Victoria & Abdul

by Shrabani Basu

  The Household was furious. Reid discussed the article with the Queen and recorded that she was ‘uncomfortable’.14

  Two days later, determined to come to the bottom of the affair, Reid cycled eight miles in the afternoon to Ballater and saw Milne the photographer, who told him that the Munshi had met him on 16 June at Ballater Station and ordered him to have a photograph of the Queen and himself published in the Jubilee issue of The Graphic. ‘Told the Queen what Milne had said and had 3 painful interviews,’ recorded Reid in his diary.

  The next two days involved long and ‘trying talks’ with the Queen on the ‘Munshi business’. Several tense interviews, a fourteen-page letter, a painful boil in his right leg and non-stop worrying about the Munshi affair had wearied Reid to such an extent now that he seriously considered resigning. He didn’t, however, get round to giving the letter as the Queen was suddenly ‘gracious and nice’, realising that she might lose the services of a trusted confidant.15 Perhaps the Queen also agreed for once that the Munshi had overstepped his limits, but she resented being dictated to by the Household.

  In sheer frustration, she wrote to Reid on 20 October from Balmoral saying she was terribly annoyed at the publication of the article and thought she was to blame for it. Yet she could not forgive the Household for continually trying to find fault with the Munshi and felt that Reid also sided with them. She wrote:

  Article on Karim – ‘The Queen’s Hindustani Tutor’ – from The Graphic.

  I feel continually aggrieved at my gentlemen wishing to spy upon and interfere with one of my people whom I have no personal reason or proof of doubting and I am greatly distressed at what has happened. I have suffered enough from having suspicions put into my mind and if I am put into a still further difficulty I shall be unable to talk as I did before even to you whose kindness I should most gratefully acknowledge.

  Torn between her Household and the Munshi, the Queen ordered Reid to see Milne and explain that there had been some misunderstandings. She said she would talk to the Munshi about the affair herself, adding that she felt ‘dreadfully nervous’.

  He is so furious against you all that I do not advise any interview at present – I fear, however Milne will say one thing to you and another to him – you say there is no intention or wish to drive him away – But how painful it will be for me to have a person whose veracity is disbelieved. I am feeling dreadfully nervous – I thought you stood between me and the others and now I feel you also chime against me with the rest.

  I must add that the M has never complained of any of the gentlemen who now seem to doubt my word. Better put an end to this story and not try to bring about a possible scandal. I shall see him now soon and write how matters stand. But my peace of mind is terribly upset. I fear I have made great blunders in this business – I should not have repeated anything to the M that night – I can’t read this through and would beg you to burn it as well as say nothing.16

  The Queen met the Munshi that evening and had a tearful exchange with him. He was furious to learn that Reid had made enquiries behind his back and contacted Milne. He informed the Queen that he had written to Milne in this regard. To the Queen’s dismay, he threatened once again to return to India. The Queen wept and begged him to remain. After the painful meeting she wrote to Reid urging him not to see Milne if he called, as the Munshi had apparently written to him. The troubled Queen appealed to the doctor to let it all pass: ‘Pray let the whole thing alone which would have been better. Do nothing more. Don’t see Milne. The Munshi is very angry and threatens to leave at once if he is troubled. Written in post haste. Pray burn it all.’

  The next day she wrote again:

  Pray do not enter into discussion with the gentlemen about the M now. It is becoming a regular habit and should not be. I am very sorry you did go to ask the photographer for it was for me to inquire and no one else to do so – I think the intention was good. But it has made it awkward. Please burn this and all long letters on the subject.17

  As the Queen veered between backing her Munshi and accusing her doctor of ganging up on her, and then apologising to him for her action, she cut a sad and lonely figure in the Court. Reid, too, had fallen ill under the strain and retired to Ellon for a much-needed break. The Queen, sorry to see her trusted doctor ill, wrote to him expressing her concern. She wanted all discussion on the Munshi, which was putting everybody under strain, to be brought to an end.

  Reid replied that it was true he had worried much from the thought that he had incurred the Queen’s displeasure, but he had done what he felt was right, however much he had suffered for it. He said he was happy to learn that she did not think he had acted ‘from any unworthy motive’ and that she appreciated ‘the difficult and painful position I have lately occupied in standing between your Majesty and others’.18

  The Household were also concerned about Reid. The Queen’s personal secretary, Arthur Bigge, wrote to him saying he was sorry to hear about his illness. ‘Yes, you have simply become poisoned with Munshimania,’ he joked, trying to make light of the situation. Bigge reported that ‘Everything (black and white) quiet as far as I know!’

  Though it had been a turbulent year at the Court, and one the Queen and her doctor would like to forget, the Munshi had not really been tamed. His Hindustani lessons with the Queen took place exactly on time, her visits to see his wife with any visiting Royalty or family carried on uninterrupted and she was also enchanted by the Munshi’s young nephew, Abdul Rashid, who frequently played with the Royal grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Young Rashid was admitted to a school in St Andrews and the Munshi was given time off to take him there. The Queen kept track of his welfare and noted with satisfaction in her Journal that he was happy at the school.

  As the autumn days drew to a close, Abdul Karim recorded his thoughts in her Hindustani Journal, not making any reference to the storm that the Household and the Court had seen that year, but lamenting instead for the suffering the famine had caused in India. He wrote in English:

  I am extremely glad to record that Her Majesty has now finished the No 10 book of her Hindustani lessons today evincing great interest. I have found Her Majesty becoming more and more eager and proficient in her Hindustani. There were but a very few days out of the whole year that Her Majesty was unable to devote the usual daily time for study. This is all the more remarkable owing to this year being such an important and busy one. Throughout the year, Her Majesty’s health has been extremely good and her reign of sixty years has been a great retrospective pleasure. I pray that Her Majesty’s health may long continue good and that she may live for many more years to come. Unfortunately, I have to note that this year has been a most unfortunate and evil one for India.

  No country or people in the world has shown so much kind feeling and loyalty to its Ruler than people of India have done. Yet India has been in the midst of great difficulties and disasters such as famine, plague, fever, and most unfortunate of all a severe war on the frontier. I hope God will never again bring so unlucky days to India.19

  At the end of his sober entry, he pasted a copy of the article from The Graphic and the offending photograph that had so incensed the Household. To the Munshi, the picture of him and his Queen sharing their precious moments together was a fitting end to the Jubilee Journal and a record of ten years of his service. He was also having a private laugh.

  The Munshi left Balmoral that year confident in the knowledge that he had triumphed against the opposition. A report from the local newspaper about the departure of the Queen’s party from Ballater showed how he still managed to grab the headlines, the media being oblivious of the storm in the Household.

  Her Majesty’s train from Ballater to Windsor on Friday 12th and Saturday 13 Nov 1897

  Arrangement of Carriages

  It is getting on to two, and the arrivals are growing fast and furious. The Queen’s Indian secretary, the Munshi Abdul Karim, is one of the first of the inner circle of officials to arrive, looking as dignified as
can be, and as one who was indeed a trusted servant of the Empress of India. His dignity – he is an absolutely self made man, a giant as the old Greeks called your ‘filius terrae’, and he therefore looks neither to the left nor to the right – will not allow him to tarry a sight for sore eyes. In that peculiarly hued turban of his, he strides magnificently over the red carpet and buries himself in his own special saloon.20

  The rest of the Household were barely mentioned in the article.

  12

  REDEMPTION

  The Queen did not want to hear any more complaints about Karim and made this clear to Reid. After what had been a stormy few months, she decided to reclaim her Munshi. ‘I have in my Testamentary arrangements secured your comfort … and have constantly thought of you well,’ she wrote to him. ‘The long letter I enclose which was written nearly a month ago is entirely and solely my own idea, not a human being will ever know of it or of what you answer me. If you can’t read it I will help you and then burn it at once.’1

  The urgent letter was signed ‘your faithfully true friend, VRI’. The Queen was determined to ensure that Karim would be looked after when she was gone. Her family and the Household, she knew, would not be kind to him. The letter she wrote to him was one of the many that her son Bertie destroyed after her death.

  Meanwhile, the Royal family and the Household were beginning to get frustrated with their attempts to expose the Munshi. The Prince of Wales approached the Prime Minister twice, but he told him that ‘he did not see it was his business’. Since the Prince could not speak to his mother directly, he turned to Reid to help him on the Munshi issue. The doctor found he was once again becoming the hapless intermediary between mother and son. The Munshi did not make things easier for himself either. He seemed to have alienated most of the Indian servants as well. Ghulam Mustapha, the Indian attendant, apparently complained to Reid that he felt compelled to return to India because of the Munshi’s tyranny and described him as a ‘bad man’ and ‘a debbel’.

  The Household made another attempt to discredit the Munshi through his association with Rafiuddin. Much was made of the fact that in January 1898 Rafiuddin had chaired a rally of the Muslim Patriotic League (MPL) at Chancery Lane. His presence at another ‘disloyal’ meeting at Bloomsbury was also confirmed by none other than Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian to be elected to the House of Commons, who wrote a letter to The Standard about it. The latter’s statement, quoted by the media, was immediately picked up by the Household, and the Chief of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ernest Bradford, thought it reason enough to keep Rafiuddin under further surveillance.

  As with most things to do with the Munshi and Rafiuddin, the event turned out to be nothing more than a lot of hot air. The MPL rally had not actually passed any ‘disloyal’ resolutions, but had in fact resolved to stand by the Queen’s government. A newspaper report quoted Rafiuddin Ahmed as saying that at a time when serious attacks were being made on Imperial India, ‘it was the duty of all loyal subjects of the Queen, who sincerely appreciated the government, to come forward and freely bear testimony to the beneficent character and impartial spirit of that government’.

  The resolution passed at the meeting clearly called on Indians to support the British government saying: ‘That this meeting of the MPL has no sympathy with the revolutionary resolution recently passed at the conference held in Bloomsbury, and reaffirms its loyal support to the British rule in India because situated as India is at the present time it is under that rule alone that the peaceful progress of the country is at all possible.’

  When Dadabhai Naoroji wrote that Rafiuddin had earlier attended the conference in Bloomsbury where a ‘revolutionary resolution’ had been passed, it gave the Household fodder to accuse Rafiuddin of disloyalty. Rafiuddin stated that he had attended the Bloomsbury conference merely as an observer and vehemently denied stoking any revolutionary feelings among fellow Indians. But it was enough for the surveillance on him to continue and for Reid to seize the opportunity to have a word with the Prime Minister. Reid wrote to Lord Salisbury personally, warning him once again of the association of the Munshi and Rafiuddin, and the fact that the Munshi would probably wish to take Rafiuddin to Cimiez as his companion.

  ‘Should he [the Munshi] urge this on the Queen, I believe Her Majesty might consent, as she has of late been getting you to think well of Rafiuddin, and is believing that all suspicions about him are groundless,’ wrote Reid. He went on to inform the Prime Minister that Ernest Bradford ‘knew something of Rafiuddin’ and entertained an unfavourable opinion about him and his capacity for mischief. He suggested that he meet Sir Ernest sometime and hear what he had to say on the subject, so he could get ‘an unbiased and unprejudiced opinion from an authority of conspicuous probity’.2

  Reid continued to have long conversations with Salisbury about Rafiuddin, trying to persuade the Prime Minister to take pre-emptive action against him. He even told Salisbury that Rafiuddin could at any time support the revolutionaries and make a case for weapons, and that he was ‘quickly accumulating them’.3 His attempts to convince the Queen about Rafiuddin, as always, came to nought as she simply dismissed him saying: ‘But he does not sympathize with them.’

  Salisbury decided to deal with the Rafiuddin issue in his special diplomatic way. He tried to dissuade the Queen from allowing Rafiuddin to go to Cimiez, suggesting that it would be ‘unfortunate’ if the French press got word of anything on him and treated her with ridicule. The Queen found this reasonable and agreed to the exclusion of Rafiuddin from the European trip. ‘She saw this and seemed impressed by it, and I am quite sure that this is the argument to use with her,’ Salisbury told Reid.

  Reid tried to tell the Prime Minister that the Munshi was bullying the Queen, but did not get far with that. Salisbury told him he did not agree with this as she could always get rid of him if she wanted. Salisbury told Reid that he believed the Queen ‘really liked the continual excitement, as he [the Munshi] is the only form of excitement she can have’.4

  The Queen went to Cimiez alone that year, but the Household was premature in celebrating their victory as Karim joined her within days. The Queen had apparently written to him to do so. Before his arrival she sent a thirty-two-page memo to Reid and warned her Household that there should be no recurrence of the ‘lamentable and unnecessary occurrences of last year’, and they should be ‘buried in oblivion’. She forbade her gentlemen to indulge in any gossip and put down strict instructions: ‘I cannot allow any remarks about my people being made by my Gentlemen, or any gossip and reports or stories being listened to by them; but [they] are at once to be stopped.’ The Queen also said that the Munshi would have his carriage as usual and have his name mentioned in the circulars on arrival.

  In her Journal she recorded that she had immediately resumed her Hindustani lessons as she had missed these while Karim was away. Though the Household fumed at his return, the Queen and the Munshi went about their walks and lessons simply as if nothing had happened. She would often take her lesson in the grounds in the donkey chair (the donkey being taken out) or the pair would sit in the gardens of the Hotel Regina and enjoy the Mediterranean sun. With Abdul by her side, the Queen would look through her boxes and fill her Hindustani Journal with sprawling Urdu letters, recording the weather and the day’s events. Satisfied in the knowledge that she had not been browbeaten by her family, the Queen was calm and composed. Her family did not dare question her anymore. Their discussions on the Munshi continued in private. Princess Christian and Beatrice and the Prince of Wales all consulted Reid and had several discussions with him, but they did not confront the Queen. She would be entering her eightieth year soon, had lived longer and seen more Prime Ministers than any British monarch and was not to be taken lightly. The bitterness against the Munshi remained on the boil. One day, when the Household was invited to the Queen’s Drawing Room to hear a Hungarian band from Monte Carlo play, the Queen warned Reid beforehand that the Munshi would be present and that he was to be
‘civilly spoken to’. Reid recorded that ‘no one did, but Clark’ (Captain Clarke, the Prince of Wales’s equerry).

  The Munshi simply put up with the obvious hostility from the Household, but the Queen had had enough of it. Having spent a few pleasant weeks with Karim at Cimiez, she decided to let her Household know exactly how she felt about their behaviour towards him. She sent a lengthy memo to Reid accusing the Household of racist feelings and jealousy towards the Munshi.

  The bitterness feeling and nasty racial feeling can only have produced extraordinary behaviour and injustice which led to it last year. What could have recently caused this enmity to the poor man who injured no one, interfered with no one, never put himself forward and the very few occasions he appeared is credible.

  He may have given himself airs or boasted in India but not more than others. He very most likely was misled into publication and let his name appear without reflection, but that has happened to others … More and more does the plot of Indian and English jealousy show that stories utterly unfounded to have appeared and were told by people out of sheer spite and jealousy behind everything and a tissue of falsehoods were believed which must be put a stop to. VRI.

  She added a postscript:

  I have added to this long yarn as such numbers of things come to my mind. But one thing I have outlined which is the attack on Abdul Karim’s position. It is not a high one and it’s not in England that we should speak of this. Archbishops, bishops, generals and peers have risen from the lowest and as Lord Salisbury and I remember, Sir William Jenner who the Queen chose to raise a chimney sweep. They have no right to say a word. It is all very disgraceful, I must repeat.5