When she left Trivandrum and moved to Bangalore, I was around five years old. To me she was my amooma who lived in the house next door and who we would go visit and spend time with and who would always give us sweets … It was only later, looking back at her life, that I came to realise how much change she had had thrust upon her. One day, a little girl playing in her own backyard, the next day a princess and a queen, and then back to being an ordinary person. Throughout it all, she conducted herself the very same way, with the same qualities of approachability, integrity, and dignity. Perhaps the biggest lesson that I have learnt is that a person must stay the same whatever life throws at you. I hope that I am living a life now that she would be proud of and upholding the values that made her the person she was … a great soul living in our midst.143
By 1984, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi retreated into a perpetually meditative state. ‘If you can visualise a life of constant prayer and meditation, broken only by occasional intrusions of the outside world,’ tells Lakshmi, ‘you can picture her state of mind as the last years of her life advanced. She had a “peace that passeth understanding”. To me, she became the ultimate in spiritual evolution, my Holy Grail!’144 In December that year the British anthropologist Adrian Mayer, who was perhaps the last outsider to see the Maharani, called on her for an interview. By this time she was clearly moving towards her end. ‘She was in bed,’ he recalls, ‘a small, fragile lady with a sheet drawn over her, her voice a mere whisper.’145 During their discussion, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would murmur her answers to Rukmini, who would then elucidate them for the scholar. Yet Mayer knew that this old, dying woman, surrounded by her white sheets and still exuding that dovelike quality, had created history. Writing later he would say, ‘To all who know Kerala she was a person of great social and historical importance and I feel it a great privilege to have been able to meet her.’146
A few days after Mayer’s visit, for New Year’s Eve, the Maharani, now missing most teeth and physically diminished in the extreme, asked Mary to dress her better than usual. For it was a family custom for everyone, from the adults down to the children, to get into fancy dress and burst into her room at midnight shouting, ‘Happy New Year!’ Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would clap in glee and laugh at all the costumes arrayed before her, before proceeding with the usual ritual of handing out toffee to everybody present. For the new year of 1985 also she waited in bed for the party to begin, but midnight came and went and nobody arrived to greet her. It so happened that Lalitha was unwell and didn’t want the Maharani to find out. Everyone had, therefore, stayed away from the latter’s room. In great disappointment, she went to bed, giving the sweets to her nurses and servants instead. The whole family felt sorry to have let her down, hoping to make it up to her the following year. But they were not destined to have a second chance. In February 1985, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi began to groan in pain and doctors realised that bones in her body had shattered, causing her great agony. Medication did not help and on 22 February she passed away at the Mallige Medical Centre in Bangalore, cremated afterwards like anybody else at the Wilson Garden Electric Crematorium. She knew her time had come, for as she was being carried away to hospital, she called out to Rukmini’s son, and said to him in a pained whisper, ‘Jay, I am going away.’147
Epilogue
Legend has it that the genesis of the House of Travancore was tainted by a terrible curse. When Martanda Varma succeeded to the throne, his consolidation of power in those tumultuous years rested upon the annihilation of the local aristocracy, including two particularly influential adversaries. Their names were Padmanabhan and Raman Tampi, and they were the luckless sons of the penultimate Rajah. The mainstream narrative, spun retrospectively to weave a righteous halo around Martanda Varma, goes to great lengths to tell how these wicked brothers aspired to their father’s throne in contravention of matrilineal law. And when their unholy machinations crossed all limits of mercy and reason, the rightful royal heir put them to death according to the gruesome mandates of local justice.
But an obscure Tamil ballad, Tampimar Kathai, recounts an alternative version of that bloody episode. This chronicle speaks of a lustful Martanda Varma who coveted the hand of the late ruler’s daughter, the exquisite Ummini Tanka. Her brothers gave their consent, but on the condition that her offspring should be guaranteed succession to the throne. As children of a Bengali or Rajput mother, these cousins of Martanda Varma subscribed to patrilineal law, and did not deem their stipulation unreasonable. The Rajah, however, rejected the condition in deference to the dynastic rules of his line. But he was unable to forgive the Tampis’ presumption, hereafter plotting to acquire Ummini Tanka by hook or crook.
To coerce the Tampis into submission, he confiscated the vast estates their father had bestowed upon them. In retaliation, the brothers humbled the king on the battlefield with the aid of a mercenary Tamil brigade. In 1729, they besieged Martanda Varma in his fort at Kalkulam (later sanctified as Padmanabhapuram), claiming an effortless victory. For all the propaganda that depicted Martanda Varma as the very paragon of gallant manliness and brimming heroism to the generations ahead, the king is said to have timidly attempted to slink away in disguise. He was captured, but the Tampis were persuaded to spare his life. It was a clemency that would have fatal consequences for them.
While the Tampis established their rule over the rich district of Nanjanad, a chastened but unforgiving Martanda Varma plotted revenge far away. From direct action, he decided on cunning stratagem. Covertly he bribed the Tamil armies to withdraw from Kerala, agreeing to their commander’s condition, in the sacred presence of a temple deity, that he and the Tampis would never cross swords again. But once the charade was played out, and the armies had disappeared into the heat and dust of the Tamil country, the Rajah put into execution his macabre scheme.
In October 1730, Martanda Varma invited the Tampis to his palace in Nagercoil for a casual conference. There he caught Padmanabhan off-guard and killed him. Raman Tampi, sensing treachery, rushed into the chamber, but was overpowered. As a number of men held him down, struggling and thrashing in rage, Martanda Varma, the future hero of modern Travancore, thrust a dagger into his heart. The first victory of the first Maharajah was rooted in cold, crafty murder. But if he had any hopes of marrying Ummini Tanka, they came to naught. For hearing of the treacherous fate of her brothers, the lady cursed the royal house for eternity and slit her throat.
In his career ahead, Martanda Varma was to spill more blood and to commit graver sins, demolishing the old laws of Kerala that stood in the way of his ambition. But the curse of Ummini Tanka unnerved his priests at any rate, for the spirit of this wrathful beauty was conciliated and ceremoniously installed in a temple as a minor deity. And local communities to this day worship the tragic heroine of Tampimar Kathai as the Melangode Yakshi.1
But if Travancore was afflicted in its inception, its decline two hundred years later too was marred, it is said, by the curse of a woman. In 2011, a council of astrologers was convened in the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram. Their mission (so to speak) was to consult the stars and determine the cause of a series of troubles that had beset the ex-royal family and the shrine of their deity. The assembled Brahmin astrologers said, according to reports, that things were very bad indeed. Ritual amends were recommended in the form of 100,000 Tila Homams, 24,000 Maha Sudarsana Homams, 24,000 Laghu Sudarsana Homams and a Sukritha Homam; fabulous ceremonies to correct lapses accumulated in the conduct of temple rites and traditions over the decades since Independence.2
According to eyewitnesses, the astrologers also spoke of a fresh curse that blighted the royal family and demanded urgent ritual settlement. ‘There was,’ they reportedly declared, ‘a queen in this dynasty. She ruled this land and served its deity. But she had to depart with tears in her eyes. Her curse is upon you and continues to unsettle even Padmanabhaswamy.’3 Many of the believers present, it is said, were confused by this utterance of the astrologers. But to those who knew the history of the
royal house, all this pointed to the name of one forgotten woman around whom had fallen a curtain of silence.
The only queen to have left Travancore in tears was Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
The disappearance of the Senior Maharani and her heirs into the westernised freedoms of Bangalore in the 1950s meant that hereafter the spotlight (largely of exotic curiosity in democratic India) was solely on the successors of the Junior Maharani. And to most in Thiruvananthapuram today, any reference to ‘the royal family’ conjures up images of only the latter. Sethu Parvathi Bayi and her son, the Maharajah, continued to live in Kowdiar Palace in relative pomp at least until the extravagant Privy Purse paid by the Government of India was abolished in 1971. Though the Maharajah had lost his principality, he was permitted control over the great temple in his capital at the time of the integration of Travancore with India. As ‘Ruler of Travancore’, under a special covenant, Chithira Tirunal would remain Padmanabhaswamy’s mortal representative on earth until his passing in 1991. And till his dying breath this last Maharajah stood famously committed in his religious fervour and passion.
With the death of Chithira Tirunal, his brother, the Elayarajah, succeeded as head of the family and assumed the now-defunct and therefore pretentious title of Maharajah. Radha Devi and he wound up their life in Bangalore and settled into the Pattom Palace, where they would live till their own deaths. But the Elayarajah’s control over the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple was contested, and by 2007 legally challenged. It came as a rude shock to him. Following Independence, any significance the Junior Maharani’s family retained in Thiruvananthapuram was tied to their control over and religious representation of this shrine. Despite the ascent of numerous communist dispensations to power in Kerala, the family continued to enjoy a minor degree of reverence, and therefore relevance, in the state mainly because of their socio-religious standing vis-à-vis the temple. But once the floodgates of litigation opened, questions began to pile up, and for the first time that traditional estimation was questioned publicly. As the High Court of Kerala noted in its resultant judgment in 2011:
Public resentment started when the last Ruler’s brother … who after the last Ruler’s death took over the control and management of the Temple, arranged to take photographs of the treasures of the Temple and made a claim which was published in the Malayalam Daily Kerala Koumudi on 15.9.2007 stating that the treasures of the Padmanabha Swamy Temple are the family properties of the erstwhile Royal Family of Travancore. Several devotees approached Civil Courts in Trivandrum filing Suits for declaration and for injunction against those who are in control and management of the Temple…4
The Elayarajah, in response to claims that he had no legal right to the temple or its treasures and that he was in fact mismanaging it, argued that after his brother, he had succeeded as ‘Ruler of Travancore’. And under the special covenant, the ‘Ruler’ alone controlled the temple. He further claimed that the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple was a family shrine. The High Court, however, ruled that by the Constitutional Amendment that had abolished the Privy Purse in 1971, the very concept of ‘Ruler’ had no legal standing anymore, and the Elayarajah’s ‘succession’ to a non-existent title could not be accepted. As for the assertion that the temple was a family estate, the High Court dismissed it as ‘absurd’.5 In order to ‘save the Temple and to protect the interest of the devotees and the public at large who have great faith in this Great Temple’, it was therefore ordered that the Government of Kerala constitute fresh arrangements for its management. The ‘relatives of the late King [had] no right over’ it and they were ordered to relinquish control immediately.6
The Elayarajah, already eighty-nine at the time, appealed against the decision, and the matter is today under review in the Supreme Court of India. But while legalities were being argued over, what electrified the public and drew the international press to old, sleepy Thiruvananthapuram was the allure of the mysterious treasures in the temple’s vaults that seemed to be the bone of contention. As the High Court remarked in its judgment:
It is a well-known fact that the Temple has immense treasures, some of which are centuries old and are highly valuable by virtue of its antique value and its price in terms of the value of precious metals like gold, silver and stones used in the making. Even though we directed the present management to produce the inventory prepared by the last Ruler … they refused to produce the same. Some registers produced in the Court were thoroughly incomplete and unreliable. In view of the public claim made by the last Ruler’s brother who is presently managing the Temple that the treasures belong to the Royal Family of Travancore, the injunction … against opening any of the Kallaras (storage place in the Temple) and removal of any valuable item, should continue in force and we order so.7
The Supreme Court, on account of fears that temple valuables might be alienated or secreted (one former chief minister of Kerala somewhat ridiculously alleged that the Elayarajah smuggled valuables out in a lunchbox on a daily basis),8 constituted a special committee to evaluate the kallaras and to create inventories of all items. The opening of the vaults, after all, was not unprecedented. In December 1931, according to a news report in The Hindu at the time as well as in the account of a contemporary book, one month after the installation of the Maharajah, he had entered the kallaras. Their doors had not been touched in decades and the locks were rusted. Eventually it took over two hours to break into the vault. Floodlights were set up and electric fans blew fresh air into the darkness. By the afternoon the vault was sealed again, but only after several chests of gold, gems, and other valuables had been taken to the palace for ‘counting and valuation’.9
In 2011, when the process began afresh, however, many more people were involved and the public’s imagination exploded as stories leaked out rapidly. As one member of the inspecting panel constituted by the Supreme Court remarked:
When they removed the granite stone, it was almost perfectly dark, except for a small amount of light coming in through the doorway behind us. As I looked into the darkened vault, what I saw looked like stars glittering in a night sky when there is no moon. Diamonds and gems were sparkling, reflecting what little light there was. Much of the wealth had originally been stored in wooden boxes, but, with time, the boxes had cracked and turned to dust. And so the gems and gold were just sitting in piles on the dusty floor. It was amazing.10
Heaps and heaps of gold coins, some belonging to the Roman era and others from the time of the Napoleonic wars, were discovered. The press was abuzz with talk about gem-studded idols of Vishnu, of eighteen-foot-long gold chains, of sacks full of grain made of gold, a crown breathlessly coated in diamonds, and more. With the passage of each day, the value rose till the first four vaults were estimated to possess treasure worth up to $22 billion. What captivated the public even more was the final, deepest vault, which remains sealed to this day. Stories abound about a serpent emblem on its forbidding iron doors and about curses that will afflict anyone who dares to venture within and commit sacrilege; this vault is said to be directly located beneath the shrine of Padmanabhaswamy. The Elayarajah also objected, due to similar reasons, to the opening of this particular kallara, with the astrological consultation of devaprasnam, described above, being convened to determine the deity’s feelings on the subject.
Evidently, the deity agreed with the Elayarajah.11
The courts of law, however, were not wholly convinced. In 2012, the Supreme Court appointed an amicus curiae to study temple affairs and serve, essentially, as its eyes and ears on the ground in Thiruvananthapuram. For years now, Gopal Subramanium has made trips to the city to acquaint himself with the history and workings of the shrine and the attendant establishment. A two-volume, 575-page report that emerged in 2014 was scathing in its review of the temple’s decades-old administration under the control of the Junior Maharani’s family.12
In general, the amicus curiae spoke of the appearance of ‘large scale breach of moral and fiduciary duties’ towards the temple by its incumbent
royal managers, adding that it had ‘been treated for all effects and purposes as a private fiefdom’. He found a prima facie case of ‘breach of trust’ and that there was ‘a concerted unwillingness to be accountable or to be questioned on any failures in administration’. The amicus curiae added that the Elayarajah, by now deceased, and his family possessed an ‘intimidating presence over those who work and serve in the Temple’, with ‘a fundamental attitude of private ownership’, and that more than one member of ‘the Palace’ had ‘manipulated the Temple staff for extraneous reasons’. Convinced that everything was not as it should be, the amicus curiae then spoke to temple employees and guards, some of whom apparently admitted to him that ‘if they did their duty fearlessly, they would lose their jobs’. In other words, ‘they are clearly suffering from fear and repression’ due to ‘the overwhelming presence enjoyed by the erstwhile royal family, which has great influence over all temple affairs’.13
The devaprasnam, he alleged, was a diversion put up by the royal family to mislead the Supreme Court; in 2007, the Elayarajah had had photographs taken of the articles in the vaults and at that time no devaprasnam was called for before authorising entry into the vaults. But when the Supreme Court gave the same directions, the managers ‘raised the bogey of devaprasnam’ in order ‘to ensure that no proper inventory is maintained of the valuables of the temple’. When the amicus curiae demanded the photographs taken in 2007, the studio responsible confessed to having deleted its soft copies, while hard copies were not produced. Mr Subramanium concluded that ‘the stiff resistance on the part of the Temple administration to make available these photographs … raises suspicions as to the true motive behind this exercise’. It was also reported that the previous inventory, mentioned also by the High Court, had not been made available.14
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