… the difficulty in present Travancore politics … is the existence of a ‘trinity’— His Highness, Her Highness his mother, and Sir CP; and it is almost like a three-card trick in trying to ‘spot the knave’ … What they want is [for] Sir Muhammad to resign. [A decision to give him] a few days ago the title of ‘Nawab’ was just a manoeuvre in that direction to forestall criticism that the Ruler has treated his Dewan badly. I may remark that the decision to bestow this honour on him was only arrived at at the eleventh hour on the very day of the birthday durbar, [and] its bestowal has deceived no one, except Sir Muhammad himself. This view may seem an uncharitable one to take, but I am afraid it is the correct one. Sir CP having got what he wanted can afford to be generous.40
As usual Sir CP employed his personal influence to persuade Lord Willingdon that he would stop interfering in Travancore. He expressed how he hoped to derive a ‘great advantage’ from his place on the Wheeler Committee. It would, he emphasised, ‘give him an opportunity of gradually severing his connection with Travancore’.41 The impression evidently created was that there was nothing more Sir CP wished to do than leave the state. But behind the curtain, great intrigues were transpiring, which even shocked the Dewan. By the end of the year Sir Muhammad looked ‘ill and tired’ and ‘confessed to feeling done up’.42 He had even been forced to issue a press note that he had no difficulties at all with Sir CP, when news of what was happening leaked out to an indignant public.
At present there is full scope and opportunity for palace intrigue and, as I think you are already well aware, Her Highness (His Highness’ mother) and Sir CP are universally credited with being its leading joint authors. His Highness, young and inexperienced as he is, continues, I have observed, to be completely under the sway and domination of his mother; and in the background there still persists that self-seeking influence of his ‘Eminence Grise’ Sir CP. I am persuaded that it is palace intrigue which was responsible for the position of Sir Muhammad … As Sir Muhammad said to me himself, he was tricked into giving Sir CP a ‘clearance certificate’ of non-interference. He was manoeuvred into being compelled by the express desire of His Highness to issue a lamentable note to the Associated Press on the 27th September 1935 … Sir Muhammad felt [the insult] keenly. ‘Colonel Garstin’, he said to me, ‘in the 42 years of my service, I have never had to do such a thing as this.’ I do not think he was acting a part: he looked miserable.43
The plot finally reached consummation in August 1936. Unable to implement a policy of fairness to tackle communal problem and appalled by Sir CP’s unrelenting influence running counter to everything he did, Sir Muhammad resigned and left. But if the Government of India expected to find the state a new, able Dewan who could resolve these issues and perhaps stand up to Sir CP, they were to be stunned. For ‘a minor coup, engineered by the Palace itself, with the knowledge of Sir CP’ was in the offing.44 On 31 August, the Maharajah communicated to the Resident about the selection of his new Dewan, stating how he felt an urgent need to have a candidate ‘in whom I have full confidence’. And apparently after ‘bestowing anxious thought on this matter’, he had decided to appoint none other than Sir CP himself as Dewan.45
The Government of India were taken by outright bewilderment at the news. They instantly objected to this unilateral decision, arguing that their sanction and consent were required for the appointment of a new minister. The Maharajah calmly responded that the Paramount Power had recently granted him the right to make all appointments with salaries over Rs 500 a month himself, without reference to them; the Dewan received well above this sum and he could therefore appoint whomever he wanted. Furthermore, even when he chose Sir Muhammad, he had offered him the post first and then written privately to the Viceroy who commended his choice. Now he was merely repeating that custom and saw no reason to consult Delhi.46 ‘Never before in the history of Travancore’ notes one writer, ‘had a Dewan been appointed in defiance of the official opinion of the British government.’47 The ‘private’ door that Lord Willingdon opened to the Maharajah in 1931 through Sir CP to put an end to the Regency had now come to stab an utterly astonished Government of India in its own back.48
There was no doubt that this master coup to install Sir CP in power would strengthen the hands of the Junior Maharani. ‘CP’s appointment as Dewan,’ states the former’s biographer, ‘had been the climactic conclusion of a long-drawn power struggle between the Senior Maharani, who enjoyed the support of the Christians, and the Junior Maharani, who was backed by the Nairs.’49 As for the man, the Governor of Madras wrote, amused that the Political Department had not seen this coming: he ‘obviously prefers to be a dictator in Travancore to one of a crowd in Delhi’ on some obscure committee the Viceroy gave him as a distraction from Travancore.50 The Maharajah himself seemed unable to stand up to this formidable union of his mother and this new Dewan who were destined to rule all of Travancore in his name in the years ahead. ‘That His Highness is at present very subordinate to those behind him is quite obvious,’ the Resident had noted. ‘I believe there is much good in him and a sincere desire to rule well, but he is naturally reticent and timid.’51 Successive Residents, therefore, tried to win him over so that he would realise he had the support of the Government of India and need not succumb to the influence of those in his palace. But as a frustrated Mr Garstin, the latest British representative, recorded, these attempts to counter-manipulate the Maharajah did not succeed:
My predecessor Field did his best to try and counteract this palace intrigue by attempting to win the confidence of the Maharajah, but he told me that whenever he made any move in this direction, the Maharajah, always studiously polite and courteous, listened to all he had to say but could not be persuaded to express any opinion himself, merely remarking that he would consider the matter: in the result nothing would be done. I have [myself] found this attitude of stony reserve whereby one is made (very politely) to feel that the friendly discussion with the [Resident] is not welcomed—indeed almost resented: His Highness is ever on his guard as though he has been carefully tutored beforehand and is afraid to say anything … Apparently this attitude is inculcated by Her Highness, his mother. There is no doubt at all that the treatment Her Highness received during the Regency years (I do not impute any criticism of that treatment) still rankles in Her Highness’ mind and accordingly influences the overmastering hold she has over her son.52
At the time of the Regency, Nairs complained habitually that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was under the domination of her husband and never said anything beyond what she had been taught to say. Residents, who as always maintained a hawk’s eye over the royal house, consistently rejected the accusation. Now, however, they watched with disbelief, as the Maharajah seemed entirely withdrawn under his mother’s overpowering wings. In Bangalore it was stated with great relief during his training and the attendant separation from the Junior Maharani that he was finally emerging out of his shell into a fine young man. Now, five years later, he seemed to have gone back right in, beating a disappointing retreat. It was reminiscent of an episode in 1928 when one of Chithira Tirunal’s tutors asked him, after saying goodbye before his departure, if he would write to him sometime. The sixteen-year-old Maharajah innocently responded: ‘I must ask my mother first.’53
In 1925 at the climax of the Vaikom Satyagraha, when Mahatma Gandhi met Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, they discussed not only the topic of opening public roads to all of Travancore’s Hindu subjects, but also the larger abomination of untouchability. Prolonged discussions on this continued at their subsequent meeting in 1927, where he expressed his admiration of her deepest conviction ‘to see that this wrong is removed at the earliest possible moment’.54 Eradication of the evil, however, would correspond to opening the hallowed gates of temples in Travancore to all its Hindu faithful. When the Maharani was asked if she was prepared to allow this, she responded: ‘I agree this should be done, and it will be done.’ But as the head of an interim government, with a Christian Dewan and other senior o
fficials also from minority communities, she would offend the orthodoxy by embarking on so sweeping and historic a step at that point. Temple entry, she therefore announced, would have to wait for her nephew when he came of age.55 And, true to that belief, in November 1936 the Maharajah, on the occasion of his twenty-fourth birthday, passed the epochal Temple Entry Proclamation, throwing open all Hindu shrines in Travancore to all its hitherto low-caste subjects:
Profoundly convinced of the truth and validity of Our religion, believing that it is based on divine guidance and on all-comprehending toleration, knowing that in its practice it has throughout the centuries, adapted itself to the needs of changing times, solicitous that none of Our Hindu subjects should, by reason of birth or caste or community, be denied the consolation and the solace of the Hindu faith, We have decided and hereby declare, ordain and command that, subject to such rules and conditions as may be laid down and imposed by Us for preserving their proper atmosphere and maintaining their rituals and observances, there should henceforth be no restriction placed on any Hindu by birth or religion on entering or worshipping at temples controlled by Us and Our Government.56
The import of this declaration, passed in a matter of months after Sir CP took over the administration, cannot be understated. Indeed, it remains the single greatest reform for courageously executing which the Maharajah is remembered even today, becoming also the greatest highlight of Sir CP’s own phenomenal career. Champions of the Hindu cause celebrated it as ‘heralding the birth of a new conscience in the Hindu world’,57 while C. Rajagopalachari considered it perhaps ‘the greatest religious reform in India after the time of Asoka’.58 Gandhi saw it as ‘a people’s charter of spiritual emancipation’ and it was altogether a tremendous act, earning for Chithira Tirunal ‘an immortal place among the social reformers of modern India’.59 The day temple entry was proclaimed the iron gates of Kowdiar Palace were thrown open for the masses to express their overwhelming gratitude to their monarch. ‘The guards withdrew,’ the Maharajah’s brother recorded, ‘and the people just kept pouring in. The palace grounds resembled a pin cushion, only heads!’60
While Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, in conceding the Vaikom demands and terminating disabilities of many kinds afflicting low-caste communities, set the stage for temple entry, credit for taking it to its rightful conclusion is due to the Junior Maharani, Sir CP, and the Maharajah in equal measure. Travancore now had a male ruler with a Dewan who was not only a Brahmin but also possessed the courage to weather any political storm unleashed by the orthodoxy. By 1937, even the venerated Azhavanchery Tamprakkal, the highest sacerdotal Brahmin dignitary in all Kerala, was persuaded to declare ‘unequivocally’ his support, despite pressure from other factions that were ‘greatly disturbed’ by these happenings.61 Cochin prohibited Travancore priests from entering shrines within its domains, and the Zamorin too exercised all his feudal influence in Malabar to reject the principle of temple entry. The Maharajah and his mother and the minister carried on unfazed, however. Earlier in 1934 they had openly demonstrated their abhorrence of untouchability when they welcomed at the wedding celebrations of the First Princess all their subjects, without prejudice of caste.62 Gandhi too praised the Junior Maharani for staunchly supporting her son in this groundbreaking reform, declaring how the proclamation was ‘due to the influence of one woman’ who was ‘determined to do what was the purest act of justice’. The Maharajah ‘could not,’ he concluded, ‘have done it without the support of his mother.’63
But no great reform occurs in a vacuum and consciousness of the injustices of old social practices is married to changing opinions and calculations on the ground, when especially they threaten social order. Travancore was no exception, and behind temple entry in 1936 lay decades of agitation and social pressure applied masterfully by low-caste groups in one way or another. It is also significant that all three principal players behind the proclamation were concerned by the political implications of Hindu casteism and the weaknesses it engendered in the wider community. While the Junior Maharani was ‘a declared sympathizer of the Hindu cause’ who had gathered Hindu forces during Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s allegedly pro-Christian administration,64 Sir CP would some years down the line remark ‘that Travancore would cease to be a Hindu State if the Christians are allowed a free hand’.65 He also harboured very serious suspicions, reportedly, that the latter, from time immemorial, were attempting to capture and transform the state into a Christian dominion.66 As for the Maharajah, his devotion to his family deity, and to pious Hinduism in general, was legendary, and he was hugely concerned by the loss in Hindu numbers in Travancore.67 Even as fringe tribal groups were steadily absorbed into the mainstream Hindu fold, the 1931 census reported that from nearly 70 per cent of the population in 1901, Hindus now stood at less than 62 per cent, while Christians increased their standing from about 24 per cent to nearly 32 per cent during the same period.68 As his brother stated, ‘the Maharajah wanted to bring about a consolidation of the community and growth of self-respect among all its members’.69
Shortly after succeeding to power late in 1931, the Maharajah’s administration had therefore revealed itself as having a stern Hindu bias, with the Nairs forming their principal base of support. As the historian Sreedhara Menon remarks, the Christians had ‘incurred the displeasure or wrath of the Junior Maharani’ so that now there was a ‘backlash’ against them.70 Even as late as the 1940s Christian groups would see the new pro-Hindu policy as a repercussion of the feud between the Senior and Junior Maharanis. With reference to the first memorial submitted against Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, mainly by Nairs who championed the Junior Maharani’s quest for a Council of Regency, the corresponding support of Christians and other groups of minorities to Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was cast in a negative light. While Nairs ‘who foresaw that the Regency is to last only a short time’ supported the Maharajah’s mother, the Christians ‘were falsely regarded as opponents of the Maharajah’ primarily because ‘they did not oppose the Regency regime’ and further the Junior Maharani’s agenda.71 With her son’s succession, then, it was no surprise that the state had a vendetta to gratify by means of ‘an anti-Christian policy’ that was ‘started with the able assistance of Sir CP’. He was rather imperious a Hindu himself, and in his World Religions: A Study in Synthesis (which he defended as ‘purely a personal enterprise’) he allegedly ridiculed Christian ideas openly, including Immaculate Conception and the divinity of Christ.72
By 1936, Hindu social organisations of a somewhat controversial variety were boldly encouraged, while Christians missions were locked into a tough grasp by the authorities. The administration evidently blessed the reactionary Hindu Mahasabha with official funding, and by 1941 it would proudly be reported that 80,000 people had been reconverted through its exertions.73 Preachers from the Christian, Muslim and even Ezhava communities complained, on the other hand, that they were prohibited from making even speeches on religious matters. ‘Shelter is taken under the possibility of disturbance of the public peace by District Magistrates,’ it was protested, ‘to prohibit evangelists and preachers from propagating their faith’ even as the Hindu Mahasabha and its allies published pure virulence freely, with official patronage. One aggressive publication, for example, represented the missionary as a ‘modern Ravana loathing what we long for, holding in contempt what we respect, and destroying everything which we will attempt to protect even by pledging our lives’. The chief enemy of Hindus, it went on, was the Christian evangelist, who was ‘the murderer of Hindu culture and the destroyer of Sanatana Dharma’, an ‘angel of death’ who was ‘engaging himself in untiring efforts to convert India into a land of sin’.74
Much of this was provocative rhetoric, but what rankled the minorities was that the administration not only turned a blind eye to it, but also sometimes actually went out of its way to promote it. This was all a departure from Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s policy. When Mr Watts was appointed Dewan in 1925, for instance, the Christians ‘looked upon his arrival as the birth of a
new power’ and the Hindus ‘as the break of an old one’. But the Maharani wisely counselled him not to succumb to taking sides. He showed, therefore, a sober sagacity in living down both expectations ‘by his great level-headedness and sense of fair-play’ while Sethu Lakshmi Bayi handled communal issues ‘with consummate tact’, earning praise for her unprejudiced impartiality.75 The new regime, however, as the Resident reported, was more than happy to play the communal ball and favour one community over another, like in the old days. Trouble was already brewing by 1935 and ‘I think it is likely to grow worse, and indeed have serious consequences, unless the administration can see its way to pursue a policy of strict fairness and impartiality between the warring communities.’76
While he believed that the Maharajah was ‘personally disposed to be fair and impartial’, he was ‘nothing like a free agent’ and influences behind the curtain thwarted hopes of his exercising policy in the famously even-handed manner of his aunt.77 Communal trouble, in the meantime, got worse, and the ‘Christians, Ezhavas, and Muslims are beginning to assert that the good which Sir Muhammad has done to remove the unfair Nair predominance’ had led to a situation where the latter were determined not to allow him to survive.78 The Maharajah himself then seemed to be taking sides in favour of the Hindus; in Quilon there was a mosque that had reached an understanding with local Hindus that temple processions passing by their premises should play softer music. ‘His Highness took a different view and after personally coming to the Residency to see me, he adhered to his opinion that it would be a mistake to order the Hindus to give up an old prescriptive custom.’ The Dewan disagreed and thought that both sides would have to compromise and not just the Muslim minority, which did not go down well with Kowdiar Palace. ‘I can now say that His Highness does appear to be anxious to get rid of Sir Muhammad’, and it was after similar disagreements on communal policy that the old Dewan had left.79
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