Historical Fiction and the Questions of Sovereignty:

Aesthetic Form and Memory Making

in Early Twentieth Century Travancore

Udaya Kumar
This paper considers the fictional and political writings of C. V.
Raman Pillai (1858-1922, widely known as C. V.), whose trilogy of
historical romances Marthandavarma (1891), Dharmaraja (1913),
and Ramarajabahadur (1918-19) presented celebratory accounts of
two eighteenth century Kings of Travancore Marthandavarma (reg.
1729-58) and Ramavarma (reg. 1758-98). In the two decades that
separated his first two novels, C. V. published several essays of
political criticism under the title Videshiyamedhavitvam (Foreign
Rule) opposing the appointment of non-native Brahmins as Dewans
of

Travancore.

Although

his

three

historical

romances

were

ostensibly focused on Travancore Kings, C. V. saw Dharmaraja and

Ramarajabahadur as the first two novels in a planned trilogy on the
eighteenth century Nayar Dewan Kesava Pillai (1745-99), better
known as Raja Kesavadas after an honorific conferred on him by
the British. In addition to this shift in focus from the King to the
Nayar Minister, a new level of complexity is found in C. V.s fiction in
its recurrent, obsessive preoccupation with a family of rebel Nayar
chiefs (Madampimar) who rise from the ashes, novel after novel, to
confront royal power. While images of Nayar loyalty, valour and
governance appear as direct objects of celebration, the novels also
manifest a subterranean strain of heroic mourning for forms of
Nayar power destroyed by Marthandavarmas consolidation of the
Travancore state. The paper argues that tensions between these two
configurations of sovereignty underlay C. V.s fictional and political
projects. In his historical romances, through a deft use of stylized
narration and visual and performance schema drawn from classical
and folk traditions from the region, C. V. created modes of

characterisation and discourse that brought together praise and

mourning, Nayar assertion and ritualised royal acclamation. The
paper analyses some aspects of the aesthetic-political work
performed in C. V.s historical novels.