Manu S. Pillai > Quotes

“We want our Public Service to be public and a service,”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“My visit to Her Highness was an agreeable surprise for me. Instead of being ushered into the presence of an over-decorated woman, sporting diamond pendants and necklaces, I found myself in the presence of a modest young woman who relied not upon jewels or gaudy dress for beauty but on her own naturally well formed features and exactness of manners. Her room was as plainly furnished as she was plainly dressed. Her severe simplicity became an object of my envy. She seemed to me an object lesson for many a prince and many a millionaire whose loud ornamentation, ugly looking diamonds, rings and studs and still more loud and almost vulgar furniture offend the taste and present a terrible and sad contrast between them and the masses from whom they derive their wealth.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“self-image did not always reflect lived reality”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History

“Sometime at the beginning of his long and eventful reign, the Vijayanagar emperor Devaraya II (r. 1425–46) summoned a council of all his principal advisers and high nobility. And to this gathering he expressed wonder at how, despite his country being ‘in extent, population, and revenue’ vastly superior to the dominions of the Bahmani Sultans, his predecessors were ‘reduced to pay them tribute’. Some with foolish beliefs declared that Muslims possessed a divine mandate ‘for thirty thousand years’ to dominate the universe, while others, with more rational instincts, pointed out that the strength of the Bahmanis came from their horses and mounted archers. ‘Dew”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“Hormuz was already known as ‘Hurumanji’.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“In the same year Ambar suddenly descended on the Mughals with 50,000 horses and sacked Surat, the principal port of the Mughal empire, giving inspiration to the famous raid by Shivaji on that city five decades later.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“eastern lands. Persians arrived, as did Arabs and Central Asians. Some graduated to princely ranks, while others soared to gratifying aristocratic heights. But among the legions of men absorbed by the Bahmanis and their heirs were also Africans who came primarily from the land we now call Ethiopia.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“The Tughluqs had shattered the south and vanquished its old houses. And from the doldrums emerged Vijayanagar and the Bahmani Sultanate that, for reasons of economics cloaked in a language of religion, waged war against one another till nothing but ashes remained.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“which came to include women from Russia, China, Afghanistan and Central Asia,25 and it was rumoured that he conversed, in bits and pieces at any rate, with each of them in her own tongue.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“while the tide was flowing towards greater democratisation and ultimately to India’s independence, the royal family were blinded by their own autocracy, revelling in obsolete notions of prestige and glory and in pursuit of impotent emblems of princely greatness.77 Indeed, even five decades later, the Junior Maharani’s son would refer to the 7,600 sq. miles of land that was Travancore as a veritable ‘empire’.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“As Sunil Khilnani notes, maharajahs were ‘required to be at once conservative and liberal . . . to sport turbans and read Bagehot’.20 But they could never ascend to equality with their imperial wardens – they would forever be almost modern, never fully so. For if the second possibility were admitted, how would the Raj sustain the myth that white men governed India for its own good?”
― Manu S. Pillai, False Allies: India's Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma

“Mysore, one of the greatest princely states, was famously progressive and more industrialised than any other part of India. In Baroda, the British did its people a favour by deposing a Maharajah who spent his time commissioning carpets of pearls, and installing in his place a young prince who would earn the love and respect of his subjects by far-sighted policy. In the 1940s, the ruler of Jaipur imported a minister from Mysore and sought to replicate its successes in his desert principality, starting schools, abolishing purdah, and so on. And, of course, in the south there was Travancore, guided by a line of fairly enlightened rulers into the higher echelons of progressive governance, winning appreciation from all quarters.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“The habshis had almost all of them begun their careers as slaves. And there certainly was a thriving market for men from Ethiopia in the courts and demesnes of the East. Writing as early as the fourteenth century, Ibn Batuta reports how habshis were ‘guarantors of safety’ for ships sailing in the Indian Ocean, with such fearsome reputations that ‘let there be but one of them on a ship and it will be avoided by . . . pirates’.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“slow-moving Mughal armies, honing a military technique that the Marathas would improve to levels of perfection.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“And very often, seemingly incongruous elements from the realm of fable and myth lend an ironic congruence to the concrete world of men. All through history, a generous fabrication of mythology has helped politics navigate the awkward corners in which its protagonists land themselves.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History

“Cabral sacked an Arab vessel, provoking retaliation from Muslim merchants who burned down his warehouse and killed between fifty and seventy Portuguese men. Cabral took to the safety of the sea and looted every ship he could find and, in what was meant as a lesson to the Zamorin, bombarded Calicut from afar for an entire day, killing nearly 600 people.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Though sensible in theory, the venture was doomed from the start. Under the Sultans before him, Delhi had transformed itself from a regional town into a glamorous international centre, rivalling, as Barani claimed, Baghdad and Cairo.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“The Mughals were, in fact, obsessed with the colour of their enemy’s skin. But ‘Most of all the portrait reveals the emperor’s profound frustration with his failure ever to vanquish Ambar: he fantasized in art what he could not accomplish on the battlefield.’36”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“avuncular”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“Devaraya II was reminiscent of ‘the throne hall and Apadana of Persepolis’, and ‘sculptural reliefs carved at the base of Vijayanagar’s Great Platform depict processions of figures bearing tribute to the enthroned king’, just as they do on the Apadana thousands of miles away.”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“Even if a bit too rosy, this was not an outlandish proposition: in 1910, a more senior figure had also blasphemed when he said, ‘We have much to learn from Native States.’ Yes, many presented ‘a loose despotic system’ but given their strong local roots, these governments did not ‘press hard on the daily lives of the people’. On the other hand, the British machinery, though ‘scientific’, was rigid and not particularly better given the procedural harassment it inflicted.118 Yet another colonial officer observed that where the princes were one up on the Raj was in their ‘claim on the general regard of the people’. The idea of a maharajah, he believed, ‘strikes [the Indian] imagination’ in a way impossible for the file-bearing civil servant.”
― Manu S. Pillai, False Allies: India's Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma

“their emergence was married to industrial successes in the two important districts of Alleppey and Shertallai in north Travancore, which also boasted the first trade union in the state, the Travancore Labour Association. By now it had transformed itself into the Coir Factory Workers’ Union, and with 7,400 fee-paying members, this was perhaps the biggest of fifty unions in the state; Shertallai alone had eleven with 15,000 out of 20,000 local workers registered.16 All of them, it became clear, were prepared to stand up to the Dewan and scotch his latest flirtations with the State Congress.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“When in 1892, as alluded to before, a Congressman won election to the British parliament, the governor of Bombay sent congratulations, but in private unleashed a jaundiced pen. ‘I am very disgusted at Dadabhai Naoroji getting elected to the House,’ said Lord Harris. ‘Why England should elect natives I can’t for the life of me see: they can’t govern themselves. Why should they govern us?”
― Manu S. Pillai, False Allies: India's Maharajahs in The Age of Ravi Varma

“The site the Sangamas chose for their capital lay along a bend of the Tungabhadra. It was a place with sacred associations, first with the river goddess Pampa (from which is derived its current name, Hampi)”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“Portugal called Frei Luis arrived at court, he was loaded with presents as well as a letter proposing a marital alliance between Vijayanagar and Portugal! The idea was that a Vijayanagar princess would proceed to Lisbon to become queen there, and a daughter of King Manuel of Portugal was to be sent to India, so that the ‘two kings would be allied for the purpose of joint actions on land and sea’ and ‘the blood of the two royal houses would mingle’.115 Nothing came of the idea – though it is tantalizing to imagine what Portuguese power at sea and Vijayanagar’s greatness on land might have achieved – and real glory in the league of Devaraya”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“I was wrapped up in lotus leaves, which served as a make-believe womb, and held against mother’s stomach. I presume our priests recommended this peculiar ‘remedy’ to the problem that I was born but wasn’t supposed to be born without permission! Anyway, I was packaged like that, and the Maharajah performed the ceremonies he was meant to do months before my birth. And then the leaves were opened and I was laid on the ground. The maids and women there were all instructed to come forth with these joyous ululations and loud exclamations, and so there was a great hoo-ha about my so-called ‘birth’. Then the Maharajah ‘recognised’ me and proceeded to the naming rituals. To her dying day mother couldn’t stop laughing when she told us this story, though on that day itself she was firmly instructed not to betray any emotion lest offence be taken.14”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore

“What Savarkar envisioned in 1940 was a ‘Future Emperor of India’; what India got in a decade instead was a people’s constitution, defended by men and women who brooked no kings and shunned all empires.”
― Manu S. Pillai, The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History

“This explains why literary sources incorporated Muslim rulers into familiar metaphors. The king of Orissa was Gajapati, or Lord of Elephants; the Bahmani Sultan was seen as Ashvapati, or Lord of Horses; and completing the circle was Narapati, or Lord of Men in Vijayanagar.26 If all of the south towered in a ‘patriotic national’27 crusade against a monolithic blitz called Islam and its ‘alien attack’,28 the founders of Vijayanagar would not have had to suppress ‘widespread rebellions in Konkan and in the Tamil country’, raised by Hindu chieftains in the early days of their empire.29”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“But his most sensational endeavour appeared when this patron of the arts invited the celebrated Persian poet Hafiz to emigrate to India. Hafiz was willing, and travelled to Hormuz to board his ship. But a furious storm soon after he embarked weakened his resolve – the poet turned back, and conveyed an ode of regret in his place.12 For having tried, nevertheless, the admiring Sultan sent Hafiz a thousand pieces of gold from across the sea.13”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji

“when Vijayanagar’s envoys were dispatched to Persia with Abdur Razzak, bearing rubies and other presents, these ambassadors of the Raya were also Muslims of Iranian origin.94”
― Manu S. Pillai, Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji