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| Ramachandran/The Hindu |
Journalist and author Ramachandran reconstructs the story of Rama Varma, a prince of the Cochin Royal family who converted to Christianity, in his novel Papasnanam
K Pradeep
It happened in April 1835. Rama Varma, the eldest son of Veera Kerala Varma, the Maharaja of Cochin, took a boat from Tripunithura to Fort Cochin. There he was met by his friend Ananthan, a Gowda Saraswat Brahmin. Together they went to St. Francis Church where Rama Varma was baptized and converted to Christianity. He was named Constantine Rama Varma and Ananthan came to be called Yohannan.
Information on the life of Rama Varma is very sketchy. The speech he made at the time of his ordination, later published in the journal Keralopakari and in book form by Basel Mission Press, Tellicherry, remains the only historical evidence of this prince.
Ramachandran’s debut novel Papanasam takes off from the point of conversion and explores the incomplete spiritual journey of Rama Varma. Here, history and fiction are inextricably intertwined, lives are entangled, and Kerala history is deconstructed as the novel moved through an eventful period in the 19th century.
“Conversions in Kerala have always interested me. Right from the time of the Portuguese, there have been numerous instances and reasons for conversion. In fact, there was an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Maharaja of Cochin, Unniraman Koyikal (1503-1537) to Christianity in 1510, just before the Portuguese shifted their capital from Cochin to Goa, under General Alfonso de Albuquerque. History also records the conversion of a Tanur maharaja and a nephew of the Zamorin. But Rama Varma’s case was unusual,” says Ramachandran, a journalist, whose short stories in Malayalam had won wide critical acclaim.
More than being attracted to Christianity it was power intrigues in the royal family, disillusionment with his religion, blatant theft in temples, and corruption that resulted in Rama Varma's conversion.
Divided into two parts and two geographical zones the novel moves back in forth through different realms of time. After his conversion Jacob travelled to Madras where Rev. John Tucker helped him get admission to Bishop Corrie’s Madras Grammar School. he spent three years here before moving to Belgaum. The novel begins at Belgaum.
“Choosing Belgaum was deliberate. It was here that Rama Varma committed the ‘biggest sin’ that he mentions in his autobiography. In fact, this is the first autobiography in Malayalam, though history has other names. There is no specific mention of what the sin was, which gave me the freedom to imagine what it would have been.”
Taking a cue from Nikos Kazantzakis, Ramachandran builds up the life of Rama Varma beginning from Belgaum. “The sin referred to, I assume, must have been the sin of the flesh. In his Report to Greco, Kazantzakis mentions the ‘ascetics’ disease’ that seems to have affected Rama Varma too.”
Through Rama Varma’s life in Belgaum, which involved teaching Rev. Joseph Taylor’s children and even speaking Tamil in the church on Sundays, Ramachandran shuttles through time zones to touch upon Rama Varma’s life and times before the conversion.
“The conflict between Advaita and Dvaita philosophy intrigued me. My views on this have been voiced through Rama Varma. And it was relevant because Rama Varma was born a ‘convert’ as the Cochin Royal Family had adopted Madhvaism and believed in Dvaita philosophy. This was after Shaktan Thampuran had expelled the leaders and followers of this faith from his state. After Shaktan Thampuran’s death his cousins Rama Varma and later Veera Kerala Varma, the father of the protagonist, adopted this faith, which explains the influx of the Embranthiris to Tripunithura. The novel provides space to include the history of the Embranthiris and Konkanis.”
The scene shifts to Kannur, specifically Thalassery, in the second part. This is a crucial phase in Rama Varma’s life. “Not being able to bear the pain of sin, not being to confess, Rama Varma flees to Thalassery. Here he meets Hermann Gundert, Samuel Hebich and Hermann Friedrich Moegling; it is here he is ordained and given the name Jacob. And it is here he confesses, gets married and dies of smallpox.”
Since the details of his marriage are not known Ramachandran creates a character and names her Mary. “I have deliberately named all the female characters that cross Jacob's life as Mary, like those in Jesus Christ’s life.” And appropriately Ramachandran uses Charles Baudelaire’s poem To A Woman of Malabar, to describe the woman in Jacob’s life. “I thought there’s a connect because Baudelaire's Malabar woman was a slave from Mahe, not very far from Thalassery.”
Ramachandran considers his work a tale of numerous travellers whose journeys are left incomplete. It is not the tale of a glorious prince but that of a loser. “Jacob is a loser. This is the story of his spiritual journey an incomplete one. Every winner has frailties but history gives only one side of the story. I have felt that history records past events of human life but very often it is only well-written fiction. Information pieced together by historians are often just personal opinions.”
An attempt is made in the novel to correct historical details. “I have made mention of them in footnotes. There are many inaccurate historical details that I thought needed to be set right. Even the Cochin State Manual is wrong on dates and details.”
It took Ramachandran 25 years of research for Papasnanam but only ‘25 days to write it. He has completed work on two books — a political biography of CJ Thomas and another on Swadeshabimani Ramakrishna Pillai. “I’m also working on the possibility of a historical fiction based on the very interesting characters of Jesus Christ and Marthanda Varma,” says Ramachandran.
The Hindu, September 15, 2017
PAPASNANAM
Published by SPCSNational Book Stall
Rs 170
