When Thrissur staked a claim to be Kerala’s capital

A lot of Malayalis hold the beautiful city of Thrissur in high esteem for cultural, spiritual and nostalgic reasons. For those from Palakkad, the city was the first religious stop and breakfast halt on the way to Guruvayoor. The Thrissur Pooram, the annual grand festival of the city, pulls crowds from around the world. It is also an important city for the followers of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church as well as other Malayali Christian communities.

Long before the modern era, the city drew all sorts of visitors, from foreign traders to missionaries and invaders. Not many people know that Thrissur was the capital of the princely state of Cochin for a brief period of time. It remained an important religious and cultural hub in the colonial era.

Thanks to the Vadakunnathaswamy Temple, the Pooram and the city’s churches, Thrissur also regularly made international headlines in the post-Independence era. When the Kalamandalam, which is in the Thrissur district, celebrated its silver jubilee in 1955, the celebrations were inaugurated by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru. This was a fitting tribute to the institution, which has greatly helped popularise Kathakali, Mohiniyattam and Kudiyattam.

A 1955 AP report with a Trichur (as it was then spelt) dateline said Nehru attended election rallies in the city and staged a “stinging attack” on communists in what was their hotbed. The news agency said the prime minister responded to the “reds” who were trying to manipulate the fact that he wished Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin well when they came to India that year.

“Wishing the Soviet leaders well does not mean that we should lock up our own minds and intelligence and forget our own experience and our country,” the prime minister was quoted by the news agency as saying at a rally. He also said that India wanted to learn some things from Russia, the co-operative system from China and industrial policies from the United States. A Reuters report from Thrissur even quoted Nehru as calling Indian communists “reactionaries clinging to outmoded theories.”

Thrissur made it to the world news for all sorts of reasons from horrible road accidents to the visit of dignitaries, but it would have become a far more important place if a strong 1955 proposal had worked out. In September of that year, the municipal council of Trichur asked the government of Travancore-Cochin and the union government to make it the capital of the soon-to-be-formed state of Kerala.

“The resolution stated that Trichur was situated in a central place in Kerala, and culturally, too, it was a premier town,” The Indian Mail reported on September 23, 1955. “No difference of opinion was likely on the issue that the capital of Kerala State should be situated in a central place, the resolution added.”

The participants in the meeting, chaired by Dr C M Joseph, also requested the union government to include the construction of the Thrissur-Kollengode and Thrissur-Guruvayur railway lines, as well an aerodrome for the city in the second five-year plan. Another request was for the planned national highway to pass through the town and not skip it.

In all fairness, Thrissur had a genuine case to be the capital of Kerala. A place like Kasaragod would not have felt like a distant and remote part of the state like it does now on account of Trivandrum being at the other end of Kerala.

Thrissur is almost a midpoint between the northern and southern cities. Its proximity to the Cochin also means that the hills of Idukki district aren’t too far. The city also had the history and the culture to back the capital claim, but that wasn’t enough when the decision was made in favour of Trivandrum.

Of course, being a capital city is not always a blessing. Capitals are a magnet for some of the worst elements of society – power and money-hungry people looking to seize resources. Seats of political power also attract large crowds, but Trivandrum, or rather Thiruvananthapuram, stayed one of the most pleasant cities in all of Asia for several decades. Then came the builder lobby that set its sights on the city’s once tranquil environs.

Thrissur still has an undeniable charm and cultural institutions such as the Kerala Sahitya Akademi that make it stand out from the rest of the state. However, with the greater Thrissur area now estimated to have a population of more than three million, high-rise buildings are very much a part of its changed landscape.