A backward directed amalgamation

Kerala had been formed by joining the Malabar district of Madras state with Travancore-Cochin state at the southern end of India, in the year 1956. Travancore and Cochin had been independent kingdoms during the British rule, till 1947. Malabar was under the Madras state which was one of the three presidencies of British India.

So, even though every year the people of Travancore and Cochin do celebrate the Independence Day of India on the 15th of August, the fact remains that they were not part of the British Empire, in the strict sense of the word. For, they had their own kings, who ruled them with a lot of restriction and controls, most of them connected to their caste.

In the British ruled parts, almost all such restrictions and controls were not in statutory force. What really happened in 1947 was that the two native kingdoms were made to join the Indian Union under duress. There is no truth in the claims that they had acquired independence from the British rule.

We moved to Travancore in the year 1970. In many ways it was a revelation on the difference between British administration and a typical Indian one. In Travancore, inefficiency was a part and parcel of government service. All people, other than acknowledged persons and other government employees, were treated like dirt. In Malabar, at least in the non-uniformed services, the ideology that all non-governmental persons were dirt was not there, even though, in the local society, the language did paint a large percentage of the population with dirt.