Royal marriages were a funnel to power

Krishna Kumari’s story transfixed India’s elite. In fact, by 1826 a south Indian Brahmin serving a Kerala prince would write what is likely the first English play by a “native", on the subject—a text recently republished by the scholar Rahul Sagar. But it got me thinking on how marriage itself in political spaces was never just about two people joining in holy matrimony. For one, ideas of privacy were fluid. In France, the 14-year-old Catherine de’ Medici’s union with her husband in 1533 was consummated in the august presence of her father-in-law. For the marriage was an alliance, and consummation had to be confirmed to seal the rest of the package. Closer home, in Kerala, 400 years later, the Travancore maharani’s husband was given sex education by her priest. Despite the training, though, he could not go to his wife until astrologers identified the ideal evening for their coupling. “Today is a good day for us and the people of Travancore," wrote the maharani’s aunt—because her niece was (finally) having divinely sanctioned coitus.

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Marriage was also an instrument through which political lineages of less exalted origins might move up the social ladder. The Maratha dynasties that rose to prominence in the 18th century, for example—the Scindias of Gwalior and the Gaikwads of Baroda—were of humble stock. But having acquired power, they sought brides from families with grander pedigrees. Indeed, in the 19th century, the head of the Marathas, Chhatrapati Pratapsingh of Satara, recorded his irritation at this. The Gaikwad, we read, was “leading people astray" by “offering them a reward" in return for marriage. They were all Marathas yes, but the Gaikwad was of a lower grade; and so must not aspire to highborn brides. Up north, one of the Scindias reportedly demanded a wife from Rajputs in Rampur. But even after he seized their territory, they refused to give him a daughter. Yet it was never altogether hopeless: there were always families fallen on hard times happy to marry down for remuneration.

Then there was marriage as a funnel to power—but also a check on it. In the 1890s, the maharajah of Travancore (uncle to the lady mentioned before) was living as a confirmed bachelor. His wife had died in childbirth a decade earlier. Newspaper gossip notes that a palace favourite, rudely called ICB (“illiterate cook boy"), had been thwarting every proposal made since. He was happy to supply random women to his boss but feared that a proper wife would cut his influence. Unfortunately for the man, the maharajah fell in love with the spouse of a palace employee. The employee did his patriotic duty by divorcing the woman, who swiftly became royal consort. In return the ruler ennobled the palace servant. And soon this “former husband of the maharajah’s present wife" supplanted the ICB as the power behind the throne. He would also go on to become a corrupt—and correspondingly wealthy—figure. The ICB, meanwhile, was left with scraps.

Yet at least this maharajah had married for love. Others wed out of duty. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Wadiyars of Mysore were keen to be recognised as bona fide Rajputs. The then queen mother launched a valiant campaign to obtain a daughter-in-law from one of the premier states of Rajputana. But the latter were reluctant to accept a Kannadiga family as their equals. In the end the young maharajah, Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV—ruler of one of the wealthiest principalities in the land, with millions of subjects—had to settle for a girl from a tiny estate in Kathiawar with less than ₹40,000 in revenue. It did not end well. For as some in the press warned, Rajputs were non-vegetarians, while the Wadiyars were vegetarian. Husband and his wife didn’t even speak the same language. Five years later, the British were informed that the marriage was still unconsummated. Indeed, the maharajah and the Rajput princess never had any children. So much for mixing with the “right" type.

This is not to say love matches somehow worked out better—even if, in such instances, women were treated as slightly better than just commodities of exchange. In the same period that the ruler of Mysore obeyed his family’s wishes, the rajah of Pudukkottai was disobeying the British. They had trained him from childhood in a Westernised style, hoping he would be a good (read loyal) vassal and sufficiently progressive. He was indeed progressive. So much so that when he fell in love with an Australian he encountered in a hotel, he could not see why the British were so scandalised. But race trumped romance, and not just to the Raj. Yes, as a man the rajah was free to espouse whoever he wanted. As a ruler, however, his court and political overlords had a say in whether children born to Maharani Molly of Melbourne could be heirs to his title. (The answer was in the negative.) In the end, the rajah moved overseas, relinquished control of the state, and the next ruler was not his half-white son—the appropriately named Prince Martanda Sydney—but an adoptee.

But if power complicates marriage, it is not as if more regular folks have it easy. For, at its most granular level, sheer incompatibility can get in the way. Raja Ravi Varma is celebrated to this day for his art. In the late 19th century, though, as he pursued his career across India, his wife disapproved. Painting for money was not a dignified vocation in her aristocratic view, and his long absences were resented. Once, it is said, he returned from a trip, hoping to mollify his lady with a present. It was a Murano glass chandelier, which he got hung up while his wife was at the temple. On her return she noticed the peace offering. Coolly she asked for it to be brought down. And then fiery Mahaprabha had it thrown out of the window. One can understand her rage at this attempt to compensate for companionship with trinkets. Theirs was no fairytale marriage. Yes, Ravi Varma became famous. But his wife died young, already by her 30s reportedly “addicted to drink". Slow poison some might call it.

Manu S. Pillai is a historian and author, most recently, of False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma.

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