Historical Fiction and Questions of Sovereignty:

Aesthetic Form and Memory Making

in C. V. Raman Pillai’s Writings

Udaya Kumar

This paper considers the fictional and political writings of C. V. Raman Pillai

(1858-1922, widely known as C. V.), whose trilogy of historical romances

Marthandavarma (1891), Dharmaraja (1913), and Ramarajabahadur (1918-19)

presented celebratory accounts of two eighteenth century Kings of Travancore

Marthandavarma (reg. 1729-58) and Ramavarma (reg. 1758-98). In the two

decades that separated his first two novels, C. V. published several essays of

political criticism under the title Videshiyamedhavitvam (Foreign Rule) opposing

the appointment of non-native Brahmins as Dewans of Travancore. Although his

three historical romances were ostensibly focused on Travancore Kings, C. V.

saw Dharmaraja and Ramarajabahadur as the first two novels in a planned

trilogy on the eighteenth century Nayar Dewan Kesava Pillai (1745-99), better

known as “Raja Kesavadas” after an honorific conferred on him by the British. In

addition to this shift in focus from the King to the Nayar Minister, a new level of

complexity is found in C. V.’s fiction in its recurrent, obsessive preoccupation

with a family of rebel Nayar chiefs (Madampimar) who rise from the ashes, novel

after novel, to confront royal power. While images of Nayar loyalty, valour and

governance appear as direct objects of celebration, the novels also manifest a

subterranean strain of heroic mourning for forms of Nayar power destroyed by

Marthandavarma’s consolidation of the Travancore state. The paper argues that

tensions between these two configurations of sovereignty underlay C. V.’s

fictional and political projects. In his historical romances, through a deft use of

stylized narration and visual and performance schema drawn from classical and

folk traditions from the region, C. V. created modes of characterisation and

discourse that brought together praise and mourning, Nayar assertion and

ritualised royal acclamation. The paper analyses some aspects of the aesthetic-

political work performed in C. V.’s historical novels.