In the late 1880s, Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff, then Governor of Madras, came across a woman with whom he developed a brief acquaintance. Wishing to present her with a token of the city’s rich craftsmanship, he offered to send a piece of cloth from Madras, a specimen of the finest local handiwork. To his surprise, the lady blushed, a reaction that seemed to suggest more than a mere appreciation for the material. She politely but firmly declined, adding that she was “quite satisfied with her present husband.”
Such a response may have been dismissive in another context, but in the world she inhabited, the act of offering a cloth was not just an innocent gift but a declaration of intent—a symbol of courtship. This rather unexpected encounter invites us into a broader exploration of gender, marriage, and caste in the Southern Indian kingdom of Travancore, a land where societal customs were shaped by layers of complex systems, some seemingly contradictory, others marked by rigorous codes.
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