always frightened and careful not to ‘make any statements beyond what she is tutored to make’ during meetings with the Dewan or the Resident.117 Mr Crosthwaite, who was already tiring of intrigues, dismissed it as another ploy by ‘these Nair agitators’ to make trouble just before the Viceroy was to visit the state.118 Moreover, the memorial seemed to him particularly mischievous in its timing, for it was in many ways an expression of support to the Junior Maharani’s own memorandum, also claiming that after the Maharajah turned eighteen the Regency should be ended and that a Council of Regency appointed in its place.119 As usual, then, the Resident exonerated Rama Varma, simply stating that he was an honourable man targeted always on account of there being no other legitimate handle for airing imagined complaints and grievances against the Regency. Far from being the tyrant he was painted to be, the hawk-eyed Ouwerkerk too would remark, if there was ‘one person worth a brass button’ between officialdom and the Resident in Travancore, it was the Valiya Koil Tampuran.120
12
Mother and Son
The rise of Travancore in the eighteenth century was received first with shock across the Kerala coast, followed by inconceivable dread. The Portuguese and Dutch had drawn the wind out of the Zamorin’s sails, leaving him a wistful shadow of his former glory in the north. In the centre, Cochin had become ‘less a dependency than a mere proprietary estate’ of its consecutive European sponsors.1 The south was, until the first quarter of that century, a mishmash of chiefdoms of the Kupaka family, when the fearsome Martanda Varma overwhelmed them. Their lands were subsumed into his modern state of Travancore, which for the first time marched armies trained in European style, with mercenary support from outside, firing English weapons, and trained by Dutch deserters. Old Nair chieftains were disempowered and robbed of real power, and a bureaucratic network designed by Tamil Brahmins was developed to run this unprecedented political enterprise. Martanda Varma had a remorseless tenacity for success, before which the listless Rajahs and aristocrats of Kerala could but gasp and crumble.
But the storm of war had inevitably to be followed by peace and conciliation, where also that founding Maharajah of Travancore proved a genius. Save for some distant (though by no means unique) glory of descent from ancient kings, this dynasty had little, beyond recent and brutally unleashed violence, to boast. The old nobility of the land had suffered under its military excesses and the kingdom was cloaked in the blood of the ancien régime Martanda Varma vanquished. The much-touted dedication of his conquests, then, to Sri Padmanabhaswamy, offered for the first time a singular identity to Travancore in a day and age when nationalism was not yet conceived. ‘Like most of the other new rituals of state, [this too] was,’ Susan Bayly remarks, ‘essentially a new event in which fragments of traditional Malayali
ceremonial were blended with the ruler’s own inventions, and with symbolism borrowed from the Tamil country and from the Maratha domains.’2 Even as the Zamorins helplessly squandered their ancestral pre-eminence in Kerala, an emerging Travancore overcompensated through its excessive demonstrations of piety and theatrical ceremonial, cementing their new-found primacy at the apex of the coastal polity.
Legitimacy, as always, necessitates recognition from the highest social ranks, and in Kerala this meant the acknowledgement of Travancore as a lawful, sanctified principality by Brahmins. In the Deccan, the great Maratha warrior Shivaji had obtained such sanction from the ‘twice born’, and Martanda Varma too secured it through expensive ceremonies such as the hiranyagarbha. As a class, though, Brahmins required more inviting incentives to invest Travancore with their socially rewarding blessings. Since migrant Tamil Brahmins had been invaluable to the construction of the state, primary benefits were offered them, first by the opening of numerous feeding houses, maintained at public expense, serving free meals. In 1842 it was estimated that some twelve lakh meals were disbursed from these oottupuras, and by the end of the nineteenth century these establishments would cost nearly Rs 4.5 lakh to maintain. In 1909 some 8,000 Brahmins were being fed daily by the state.3 Slowly, but steadily, positions in the administration also followed as a more tangible reward. Travancore became famous as a ‘Land of Charity’, which of course meant charity for Brahmins and not for the general needy. And little over a century later this would cause much discontent among other classes, who found that the free provision of meals to Brahmins amounted to something of a government subsidy, freeing them from the punishing difficulties under which others languished unfairly. ‘By Brahmins,’ the Madras Standard would vehemently note in the 1880s, ‘we simply mean those classes which are sucking the life blood [sic] of the country,’ adding that it was a mistake for the government to ‘encourage a class of indolent and unscrupulous Brahmins … to fall back upon it for support and existence’.4 This disgust towards the Tamil Brahmin had emerged even during the lifetime of Martanda Varma, with one of his court poets composing with undisguised revulsion: