Editing Travancore (section)

===Retainment of Devikulam and Peerumedu Taluks in Kerala===

{{See also|Idukki district}}

Apart from [[Kanyakumari district]], the Taluks of [[Devikulam]] and [[Peermade]] in present-day [[Idukki district]] also had a [[Tamil language|Tamil]]-majority until the late 1940s.<ref name="idukki">{{Cite news|title=Why did Kerala surrender Kanyakumari without a fight?|url=https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2020/10/31/why-did-kerala-surrender-kanyakumari-to-tamil-nadu.html|last=Ayyappan|first=R|date=31 October 2020|access-date=16 June 2021|work=Onmanorama}}</ref> The T.T.N.C had also requested to merge these Taluks with [[Madras State]].<ref name="idukki"/> However it was due to some decisions of [[Pattom Thanu Pillai]], who was the first prime minister of Travancore, that they retained in the modern-state of [[Kerala]].<ref name="idukki"/> Pattom came up with a colonisation project to re-engineer the demography of [[Cardamom Hills]].<ref name="idukki"/> His colonisation project was to relocate 8,000 [[Malayalam]]-speaking families into the Taluks of [[Devikulam]] and [[Peermade]].<ref name="idukki"/> About 50,000 acres in these Taluks, which were Tamil-majority area, were chosen for the colonisation project.<ref name="idukki"/> As a victory of the Colonisation project done by post-independence Travancore, these two Taluks and a larger portion of [[Cardamom Hills]] retained in the state of [[Kerala]], after [[States Reorganisation Act, 1956]].<ref name="idukki"/>