How this Travancore King sparked off temple entry reforms for Dalit citizens

 In ‘History Liberated’, Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi writes about reforms & policies undertaken during the Travancore royal family’s last phase.

God, the Supreme Being, reigns in every human heart. Yet to approach Him physically stood denied to sizeable numbers all over India who were constrained within the orbit of Avarnas (as against the Savarnas) cruelly and contemptuously labelled as ‘untouchables’. Progressive Travancore with much to its credit was unfortunately no exception in this case.

Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala | Photo: Commons

However, when the brittle pages of the far past are turned back, the year 1486 AD rises like the splendorous sun—King Jayasimha Devar of Venad ruled the land. He enacted a reform far ahead of times. Generations can offer nothing to compare with the reform dealing with social justice and social emancipation enacted by this noblest of kings. It directly extended to the dyers of Parasurama Perunteru near Nagercoil. These dyers who had come and settled from far-off lands were branded lower caste and were at the receiving end of acute caste discrimination. They could not worship the village deities, like the upper classes. The dyers had to pay all kinds of taxes and were forbidden from approaching the King directly. Violators, besides getting corporal punishment, would be evicted from their own village and would not be allowed to use village wells. When King Jayasimha Devar visited Vatasseri, these unfortunates pleaded their case before him. After lending a sympathetic ear to them, the benevolent Ruler ordered:

That if they had grievances they might present themselves before the King whenever he came in procession on his elephant;

That all taxes except those for the upkeep of the army and the navy were slashed;

That the upper classes should not interfere with their religious worship or festivals;

That they should be subjected to no injustice;

That they could use public wells and tanks without restrictions;

That meddling in their affairs by Brahmins, Pillamar and other upper classes would invite Royal displeasure and punishment.

Sometime during the cyclic rotation of seasons, Jayasimha Devar and his stunning reform were banished into oblivion. In the 1700s, Maharaja Anizhom Thirunal Marthanda Varma the Great, architect of modern Travancore, conferred on the Ezhavas many an important position. The presence of Avarnas in administration and such do not come under the survey of this chapter as of now. It stands restricted to one aspect—the fundamental right of worship of every Hindu in the State of Travancore.

The Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–1925), which commenced in crescendo of clamour during the final year of Sree Moolom Thirunal’s reign and concluded in success during Pooradom Thirunal Maharani Setu Lakshmi Bayi’s regency, was a landmark in the struggle for the dignity of the human being, in this context the sizeable Avarna population of Travancore. This major issue apart, the rule of both the Maharaja and the Maharani Regent have widely invited much appreciation. The view that this Satyagraha was the initial step against untouchability is chronologically incorrect. A brief flashback of events is narrated.

At a public meeting held in Quilon (now known as Kollam), an important town in Travancore, in 1917, Sri C. Raman Pillai, retired High Court Judge (and hailing from the upper caste) appears to be the first to ask that all State temples may be opened to the Avarnas. Then came the more serious move by the prominent leader of the Ezhava community (which even then stood on a much better footing) Sri T.K. Madhavan (who did not live to see the fruits of his labour) whose demand was on the same lines: removal of untouchability and entry into temples. He was also the editor of a Malayalam weekly Deshabhimani which was a distinct advantage to him. A representation was brought before the Sri Mulam Popular Assembly. In 1921, he again raised the question before the Assembly. At both instances it met with no success other than it was heard.

A very strong organization of the already established Ezhavas had taken birth under the banner of the great spiritual Guru revered as Sree Narayana Gurudevan, a multi-dimensional personality. It went by the name SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana) Yogam and continues to be a real force in the socio-religious-political scenario of the State of Kerala. (It has to be added that Sree Narayana Guru was totally nonpolitical.) At every one of their meetings the Yogam under the Guru had been passing resolutions for temple entry.

A slight digression may be pardoned. It has been said many a time that once when the Guru was resting on a beach (possibly Varkala) one of his disciples asked of him when there will be an end to their sorrows. The Guru replied that a king is going to be born who will put an end to them. The king who was born next was none other than Sree Chithira Thirunal. Guru’s words were prophetic.

Yet another sage of the city Sree Ayya Guru Swamikal, famed for his saintly eminence, had also predicted this young King’s birth. He declared in Tamil that a king is going to arrive with scepter and royal umbrella. The royal personage in question was Sree Chithira Thirunal. Thus, Sree Chithira Thirunal received the blessings and acknowledgement of great spiritual personages even before birth.

The 1923 Kakinada Congress meeting constituted the Kerala Untouchability Committee to work for removal of untouchability. It is extremely significant that the Avarna cause received solid support from the Savarnas which was impressive. Kerala Hindu Sabha, Nair Service Society (NSS), with Sri C.K. Parameswaran Pillai as its long-term President and Sri Mannathu Padmanabha Pillai as General Secretary, Yogakshema Sabha, the premier organization of the highly respected Namboodiri Brahmins, and the Kshatriya Mahasabha to which the royalty (including of Travancore and Kochi) and most of the aristocracy belonged, all strongly supported this peaceful agitation. It is a matter of lament that while the undeniable ills were generated due to long standing Savarna attitudes and actions which have invited repeated negative exposure in the modern age, the part they played in the peaceful success of implementation of the Temple Entry Proclamation (1936) is also undeniable, but oft banished behind shadows.2

It should not be misconstrued in any way that all was smooth sailing. Opposition was very much in evidence from certain power centres. That it was finally peacefully resolved, was indeed the grace of God.

It is informative to glance at the numbers of the different caste groups which formed a staggeringly substantial mega section. In rough estimate, the Ezhavas who were around a million strong and who were even then cultured, educated and with economic standing, stood well ahead of the other marginalised sections. The other castes recorded were the Pulayas who were about three hundred thousand strong, and engaged in agriculture as labourers; Parayas too about three hundred thousand; Channars or toddy tappers and connected workforce, all also reaching the same numbers. Apart from field labour, their services were essential on many fronts, including for jaggery production to meet the steady demands from temples, households and food outlets.

Sri Mahadev Desai, in his elaborately recorded work titled notably The Epic of Travancore, quotes Gandhiji thus:

Indeed I had the privilege of meeting the Maharani and her young hope, the present Maharajah, when I was in Travancore years ago. The Maharani had even then professed her belief in the reform. I had even jokingly asked the boy, as the Maharajah then was, whether he would remove untouchability and throw open temples when he mounted the gadi of Travancore. He had enthusiastically said, ‘Of course. To put the record straight, at that time (in 1925), Sir C.P. was not involved in any way, though at later stage his contributions were solid.

At this time the Vaikom Satyagraha was in full swing. During the interview at Varkala Palace with Gandhiji, the Regent Maharani was not alone; her consort, the Valiya Koil Thampuran who was the inevitable presence, was also there. With his considerable power of expression, Gandhiji appealed to Her Highness to issue a new ‘Smrithi’ to resolve the uprising and to throw open the temples to all. Both of them expressed their sympathy to the cause of liberation of the Avarnas. However, ‘they felt burdened with the responsibility of a great State and told me that the time had not come for taking such a step’.4 She also rightly felt that the Savarna stand in the matter was inevitable.

Gandhiji had become a huge factor exercising tremendous power and control over the minds of the multitudes. The Regent had her own reservations on the responsibilities and repercussions that would become her destiny. At the same time, it was none other than Gandhiji who was passionate about the reform, who brought it up. Dissent would be a disaster and not required as the Regent had no intention of associating, apart from expressing sympathy. 

Uncharitable minds whispered that her positive attitude regarding temple entry without going a step further would have been a diplomatic option.

Possibly unavoidably, the Maharani Regent’s and her consort’s stand commenced and concluded with sympathy to the cause while the young (boy) King, Sree Chithira Thirunal did not even require a second to respond enthusiastically, “Of course”. Gandhiji had met him at the Kaudiar Palace.

Quite a few steps were taken, many rallies organized, resolutions passed, all revolving around hateful untouchability, before the stage was set for the Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–1925). It received sweeping support of big names from within the State and outside, including the decisive presence of Mahatma Gandhi. Savarna support was significant but so also was strong opposition. In a historic step the Regent Maharani Setu Lakshmi Bayi abolished the restriction on the use of the roads leading to the great Sree Mahadeva Temple at Vaikom applicable to the Avarnas, except the eastern road to the main entrance.5 In itself it was a landmark reform of a gracious reign. With it the curtain fell on the Vaikom Satyagraha.

By the grace of Sree Padmanabha Swamy, the Investiture of Maharaja Sree Chithira Thirunal Rama Varma took place on 6th November 1931.

Sir C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, already a known figure in India’s multifaceted map, was appointed as the Maharaja’s Legal and Constitutional Adviser. The decision was the Maharaja’s own and resulted in some opposition from even high up

quarters. But this did not make the Maharaja have a change of heart. Sir C.P. served in this important position for five eventful years, harbinger of an equally or more eventful tenure as the Dewan.

In November 1932 a nine-member ‘Temple Entry Committee’ was constituted with full sanction of the young King and with the wholehearted backing of Sir C.P. Comprising chiefly of non-officials, it was to enquire and report on the highly sensitive matter of temple entry for the marginalised sections of society, the unfortunate untouchables. The members, who were in majority Savarnas, read as follows: V.S. Subramonya Iyer (former Dewan of Travancore) as President with C.K. Parameswaran Pillai (High Court Judge), S. K. Mahadeva Iyer and M. Govindan (retired Dewan – Paishkars), T.K. Velu Pillai (High Court Vakil – Advocate), T. Kesavan Sastri (Pulaya representative), Punnasseri Nambi Nilakanta Sarma (Principal, Sanskrit College, Pattambi) and Narayana Bhattathirippad of Thiruvalla. They undertook a state-wide tour to elicit public opinion.

With this end in view, questionnaires were sent to 5,774 persons, including temple trustees (especially hereditary), representatives of associations, innumerable members from among the Savarnas, as well as women. Out of the total number, 3,122 persons including eight women responded, with 2,867 being Savarnas. Elaborate study of the pros and cons of such a step which could be designated as courageously revolutionary, with exhaustive discussions with the Brahmins—especially Namboothiri Brahmin sections and the priestly orders, religious scholars and learned men, all featured in this study. Rites and rituals, customs and rules all came under the scanner. In one observation the Committee said, ‘there was a strong feeling among Savarnas in favour of temple entry being allowed’.

This excerpt from History Liberated: The Sree Chithra Saga authored by Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi has been published with special permission from Konark Publishers. (Rs 2,500/-)

(Source: The Print)

Ammachies of Travancore: Wives who were married to royalty but were never Ranis

The wife of the Maharajah was not his queen—she could only be addressed as ‘the consort’ and had no claims to being a ‘Highness’, writes Manu S Pillai in the book 'The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore':

In 1912 a magazine in London carried a feature on the wife of an Indian Maharajah. “Whenever a stranger goes to Travancore, one of the largest and most picturesque native States,” it began, “they always tell him not to address her as ‘Your Highness’. They think this word is too dignified to apply to her. No doubt she is the Ruler’s spouse; but that does not make her the Maharani or even the Rani. She is only Ammachi, just the mother of His Highness’ children, and they believe that word is good enough to express her relationship to the man who is autocrat of more than 2,950,000 people, inhabiting [over] seven thousand square miles of territory, yielding an annual revenue of about £700,000.”

Visitors to Kerala often found themselves fascinated by the matrilineal system that governed succession among its dominant castes. For here, to put it simplistically, a family did not consist of man, wife, and children but of man, sister, and her children. In the royal family too, much to the disbelief of outsiders, the wife of the Maharajah was not his queen—she could only be addressed as ‘the consort’ and had no claims to being a ‘Highness’. There was, however, a Maharani, the difference being that she was either the sister or niece of the ruler, and it was she who produced heirs to the throne through a male ‘consort’ of her own. Power always descended from uncle to nephew and not father to son, and no Maharajah had ever inherited the throne from his father, and no son of his could ever claim anything more than a glamorous bloodline.

So too were the circumstances in which husbands of the Maharanis of Travancore were placed. They had no official standing at court and as late as the 1920s when the ruling queen granted her husband precedence over her chief minister at a banquet, it caused a minor scandal—you could be married to royalty, but you remained a subject. If she had to go out, it was essential that her consort followed in a separate car. At feasts in the palace, the Maharani was served four varieties of dessert—her husband received two. Most tellingly, perhaps, the partners of the princesses of Travancore were not even permitted to sit in their presence, and had always to address their wives as ‘Highnesses’ and never by name. When the aforementioned Maharani decided to ‘modernise’ things and permit her husband to take a seat and to drive with her, her uncle, the Maharajah, ‘much disapproved’ of such radical innovations.

Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi with her consort and children

If this was the status of the men who married Maharanis of Travancore, the female consorts of its Maharajahs were in a similar boat. When in the 1860s Theodore Jensen, a Danish painter, arrived in Trivandrum to do a portrait of the ruler and his consort, he was baffled to discover that they would not give him joint sittings even though the painting was to show them together. As Samuel Mateer noted, “The Ammachi…is not a member of the royal household, has neither official nor social position at court, and cannot even be seen in public with the ruler whose associate she is.” When the Maharajahs’ daughters were married, the fathers could never attend the ceremonies—they were his offspring but they were not his matrilineal kin. And when a Maharajah died, his children were not permitted at the funeral. So too when the consort of a Maharani was on his deathbed, he was removed from the palace. They could have been married for decades, but a consort always remained a mere consort and could not defile the palace by dying there.

This was both on account of matrilineal conventions as well as due to reasons of caste. The wife of the Maharajah, in particular, was never his social equal. The Ammachies were chosen from the Nair community, which was the most important non-Brahmin upper-caste in Kerala. Its members, however, did not wear the sacred Brahminical thread and were, therefore, a rank below the Maharajahs of Travancore who had acquired the thread and a social upgrade in the eighteenth century. Food cooked by his consort could never be touched by a Maharajah (though fried items and pickles were exceptions—and it is very likely many princes cheated) and as late as the 1940s, wives of male members of the royal family were not entertained at feasts. As Rukmini Varma, the painter, who was born Princess Bharani Tirunal of Travancore recalls:

The whole family would assemble for this ritual [feast] but not the Ammachies. They couldn’t come anywhere near us when a meal was being eaten and if by accident they did, then the whole meal had to be sent back—because if anyone below caste set foot in the room while the meal was in progress, it would have to be cooked again. Dinner was always a bit more relaxed because that was after sunset, when everything is more relaxed.
For all this, however, the wives of the Maharajahs were not concubines. They were legitimate spouses whose status, in the patriarchal system, is most comparable to morganatic wives i.e. women married to highborn men on the understanding that they could not inherit their titles and estates. Often the Ammachies were strong, accomplished women and their stories with the Maharajahs moving romances. One Maharajah in the 1850s patiently hosted a durbar in honour of Queen Victoria to satisfy his British overlords. But once the formalities were over, he hastened to join his ailing consort, who died that very night leaving him distraught. In 1882 another prince, upon the death of his wife—the woman with whom he could not be seen in public, whose food he was prohibited from touching, and to whom he could never grant more than basic aristocratic status—wrote: “The loss is an irreparable one and it is more than I could bear with all my fortitude.” He didn’t marry again for nearly twenty years.

Arumana Ammachi

In 1885, when the then Maharajah lay on his deathbed, “he sent for his Consort and children, and they came before him in the evening very late. He beckoned his daughters to approach close to the cot, and the light not being very bright, he bade his Consort trim the flickering lamp, in order to enable him to see his daughters well, and he gazed on them for a while and wept. His Consort and children also wept; but he told them that God would protect and help them, and asked them to take leave. His Consort, his son, and daughters prostrated themselves at his feet, according to oriental custom, and took their last farewell. On the same night his Consort and his eldest daughter took ill, being overcome with grief[i].” Part of the concern might also have been that this particular Maharajah had left them little money-- his predecessor had ensured that his wife was extremely well taken care of.

History has erased the Ammachies from memory on account of the fact that their sons never succeeded to power—at least the consorts of the Maharanis fathered monarchs and could therefore claim some celebrity, unlike the wives of Maharajahs who disappeared into the shadows after the lifetimes of their royal husbands. Kalyani Pillai, the wife of the Maharajah who ruled from 1860 till 1880 was a poet of great talent, with a phenomenal interest in art, culture, music, and more, emerging as one of the earliest patrons of Raja Ravi Varma. An exquisitely good-looking woman, hers are also some of the earliest portraits Ravi Varma did (a rare honour, for normally other men did not have access to the Maharajah’s consort) -- paintings that have never since been seen, however.

Kalyani Pillai 

She was also a very confident woman, the daughter of the chief minister of neighbouring Cochin State, who had been married once before she met the Maharajah. Visitors to court paid courtesy calls on her, and with her husband, she travelled across India. She took English lessons and invited missionaries home to read the Bible with her and to teach her to paint. If an 1868 photograph is any proof, she was also probably the first Malayali woman to wear a sari. After her husband’s passing, however, an associate noted that “she is very thin and delicate looking, and has lost much of her beauty…She seems so friendless and lonely that I feel sorry for her…” By the time she died in 1909, few outside Trivandrum remembered her.

Then there were consorts such as the one who features in that London magazine from 1912. “She has a light complexion and is short and very stout”, possessed as she was of “an excess of adipose tissue” in a culture where every additional pound was seen as “a sign of prosperity”. This lady too had been married before she was espoused by the Maharajah, the difference being that her husband, a palace employee, went on to achieve tremendous notoriety as a corrupt influence behind the throne. Soon the Maharajah became putty in his hands, the consort retreated to an upstairs suite in her palace where she painted landscapes, and the “former husband of the Maharajah’s present wife” became the real power in the state. When this penultimate ruler of Travancore died, his consort was forgotten too though not her ex-husband.

The last Maharajah of Travancore never took an official consort. While there were rumours that his mother, who was the force behind his throne, and minister had an ‘unholy pact’ to keep him under their thumb and prevent a third influence on the man, the official line was that the Maharajah disapproved of the very matrilineal system that had vested him with power, since the idea of his wife being only the consort and his children being excluded from the privileges of his dynasty were most repugnant to him. Instead he lavished his attention on the offspring of his royal sister, who remembered that after signing over Travancore to the Indian Union in 1949, he went straight to the little girls’ room and resumed a story he was telling from the great Indian epics.

Painting by Rukmini Varma of the last surviving consort 

But the story of the consorts does not end with the bachelor Maharajah who died in 1991. The final chapter is yet to close, for living in Bangalore in an old colonial house on Richmond Road is the last of the male consorts who married a princess of Travancore. He was 21 when, in 1938, the daughter of the Senior Maharani spotted him from her palanquin during a procession. Before he knew it, he had been elevated as her consort. Independence followed a decade later and the world changed—the princess and he chose to give up their titles and begin a new life away from the kingdom her ancestors ruled. She passed away in 2008, but today, at the grand old age of 100, her husband still remains in their large, old house, as the last of those consorts who married into what was once the House of Travancore.

(Source: TNM)

Mixed fortunes for the daughters of Travancore

IN THE 1920s Queen Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore, a kingdom that would later become part of the south Indian state of Kerala, rewarded women who went to university with an invitation to tea at the palace. The royals were matrilineal—the maharajah’s sister’s sons, rather than his own progeny, inherited the throne. The Nairs, an upper-caste Hindu community, likewise bequeathed the family home to women and believed strongly in female education. “The birth of a girl [was] a cause for celebration,” recalls Gouri Parvathi Bayi, a member of the erstwhile royal family, sitting in her now slightly dilapidated palace in Kerala’s state capital, Thiruvananthapuram.

Modern Kerala is still often upheld as India’s best state for women. It has the country’s highest female literacy rate at 92%, with only four percentage points’ difference between male and female rates. In Rajasthan, a large northern state, only 53% of women are literate: almost 30 percentage points behind their male counterparts. Nationally, only two-thirds of all women can read and write, versus four-fifths of men. Kerala also has India’s lowest rates of maternal mortality as well as a population of 1,084 women per 1,000 men, which makes it the country’s most female state. India’s national population has 940 women per 1,000 men, as couples selectively abort female fetuses or neglect daughters. Haryana, another northern state, has just 877 baby girls per 1,000 boys. Families there have in recent years started sourcing brides from Kerala.

The poor status of women in India has been under the spotlight since the brutal gang-rape of a student in Delhi in December sparked home-grown protests, international criticism, and a revision of the country’s sexual-assault laws. Yet vicious attacks have continued. This month, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted at a school in the capital, triggering further protests. A Swiss tourist camping with her husband in Madhya Pradesh, a poor and landlocked state, was allegedly gang-raped. Women in the growing urban middle class, in particular, are becoming more independent and educated. Yet a culture of preserving a daughter’s virginity, paying dowries upon her marriage, and then “losing” her and her earning capacity to her husband’s family persists. A lower proportion of India’s women work than do those in any of its seven neighbours bar Pakistan. 

Kerala, a small chili-shaped state filled with palm trees, thus bucks some national trends. The progressive maharajahs, who ruled with the permission of British colonisers until 1947, have given way to elected leaders. Many Nairs, whose matrilineal customs were once copied by the less well-off, including Muslim communities, have sold their ancestral land to property developers. Yet women still benefit. Kerala has see-sawed between two coalition governments—one led by the Communist party, one led by the Congress party, which leads India’s national coalition—in every poll since 1982.

Amid such competition, politicians woo savvy voters with welfare schemes that often support women and children. Kudumbashree, a programme founded in 1998 that works with half of the state’s households, organises women into savings clubs and offers grants to entrepreneurs. J. Devika, of the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, says the scheme has boosted women’s financial know-how (though the state has taken advantage of low wages when it hires the business that have resulted, such as street-cleaning outfits).

But there’s trouble in paradise. Just over a fifth of Keralite women aged 15-59 are working or job-hunting, which is roughly in line with the national average, according to 2009-10 data. This is partly because they are studying at schools and colleges. But it is also because they regard menial jobs as being beneath them. “A change in mindset is urgently needed,” says a senior state government official, who laments that far more women have their noses to the grindstone in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Also, many families need only one bread-winner. Communist governments and strong unions have resulted in high wages—a carpenter in rural Kerala earns 538 rupees ($9.96) a day, more than double the national average for such work, according to India’s labour ministry. Many Keralite men migrate to the Gulf for work and send large pay packets home.

Perhaps surprisingly, Kerala also has India’s third-highest official rate of crimes against women, with 34 offences per 100,000 citizens in 2011 (this may be due in part to well-informed Keralites reporting more crimes than their peers). Fewer of Thiruvananthapuram’s women go out alone after dusk than do women in Delhi, according to a recent study. Those who do walk alone at night risk being seen as “loose”. Kalyani Nandakumar, a 19-year-old student who is always home by 7pm, feels hemmed in. “Even being seen with a boy is a problem,” she says. “Boys from good families might see you and think, ‘we don’t want a girl like that in our family’.” Kerala’s pride in its women, it seems, comes with a restrictive emphasis on dignified conduct.

(Source: The Economist)