by Jerry Pinto
In those days, having an army meant a lot to a city. It fuelled a demand for craftspersons and artisans, especially those who could make firearms and ammunition. An army needed those who could carve wood and those who could polish it. It needed ironsmiths and those who could handle explosives. It needed leatherworkers for the saddles of the horses and tailors who could turn out uniforms. (The tailors needed dyers, weavers and embroiderers as well.) It needed those who could shoe horses and those who could handle elephants.
When these people were not working for the army, they would turn out stuff for the ordinary person. If an ironsmith had learnt how to smelt iron and produce a firearm that could withstand a high explosive charge, he could also make a more robust cooking pot. (On the other hand, an army often meant trouble for the local people. In times of war, food could be confiscated, cattle slaughtered and even next year’s seed might be eaten. And when you have an army, you have wars. And wars mean death not just for the soldiers who fight but also for the civilians who get in the way. We now call this ‘collateral damage’ but it has been happening since the first war was fought.)
In the early nineteenth century, Varma’s descendant, Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma assumed the throne. He was an informed exponent of Carnatic and Hindustani music, started an English school and a charity hospital in Trivandrum, as the British called it. All these made a huge impact on the city and added to its cosmopolitan spirit. His enthusiasm for both Carnatic and Hindustani music meant artists and patrons came to the city from different parts of the subcontinent and a co-existence of musical styles that was unusual for those times. An English school meant the introduction of new ideas from all around the globe and the development of a native middle class that learnt new skills useful for a modern economy.
His successor, Maharaja Utharadam Tirunal Marthanda Varma (1847-1860) was also an able ruler. However, Utharadam was a lot more radical and so he had an even bigger social impact. He abolished the system of slavery that had been well established in this region, an inevitable spin-off of being an ancient global trading city.
Along with slavery, the city also witnessed a blow to its exploitative caste system. One peculiar way in which the lower castes were oppressed was by imposing inhuman and undignified dress codes on them, especially the women. These were abolished in 1859. That was also the year the king started the first school for girls here.
While it is true that all these changes were applicable to the whole of the state, one cannot underestimate the special role that the city played in helping to shape and spread those ideas. Thiruvananthapuram had always been open to innovation and new ideas from around the world thanks to its history. Ideas of social reform were quickly internalized. Besides, the city also acted like an inspiration for the whole kingdom. It was in this city by the sea that many of these moves were first tangibly implemented. It would be many years before they became part of accepted belief systems for the whole kingdom. The city continued to inspire social innovation all through the subsequent years.
The Varma dynasty opened up new charity hospitals, asylums, schools and colleges, moves that indicated the emergence of a strong, informed middle class. Such a milieu was responsible for the establishment of a department for the preservation and publication of oriental manuscripts. When Jawaharlal Nehru visited the state in the 1920s, he remarked that the education here was superior to British India. He was also impressed by the fact that the state had an organized medical system and its own Legislative Council, the first of its kind in an Indian state, established as early as 1888! The principle of democratic election was introduced and women were allowed to vote here much earlier than in many parts of the world.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi ruled the region from 1924-1931. She abolished animal sacrifice and replaced the matrilineal system of inheritance with the patrilineal one, under the influence of the British legal system. Some of us may well see this as unfair to women since property would now go from father to son only, ignoring the daughters of the family.
Thiruvananthapuram retained its vibrant cultural and artistic milieu all through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kerala Varma Valiakoi Thampuran (1845–1914), who spent a major part of his life in Thiruvananthapuram, translated Kalidasa’s Abhigyan Shakuntalam into Malayalam. This earned him the title of Kerala Kalidasa. He is also regarded as the father of modern Malayalam prose.
The contributions of A.R. Raja Raja Varma (1863–1918), known as ‘Kerala Panini’, marked an important stage in the development of Malayalam literature. Another notable novelist was C. V. Raman Pillai (1858–1922). Mahakavi Kumaran Asan (1873–1924) and Mahakavi Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer (1877–1949) were two of Thiruvananthapuram’s best-known poets.
Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), an illustrious painter who hailed from Travancore, contributed substantially to Indian art. Some of his work are preserved in the Sri Chitra Art Gallery in the city. Most of his paintings are based on Hindu epic stories and characters. In 1873, he won the first prize at the Madras Painting Exhibition and became known all around the world after winning an award in 1873 at an exhibition in Vienna. Today, the gods and goddesses of Hindu culture, the ones we see on posters and calendars and in the framed pictures that are hung in the pooja room all look like the ones he painted. You could say that Raja Ravi Varma gave Hindu gods and goddesses the faces that we now see everywhere.
The last ruler of Travancore was Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma (1931–1949). He announced the famous temple entry proclamation on 12 November 1936, which opened all the Kshetrams (Hindu temples) in Travancore to all Hindus, a privilege until then reserved for upper-caste Hindus. This act won him praise from across India, most notably from Mahatma Gandhi. He also industrialized the state. However, his minister Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer was unpopular among the public of Travancore. When the British decided to grant independence to India, the minister declared that Travancore would remain an independent country. The tension between the people and the minister led to revolts in various places in the city.
In one such revolt at Punnapara-Vayalar in 1946, the Communists established their own government. This was brutally crushed by the Travancore army and navy and led to hundreds of deaths. The event led to further disturbances and an attempt was made on the life of Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer. Subsequently, he resigned. After this, the maharaja agreed to join India and Travancore was absorbed into the Indian union.
Perhaps because it had never been under the direct control of the British Empire at any time, the city featured prominently in India’s freedom struggle. The Indian National Congress had a very active presence in the city. A meeting of the Indian National Congress presided by Dr Pattabhi Sitaramaiah was held here in 1938.
The first popular ministry headed by Pattom Thanu Pillai was installed in office on 24 March 1948. In 1949, Thiruvananthapuram became the capital of Thiru-Kochi, the state formed by the integration of Travancore with its northern neighbour Kochi. The king of Travancore, Chitra Thirunal Bala Rama Varma became the Rajapramukh of the Travancore-Cochin Union from 1 July 1949 until 31 October 1956.
The movement for the unification of the lands where Malayalam was spoken took concrete shape at the State People’s Conference held in Ernakulam in April 1928, and a resolution was passed therein calling for Aikya Kerala (United Kerala). On 1 July 1949, the state of Travancore-Cochin was established, with the Maharaja of Travancore as the Rajapramukh of the new state. When the state of Kerala was formed on 1 November 1956, Thiruvananthapuram became the capital of the new state.
With the establishment of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station in 1962, Thiruvananthapuram became central to India’s ambitious space programmes. The first Indian space rocket was developed and launched from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre located in the outskirts of the city in 1963. Several establishments of the Indian Space Research Organization were later established in Thiruvananthapuram.
The city is a bastion of an evolved film culture as well. The Malayalam film industry
that was earlier based in Chennai, set up a base here in the 1970s, with the help of the Kerala State Film Development Corporation. The Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, founded in 1998, is based at Thiruvananthapuram.
The International Film Festival of Kerala is held in November every year and is acknowledged as one of the leading such events in India. It brings moving images from around the world to this ancient port city, which once absorbed global images and ideas through its extensive trade practices. And so, the city continues with its tradition of openness and a lively cultural milieu, something that has consistently characterized its existence.
Announcing the rain
Alexander Frater
Always, in the latter part of May, attention starts to focus on Trivandrum, a sprawling, rackety, good-natured, tropical city on the Malabar Coast. Its people are notoriously pro-Communist. They are also loquacious, independent and always ready to engage strangers in coffeehouse debates. They have the highest literacy rate in the country and, each day, read no fewer than forty local newspapers concerned with matters such as radical politics, the state of the world spice markets and—cheered on by their readers—the incompetence of the central government in Delhi. This, together with ferocious chilly-spiked curries, is what Trivandrum is known for. But come the dog days of late May another aspect begins to impinge on the national consciousness.
Alexander Frater wrote Chasing the Monsoon. This extract is taken from that book.
An annual visitation by the Indian media has made Trivandrum’s meteorological centre the most famous provincial weather office on the subcontinent. Built in 1840 by a maharaja interested in Western scientific disciplines, its hilltop location gives it extensive views over the Arabian Sea and lifts it a little closer to the sky. This lofty elevation enabled employees of the old Indian Meteorological Department working in the days before radar or enhanced satellite imagery, to stand on their wide verandas and observe the monsoon’s tumultuous approach through telescopes. From here, the most southerly of the meteorological centres, its arrival over India was formally announced or ‘declared’.
References
Authors’ Note: Neither of the authors is a qualified historian. It would be more fitting to call us editors of this book since it consists primarily of reorganized material from the following secondary sources, some of which are listed below. We are grateful for the rigorous research done by these scholars, which we paraphrased for the sake of introducing a new generation of readers to urban history in India. We apologize for not being able to identify them within the text for purposes of readability in this format. However, we hope to have whetted the appetite of our young readers to go for the real thing. The books mentioned below are part of a larger library of references.
Basham, A.L., A Cultural History of India, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Chaudhuri, S., Calcutta: The Living City, Vol I and Vol II. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Dupont, Veronique; Tarlo, Emma and Vidal, Denis, Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies, Motilal, 2000.
Dwivedi, Sharada and Rahul Mehrotra, Bombay: The Cities Within, India Book House, 1995.
Edwardes, S.M., (reprinted 1977–78) The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, Three vols, Bombay: Times Press, 1909–10.
Graffe, Violette, Lucknow: Memories of a City, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Gurden, P.R.T., The Khasis, Somo Publications, 1975.
Hasan, Fazlul, Bangalore Through the Centuries, Historical Publications, 1970.
Howgh, William, A Brief History of the Bhopal Principality in Central India, Hesperides Press, 2006.
Hussain Imdad, From Residency to Raj Bhavan: A History of Shillong, Government House, Regency, 2005.
K. Kalpana and Schiffer, Frank, Madras: The Architectural Heritage, INTACH, 2003.
Kalia, Ravi, Chandigarh: The Making of an Indian City, Oxford University Press, 2000.
Keay, John, India: A History, Grove Press, 2000.
Khan, Shaharyar, Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India, I.B. Tauris, 2000.
Nair, Janaki, The Promise of the Metropolis—Bangalore’s Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Nilakanta Sastri, K.A. History of South India from Prehistoric Times to Present, Oxford University Press, 1959.
Rosie, Llewellyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow, Oxford University Press, 1985.
Spear, Percival; Gupta, Narayani and Frvkenberg, R.E., The Delhi Omnibus, Oxford University Press, 2002.
Sreedhara Menon, A. Ed. Kerala District Gazetteers: Trivandrum, Trivandrum Government Press, 1962.
Vaikuntham, Y., State, Economy and Social Transformation Hyderabad State (1724-948), Manohar, 2002.
Web source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Patna).
Wheeler, Talboys James, Madras in the Olden Time, Higginbothams, 1861.
Copyright Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
William Dalrymple, for an extract from City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (Penguin Books India, 2004).
Vinod Mehta, for an extract from Shaam-e-Awadh: Writings on Lucknow (Penguin Books India, 2007).
Pan Macmillan, London, for an extract from Chasing the Monsoon Copyright © Alexander Frater, 2005 (Pan Macmillan London).
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to print new material:
Anita Nair, for ‘Teatime at Koshys’.
Ashok Vajpeyi, for ‘The lyric, the epic, the tragic’.
Nayantara Sahgal, for ‘A city of the mind’.
C.S. Lakshmi, for ‘Growing up with Lemon’.
Kaumudi Marathe, for ‘Balancing act’.
Amit Cahudhuri, for ‘Listening to the radio in Kolkata’.
H. Masud Taj, for ‘Child-nation’.
Amitava Kumar, for ‘When the waters flooded Patna’.
Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, for ‘Down the ladder into the coal pits of memory: a hard look at Shillong’.
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