Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi, a little known, interesting royal dies

From The Times
June 21, 2008
Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi: Maharani of Travancore
Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi

Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi

Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi was one of the last living links with an India that died after the British left in 1947.

As a senior member of the royal family of Travancore, in what is now Kerala in southern India, she knew power and privilege on a scale that few if any European aristocrats could match.

And yet, unusually for India’s princely states, that power was generally used well despite the excesses of some of the junior royals.

Travancore was not especially big but it was always different, and the British recognised the quality of its rulers by granting them the high status of a 19-gun salute. The young Karthika Tirunal watched her father and later her brother, the last Maharajah of the state before it was disbanded after independence, exercise power with a benevolence and liberalism that Mahatma Gandhi, no lover of royal rulers, praised.

Karthika Tirunal, the second child and only daughter of the ruling family, took the hereditary title of Queen of Attingal, but in line with family tradition was generally referred to by the name of the star — one of 27 in the monthly calendar — under which she was born.

Her early life was devoted to study, especially of Sanskrit, English and music. She mastered French, and as a young woman broke an ancient tradition by visiting a foreign country.

Throughout her adulthood she worked for charity — especially women’s causes — and most people continued to call her the Maharani even after all royal titles were abolished by the Indian Government. Her family had long been noted for religious tolerance and liberal rule, and the last Maharajah of Travancore did the unthinkable in 1936 by opening all Hindu temples to Dalits, formerly known as Untouchables.

To this day that decision rankles with some high-castes. The family placed strong emphasis on education for ordinary people, and it is no accident that Kerala is the most literate region of India today, especially among women.

As a young woman in 1947 Karthika Tirunal watched her state slip into chaos when its senior rulers declared that it would remain independent from India. The Travancore army brutally put down pro-India riots but in the end the state forces were defeated.

For all the initial chaos, few royals handled the unravelling of their world after 1947 as well as the Travancore ruling family. The former royals did, nevertheless, endure the constant hostility of some of the communist politicians who dominated the Kerala region after Indian independence, in large measure because of the bloodshed that marked the state’s dying days.

Karthika Tirunal remained constantly wary of local politicians and the family did its utmost to keep out of day-to-day politics. It refused even to vote, which brought frequent criticism from some politicians. In a flourish of royal hauteur in 2004, Karthika Tirunal and other members of the erstwhile royal family again refused to vote, declaring that the Kerala authorities had failed to provide an exclusive facility in which to do so.

Travancore was the first Indian princely state to set up a synagogue, a church and a mosque, and to this day interreligious relationships remain good. The state, with roots dating to the 3rd century BC, was one of the oldest in India, and Karthika Tirunal could trace her lineage for centuries.

She often spoke with a flourish of elegant, quaintly dated English, as when, in an interview when she was 90, she described her mother, the Maharani, as “one of the rarest daughters” of India, “a combination of practical sagacity with much eagerness for the things that are more excellent, one who demanded artistic perfection in music, painting and other fine arts”.

Music was one of Karthika Tirunal’s passions, and she delighted in concerts given by her grandson, one of the finest exponents of the veena, which in southern India is a form of lute. As a young woman before Indian independence she frequently acted in English plays before elite audiences that included successive British viceroys.

At 17 she married Colonel Goda Varma Raja, an aristocrat and keen sportsman who 20 years later established the Sports Council in India and did much to promote Indian cricket. Their wedding was a lavish aristocratic affair, with the groom riding to the ceremony on an elephant accompanied by military bands, cavalry and mounted police.

He was killed in a light aircraft accident in 1981, and his body was carried back for his funeral in the first Boeing to land at the newly constructed airport in Trivandum, capital of Kerala.

Karthika Tirunal’s funeral echoed with past splendour. Her body was placed in a public building for ordinary people and the political and social elite of Kerala to pay their respects, after which it was moved to Kowdiar Palace, an imposing monument built in 1914 that remains the former Royal Family’s ancestral home. She was cremated there with full state honours.

Karthika Tirunal is survived by a son and two daughters. Her first-born child, a son, died aged 5.

Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi, senior member of the ruling family of the former Indian princely state of Travancore, was born in 1916. She died on June 8, 2008, aged 9