Travancore did not want to accede to India: princess

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

Swati Thirunal Lakshmi Bai, princess of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom, finds herself in the midst of controversy thanks to her statement that the last king of the Travancore dynasty, Chithra Thirunal, was against accession of Travancore with the Indian Union.

Lakshmi Bai, in course of a lecture on 'History of Modern Travancore' at the Institute of Management in Government, where IAS officers are trained, said that Chithra Thirunal feared that the north would dominate the south, and therefore wished to keep Tranvancore out of the Indian Union.

While political parties have vehemently criticised the princess for her "provocative comments" and for "raising a needless controversy", historians for their part dismiss her comments as totally irrelevant.

What exactly is she trying to say, demanded Community Party of India-Marxist secretary Chadayan Govindan. "We in Kerala have never felt that it was a mistake to become part of the Indian Union," the politico added. "If Kerala has remained backward, it is not the fault of the accession, but of bad relations between the Centre and the state."

Nonsense, was Communist Party of India state secretary Veliyam Bharghavan's response to Lakshmi Bai's comments. "It's a complete distortion of history, the princess is retrospectively trying to justify the stand taken by the former king on this issue," Bhargavan said, adding, "Then again, Chithra Thirunal cannot be blamed, he was merely a pawn in the hands of the then diwan of Travancore, C P Ramawamy Aiyar."

Another prominent political personality to put the villain's robes on Aiyar is Professor T J Chandrachoodan of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, who argues that the decision to stake a claim for an independent Travancore was taken by Aiyar as diwan. The diwan's autocratic ways of functioning, Chandrachoodan goes on to argue, resulted in various violent public uprisings of the time, including the Punnappura Vaylar uprising that was largely responsible fo the final decision to accede into the Indian Union.

If politicians have been quick to condemn the princess, historians haven't lagged behind either. Sreedhara Menon, doyen of Kerala historians, said that Lakshmi Bai's argument made no sense as, under the British, rule, there was no such thing as a north-south divide. The phenomenon, he pointed out, was an outcome of Independence and the formation of a national government centered in New Delhi.

Menon, unlike the politicians, sees love rather than ignorance as the spark behind the princess's utterances. "She might have made these remarks out of a desire to defend the king, whom she loved very much," the historian said, adding, "but her remarks have no basis in fact."

For her part, Lakshmi Bai refused to elaborate on her comments, saying she did not want the late king to be dragged into a controversy. "All I can say for now is that I would never distort fact simply to defend the late king," she said, adding that her forthcoming book on Chithra Thirunal will answer the criticisms that have been voiced by various parties.