For various reasons, including its distance from the sea, Palakkad hardly figures in old travel writings. One traveller who visited the region for a short time was a highly influential English clergyman named George Trevor Spencer.
Spencer, who was appointed Bishop of Madras in 1837, kept an account of his journey to Kerala and published it in London as a book titled, ‘Journal of a Visit to the Provinces of Travancore and Tinnevelly in the Diocese of Madras, 1840-41.’ From his writings it is clear that Spencer was in love with Palakkad, or as he spelled it, Polegoat.
“Having passed through vast jungles, or rather forests (which deserve a nobler name), and forests of splendid timber, we arrived in a country as Italian as Italy itself,” Spencer wrote, “and in one village I felt as if I were beside Lake Maggiore. Not that there is a lake, for, like most Indian landscapes, there is a want of water; but still, it is entirely different from any I have yet encountered there; more beautiful, and, I think, more human.”
The comparisons with Italy continued: “The huts in this village are of a particularly neat appearance, thatched with palm leaves which could easily be mistaken for those of Gran Turk, and ornamented with a ring of gourds rich in flowers and fruit which is the almost universal ornament of Italian cottages; and all are surrounded by a neat bamboo fence intertwined with gloriosa superba and the most beautiful bindweed I ever saw,” Spencer said.
The Anglican bishop seemed so engrossed in the rural scenery of Palakkad that he almost forgot where he was. “I had hoped to see an elm tree supporting a graceful vine as a still-life, but alas there was no Tuscan to listen to, nor any Bocca Romana to chirp it,” he said.
Spencer made no attempt to hide his racial prejudices regarding South Indians. Writing about the inhabitants of Palakkad, he wrote, “But the people here are of a totally different appearance from those of Coimbatore, and seem to be of a nobler race. They look you in the face, and walk erect, like the people to whom this land belongs.” He also wrote about the “fairness” of the people of Palakkad; they do not, he says, have the “unhealthy look” that accompanies the fairer skin of the “natives of the tropics.” This appalling obsession with skin color seems to be a common theme in older Western accounts of Malayalis.
Low expectations
Before crossing the Palakkad Gorge, Spencer had low expectations of the town: “I was looking for a picturesque dirty village in the middle of the jungle, on the mountain slopes, and I found a very pleasant looking town, surrounded by the most cultivated and enclosed fields, in a country of the most perfect pastoral scenery, where the mountains begin to sink and smooth out into the plain, still retaining some of their wildness and grandeur as the main character of the landscape, while at the same time exposing their fresh and beautiful slopes to the 'wildness of the gentle plough,'” he added.
After touring a bit more around Palakkad, Spencer observed that “the Italian character of the country has changed” but “has not been lost among the Indians.” He noticed that palm trees had “recovered their natural place in the landscape,” but were no longer as prominent as they were on the west coast of Ceylon.
Another thing he fell in love with were the green rice fields of the region. “Before I came to India I thought the rice fields of Lombardy were beautiful, but the rice fields here were the height of verdant greenery, not the muddy enclosures of Karnataka, not the fields that look like dried-up ponds where people have been forced to grow grains because they can no longer hold water,” Spencer said.
The Bishop found more reasons to praise Palakkad and praised its roads: “The roads around this beautiful town are excellent and much wider than those which are common in the 'stations' of India.”
Among the places he visited was Tipu Sultan's fort, of which he wrote: “There is a very beautiful fort, apparently quite strong, with a fine lawn, which would make a fine cricket ground.”
Spencer also liked the town's architecture, especially the temples and the houses of the wealthy. Regarding the roofs of these buildings, he said, “I think they may have been adopted from Portugal; they give the town a European appearance, and are very pleasing to the European eye.”
Spencer found the town to have a “very respectable business atmosphere” and felt it was an ideal “middle ground” between the Coimbatore and Malabar districts.
“The town is remarkably clean for an Indian country, which is the result of the police and the courtesy of the people,” Spencer wrote. “I walked two or three miles into the country this morning, and with each step my admiration of the town grew greater.”
On his second and final day in Palakkad, Spencer conducted a service for the town's small British community, mainly East India Company officials and their families.
Spencer wanted Britain to rule India, and his short stay at Palakkad only reaffirmed this position: “India is certainly worth holding. Let us hold it so faithfully that when the time comes when we are no longer its administrators, we will not be ashamed to report that we did!”
(Ajay Kamalakaran is a multilingual writer based primarily in Mumbai)
