[Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma, though little-known in Kerala today, was one of the most vocal, bold, and well-read feminists of the first generation in Kerala. She paid an enormous price for her unbowed attitude, but her life was so much richer for the expansion of the mind she gained through travels all over India and in Europe as well as her deep interest in the most exciting debates of her times, including contraception, women’s rights, and nationalism. I have translated some of her articles which may be read here, but below is an excerpt from her autobiography Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum (The Wayfarer and the Wayside Lamps). She studied in Queen Mary’s College, Madras in the early 1920s and remembered vividly the many great women and men she heard and met in the city which shaped her deeply cosmopolitan outlook.
Kalyanikkutty Amma (also known as Mrs Kuttan Nair) wrote this autobiography when she was nearly 90 and won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi’s prize for it. My translation of this work is forthcoming from Zubaan, Delhi.]
It was the Khilafat movement that caused Maulana Muhammed Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali to visit Kerala. Unfortunately, the turn that the movement took here that led to the Mappilla Rebellion, and the horrific ‘Wagon Tragedy’ that followed, along with the completely unjust incarceration of M P Narayana Menon fanned the flames of rage against the authorities that had already been growing in me. I had a chance to express it, mildly but still, during the visit of the Prince of Wales (Prince Edward who had just become Edward VIII) when he passed by our college with his royal entourage.
Our Principal Miss Delahey, an Englishwoman of elite origins, was a passionate royalist. Insulting the Prince of Wales, the future British Emperor, was in her eyes, nothing short of sedition. She had issued orders to all students of the college and inmates of the hostel to assemble outside the main gate to greet him respectfully.
I did not obey her. I was a student of the college and she could have initiated any disciplinary action. She came to check several times if any student had stayed back, but I hid myself and evaded her eye.
But all this while there was medical student who openly defied her authority, staying back in the hostel. She was Thalikakkattil Parukkuttyamma, a native of Irinjalakkuda; she later joined government service as a medical doctor and married Mr Raman (Raman Pillai) who was the Deputy Director of Education. She passed away after a few years.
Parukkutty Amma was already a brave woman, and besides, her studies had almost ended and our principal did not wield much power over her. Therefore, she openly sat in the hostel veranda, visible to all. And not just that, it was she who devised the plan by which I escaped Ms Delahey’s inspection.
Most of those who returned to the hostel were highly gratified by the ‘sacred glimpse’ they caught of the Prince. But some of them said – “Don’t know why – the Prince’s face looked glum.”
When I visited England in 1936 as part of a group, I realized that the resentment I displayed towards British dominance was misplaced. The reason was that the Prince of Wales was deeply loved by all who came to know him closely. His attitude and behaviour were not of the average Englishman; this I realized during the time I spent in London.
It is generally thought that an Englishman cannot get close with a foreigner the way Europeans on the other side of the English Channel do. Secondly, Englishmen who are strangers, in order to speak to each other, must be introduced by a third person (it helps even more if the third person were also an Englishman). There are many funny stories about this aspect of the English nature – the story below is one such. You may have heard it perhaps, but let me retell it here:
Two Irishmen, two Englishmen, and two Americans were stranded on a desert island. Within five minutes, the two Americans began to speak passionately about golf. Five minutes passed, and the Irish debated politics and were at each other’s necks. But even after two whole days, the Englishmen did not exchange a word. That, apparently, was because there was no third Englishman to introduce them!
This of course may be an exaggeration. But I have heard some Europeans remark that “the Englishman’s distance with other human beings will end only if the English Channel is filled up!”
But Edward VIII was quite different. He was reportedly at ease with others; he could make friends disregarding status or protocol. He is said to have visited workers, unannounced and alone, to inquire about their welfare before his coronation. I have heard that he was much loved and respected by them.
There is an incident that is said to have happened in a British Colony in Africa when he visited the place as the Prince of Wales which illustrated his easy going nature that was open to friendly interaction with anyone.
Elaborate preparations to greet the future Emperor were on there. The police examined the passports of all visitors very carefully. On the day before the meeting in which he was to be welcomes, he is said to have gone out for a walk by himself. A policeman approached him and demanded to examine his passport. The Prince had forgotten it and so he introduced himself, saying to the policeman, “I am the Prince of Wales.” To which he received the sneering reply, “If you are the Prince of Wales, I am your father George V!” Then he was sent away with some warnings.
The same policeman was present at the meeting next day at which the Prince was to be welcomed. Seeing the Prince, the man became completely nervous. The Prince’s eyes had fallen upon him, too. After the meeting, the he was summoned by the Prince. He went up, trembling. As the assembled audience watched, Prince Edward leapt up to shake hands with him, exclaiming, “Hello, Dad, how are you?”
It is doubtful whether he left the Crown and settled down in Paris merely to marry the woman he loved. Is it not true that it was the greed for an empire that drove Napolean, who claimed that his wife was dearer to him than his very life, to abandon her and marry the Princess of Austria? (As is narrated in Abbot’s Life of Napolean). Some individuals who rose up in life as well as Emperors have done the same.
But maybe one must think that Edward VIII did not value a royal position much. There is much resemblance between him and King Swathi Tirunal of Travancore. Both cared little for traditional rituals and mores. They did not like to be turned into mere decorative objects devoid of individual freedom.
Swatantryavaadini 