How an eminent British newspaper described Kerala in 1906

In 1905-6, George, the Prince of Wales, who would later become King George V, visited India for four months. The tour generated a fresh wave of interest in the subcontinent back in Britain, and quite a few correspondents travelled across India, often to remote or lesser-known parts of the country.

Among those who travelled to write about India was a correspondent of The Times, London. The article, published in March 1906, reveals a great appreciation for the natural beauty of the Travancore and Cochin states, as well as contempt for the caste system.

The special correspondent had first heard of Kollam when he read the 14th-century account of Franciscan friar Giovanni de' Marignolli, who wrote about how the city supplied pepper to the rest of the world. With Kollam’s days as a major trading hub behind it, the Times correspondent found the city underwhelming.

“‘A very noble city’ is not quite the description one would apply to this rambling township of some 16,000 inhabitants, though it is one of the residencies of His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore, and a fair amount of trade is done in its small port,” the correspondent wrote. “But the vicissitudes of time have not impaired the natural beauty of its position, embowered in shady groves of tropical vegetation between the great wind-swept of the Indian Ocean on the one side and the placid land-locked lagoons on the other."

It had been only a year since the ancient city entered the railway age, with the Kollam-Sengottai line opening in 1905. The correspondent said the line which put the region into “direct contact with the “outer world,” did not disturb the social atmosphere of “a country where the conditions of life probably still approximate more closely than in any part of the peninsula to the India of John (Giovanni) de’ Marignolli’s days”.

The correspondent seemed disappointed that the Prince of Wales had visited only Madras and Mysore during his tour of India. He commented, “But to see the South of India, to realise its picturesque interest, its unique beauty, and, above all, the fascination which attaches to the survival of an ancient civilization and of ancient races and customs, almost untouched by the waves of migration and conquest that have repeatedly swept over other parts of India, one must travel down to the great Dravidian shrines of Tanjore and Madura and Ramesvaram on the eastern watershed of the peninsula, or through the Lake Region of the West Coast into the old-world States of Cochin and Travancore.”

One hundred and twenty years later, this route would still make for a very interesting holiday for those looking to discover a couple of parts of the universe known as India.

The Times correspondent also wrote about the fable of Kerala being formed by Parashuraman. “It is a graceful legend, of which the poetry must appeal to anyone familiar with the fairytale-like combination of water-girt land and land-locked water, which from the foot of the Western Ghats to the Indian Ocean forms the best part of both Cochin and Travancore.”

He seemed totally fascinated by the water-dominated landscape of southern Kerala. “Where the water predominates, a thousand islands covered with forests of lofty coconut palms float on far-spreading lagoons, whose outer reaches are sheltered by a mere strip of land from the ceaseless beat of the ocean.”

The correspondent described the backwaters as a “network of channels, sometimes so narrow that the feathery fronts of the palm trees on either side spread their canopy of shade from bank to bank”.

Such a description of southern Kerala would have surely motivated the wealthy in cold and grey Britain to set forth on the long voyage by steamship to take in the delights of paradise.

What is more fascinating though, is that at that point in history, the waterways were the primary

mode of travel between Travancore and Cochin. The Times correspondent observed that under such “primitive conditions", the “traffic of this favoured region is extraordinarily heavy”.

The railways would indeed change the way Malayalis travelled, but the train ride connecting the two major cities of Kerala offers a glimpse of what it was like to travel by water 120 years ago.

Even as heavy commercial “development” eats into Kerala’s nature, the serenity and beauty of the state still shine through, especially for those visitors who come from some of the more crowded parts of India.