TWO GERMAN CRUISERS AND ABDICATION OF THE COCHIN KING

Oh, It was not Emden, after all!

A King of Cochin, in Southern India, was known as, Vazhcha Ozhinja Thampuran, or, Ozhinja Valiya Thampuran in Malayalam language, meaning, His abdicated Highness. The incident in 1914, created a furore and it shocked his subjects, because, clinging to power by all means was the practice, and abdication was unheard of in the Kingdom. The rumour spread that the abdication was not a normal act and that he was forced to do it after he gave a garden party to the officers of a German cruiser. Still, I find takers for this theory. I too had believed in the theory, and had thought that the cruiser may have been, SMS Emden, which bombarded Madras on the night of September 22,1914.

SMS Emden

Many still believe, the second in command of Emden, Chempaka Raman Pillai, of Thiruvananthapuram, had rowed Emden ashore at Cochin, to see his friends and family members. The fact remains that the Malayalam word, Emandan (huge) originated from Emden, taking the cruiser to the state's legends. Though Emden never came to Cochin, it has a small connection with Cochin, as a diary entry of Georgina Lee, shows in the book, Home Fires Burning: The Great War Diaries, by Gavin Roynon:

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22

The German cruiser Emden which has been at large ever since the war, doing much damage in the Indian Ocean, including the shelling of Madras where she destroyed the oil tanks, has sunk five more British Steamers, three of them being liners. The Emden transferred the crews and passengers to the Steamer, Egbert and sent them to the nearest port, Cochin, near Madras.

So, Egbert came, not Emden.Georgina Lee was a normal homemaker, who began making diary entries, addressed to her nine-month-old son, Harry, when the First World War broke out after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated at Sarajevo, on June 28,1914. Georgina depended on newspaper stories. I too searched old newspaper reports, and here is a report dated October 24,1914, in Hawera and Normanby Star, page 5:

The Bombay steamer, Egbert has arrived at Cochin with 325 members of the crew and 22 passengers of seven steamers, sunk by the Emden between the 15th and 19th.

Rajarshi Rama Varma

The guns of Emden, Captained by Karl von Muller, bombarded the oil tanks of Burma Oil Company on the illuminated port of Madras at 9.30 PM, and then sank a merchant ship, killing five and injuring 28.125 shells were fired in 30 rounds, and it lasted for half an hour. It was a surprise attack and the British lost their morale. Raman Pillai was an engineer, assisting Muller. Later he became Prime Minister of the Indian provincial government based in Afghanistan, and he was poisoned to death by the Nazis, in 1934.

Chempaka Raman Pillai

Emden was named after the city of that name and was launched from the dockyard of Danzig, in 1909. It had 10 guns and two torpedo tubes. It was part of Germany's East Asia Squadron, based in Tsingtao, China, and Muller became its Commander in 1913. He detached it for independent raids in the Indian Ocean. It was quiet in the Chinese and Japanese waters in the first half of 1914, and when Ferdinand was assassinated, it was the only German cruiser in Tsingtao. Germany declared war on Russia, on 2 August, and Emden captured the Russian Steamer, Ryazan, and converted it to, an auxiliary cruiser, Cormoran. Then it steamed up the coast of Sumatra, to the Indian Ocean, entered the Bay of Bengal, on 5 September, and moved to the Colombo-Calcutta route, on September 10. Muller decided to bombard Madras in late September. After the bombardment, Emden forayed to the western side of Ceylon, and I got relieved only after reading this line because I was born in Cochin! It captured a British Steamer, off Minikoy, on October 15.

Oil Tanks Burnt by Emden/Madras, 1914

So, King Rama Varma XV, who reigned from 1895 to 1914, had nothing to do with, Emden, or any German officer in 1914. Then why he abdicated? Was he connected with any German delegation at all, at any point in time?

Yes.

Records show he gave a garden party to the officers of the German cruiser, SMS Gneisenau, in 1911. So, it was three years before and has nothing to do with abdication.

Gneisenau was an armoured Cruiser of the German Navy, part of the two-ship Scharnhorst Class. It was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian General of the Napoleonic wars. It was launched from the Bremen dockyard in June 1906, and completed in March 1908 at the cost of 19 million gold marks. Franz von Hipper was the first Commander for a few months. It had eight guns. Like Emden, it was also assigned to the East Asia Squadron, at Tsingtao, with the Flagship, Scharnhorst, in 1910 and served as the core of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee's fleet. At the outbreak of the First World War, the two ships, accompanied by three light cruisers and several colliers, sailed across the Pacific Ocean, before arriving off the Southern coast of South America. It encountered and overpowered the British Squadron at the Battle of Coronel, on 1 November 1914. The stinging defeat prompted the British admiralty to detach two battle cruisers to hunt down and destroy von Spee's flotilla, which they accomplished at the Battle of the Falklands Islands on 8 December 1914-Gneisenau sank. It had won the Kaiser's Cup four times, twice in Asia, in 1911 and 1914.

SMS Gneisenau

Hosting a garden party at Hill Palace, Tripunithura, for German officers of the cruiser, in a British dominion, was definitely not an innocent act, you may think. It was not a political act-the occasion was the visit of the German Crown prince, Wilhem and his wife Duchess Cecilie, to India, in December-January,1911. Wilhelm was the Guest of Honor at the Viceregal Lodge, when the escort ship, Gneisenau lay at anchor in the Cochin Harbor; with the formal approval of the British Government, the German Consul, Bueler arranged for the King's visit to Gneisenau and the King entertained its officers at a garden Party, and the Dewan gave a Cocktail Party in the night at Bolghatty Residency, with the approval of the Resident. The temporal sequence was ignored and this incident was termed pro-German by his detractors, three years later.

Wilhelm

No records of a British resistance against the King exist, for hosting such a party. If they had taken it as an offence, the King should have been removed, in 1911, not in 1914. Or, he could have been removed in 1902, for using Germans, for building the Parambikulam Tramway. Or he could have been removed in 1907, when a German Baron, Kauffman visited Cochin as the King's guest, spent time hunting in forests, and got a monograph on the King written in German on his return. Instead, his gun salute was raised from 17 to 19, in 1911. There is no point in arguing a power tussle in this case, because, a lot of records exist, to prove that King Rama Varma had revealed his intention to abdicate as early as 1905, but the British insisted on his continuation. In 1914, though the King was advised by his well-wishers to reveal the earlier correspondence, to silence the critics, he said, "When someday the truth comes out, the disappointment of my detractors will be all the greater, but, there is no reason to hasten that end".

The King's letter dated 18 August 1905, from Tripunithura to the Resident, James Andrew, begins thus:

The proposal I am going to make in this letter may appear to you as somewhat strange and ill-considered. But, it is not so. I have spent a good deal of careful thought over the matter, and am making the proposal only after long and mature consideration. I wish to be relieved of my charge of the administration at the end of this Malabar Year. My chief and almost sole reason for deciding on such a course is my desire to have complete rest and peace of mind during the remaining portion of my life.

.......

I, of course, expect an allowance for my maintenance during my retired life. But, knowing as I do, of how heavy a burden the family of Cochin is on the State, and considering that the item of expenditure is altogether new on account of the step I am now proposing, I shall not name the sum of the allowance for me. Whatever sum the Durbar and the Government consider to be a proper amount will be accepted by me with gratitude and thankfulness. It is now my intention to keep up any great position or dignity during my retired life, and it will not, therefore, be difficult for me to live comfortably on a moderate amount. In this connection, I have to make one request for the consideration of the Government. It is this: a portion of my allowance, not less than Rs 100 a month, may be continued after my lifetime to my wife and her children as long as one of them is alive.

........

He was 53 then, and the letter brings out the sage in the King. This was the King, who auctioned off the 14 gold caparisons in the Poornathrayeesa Temple to build the Ernakulam-Shornur railway line, ignoring the criticism inside the royal family. He sold all gold ornaments and borrowed money from the Chidambaram Temple Trust. Though the first train ran in 1902, the effort took a heavy toll on the King.

German Crown Prince in India

P Rajagopalachari, who was the Dewan, when the railway project was begun, was shocked to learn about this letter, and he wrote to the King, requesting him to withdraw it. The Cochin Dewan at the time, N Pattabhirama Rao was also shocked. The Resident forwarded the King's letter to the Governor of Madras, and the Governor, Lord Oliver Russel Ampthill (1900-1906), in his rejection letter of 4 September 1905, said: There is nobody at present who is fit to succeed you as Raja of Cochin and to govern the state without detriment to the interests of the people.

Lord Ampthill sought  Viceroy Lord Curzon's advice and wrote to the King on December 9,1905:Neither this Government nor the Government of India can consent or be a party to your Highness' abdication.

Ampthill

The King again wrote to Resident A T Forbes, on 13 June 1913, saying he was not prepared to extend his public career beyond December, but the British vetoed. The King prevailed, and Dewan J N Bhore issued an extraordinary gazette on 25 November 1914:

"It is the desire of His Highness the Raja to abdicate on the 22nd Vrischikam 1090 (7 December 1914). His Highness would be glad to meet such of his people as many find it possible to be present at the Durbar Hall on that date at 12.50 PM".

But, according to T K Krishna Menon's Memoirs, the King abdicated on 13 July 1914.

After abdication, Rama Varma stayed on at Ernakulam for some months, while his Palace at Thrissur was in the process of construction, and he shifted to Merry Lodge Palace, the present Kerala Varma College, during the summer of 1915, led a sage's life and died on 29 January 1932. The Palace was built for him by his old, loyal friend, T(Thatikonda) Namberumal Chetty, the master builder of Madras and business partner of Dewan Pattabhi Rama Rao.   A statue of him was unveiled in the public park at Ernakulam(Rajendra Maidan), on October 13, 1925, by the Governor of Madras, the 2nd Viscount, Goschen(1924-1929), in the presence of the Political Agent, Cotton. The statue was made by British Sculptor, E G Jillicken, at the cost of 1300 pounds.

The question once again, is why the abdication?

There is a hint in the following lines of I N Menon, Son of the King, who was Director of Public Instruction in Cochin:

My father had hoped to harness the waterfalls at Athirapally and get enough electrical power generated for running not only the indigenous factory and cottage industries but also to attract to State big industrialists from other states and provinces to invest capital in the state;, before any concrete steps could be taken, he laid down the reins of administration in the hope that his Dewan Mr Bhore, with whom he had discussed his plans at great length, would be able to implement them. Unfortunately, Mr Bhore could not get my father's successor to agree to these proposals, and he left Cochin a sadder and wiser man.

Rama Varma XVI

It means, his successor, Rama Varma XVI, known as, Madrasil Theepetta Thampuran(The King who died in Madras), was a roadblock to, Rajarshi Ramavarma. It is evident in the abdicated King's very brief autobiography that the earlier King, Rama Varma XIV(1864-1888), Mithunamasathil Theepetta Thampuran, and a courtier called Cheruvathur Nambudiri, were hands in glove, against him, and his cousin(son of the Raja's elder brother, who died at age 33, in 1880)spreading canards. Rama Varma XIV, was very weak, affected by illness throughout his reign. He built the Puthan Malika and Mani Malika(clock tower)in Tripunithura.In the Palliyil house in Tripunithura, there was a girl who was the stepdaughter (daughter of his wife by an earlier husband) of the late Raja who was then Elaya Raja. This girl was about 16 years old and had a regular husband. Rama Varma(Rajarshi) proposed to become a paramour to her, and as the husband raised no objection, it was done so. Cheruvathur and others spread a story that he did it simply to please the Elaya Raja(Vira  Kerala Varma), but not because he loved her.

He, as heir apparent, wrote to the Dewan against Cheruvathur, on 11 April 1886:

Cheruvathur and some of his(Raja's) comrades were for some time back trying to annoy me in various ways, especially by spreading bad reports about me, and my royal cousin-unfortunately for me-seemed to connive at their attempts; but as you know I took very little notice of it though His Highness's taking sides with them was really unpleasant to me...

Duke Ferdinand

Rama Varma was the son of the third daughter, Amba/Kunjikavu Thampuran of the Senior Rani, and Bhaskaran Nambudiripad. He has recorded that, his brother, Kerala Varma (Kochunni)Thampuran (Born in 1855, he died as heir apparent), began to attempt certain radical changes in social and religious matters which gave rise to severe criticism all over Tripunithura. His mother too, felt some uneasiness at these things. A set of newly English-educated men of State, gained the sympathy of his brother and a few other princes."My brother", Rama Varma writes, "though very intelligent and well educated in Sanskrit, was somewhat hasty in coming to conclusions and acting upon them. He was also very very obstinate....he fell out with me, and ever since, tried to annoy me in several ways. From this time forward we began to pull the ropes in opposite directions, with equal force, and the consequence was that we never became friends again".

This coterie led by his own brother worked against Rama Varma over time, and every decision of his was made controversial, culminating in a palace rebellion, during 1898-1902, when the gold caparisons of Poornathrayeesa Temple were sold and the allowances of the princes were cut to raise funds for the Shornur line.

The date of Rama Varma's first abdication letter is very important. It is August 18,1905, exactly a month after the verdict to excommunicate and banish Kuriyedathu Thatri, in the caste inquisition or trial of chastity(Smartha Vicharam). The majority of the banished were rich, influential and well-connected. It was the last nail in the coffin when the coterie spread the rumour that the trial was stopped when Thatri was about to pronounce the name of Rama Varma. So it was not a cruiser that led to the abdication; it was Thatri, who launched a thousand ships.

Reference:

1. The Rajarshi of Cochin/Ed.I K K Menon

2. Sir Rama Varma Rajarshi/I K K Menon
3. The Story of an Abdication/C Achyutha Menon

© Ramachandran

See my Post, PARIKSHIT THE LAST KING AND THE OTHER PARIKSHIT