Ivory Throne
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This review was not surprising, and in the previous year Louise Ouwerkerk also expressed a similar opinion in private. Even while in Trivandrum, under Captain Harvey the Maharajah was encouraged to play as many sports as possible, and to take an initiative in inviting many people for such activities, since he had no friends of his own. Writing after her first game of tennis with him, Ouwerkerk noted:
I suspected the boy would come out of his shell when Mama is not about; these tennis parties are his own show entirely and Mama does not appear, and he is quite a different person, a lively little cricket. The whole affair tickled enormously; he being a high caste … may not eat in the presence of outcastes (which white folk are, of course!) so we had a good tea and drank deep of lemonade at intervals, while he ate not a crumb and must have got horribly thirsty in the course of the afternoon! And as soon as he had shaken hands with his departing guests, he rushed off to get a bath to wash off the pollution! And yet he has had an English tutor, is surrounded by English influence, and appears in his manner and speech like any normal English boy of sixteen. You wonder what will happen to him in the end.72
By August 1930, less than four months after his departure from the palace, the young Maharajah appeared to be a vastly different individual. When Mr Cater went to Bangalore to witness first-hand his development, he was evidently pleased by the changes he saw, and
… it is satisfactory to be able to report a definite advance in his progress. Physically he is much stronger and has put on nearly a stone of weight. In other ways he has also changed for the better. Instead of being the rather silent, reserved boy that he was at Trivandrum, he has now, so to speak, come out of his shell and is talkative and cheerful, and altogether more natural and boyish than he was. He is thoroughly happy in Bangalore, and I have no doubt that his stay there and contact with all sorts and conditions of people whom he would never meet in Travancore is doing him a world of good, apart from the administrative training which was the principal object of his going to Mysore State.73
But if the Maharajah was thriving, his mother seemed to be in a state of high panic. Although Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had allocated money for her to take up residence in Bangalore, she had preferred to go away to Madras instead, for her own reasons. In July the Resident then received intelligence of yet another conspiracy being hatched by the Junior Maharani there with all her ‘fondness for intrigue’.74 It seemed that like before, the Maharajah’s mother had approached a journalist from the Pioneer to help her ‘rectify her grievances’ and to put an end to the Regency, and the separation from her son.75 When the journalist in question spoke to Mr Cater about this, and he in turn questioned the Junior Maharani, the latter issued a staunch denial. The journalist then, one A.S. Menon, wrote to the Resident claiming to be ‘outrageously betrayed’. By informing the Junior Maharani of their conversation, Mr Cater had, he said, let him down.76 Despite this, however, he went on to give more information about this latest intrigue, which involved the Cochin durbar as well.
Like the royal family of Travancore, Cochin too was split with factions, not least because there too existed two power centres. From 1895 till 1914 the state was ruled by a widely popular Maharajah, who decided, for personal reasons of health, to abdicate.77 ‘The Cochin which His Highness picked up in 1895 in a state of chaos in many respects and which, through his faithful and watchful stewardship for a period of nearly twenty years, he raised to a unique position’ in both ‘political independence and material prosperity’, was ruled now by a cousin, who was next in line.78 But the old ruler remained head of the royal family with the status of Valiya Tampuran. The new ruler, however, was ‘entirely swayed by his Consort’, a dominating Nair lady of renowned ability and personality, known as Parukutty Neithiyar Amma.79 The ex-ruler resented this outside influence, since his successor’s wife had no locus standi to exercise power, and consequently difficulties arose in relations between Abdicated His Highness and Reigning His Highness.80 It so happened that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and her husband were close to the former, and in 1927 even had him visit Trivandrum as a state guest,81 while the Junior Maharani was friendly with the all-powerful Neithiyar Amma of Cochin.
It was now revealed that just before the Maharajah left for Bangalore, his mother, completely agitated at the impending separation from her son, met with the Neithiyar Amma to request her assistance in preventing this, and to help in putting an end to the galling Regency. Reportedly, in a somewhat hysterical mood, the Junior Maharani ‘flourished a revolver and threatened to shoot herself if her grievances were not redressed’.82 The Neithiyar Amma promised to do what she could, and ‘the result was the employment of an agent who is well-known in Cochin for fishing in troubled waters’.83 The name of this individual was not revealed but a copy of a letter handed over by Mr A.S. Menon, the journalist from Madras, to the Resident clarified the commission given him by the Junior Maharani:
I have been authorised by Her Highness the Junior Maharani of Travancore to do all that is legal and constitutional in getting the order of the Government of India revised in respect of the extension of the Regency in Travancore, the guardian tutorship of Captain Harvey, and Her Highness’ enforced separation from His Highness the young Maharajah during the period of His Highness’ administrative training, and to incur in this behalf all reasonable expenses.84
Despite the Junior Maharani’s vehement denials, Mr Cater had reason to believe Mr Menon’s information was accurate.85 This was partly because Menon had already tried to express the Junior Maharani’s ‘sad circumstances’ to the Government of India, only to be rebuffed and told to approach the Resident first.86 In any case, the Junior Maharani was utterly frustrated by the turn of events and her son’s removal from her authority, and wanted, more than ever, for the Regency to come to an end. Such was her aversion to being in Trivandrum that she refused to visit even for her son’s eighteenth birthday, when he himself was in town, preferring to see him in Madras instead where he went for Christmas. To the Resident it appeared to be a simple case of the Junior Maharani, long accustomed to using her son as ‘a kind of shuttlecock’ in ‘her endeavours to get the best of the Maharani Regent and myself ’,87 no longer having him available for her endless calculations.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, in the meantime, had matters of state pressing her. The Great Depression of 1929 was beginning to take a toll, and revenues were beginning to drop. Expenditure on public works and other ongoing schemes remained high, leaving a relatively small surplus of funds. ‘At no time in recent years have the prices of staple articles of local produce such as paddy, pepper, coconut, rubber and tapioca fallen so low,’ reported the Dewan. ‘Our economic revival depends to a large extent upon the increased buying capacity of our foreign customers and no action taken by ourselves alone can accelerate the economic revival of the foreign countries which buy our goods.’88 To find a way to guide the state through these economic doldrums, the Maharani constituted an Economic Depression Enquiry Committee, and sanctioned a preliminary sum of Rs 3.5 lakh in loans to the agriculturists of the state, who would have to bear the worst effects of the crisis. Trade still remained fairly buoyant, and there was no deficit, but it was clear that a difficult tide would have to be weathered for a few years, after the enormous boom of the 1920s that had enabled Travancore to progress at such an unequalled pace. As the Committee would report, only when prices returned to their original levels would the situation improve, without which the exports of the state would continue to be undervalued, and income even of ordinary people would diminish.89
All over the world hysteria broke out, and in some parts things were to become extremely difficult. Travancore, with its record of good governance and benevolent state policy, was able to navigate the storm. It would emerge from the throes of the Great Depression relatively unharmed, resuming its course of high growth in a few years’ time. But it was not easy. Prices dropped 40 per cent in only fourteen months between 1929 and 1930, and the total value of India’s trade fell from Rs 330 crore in
1929 to Rs 132 crore by 1932.90 While countries like Brazil, where one crop dominated, suffered the worst, India with its internal diversity of cultivation was in a better position and a total catastrophe was, therefore, averted. Protectionist policies were imposed, custom duties increased, the defence budget curtailed, and government salaries cut down. In 1930, while the Government of India’s budget suffered a deficit of Rs 11.5 crore,91 Travancore’s reduced revenue of Rs 247 lakh still left a surplus of nearly Rs 7 lakh after all expenses. Even the drop in the government balance from Rs 170 lakh to Rs 165 lakh was relatively minor given global conditions.92 The Maharani, in hindsight, probably heaved a sigh of relief for having firmly refused to commence Mr Watts’s Railway Scheme, which if under way at this time would have bankrupted the state. But as she worked harder than ever to tackle what John Maynard Keynes considered a ‘first class disaster’,93 another one, political in nature, was afoot in Simla—that ‘pleasant hill sanatorium’ where, regretted John Kaye, ‘our Governors-General, surrounded by irresponsible advisers, settle the destinies of [even] empires without the aid of their legitimate fellow-counsellors, and which has been the cradle of more political insanity than any place within the limits of Hindostan’.94 The partition of Bengal was designed here, as were the disastrous invasions of Tibet and Afghanistan. And in 1931, on a decidedly minor but still problematic level, loomed an intervention in Travancore, destined to bring to a premature conclusion the reign of the Pooradam Tirunal Maharajah.
13
La Revanche
‘British policy in India,’ remarked Sarvepalli Gopal, ‘was, in essentials, determined by governments’ but there were ‘times when what was seen as the personal touch of understanding’ made a world of positive difference.1 While general policy directives were issued from London, a great deal depended on attitudes of imperial emissaries as well—whether Viceroys and their votaries decided on conciliating and understanding the people they governed, or in dividing and manipulating them instead. Lord Ripon in the 1880s, for instance, ‘testified by his actions that British rule was not always wholly unprincipled’, just as decades later India’s last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, did enough good to depart ‘to resounding cheers’ from masses of Indians themselves. ‘But perhaps the most substantial contribution by any individual to the building of goodwill between India and Britain,’ continues Gopal, ‘was made by Lord Irwin’, who was the Viceroy from 1926 until 1931, protecting the interests of the Crown he served in the dusty lands of South Asia to the best of his understated abilities.2
Irwin arrived in Delhi after Lord Reading’s unpopular tenure and the general impression was that ‘no man in English public life was better fitted than [him] for the political climate and situation in India’ at the time.3 A devout Christian of ‘sincerity and religious dedication’, he made a ‘marked impression’ on an equally pious Gandhi and several other leaders of the nationalist movement in India, opening the doors to work with rather than against them. He presented to the Indian people ‘his credentials as a Viceroy who was concerned with more than mere execution of [British] policy, and management of the administration’.4 In the beginning mistakes were made when he tried to force the Mahatma down to his terms, but very quickly Irwin ‘saw what all his successors, except Mountbatten, failed to see, that it was in Britain’s interest to win Gandhi over’.5 By 1929 he famously declared that his goal for India was dominion status and autonomy within the British Empire, causing such umbrage among conservatives back home that Churchill privately lambasted him as ‘Lord Worming and Squirming’ and publicly accused him of ‘drinking tea with treason’.6
But Irwin was determined. He told horrified critics it was simply inconceivable to expect India ‘to occupy a permanently subordinate place in an Empire of white nations’ and that as far as possible, they would have to reconcile to local aspirations.7 Gandhi too reined in more extremist voices within the Congress and was prepared to confer with Irwin, so that even at their worst times, they could reach agreements such as the historic Gandhi–Irwin Pact of 1931. While the Viceroy had no intentions to inaugurate the beginning of the end for the Raj, he did concede space to Indians, and do his best to bring the opposition on board. ‘I do pray,’ Irwin expressed in his farewell note to the Mahatma, ‘that history may say that you and I were permitted to be instruments in doing something big for India and for humanity.’8 It was a genuine sentiment and the man retired with his conscience clear.
But Irwin’s hopes were dashed to the floor with spectacular effect by his successor who had not the least inclination to do anything for India other than to grip it in Britain’s hardened imperial clutches, and put Gandhi in his rightful place. Lord Willingdon, who arrived in April 1931, considered his predecessor a ‘simple man’ who had been unfortunately ‘deluded’ into doing business with Gandhi.9 The new Viceroy had ‘the appropriate imperial arrogance and requisite contempt’ for Indians, so as to undo all that Irwin had achieved, and go back to the days of ruling India as a personal fiefdom of the King Emperor.10 To Churchill’s delight, he condemned Gandhi as ‘the most Machiavellian bargaining little political humbug I have ever come across’, and decried the outgoing Viceroy’s ‘mistaken hobnobbing’ with this Father of Indian nationalism.11 In hindsight, Willingdon’s selection as Viceroy is considered ‘among the major misjudgements of the National Government in London’, since he was ‘so limited a man’, determined to obliterate all demands for freedom, blinded by his firm conviction in Pax Britannica.12 Succeeding Irwin was not easy, and Willingdon made blunder after historic blunder in the following years. ‘Irwin sought cooperation and conciliation. Willingdon, on the other hand, sought conflict and confrontation. Irwin befriended Gandhi; Willingdon imprisoned him and banned the Congress Party.’13 Even Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam of Pakistan and no admirer of the Congress, would refer to the man as ‘that wretched Viceroy’.14
Willingdon had some experience in India, having served a term as Governor of Bombay and then another in Madras, before going to Canada as Viceroy there. He had no particular gifts as such and was best known as ‘a minor Liberal politician and a county level cricketer’ at first.15 General opinion was that he ‘would have remained a parliamentary backbencher had it not been for two things—tennis partner to King George V, and his pushy spouse’.16 Having become Viceroy, however, he was ‘hell bent on finishing off’ the Congress, ‘took to a policy of suppression’, and ‘encouraged communal and feudal forces with a view to creating a wedge in the struggle being waged against the Imperial Government’.17 He ‘seemed to prefer India’s princes to its politicians’18 for no other reason than to employ them as a bulwark in that traditional colonial formula of divide and rule, against Gandhi. Where Irwin circulated notes on good governance to the Maharajahs, and tried to persuade them to relinquish petty despotism in favour of enlightened rule, Willingdon desired to cultivate them as imperial allies, lavishing titles, flattery and favours in pursuit of his goals. Irwin contemplated self-rule for India and ‘succeeded to a degree not even he had anticipated’ in ensuring participation of the princes in this grand scheme, while Willingdon had every inclination to keep India as divided as possible.19 While Gandhi thought Irwin ‘an honest Viceroy with decent impulses’, Willingdon was, he felt, ‘bereft of all grace’.20 The latter was decidedly rude to the Mahatma; during their conferences in Simla, the Viceroy refused to relax rules prohibiting cars from plying the town’s roads except his own, forcing Gandhi to walk 6 miles every day to see him, often in drenching rain.21 ‘Combining ostentation with repression, Willingdon’s regime aroused bitter enmity among nationalists’ and was set to become one of the most notorious viceroyalties in a long time.22
While Irwin, who admired progressive statecraft, professed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s reign as perhaps the best in all of Travancore’s history, Willingdon too had concerns with the state, though less with its administration and more with the royal family. It was when he was Governor of Madras in Mulam Tirunal’s days that he first visi
ted Trivandrum and met both the Maharanis. His arrival as Viceroy now, however, was to prove a godsend for the Junior Maharani in particular, and a positive nightmare for her reigning cousin. His installation in Delhi was one among several other changes happening at the time. Mr Cater, the Resident, had departed the state after a relatively short stint in that role. One Lt Col H.R.N. Pritchard succeeded him in October 1930, and had only half a year in overseeing affairs for the Government of India. The Junior Maharani herself, meanwhile, showed no inclination to return to Travancore, dividing her time between Madras and Ooty. By April 1931 she went up to Delhi and Kashmir, and later in the summer arrived in Simla, the ‘hot weather’ capital of the British Raj, where the Viceroy was getting on with tackling Gandhi and his other imperial headaches. But for the Junior Maharani, this visit was to become momentous and turn the tide in her favour for the first time in years, finally providing her the sympathy of the Paramount Power that had so far proved elusive.
The story, which has since gained such currency that it is widely accepted as the true historical narrative, goes that Sethu Parvathi Bayi was utterly vexed by the delay in granting her son his ruling powers. She feared that the Regency of her cousin ‘might be converted into a permanency’ and that the Maharajah’s fate would be to languish forever as a prince without a throne.23 It was critical, therefore, for him to be ‘moved out of his perilous minority’, putting which off was detrimental not only to him personally but also to ‘the State at large’.24 While Sethu Lakshmi Bayi herself was acknowledged as popular, and though she held warm affection for the Maharajah in her heart, there were certain individuals with vested interests (in other words, Rama Varma and associates) who were making every effort to prolong the Regency and perpetuate their own wicked hold over power.25 Uncharitable rumours were spread regularly about the young Maharajah, which had reached even the ears of the previous Viceroy that the boy was ‘unfit’ to succeed to the throne.26 The efforts of these men were to extend the Regency ‘indefinitely by convincing the Government of India that the young Maharajah was not mentally up to the mark, [and was] in fact something of a moron, and hence incapable of assuming ruling powers’.27 This vile propaganda was the only reason Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s rule had continued beyond 1930 and the Maharajah was prevented from claiming the throne on turning eighteen. In order to resolve this shameful injustice, a gallant Junior Maharani, devoted to her son, proceeded to Simla and magisterially demanded of Lord Willingdon thus: