PERSONALITY
FASHION
SPECIAL
COLUMNISTS
CHAT JOCKEYS
ARCHIVES

The Princess and The Commoner

It was a wedding like any other. Only the exploding flash bulbs of an overzealous media set it apart from the ordinary.

The event was an attention-grabber because of the dramatis personae involved. Seema, the bride, belonged to the Cochin royal family which, in itself, is not a newsy detail. But Manoj, the hub of attention, was a Pulaya.

The royal-Pulaya wedding caused a flutter in the local media. The couple was besieged by reporters on the eve of the wedding, turning the April 27 nuptial function into a public event.

Seen as a bold move by a member of the Cochin royalty, it is an index of the sea change in Kerala's social attitudes. Women of royal descent, identified by the surname Varma, denoting the Kshatriya caste, are bound by convention to marry Namboodiris, located at the apex of the caste hierarchy. But this is a case of a latter-day princess choosing her husband from the bottom of the social scale, who belongs to a caste that was, at one time, considered "untouchable".

The media, by and large, tried to be politically correct. It hailed the marriage as a path-breaking event. It was a sign that the Cochin royal family, faced with a society in transition, was responding to the imperatives of social change. There were no visible signs of dissent or disapproval from the royal fraternity based in the temple town of Tripunithura, 15 km from Kochi.

But Manoj is alert to the undercurrents. "The marriage has evoked media interest only because it is a royal-Pulaya wedding," he says. "It is the low caste angle that has been played up."

Suddenly, the complexion of the event changes. Does all the hullabaloo mask certain deep-seated negative social attitudes?

Manoj is convinced it does. "People are still conscious about caste and untouchability," he says. "Otherwise, this wedding should not arouse this kind of attention." He buttresses his argument with references to the recent history of the Cochin royal family. For this is not the first time royal women have married out of caste. Three princesses married Christians and yet another chose a Muslim husband, embraced Islam and moved to court for a share of the royal property.

None of these events got the kind of media coverage this wedding has. "The other weddings were more sensational," says Manoj. "Those girls married outside their religion. Our marriage took place within the Hindu fold. Then why are we receiving this undue attention? Obviously, it is the low caste factor."

Manoj, who runs a desktop printing unit, does not agree that the wedding has been viewed as a progressive event. "No paper has said this sort of marriage should occur more often. This shows that the concern is not primarily social. The media is not really trying to promote intercaste marriages. It is only curious as to why a royal Varma girl would want to marry a Pulaya boy."

The only novelty he is willing to concede is the fact that this wedding was the first arranged marriage of its kind. Arranged marriage? Manoj flies in the face of the general impression that theirs was a love match. "Not so," he insists. "This is a misconception. Seema and I had known each other for barely two weeks before our wedding. A relative of hers came over to our house and broached the subject of marriage. That was in 1992. We were still students. It was decided to postpone wedding plans till we had finished our studies. So you can say that it was an arranged marriage, a marriage that was fixed by the respective families."

How did they first meet? "We neither on campus nor in the computer class, as has been widely reported." He is not prepared to reveal the circumstances in which he met the princess.

The newlyweds are clearly ill at case under the spotlight. They are highly offended by the intrusion into their privacy and resent the overtones of caste. "My father brought me up to believe that human beings are equal," says Seema. "The media reaction to our marriage focuses on our caste. The marriage is not a sensational event to the local people of the area."

Perhaps not. But the wedding has a cultural and historical underpinning that cannot be wished away. It is certainly a talking point, however muted, among the 800-odd members of the Cochin royal family scattered around Tripunithara. They represent a community trapped in a time warp. Leading insular lives set in a maze of tiny "palaces" (Varma abodes are still called palaces) that cram the walled Fort area of the town, these families are the living relics of a royal line that dates back 800 years to the first Chera empire.

After the break-up of the empire, Cochin was ruled by a succession of descendants of the Chera kings. The last raja of Cochin was Rama Varma Parikshit, a reputed Sanskrit scholar, who died in 1964. Since then, the Cochin royalty slowly faded into anonymity, dissolving its identity in the burgeoning population of the temple town.

Many Varma families still cling to the rituals of yore, which closely resemble those of the Namboodiris. The Varma-Namboodiri cultural nexus, rooted in Tripunithura, symbolises the last repository of upper-caste sentiment.

Says Captain Paramu Das, Manoj's father, "I am the only lower caste resident in a neighbourhood dominated by brahmins and Namboodiris." Land is a zealously protected symbol of upper-caste bonding in Tripunithura. It is virtually impossible for an outsider to infiltrate the community. The cash-strapped Namboodiri who put his house up for sale in 1978 did not know the caste credentials of Paramu Das when he accepted his offer.

Today, Seema, whose uncles once ruled Cochin, lives with Manoj in the house that Paramu Das bought. Normally, this should not make news. But somewhere in the recesses of the social psyche, it still does.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier

Tell us what you think of this article