Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

979 Pages·2015·7.28 MB·English

by  Manu S. Pillai [Pillai

Éléphants du Radja de Travancor (Elephants of the Rajah of Travancore) (1848), lithograph by L.H. de Rudder
based on a drawing by Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich Saltuikov.
The Ivory Throne
Chronicles of the House of Travancore
MANU S. PILLAI
HarperCollins Publishers India
For Indrani
Contents
Introduction: The Story of Kerala
Map
Family Tree
Note to the Reader
1. A Painter Prince
2. The Queen of the Kupakas
3. Three Consorts
4. The Second Favourite
5. Her Highness the Maharajah
6. A Christian Minister
7. Malice Domestique
8. Tea and Troubles
9. The Boudoir Dewan
10. Black Magic
11. In Letters of Gold
12. Mother and Son
13. La Revanche
14. A Real Little Grande Dame
15. A Palace Coup
16. The Ultimate Eclipse
17. The Villain of the Piece
18. Rivers of Blood
19. The Reluctant Princess
20. Once I Had a Kingdom
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Bibliography
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
Photographic Inserts
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction: The Story of Kerala
n July 1497 when Vasco da Gama set sail for India, King Manuel of Portugal
I
assorted a distinctly expendable crew of convicts and criminals to go with him. After
all, the prospects of this voyage succeeding were rather slender considering that no
European had ever advanced beyond Africa’s Cape of Good Hope before, let alone
reached the fabled spice gardens of India. Da Gama’s mirthless quest was essentially to
navigate uncharted, perilous waters, and so it seemed wiser to invest in men whose
chances in life were not especially more inspiring than in death. Driven by formidable
ambition and undaunted spirit, it took da Gama ten whole months, full of dangerous
adventures and gripping episodes, to finally hit India’s shores. It was the dawn of a
great new epoch in human history and this pioneer knew he was standing at the very
brink of greatness. Prudence and experience, however, dictated that in an unknown
land it was probably wiser not to enter all at once. So one of his motley crew was
selected to swim ashore and sense the mood of the ‘natives’ there before the captain
could make his triumphant, choreographed entrance. And thus, ironically, the first
modern European to sail all the way from the West and to set foot on Indian soil was a
petty criminal from the gutters of Lisbon.1
For centuries Europe had been barred direct access to the prosperous East, first
politically when international trade fell into Arab hands in the third century after
Christ, and then when the emergence of Islam erected a religious obstacle in the
seventh. Fruitless wars and bloodshed followed, but not since the heyday of the Greeks
and Romans had the West enjoyed steady contact with India. Spices and other
oriental produce regularly reached the hungry capitals of Europe, but so much was the
distance, cultural and geographic, that Asia became a sumptuous cocktail of myth and
legend in Western imagination. It was generally accepted with the most solemn
conviction, for instance, that the biblical Garden of Eden was located in the East and
that there thrived all sorts of absurdly exotic creatures like unicorns, men with dogs’
heads, and supernatural races called ‘The Apple Smellers’. Palaces of gold sparkled in
the bright sun, while precious gems were believed to casually float about India’s serene
rivers. Spotting phoenixes, talking serpents, and other fascinating creatures was a
mundane, everyday affair here, according to even the most serious authorities on the
subject. But perhaps the most inviting of all these splendid tales was that lost
somewhere in India was an ancient nation of Christians ruled by a sovereign whose
name, it was confidently proclaimed, was Prester John.2
It was long believed that there lived in Asia a prestre (priest) called John who,
through an eternal fountain of youth, had become the immortal emperor of many
mystical lands. Some accounts said he was a descendant of one of the three Magi who
visited the infant Jesus, while a more inventive version placed him as foster-father to
the terrible Genghis Khan. Either way, Prester John was rumoured to possess infinite
riches, including a fabulous mirror that reflected the entire world, and a tremendous
emerald table to entertain thirty thousand select guests. Great sensation erupted across
Europe in AD 1165, in fact, when a mysterious letter purportedly from the Prester
himself appeared suddenly in Rome. In this he elaborately gloated about commanding
the loyalties of ‘horned men, one-eyed men, men with eyes back and front, centaurs,
fauns, satyrs, pygmies, giants, cyclops’ and so on. After vacillating for twelve years,
Pope Alexander III finally couriered a reply, but neither the messenger nor this letter
were ever seen again.3 Luckily for Europe, the travels of Marco Polo in the thirteenth
century and of Niccolo di Conti in the fifteenth painted a rather more rational picture
of Asia on the whole, but they were still convinced of the presence of lost Christians
there, egged on by religious fervour and the commercial incentives of breaching the
monopolised spice trade.
If da Gama and his men, weighed down by centuries of collective European
curiosity and imagination, anticipated the legendary Prester as they stepped on to the
shores of Kerala in India, they were somewhat disappointed. For when envoys of the
local king arrived, they came bearing summons from Manavikrama, a Hindu Rajah
famed across the trading world as the Zamorin of Calicut.4 This prince was the proud
lord of one of the greatest ports in the world and a cornerstone of international trade;
even goods from the Far East were shipped to Calicut first before the Arabs
transported them out to Persia and Europe. Until the Ming emperors elected to isolate
themselves from the world, huge Chinese junks used to visit Calicut regularly;
between 1405 and 1430 alone, for instance, the famed Admiral Zheng He called here
no less than seven times with up to 250 ships manned by 28,000 soldiers.5 In fact, even
after the final departure of the Chinese, there remained for some time in Calicut a
half-Malayali, half-Chinese and Malay community called Chinna Kribala, with one of
its star sailors a pirate called Chinali.6 The city itself was an archetype of commercial
prosperity and medieval prominence; it hosted merchants and goods from every
worthy trading nation in its lively bazaars, its people were thriving and rich, and its
ruler potent enough to preserve his sovereignty from more powerful forces on the
Indian peninsula.
Da Gama and his men received one courtesy audience from the Zamorin and they
were greatly impressed by the assured opulence of his court. But when they requested
an official business discussion, they were informed of the local custom of furnishing
presents to the ruler first. Da Gama confidently produced ‘twelve pieces of striped
cloth, four scarlet hoods, six hats, four strings of coral, a case of six wash-hand basins, a
case of sugar, two casks of oil, and two of honey’ for submission, only to be jeered into
shame. For Manavikrama’s men burst out laughing, pointing out that even the poorest
Arab merchants knew that nothing less than pure gold was admissible at court. Da
Gama tried to make up for the embarrassment by projecting himself as an ambassador
and not a mere merchant, but the Zamorin’s aides were not convinced. They bluntly
told him that if the King of Portugal could afford only third-rate trinkets as presents,
the mighty Zamorin had no interest whatever in initiating any diplomatic dealings on
a basis of equality with him.7 Manavikrama, it was obvious, could not care less about
an obscure King Manuel in an even more obscure kingdom called Portugal, and with a
pompous flourish of royal hauteur, he brushed aside da Gama’s lofty ambassadorial
claims.
The Zamorin was not unreasonable, however. He clarified that the Portuguese
were welcome to trade like ordinary merchants in the bazaar if they so desired, even if
no special treatment was forthcoming. Da Gama, though livid at his less-than-
charming reception, had no option but to comply, having come all the way and being
too hopelessly outnumbered to make a military statement to the contrary. And so his
men set up shop in Calicut, under the watchful eyes of the Arabs, peddling goods they
had brought from Europe; goods, they quickly realised, nobody really wanted here in
the East. The hostility of the Arabs did not help either; for they, recognising a threat
to their commercial preponderance, initiated a policy of slander, painting him and his
men as loathsome, untrustworthy pirates. When complaints about this were made to
the Zamorin, they were met with yawning disdain, not least because the Portuguese
had precious little to contribute to business or to the royal coffers. The first European
trade mission, thus, was a resounding flop as far as the Indians were concerned, and
when da Gama’s fleet departed Calicut three months later, they left behind a distinctly
unflattering impression on the locals.8
In Europe, however, the expedition was received as a great success, as it had finally
broken the thousand-year Arab monopoly, and also because the few goods da Gama
had successfully bartered in Calicut fetched sixty times their price in Western markets.
In March 1500, therefore, King Manuel assembled a second armada to go to India.
This time they were better prepared and more confident, led by the redoubtable Pedro
Alvarez Cabral. It also helped that by the time they arrived in Calicut, the forbidding
Manavikrama had died and a younger, more amenable prince was parked on the
throne. The Portuguese got off to a more promising start, as a result. But their
enthusiasm waned when they realised that demand for European goods continued to
be feeble at best. In the spice auctions too, wealthy Arabs consistently outbid them and
Cabral’s ships were not filling up as expected. As the weeks passed he began to grow
impatient and belligerent. The policy of defamation unleashed by the Arabs incensed
him, and he suspected they were colluding with local suppliers to prevent the sale of
spices to the Portuguese. At one point, then, Cabral sacked an Arab vessel, provoking
retaliation from Muslim merchants who burned down his warehouse and killed
between fifty and seventy Portuguese men. Cabral took to the safety of the sea and
looted every ship he could find and, in what was meant as a lesson to the Zamorin,
bombarded Calicut from afar for an entire day, killing nearly 600 people.
Cabral had realised by now that there was no way he could trade in this city so long
as the Arabs held sway. He decided, in what was a calculated move, therefore, to sail
south into an alternative harbour and try his luck there. During his months in Kerala,
he had learnt a fair deal about regional politics and identified a very useful chink in the
Zamorin’s armour. And this was the port of Cochin in the south, held by a Rajah
called Unni Goda Varma. This prince was a dynastic descendant of the Chera kings of
yore and possessed a pedigree and caste superior to that of the haughty Zamorin. Yet
he had been enslaved by Calicut: he had to pay tribute; all his pepper had to be
submitted to his overlord; he was not allowed to mint currency; and perhaps most
humiliatingly, the scion of the Cheras was prohibited from tiling the roof of his own
palace, forced to thatch it instead, like the hut of a common peasant.9 Cochin resented
this debasing treatment imposed by the Zamorin and so, when Cabral’s ships appeared
by his shores, the Rajah received them with open arms, magnanimously granting
several trade privileges and much pepper. He hoped, as Cabral knew and exploited,
that with the aid of the Portuguese, he would finally be able to throw off Calicut’s
yoke and regain his independence and dignity.
It was a fateful juncture in the history of Kerala. Essentially, at this moment, Cabral
had declared war between Portugal and Calicut, and Unni Goda Varma had rebelled
against his feudal master after generations of servitude. The Zamorin, when he heard
of these proceedings, was furious. He resolved not only to cut down the arrogant
foreigners, whose only advantage was a superiority of arms and better navigational
skill, but also to punish his audacious tributary. An enormous army started
southwards while a massive fleet of eighty ships sailed out of Calicut to confront the
Portuguese. Unni Goda Varma, incidentally, was prepared for a showdown and began
to gear up for war. Cabral, however, knew that for all his bravado and grandstanding,
the Portuguese were no match for the Zamorin and would only be utterly routed if
they engaged in a full-fledged military conflict. To the great chagrin and