Splendours of Royal Mysore -
The Untold Story of the Wodeyars
Excerpts
The Sands of Talakad - Myth vs Science
The submerged temples of Talakad, the disappearance of Malingi
and the strange phenomenon of the Wodeyar lineage raise
questions that perplex any reasoning intellect.
To any rational mind, while the last line of the Rani’s curse
might seem logical—that of destroying the very family of the
Wodeyars for what they had done to her and her family—why the
poor towns of Talakad and Malingi had to become scapegoats in
this entire drama baffles everyone. Wouldn’t it have been better
if she had cursed the capital city of the Wodeyars,
Srirangapatna, to death and disaster? In what way did the
submergence of Talakad and the whirlpool formations at Malingi
affect the Wodeyars? These are questions that do not have a
direct answer and remain shrouded in mystery forever.
An unbiased and scientific approach to the story of Alamelamma
would naturally bring a question to anyone’s mind--- Was she
someone who was spiritually powerful enough to curse an entire
lineage and a town to doom? Have there been any evidences or
references in the texts to suggest that she was a woman blessed
with supernatural powers, bestowed on her after perhaps years of
penance or meditation? Sadly none of the sort exists. Someone
who is spiritually advanced enough to pronounce such terrible
curses on others would generally be believed to have sacrificed
all sense of attachments and desires. But here was a woman whose
lust for the gold ornaments seemed all encompassing! How often
in Hindu traditions do people submit offerings to a deity and
take the same back for their personal use? Did the social
customs of those times permit widows to deck themselves up with
such fanciful jewelry? Raja Wodeyar was supposedly asking these
ornaments for the Goddess of the Srirangapatna temple and not
for the inmates of his harem. Someone who would rather end her
life and throw the jewels in the river, than submit them to the
presiding Deity could most certainly not have been a saint
capable enough of pronouncing catastrophic curses.
It is noteworthy that historical documentations of the 17th and
18th century make no reference to Rani Alamelamma. In fact even
the accounts of British travelers like Francis Buchanan, who has
recorded the minutest of details related to the Mysore Kingdom,
its people and their traditions, in his account “A Journey from
Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar”
speaks casually of a legend of the “natives” during his visit to
Malingi. He records that they believed that the curious sand
formation that had submerged many temples in neighbouring
Talakad was the after-effects of the curse of a local woman who
was drowned while crossing the river to visit the temple. So
enraged was she with the God of the place for having denied her
a darshan, that she cursed the temples to be submerged by sand!
Nowhere is the reference made to a Queen who lost her life under
such tragic circumstances. If this story was true enough, could
someone like Buchanan have missed out on something as important
as this, even after interviewing scores of locals for his
account? Could the locals themselves have missed telling him
such an interesting and significant tale? Seems extremely
unlikely!
Other contemporary records have similar tales to tell. Lt. Col.
Wilks, Political Resident at the Mysore Court, who compiled an
exhaustive history of the region, misses out on the Rani too!
These documentations were done in the early nineteenth century.
If the Rani episode had indeed occurred in 1610, a neat 200
years before, could vernacular and British literature have
missed the episode altogether, for so long?
The first time that Rani Alamelamma makes an appearance in the
documentation of the history of Mysore is in Rice’s Gazetteer of
1876 and the three-line curse makes it presence felt. The story
is further dwelt upon in the Annals with all the dramatization
of the events preceding her death. Interestingly the Annals was
published by the then Maharaja himself and he took active
interest in its contents and publication! If this story was such
an embarrassment for the Royal Family, why did the Maharaja not
censor it completely? It thus becomes clear that the story of
Alamelamma was a fabricated one that took birth in the 19th
century—may be towards the 1830’s or 1840’s ---and was most
probably at the behest of the Royal family itself. Rationalists
argue that the Doctrine of Lapse of Lord Dalhousie that was
enforced during that time spurred the royal court to concoct
this story. The nobility must have witnessed with alarm, the
annexation of numerous Indian princely kingdoms by the British
on the pretext of illegitimate succession or the absence of a
legal male heir. That the then King of Mysore had no legitimate
male heir was reason enough for them to believe that the axe
could fall on them next.
To avert this, a possible escape route might have been to
attribute the childlessness to a curse of yore and try to
substantiate it by placing it in a historical and geographical
era and circumstance of 1610, Talakad and the Vijayanagara
Viceroy’s family. Scientists, geologists and archaeologists
dismiss these legends as mere mumbo-jumbo. They attribute more
plausible reasons for the occurrence of these phenomena. The
course of the Cauvery seems to hold the key, they say, as it
takes a sharp meander on its route along the Mudukutore Betta or
Hill. High school geography textbooks tell us that when a river
meanders and turns back on its course, the outer banks of the
river obviously get eroded by the waters of the river, but it
also exposes the inner banks, which get deposited with sand and
sediments. In the mid-14th century, a minister of the
Vijayanagara Empire, Madhava Raya, supposedly built the Madhava
Mantri dam. This created lower water stages downstream and
exposed the deposits of the river that forced the Cauvery to
shift its course. This, coupled with large scale deforestation
in the region, created fine sand and silt which got trapped in
the topographical area of Talakad bounded closely by the tall
temple structures and gradually started accumulating over the
entire region. Archaeologists supplement the theory by virtue of
their excavations, which reveal that it was no catastrophe that
killed people in large numbers or buried their remains in the
sands, but a natural and gradual process. The shifting course of
the Cauvery in a westward direction exposed the inner banks as
stated earlier. But it also eroded the outer banks on which
stood Malingi, which was perhaps what was meant by Malingi
becoming a terrible whirlpool.
The curse of Rani Alamelamma remains shrouded in mystery. The
third part of her curse on the Wodeyar genealogy is also
something that doesn’t make rational sense. Especially because
the very object of her curse, Raja Wodeyar, begot sons! If the
impact of the curse was to get diluted in its very first
occurrence, one can comfortably doubt its veracity and its
effect on future generations. The Wodeyar lineage (till the last
ruler of the Dynasty of 15 kings who succeeded Raja Wodeyar)
shows that a possible impact of the Kings dying sonless might
have happened only thrice in its family tree. Even in these
cases, most often the Kings did not have legitimate sons from
the Crown Queen. But the countless concubines or other queens
had sons, but they would not have been acceptable as heirs to
the Throne. It is but natural for a King with so many wives and
concubines to spend the bulk of his time and divert his
affection to them rather than the principal queen. Could that
and not the curse have then been the reason for the absence of a
male heir? Also, during the 18th Century, when the Kingdom was
usurped, it was alleged that the young Kings who had been placed
as puppets on the Throne were surreptitiously murdered by the
usurper by the time they reached their puberty. Obviously such
young lads could not have had sons at such an early age,
necessitating an adoption from the collateral line.
Thus, while every rational argument goes against the myth of
Alamelamma and her existence, she still continues to capture the
imagination of people.But the imagery of an innocent woman being
wronged by a man intoxicated with power, and the subsequent
suicide of the lady in question, is too strong not to affect the
psyche of the people. Perhaps for this very reason, despite all
the questions being raised about the historical validity and
rationale of the Alamelamma legend, it still continues to be
narrated as folklore with such conviction as merits a documented
fact.
Meanwhile for reasons of geological phenomena or the curse,
Talakad stands as a mute spectator to this sudden metamorphosis,
wailing amidst a million dunes with the fables of the past
swishing with the wind across its arid expanses. The township of
Talakad to this day lies submerged in sand dunes, a town on the
banks of the river Cauvery that bears the brunt of its hoary
past.
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The Controversial Sultan
It is pertinent to mention that unlike most other historical
characters, Tippu Sultan and certain aspects of his life
continue to ruffle feathers to this day. In September 2006, the
Karnataka Minister of Higher Education Mr Shankaramurthy made
some vague comments about Tippu Sultan having been anti-Kannada,
saying that he had ensured the obliteration of Kannada by the
imposition and adoption of Persian as the court language. This
was enough to send the so-called secularist brigade into a
frenzy. Chat shows on television, articles in newspapers and
general public debate was diverted from the Minister's
irrelevant comment to the larger issue of how Tippu was actually
one of the most secular and progressive ruler of his times. Both
sides hardened their stands and what followed was a free-for-all
washing of dirty linen in public by the supposed intellectuals
and thinkers. Voices of reason and rationalism usually tend to
get subsumed by this kind of high-decibel frenzy, which anyway
aims to cultivate and nurture strategic vote-banks.
Tippu's secularism, or lack thereof, is a subject of great
interest, and so merits much focus in this volume. In India,
secularism is often little more than the branding of another as
communal. We too resort to this game of vivisecting history and
categorising the heroes and heroines of the past into air-tight
compartments of secular and communal, forgetting most often that
they were also human beings after all, and, like any of us, were
given to their moments of weakness and greatness alike. Two
diametrically opposite schools of thought dominate the current
scene of Indian historical research and debate. At one extreme
we have the so-called left-liberal and rational historians for
whom history is but class struggle. Religion and related matters
do not hold any significance for them. Their notion of
secularism extends to a level where they tend to over-simplify
and at times undermine a lot of things that have been revered
over the centuries. Completely distinct from this approach is
that of the supposed right-wing, nationalist historians who
would see everything through the lens of religion and judge
people thereby. The slanging match between these two groups
continues as each tries to portray his version as the truth.
Even with respect to Tippu, both sides have arguments and
counter-arguments to buttress their claims.
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The Dewans of Mysore
The Dewans of Mysore were a stark contrast to the avaricious
Dalavoys who had held similar positions of eminence in the
polity. Unlike the semi-literate, militarily trained, ambitious
Dalavoys, this new genre of officers were suave,
English-educated, well-read, exposed to modern Western
philosophies of freedom, liberty and justice and were appointees
of the Raj, rather than self-appointed dictators of the kingdom.
They knew that their professional performance would be the only
way to earn fame, rather than the earlier Dalavoys, infamous for
storming palace doors with elephants and deposing the king
unceremoniously. Education and exposure ensured that the Dewans
had a broader vision of development, one that included the
welfare of common people and projects of public utility. These
measures, carried out successfully over decades of nurturing by
the Dewans, catapulted Mysore into the forefront of successful
states of imperial India.
In describing the successes and achievements of the Dewans, we
must not forget to praise the foresight of the kings who made
all this possible. Rather than the autocratic kings of earlier
centuries, who appointed and dismissed Dalavoys at whim, the
later Wodeyars, especially Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, gave their
Dewans the freedom and power to make Mysore a better, a more
modern kingdom. In an environment free of interference, with a
supportive and broad-minded king, the Dewans could make full use
of their powers to make a difference during their reign. So,
while the planning and implementation of various developmental
projects is to the Dewans credit, we must not neglect the
significant role played by their kings in this scenario.
By the turn of the 19th century, Mysore was poised to take off
into the skies of progress and development. Her fundamentals
were all right politically stable, socially progressive and
administered by a set of remarkable men who called themselves
her Kings and Dewans. The Rendition of Mysore on 25 March 1881
followed about 50 years of progressive and efficient
administration by the British Commissioners. The Commissioners
stint had, to a large extent, laid the foundations for a modern
Mysore. If one were to take stock of the financial health of the
state in 1910-12 vis-a-vis the Rendition, most of the fiscal
parameters point to a surge, thereby bolstering the statement we
set out to make about Mysore being poised for a confident
take-off.
On the downside, the period was marred by famines, with the one
in 1875-78 the severest of its kind in the region in half a
century. It cost the state exchequer Rs 160 lakh and embroiled
the government in debts of over Rs 80 lakh. The province also
lost one million people to the famine and subsequent epidemics.
From 50,55,402 in 1871, Mysore's population fell to 41,86,188 by
1881, a fall of 17 per cent. The number stabilised, however, to
58,06,193 by 1911.
The demographics of the state also saw interesting change
patterns during this time. The population in the towns, which
was about 13 per cent of the state's total population, fell to
11 per cent in 1911. This could be attributed to the lack of
employment opportunities in towns and migration to cities, a
trend that caught up during this time. The agriculture-dependent
population in Mysore rose from 33 lakhs to 42 lakhs between 1881
and 1911. The same period also saw a healthy increase of 79 per
cent in the area occupied for agriculture, mainly extensive and
not intensive agriculture, to about 74,38,463 acres in 1911-12.
These changing socio-economic dimensions had a natural impact on
the state's revenues as well. From about 50 lakhs at the time of
transfer of power to the royal family after the fall of Tippu,
the revenue rose to 101 lakhs by the time of Rendition.
Including the accidental income that was accrued due to the gold
mines at Kolar, the revenue figures jumped to a healthy 247
lakhs by 1910-11. Between Rendition and the early decades of the
20th century, the land revenue also increased from 60 lakhs to
106.5 lakhs; excise saw a hike from 10 to 67 lakhs and income
from forests shot up to 21 lakhs from 7 lakhs. But along with
the rise in revenues, the expenditure also doubled from 101
lakhs to 223 lakhs in the said period. Law and justice, jails,
education, medical expenses and public works were the main
expense items that saw an increase. This was comforting,
however, as the expense was intended to create a sound
socio-economic infrastructure for the state and its people.
Education in particular saw a healthy increase in fund
allocations from Rs 3,91,028 in 1881 to Rs 18,79,135 in 1911, a
whopping 80 per cent increase, clearly demonstrating where the
administration's priorities lay. Consequently, the school-going
population within the kingdom of Mysore also increased from
53,872 in 1881 to 1,38,153 in 1911.
The railways was an area that was given primary importance by
both the Commissioners and the rulers of Mysore. It might have
begun as a means of transport for the British (especially
between Mysore and their headquarters at Madras) and as a
facilitator of trade activities, but in the long run it played a
vital role in building a robust economy for the state. The
railways, which covered only 50 miles in 1880-81 rose to 411
miles in 1910-11 and the capital outlay on them in the same
period from 25 to 250 lakhs-a sharp rise indeed! The mileage of
the province's road networks were also doubled since the time of
Rendition. Channel irrigation was extended during this period in
the Cauvery and Kapani valleys, numerous tanks were restored and
repaired, the two major works of public interest-the Cauvery
Power Scheme which was a pioneering electrical undertaking in
the whole of India and the Marikanave Reservoir, also one of its
kind in contemporary times were completed. Urban development and
planning, especially in the cities of Bangalore and Mysore,
began receiving royal attention. Industries like the gold mines
of Kolar, manganese mines of Shimoga and a few cotton and other
mills sprang up across the state.
The officials of the Madras Presidency would often remark that
Mysoreans resided in one of the most beautiful and picturesque
provinces of the country.
While the above description of the state's financial health in
the early decades of the 20th century sets a context for
discussing the enormous strides Mysore made on all fronts, it is
important to delve deeper into the various aspects of this
growth saga.
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