What an Australian small town got to know about early 20th century Travancore

At the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, Omeo, in Australia’s Victoria state was a boomtown, thanks to a gold rush. With wealth and prosperity came an awareness to know more about the world. To fill this need, a newspaper named The Omeo Mining and Standard Gazette published articles about faraway places that few Victorians would have heard of such as Blagoveshchensk, a town in the Russian Far East that shares a riverine border with China, and Travancore.

An article published by the paper in February 1901 was full of praise for the Indian princely state, calling it “small, but progressive” and emphasising its uniqueness.

“Travancore was well known to the Romans; it was known to the Portuguese long before the British dreamed of an empire in India, and it was known to the Dutch,” the paper said. “But it is not merely on the strength of its hoaried past that Travancore claims our attention; it is still one of the most interesting parts of India, interesting alike in its natural features and the peculiar manners and customs of its people.”

The Australian paper called Travancore a “wonderful little native state,” adding, “Its attractiveness consists in being a portion of India, and yet so unlike the rest of India.” Perhaps such a description could be apt for all of Kerala in the 21st century. “In point of natural beauty, there are few places in India which could bear favourable comparison with it.”

The 1901 report also highlighted the uniqueness of the inhabitants of the princely state. “With respect to its people, there are no places in India, except a piece of territory immediately to the north of Travancore, which presents such a peculiarity of notions, beliefs, manners and marriage. The place is, besides, full of romance.”

The state had something unique to offer for historians, antiquarians, archaeologists, naturalists, zoologists, ethnologists, as well as students of nature and of mankind, the paper said.

In the report, the paper made mention of what English dramatist Douglas William Jerrold had to say about Australia and said the same thing held true for Travancore: “Earth is so kindly there, that tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.” The paper attributed Travancore’s wealth to the productivity of its soil and abundant rainfall.

Of course, this report wasn’t entirely free of exaggerations and aimed to impress a distant Australian audience. Describing Travancore’s agricultural prowess, the paper said, “It produces 104 varieties of paddy, bunches of cocoanuts, containing 153 nuts each, tapioca ten feet long, pumpkins four feet in circumference, sugarcanes eighteen feet long, valuable trees seven feet in diameter, and bananas of forty varieties.” It’s hard to imagine what the residents of the gold rush boomtown would have made of these descriptions. The state was described as “a land of mountains and of food.”

There were quite a few mentions of Travancore’s natural beauty, praising its “picturesque hills and dales, lovely lakes and rivers, magnificent waterfalls and cascades.” The report added, “It is a land, as well, of gigantic trees and shrubs and rare fruits and flowers. It is covered with a robe of florid and exuberant vegetation throughout the year. Its natural beauty is unsurpassed.”

Missing from the article was the usual racist nonsense about Indians that was a part of most reporting of the time period in the Western press. It also did not delve on the major social problems that the princely state faced before reforms were brought in a few decades later.

The newspaper took note of some of Travancore’s progressive policies. The state had earned a good reputation globally on account of its ruler Moolam Thirunal, under whose rule the Travancore Legislative Council was established. This council ushered the concept of public participation in governance in princely states in India.

“Travancore has now the reputation of being a progressive little state,” the paper said. “It is ruled at present by one of the most amiable and enlightened of rulers, Maharajah Rama Varma.”

At the time the article was published, Omeo’s population peaked at 9400. After the gold rush was over, people began to move elsewhere. It is now believed to have less than 500 residents. At its height of prosperity, Omeo’s wealthy residents were probably awestruck by the description of faraway Travancore, a place that ended up having a totally different destiny than the small Australian gold rush boomtown in the 20th century.