For long, history writing in India had been north-centric. The Southern empires, for all their glorious past, used to be detailed either cursorily or, at best, as an appendage to the Mughal/Sultanate adventures in south of the Vindhyas. This has since been somewhat corrected, the flow of books on the southern empires in recent times being a good enough proof.

The book under review is one such attempt. It tells the story of the life and mission of the maker of modern Travancore, the legendary Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1706-1758). Among the long line of maharajas in Travancore, he was the tallest as much for his great miliary adventures as for his enlightened reformist governance. His life had been tumultuous and his mission epochal.

And yet, recorded history on him and his remarkable achievements is confined to a couple of academic tomes as part of Travancore history by local historians and a few historical fictions in Malayalam one of the most popular and widely read being C V Raman Pillai’s eponym published way back in 1891.

Marthanda Varma has a counterpart in the Cochin royal lineage, Sri Rama Varma (1751 -1805), popularly known as Shakthan Thampuran {strong king). They shared more or less a common career graph and, not to be missed, personal traits. Both took charge when their states were hopelessly governed, with empty treasury, chaotic law and order and gutless governance. But they left behind a strong state, socially cohesive, economically vibrant and politically stable. Even so, both came to be more reviled than revered because they stood for a strong state devoid of popular frills and favours and any defiance was met with brutal and merciless reprisal. No wonder, the good they did was interred with their bones and the evil lived ever after.

It is actually a chance encounter the authors had a couple of years ago with a member of the Travancore royal family that ignited their interest in Marthanda Varma and his life and mission that finally ended in this book.

Military campaigns

A good part of it, therefore, deals with his military campaigns, of the battles he won and lost, of the compromises he made with his adversaries when faced with defeat but only to conquer them later and his insatiable hunger for conquests. He had dreams of bringing the entire Malabar coast under him, a la the Cheras, but dropped it because of failing health and the untimely demise of his Chanakya-like Dewan, Ramayan Dalawa, the one and only man he fully relied on and who never failed him.

Marthanda Varma had had a charmed life. His escapes from several attempts on his life by his powerful adversaries had been incredibly providential. But it never prevented him from leading from the front, a rare quality seldom seen among the peers of his time. He also had an uncanny ability to identify people with brain and brawn and who served him with unflinching loyalty.

Defeating the Dutch

Two events in Marthanda Varma’s remarkable life are major milestones in Kerala history. One is the battle of Colachel (August, 1741) in which he roundly humbled the then reigning European power, the Dutch, and, second, his final act of dedicating the kingdom he had built to his, and, later the state’s, deity, Lord Sri Padmanabha. Both had much wider ramifications than are normally granted.

For one, Colachel changed the socio-political landscape of the state, aside from marking the first ever defeat of a reigning European power by an unknown Asian native state. There was realignment of power structure with the innumerable regional satraps and local chieftains who had had a free run till then being subsumed and brought to order by the royal families of Travancore, Cochin and Calicut. Socially, it set in motion the process of ending the dominance of feudal nobility in all walks of life.

The dedication of his kingdom, on the other hand, was an act of atonement the why and how of which is well explained by the authors. One unintended fallout of it was it came handy to the last ruling king of Travancore, Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, ably helped by his Dewan, C P Ramaswami Iyer, to stall signing the Instrument of Accession with the Union Government by arguing that the state belonged to the Lord and not him. As events showed, it didn’t pass muster.

(The reviewer is a senior Kochi-based journalist)

Check the book out on amazon.

Published on October 19, 2025