The making of a Kochi
Not much princely state in pre- independent India had two capitals; one where royalty sat and took decisions and another where its minions sat and dispensed royal diktats. The erstwhile Cochin State was one such. The hamlet-like Tripunithura was the abode of royalty, while the neighboring sleepy town of Ernakulam housed the secretariat, judiciary and other sundry officialdom.
The privilege came to them rather fortuitously,as it were. As detailed elsewhere in the book, the Cochin royal family had its origin at Perumbadappu in Ponnani taulk up north, and towards the end of the 13th century it moved to Mahodayapuram (present Kodungallur ) after losing power and territory to the Zamorin (king) of Calicut. It moved to Mattancherry in 1405 AD after the devastating floods of 1341 that virtually deprived Kodungallur of all its importance and later to Thrissur (17th century) and finally to Tripunithura (18th century)
The emergence of Ernakulam as the state capital was evidently due to its proximity to the port that gained importance after the fall of Kodungallur. Interestingly, the fate and fortune of Ernakulam had been inalienably mixed up with the commercially important Mattancherry and historically important Fort Cochin. Which, perhaps, explains why there is so little on record about Ernakulam, its pedigree and its people?
All that is known about its past is that was a swampy, marshy place with the attendant abundance of water bodies. The name, Ernakulam, itself is suggestive of it .One legend has it that its original name was “Ernapuram” meaning of waterlogged place. In course of time it came to be called Ernakulam.
Much of the present city was under water 2000 tears ago. What is now the hi-tech downtown Kakkanad and Thripunithura provided the coastline. With the passage of time, new, swampy areas emerged with the sea retreating. To that were added vast area of reclaimed land, which, in the event, pushed the city’s limits westwards. The metropolis of today is, therefore, an add-on partly by nature but largely by man, to what was once a cluster of marshy villages.
Understandably, Ernakulam did not figure in any of the writing of such early chroniclers as Ptolemy (126AD) and Marco Polo (1290). For that matter, the first-ever reference to Cochin was by Ma Haun (1409) who accompanied the legendary Chinese adventurer Cheng Ho. The latter Reportedly undertook seven expeditions to Kollam and Cochin between 1405 and 1433. The Italian traveler, Nicolo Conti (1410-1444) and the Venetian historian Caesar Frederik (1563) had made references to Cochin in their travelogues.
The arrival of foreigners seemed to have changed the traditional mores of the local people, but not before some stiff resistance was put up. One such resistance took an interesting, even amusing, turn. The local chieftain of Edappally, a satellite of Ernakulam, who was an ardent Hindu and cow worshipper, took exception to the Portuguese soldiers slaughtering a cow and wanted them to be punished. He was discouraged from pursuing such an aggressive course by his minister, Changampuzha Marthandan, on the ground that the Portuguese were governed by different customs and, unlike the Hindus, the cow wasn’t a sacred animal to them and hence the act should be condoned. The chieftain wasn’t convinced and went to war in which his army was routed by the well-armed and better skilled Portuguese.
One fallout of the battle was an attempt made by the Portuguese to persuade the power-that- were to upgrade the social status of the lowly caste soldiers of the chieftain who fought so valiantly for their master. The effort to help them enjoy privileges exclusively reserved for the upper caste Nair’s who formed the bulk of the royal armies of the time was too tall an attempt.
Ernakulam’s transformation into a metropolis was entirely due to two factors, the advent of railways (1901) and the commissioning of the port (1940). They changed the face of the city. Electricity came in 1939 heralding a new life and lifestyle for the place and the people. It also proved to be a great leveler in that till then the imported hurricane lamps decided the social status; only the affluent could afford such costly lamps. In one fell swoop, it re-ordered social hierarchy. Around the time (1938), the town had its first tarred road, Shanmugham Road, for long a promenade by the backwaters till more land west of it was reclaimed to put up sky-kissing high-rises
The rail connectivity opened up the hinterland of the state, quickened transportation of men and materials and gave an entirely new direction and dimension to the economic growth of the entire state. The year 1948 was yet another milestone as a private operator started air service to and from Ernakulam. The road-rail- air connectivity and the fine natural port close to the international sea route automatically attracted business and industry and, hence, a large number of people from both within and outside the country in search of fame and fortune.
This, for sure, helped Ernakulam retain its importance even after Trivandrum became the capital of the integrated state of Travancore- Cochin in 1949. While it lost its importance as a political capital it was more than made good by being the commercial and business capital, first, of the merged dispensation and, later, of Kerala when it came to be formed in November1956
The presence of the State’s High Court added hugely to Ernakulam’s status. Besides being the dispenser of justice and equity, the mere presence of the High court did add greatly to the intellectual infrastructure of the city. The commercial fallout of the presence of a huge army of lawyers and litigants and all the attendant paraphernalia has been no less consequential.
The few heavy industries- Fertilizers and Chemicals, Travancore, Cochin Shipyard, Kochi Refineries, and two major tyre units… to mention the more important… and the expanding naval establishment and the mushrooming IT industry attracted people from all over the country, giving Ernakulam the status of a cosmopolitan city comparable with say, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. With people came their peculiar lifestyles, customs, traditions and festivities. No other city in the state has such a variegated social fabric as Ernakulam.
An interesting fallout of the confluence of different kinds of people is the reactivation of art and culture. The city, which already has a few centres of performing arts, essentially native, museums and galleries, is slowly emerging as a tourist destination for the rest of the country and the world. The resultant exposure to local talents has been immense.
From the sleepy town that it was a few decades ago, Ernakulam has grown into a metropolis that, like its peers elsewhere, never sleeps.
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