Michelle Sindha Thomas
GOD’S OWN COUNTRY | THE HOUSE OF TRAVANCORE 1706-1900
II: BALARAMA VARMA
Upon the death of Rama Varma in 1798, sixteen-year-old Balarama Varma became Maharaja of Travancore. He inherited a kingdom in tumult.
Travancore had stood firm against invasion until Tipu Sultan, the “Tiger of Mysore,” attacked in 1789. Even under incomparable duress, Travancore maintained its stance: the native army was aided by monsoon rains and unsolicited reinforcements from the British East India Company. By this time, the Company had subjugated territories across India—and rulers of ancient Indian dynasties, once masters over commerce and culture, were reduced to landlords with faded titles stripped of their weight. In an effort to gain foothold in south India, the Company cited the aid they offered Travancore against Tipu Sultan and, despite opposition from young prince Balarama Varma, the 1795 Treaty of Perpetual Friendship brought Travancore under British “protection.” The treaty outlined a tributary alliance in which Travancore became a subordinate, client regime of the British East India Company, to gradually disband its own military and claims to sovereignty in exchange for protection from external threat.
As part of the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship, the Company also staked a claim in the pepper trade, demanding a cut of the royal tribute. They introduced a quasi-native, British-appointed layer of governance, selecting local prime ministers, often district officers who had held their own against royal authority. These native prime ministers were to partner with British ambassadors, called Residents, to administer control over Travancore and ensure payment of taxes to the Company.
Upon his accession to the throne in 1798, Maharaja Balarama Varma continued to oppose mounting British interference with internal state matters. British officials, meanwhile, appointed Colin Macaulay as the honorable Resident of Travancore. The Scottish colonel had already spent 30 years in India and was assigned to convince the king to accept a subsidiary alliance scheme which the British had already imposed across much of the country. Macaulay tenaciously pushed this agenda, calling for a repeal of the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship. Balarama Varma loathed the existing treaty of so-called friendship and of course refused to accept a new treaty with even more oppressive terms. He despised Macaulay’s arrogance and methodically began to attack his support system. He banished from court the British-appointed prime minister, Kesava Das, and authorized a cabal to finish him as they saw fit—he was confined to his home and later poisoned. Macaulay attempted to identify and punish the culprits, but Balarama Varma thwarted his efforts and sent a bold message in his punishment of the relatives and allies of the prime minister. Shungoony Menon states: “On a certain night they were taken by the palace guards and dragged quietly to the sea-beach where they were butchered in cold blood. Agitated witnesses were pacified by palace representatives who stated that the murdered men were ‘actually engaged in treacherous acts to give up the country to the English.’” Political order collapsed; undaunted, the British continued to advance.
Resident Macaulay demanded that Maharaja Balarama Varma subsidize the Third Anglo-Mysore War, rationalizing that his troops engaged in defense of Travancore. Financial crisis ensued as the king was forced to take loans from bankers and merchants in order to sustain a volatile arrangement beyond his capacity to fund.
The British Governor-General appointed Velu Thampi as Prime Minister of Travancore in 1799, after he earned repute for rallying forces against corruption in his district. Initially relishing his new title and power, he willingly cooperated with the Company. He supported Resident Macaulay in 1801 when he ordered the return of the Travancore troops serving in Calicut and Palayamkotta, personally informing the king that the Company would not require the aid of his army in the future. He supported Macaulay when he further proposed that Balarama Varma should subsidize another British regiment, in addition to the two battalions stipulated in the 1795 Treaty of Perpetual Friendship. This was a shock to Balarama Varma, who appealed to the Governor-General, noting that according to the Treaty of 1795, the Company had no right to propose an augmentation to their force. The Governor-General simply urged him to revise the treaty as requested and accept a subsidiary alliance. Vindicated, Resident Macaulay threatened him with consequences if he refused to comply.
Raja Balarama Varma ignored these threats, declared his intention to abide only by the existing treaty without amendment, and found great support in the royal court. To further ruffle British feathers, he circulated stories of an impending French invasion in support of Travancore. Realizing Macaulay had failed, British high officials tried another tactic and sent expensive gifts to win Balarama Varma’s goodwill. The maharaja was unmoved.
Prime Minister Velu Thampi, meanwhile, continued to curry favor with the British, seeing potential for great personal gain in the relationship, even at long-term cost to his people. He looked for ways to reduce expense, increase revenue, and advance the British cause—for instance, cutting the stipend paid to native troops during peacetime. When a section of the Travancore army revolted in response, he sought refuge with Resident Macaulay. In 1804, Velu Thampi faced the open mutiny of a coalition of Hindu Nair troops stationed across the state—a revolt powered by the palace and intended to punish him for handing his country over to the Company. Macaulay and Velu Thampi fled to Cochin and directed newly-arrived British troops to suppress the revolt. The palace faction that had fueled the uprising was identified and slaughtered.
The Nair revolt provided British authorities opportunity to finally impose the subsidiary alliance on Travancore while increasing the authority and influence of Prime Minister Velu Thampi, Resident Macaulay, and the Company in affairs of state. The subsidiary alliance specified that British troops be employed to curb internal uprisings—such as the Nair revolt—in addition to external threats. The Governor-General insisted on the conclusion of the subsidiary treaty and moved three battalions of Company troops to the borders of Travancore to ensure compliance.
By 1805, bereft of his support at court, Balarama Varma signed the subsidiary treaty. He was utterly alone, his loyal officials hanged, shot, eliminated, yet, in spite of having signed the revised treaty into effect, he continued to protest its terms. He had been coerced and the royal treasury could simply not withstand the strain of additional subsidy. The terms indebted Travancore to the British East India Company, increased British force stationed in Travancore, increased the tribute collected by the Company, all while cutting funds allocated to the State in maintaining its own standing army.
The native Christians had already long felt the loss of their privileged military role. The demand for their kalari martial art of swords and spears diminished with the introduction of firearms and European-style tactics, and military families sought alternate sources of income. Subject to increased Company interference in commerce, former traders and administrators suffered loss of status to such extent that Christians were dismissed as a generally poor and depressed community. The Hindu Nair troops, meanwhile brimming with rage and injured pride, marched to Trivandrum with a ten-thousand-man army, demanding that the king dismiss Velu Thampi as prime minister and end all dealings with the British.
Resident Macaulay worked with Velu Thampi to put down the uprising, savoring the fresh new opportunity to assert British dominance and authority. Balarama Varma wrote to the British government seat in Madras for a recall of Resident Macaulay—his request was denied. This impeachment effort made Macaulay doubly aggressive in his demands and he now began to exert pressure on Velu Thampi. While fully aware of the financial crisis in Travancore, he pressed Velu Thampi for immediate payment of tribute, reimbursement for the expense of suppressing the Nair troops, and compensation for involvement in the long-past Travancore-Mysore War of 1791.
Velu Thampi became disillusioned after Macaulay’s betrayal and by the British, whom he had considered as friends and as sincere when they said they considered “an aggression on Travancore as an aggression on themselves.” He had relied on the British, evangelized their values, and approved increased dependence on them; he was mortified upon being personally pressed for a large tribute the state could not pay.
The false claims, broken promises, and confrontations between the Company and Travancore were hurtling towards a climax, now with British-appointed anti-British Prime Minister Velu Thampi as the helm. He evaluated the situation and realized that only rebellion could break the political deadlock. With support from Maharaja Balarama Varma, Velu Thampi organized a revolt against Resident Macaulay and the Company stranglehold on Travancore. He ordered Nair officers to recruit soldiers and train them in the use of bows and arrows and firelocks. They manufactured huge quantities of weapons and sought the assistance of native and foreign powers who were similarly hostile towards the British. In a favored tactic, they circulated news that the French, Marathas, and armies from neighboring kings would soon arrive to support Travancore.
In December 1808, Velu Thampi initiated a night attack on the Residency at Cochin. Resident Macaulay escaped capture by concealing himself in a recess in the low chamber of his house. He evaded two similar assassination attempts, by which time the British government authorized a mobilization of British troops in his support. Velu Thampi roused considerable force against the Company, but hopes for outside help never materialized and his elaborate military preparations were not enough to withstand British brute force. He tried to rouse his discouraged countrymen with impassioned speeches; British forces continued their advance. Velu Thampi lost hope and fled. In 1809, a British search party surrounded his hideout at Mannadi Bhagavati temple and rather than surrender, he committed suicide.
Following Velu Thampi’s revolt, Company authorities further tightened their grip on Travancore. State armies were completely disbanded and Balarama Varma was expected to recognize the subsidiary treaty and carry it into execution. Instead, he maintained his stance against the Company, declining to pay the additional subsidy and disregarding efforts of the Governor-General to smooth relations between the two governments. Resident Macaulay fanned his fury, obsessively maneuvering to fully control Travancore, even drafting rules and regulations for internal administration post-takeover. His health, however, curtailed his ambition, and 50-year-old Colin Macaulay finally left India in 1810, reaching England “in a very emaciated and enfeebled state,” said his brother. He had been ill during the passage from India and continued to suffer bouts of sickness for the rest of his life.
The promise of a new resident did not satisfy Maharaja Balarama Varma. Even one year after the arrival of Resident John Monro, the king refused to discharge even part of the subsidy demanded by the Company.
Balarama Varma died suddenly on November 8, 1810, at the age of 28.
He reportedly died of dysentery soon after a meeting with Resident Monro. Other reports state that he was assassinated by poisoning.
During his twelve-year reign, Balarama Varma held firm in his resistance to British interference in Travancore. He took the throne as an adolescent and may have seemed reckless or even delusional in his opposition to the colonial machine, yet I find a heroic idealism in his defense of the dignity of his kingdom, his refusal of British claims upon God’s own country.
Further Reading:
Kunju, A. P. Ibrahim. “King Balarama Varma of Travancore (1798-1810).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 38, 1977, pp. 416–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44139098. Accessed 3 Sep. 2022.
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The annual journal of the Indian History Congress, entitled The Proceedings of the Indian History Congress carries research papers selected out of papers presented at its annual sessions on all aspects and periods of Indian History from pre-history to contemporary times as well as the history of countries other than India. The addresses of the General President and the Presidents of the six sections generally take up broad issues of interpretation and historical debate. The journal has constantly taken the view that ‘India’ for its purpose is the country with its Pre-Partition boundaries, while treats Contemporary History as the history of Indian Union after 1947. The papers included in the Proceedings can be held to represent fairly well the current trends of historical research in India. Thus there has been a growth of papers on women’s history, environmental and regional history. This journal has appeared annually since 1935 except for five different years when the annual sessions of the Indian History Congress could not be held.
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The Indian History Congress is the major national organization of Indian historians, and has occupied this position since its founding session under the name of Modern History Congress, held at Poona in 1935. In his address the organization's first President, Professor Shafaat Ahmad Khan called upon Indian historians to study all aspects of history, rather than only political history and to emphasize the integrative factors in the past. Its name was then changed to Indian History Congress's from its second session held in 1938, and three section, 1. Ancient, 2. Medieval and 3. Modern were created for simultaneous discussions. Ever since 1938 the organization has been able regularly to hold its sessions each year, except for certain years of exceptional national crises. It is now going to hold its 77th annual session at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, on 28-30 December 2016. It has at present over 7,000 ordinary and life members.