A Madras Governor’s diary and 1880s Kerala

Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff had a long career in the British colonial bureaucracy, serving in India as the under-secretary of state from 1868 to 1874. Seven years later, he became the governor of Madras.

The governorship of the presidency, which included vast parts of southern India, gave Duff the chance to interact with the British and Indian elites as well as the privilege of frequent travel.

Duff meticulously maintained a personal journal when living in India and the entries from his time as governor were compiled into a book titled 'Notes from a Diary 1881-1886'.

“I have seen, in just under two years, all our twenty-two district capitals, and I have visited Travancore, Cochin, Sandur and Mysore,” he wrote. “I have travelled in the course of eight tours of inspection, occupying one hundred and seventy-four days, over something like nine thousand miles in and about the Presidency…”

Like any high-ranking colonial official of the time, Duff enjoyed hosting dinner parties. One of his regular guests was Travancore Maharaja Visakham Thirunal Rama Varma, whom he described as “the ablest as well as the most important of South Indian princes.”

One anecdote about Duff’s interaction with the maharaja stands out in his diaries. The governor decided to pay a visit to the Travancore ruler, who was in Madras at that time. “He was lodged in a house opposite the Cathedral, and the chimes played ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ all the time I was there,” Duff wrote. “As he was dressed from head to foot in cloth of gold, the hymn had a certain ludicrous appropriateness.”

On another occasion, Duff organised a ball at his residence, where he asked guests “to come, as much as possible, in dresses made of Indian materials.” The governor boasted about how the “two Ranees of Travancore were present,” calling it “an unheard-of event.”

It seems the maharaja was all game for the ceremonial pageantry of the British.

Duff mentioned awarding the “Insignia of a Knight Grand Commander of the Star of India” to the Travancore ruler. “Duke Johann, Count Von Sierstorpff, and Baron Von Tiele added not a little to the pageant, dressed, as they were, in the gorgeous uniforms of the Prussian Hussars and Lancers of the Guard,” he wrote.

It must have made for a fascinating sight for these European officers to be in such attire in the tropical heat of south India long before the advent of air conditioning.

Duff was a keen observer of the nature and landscapes of the places he visited, often describing the “enchanting scenery” that he witnessed. He mentioned a place called Camp Gorge, near Trivandrum, where he spent a few days in September 1882.

“We sat in an abandoned coffee estate, rapidly passing into jungle, with the primaeval forest all around,” he wrote. “A great black eagle sailed above, and I heard a tree, whose hour had come, crash down with its own weight and that of years.” He also wrote about spotting a golden Oriole for the first time and how Mahseer fish near a riverside Kerala temple were so tame that they almost came on shore for crumbs and rice.

Duff paid close attention to the trees of Kerala. “From Shoranur to Trichore, Mimosa sensitiva, the sensitive plant, introduced, but introduced more than two hundred years ago, was extremely common; so were two plants which the natives called Kua, apparently Zingiberacea, which I have not yet identified,” he added.

He said that one of the “after-pleasures” of the journey was reading Hendrik Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus.
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Duff travelled often in the rapidly expanding railway network in southern India.

“The European mail met us at Palghat, and I had pretty well finished my letters before we had got to the Walliar station, where ‘the tiger was not jumping about the platform,’ though doubtless in the woods hard by, which looked enchantingly green and beautiful,” he wrote.

Duff was referring to a tragic incident that took place in 1868, when a train driver named John Wilson was mauled to death by a tiger that leaped in his engine when the train was near the Walayar station.
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Another place that Duff took a liking for was Kollam or Quilon as it was then called. He wrote, “The Quilon Residency, which looks like a Grosvenor Square House, stands on the edge of a lovely reach of the lagoon known as Loch Lomond.”

The lagoon he mentioned is the Kureepuzha Kayal, which has been likened to Loch Lomond in Scotland.

“The prettiest view is just as one rounds a promontory on which the tomb of a retriever, who is said to have saved his master’s life at that spot,” he added.

As governor, Duff also made it a point to attend ceremonies of Kerala’s diverse religious communities, including the Cochin Jews and various Christian denominations.

In Quilon he went for a Syrian mass in the morning, a Catholic benediction in the afternoon and an Anglican service in the evening. “The Syrian mass was, we were told, partly in Syro-Chaldaic, partly in Malayalam,” Duff wrote, adding that the factions of the church that were quarrelling at that time put aside their differences for him.

Duff’s five years as governor of Madras were marred with problems and controversies and he was accused of being disconnected with the people of the presidency. However, one of his major achievements was the expansion of forest conservancy in southern India.

After his tenure, Duff moved back to Britain, from where he compiled his diary entries into the book, which was published in 1899.
(Ajay Kamalakaran is the author of ‘A Week in the Life of Svitlana’ and ‘Globetrotting for Love and Other Stories from Sakhalin Island)