by Miles Taylor
Managing Loyalty: The Golden Jubilee of 1887
If it had not been for Indian enthusiasm Queen Victoria’s first jubilee might never have happened. In the late summer of 1886, the India Office opened discussions with Lord Dufferin, the viceroy, about if, when and how Queen Victoria’s jubilee might be marked in India. At home the queen made it known that she expected a thanksgiving ceremony in Westminster Abbey around 21 June (the day of her accession): ‘a short plain service without a sermon’. Later she added a naval or army review and requested the attendance in London of a guard drawn from colonial and Indian cavalry regiments, as well as some of the Indian princes.3 She also held out for a new Albert memorial, this time an equestrian one. Brushing aside advice, she insisted that the monies raised for a philanthropic project by the ‘Women’s Jubilee Offering’ be spent on the statue, a bronze work by Joseph Boehm, unveiled in 1890 in Windsor Great Park, complete with an inscription around its pedestal in English, Gaelic, Latin and Sanskrit, the latter provided by Professor Max Müller, detailing the dedication, ‘a token of love and loyalty from the daughters of her Empire’.4 Whilst the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens had hailed a Renaissance prince, closer to home Queen Victoria wanted a reminder of her consort’s imperial vision.
No such follies were proposed in India – not on this occasion anyway. Dufferin suggested a distribution of honours, and a release of debtors from prison. Richard Cross, the secretary of state for India, went along with this, concerned only that expenditure on celebrations in India should be as limited as possible.5 There this desultory conversation closed for a few months. Meanwhile, in India, plans for the jubilee unfolded with more speed. Assuming that 1 January – the anniversary of the Imperial Assemblage – would be the jubilee day, preparations commenced in Madras and Bombay during the autumn of 1886.6 In November, Dufferin and Cross resumed their dialogue, deciding that India’s jubilee would be held before the main event in Britain, but in the middle of February, before the onset of the heat and the rains. The queen disliked this proposed ‘celebration by anticipation’.7 Confirmation of the date for India’s jubilee came just in time to put a brake on preparations already under way. However, the viceroy’s office only gave guidance in mid-January as to how the jubilee holiday should be observed. A telegram of 17 January encouraged the ‘usual’ celebrations: fireworks, illuminations and a feeding of the poor. Three weeks later the viceroy sent a kharita to all native rulers and to all senior officials in British India, confirming arrangements. The viceroy’s office also circulated a sample text to be used in formal speeches and addresses. It described the highlights of the queen’s reign, emphasised her personal virtues and listed the benefits of her rule over the ‘teeming millions’ of India: peace, the spread of railways and other public works, and improvements in education. Then, in a heavy-handed move, the government stipulated that all addresses of congratulation had to be approved by British officials. Public money would only be available for illuminations, and localities were encouraged to save some of the funds raised for permanent memorials, in the shape of public buildings and municipal facilities.8
For an event of such significance, it was all very hurried, with barely one month’s notice of official plans for the jubilee. But last minute did not mean light touch. The viceroy’s officials explained that ‘we do not want to take the initiative but we wish to know as early as possible what is intended’.9 As coded statements go, this one covered all bases. Government outlay would be minimal, but its oversight extensive. In the days leading up to 16 February, localities sent on to the Government of India detailed plans of proposed events, together with the text of the local address to be sent to the queen. Inevitably, some Indian princes and chiefs wanted to do things as grandly as possible. The Maharaja of Mysore sent an ivory flower-stand depicting Lakshmi, whilst the Raja of Travancore gifted an ornamental figure of Siva framed by elephant tusks. Many wanted to telegram the queen directly. Protocols on sending gifts to the queen were relaxed for the occasion, subject to their formal approval by the Government of India.10 Between gifts, memorials and other visible displays of affection a remarkable degree of uniformity emerged. Was it coincidence or control?
Or routine? Many of the men who made Lytton’s extravaganza work in 1877 were still on the scene ten years later. One of them, Owen Tudor Burne, wrote a timely piece in January 1887 on the ideas that had gone into the many local durbars at the time of the Imperial Assemblage.11 So when it came to Indian royal ceremonial there was a tried and tested formula already in place. More – and less – was expected of the Government of India this time. Newspapers were quick to spot any undue interference by officialdom. From Allahabad, Bombay and Lahore came complaints that the poor were being forced to give a few annas to support the festivities. Fundraising momentum faltered when the viceroy issued another circular calling for subscriptions to be raised simultaneously for the Prince of Wales’s pet project, the Imperial and Colonial Institute back in London. Then Lady Dufferin chipped in, piggy-backing onto the jubilee fundraising with an appeal for donations to her female hospitals.12 By the beginning of February some critics had had enough. Involving the royal family, and allowing officials to take over the arrangements, was detracting from the spontaneity of the jubilee. Besides, it was argued, there was one obvious way in which government interference would be welcome: a symbolic act of grace to reward the queen’s subjects at this historic time. Some newspapers called for ‘largesse’, recalling how Akbar had tuned gold into coin on such occasions. Others looked for more tangible reforms, such as repealing the Arms Act, introducing more representative institutions, opening up the Indian Civil Service to more Indians, and the redress of past wrongs, such as the restoration of Indian kings and princes to their thrones.13 The Government of India went some way to address this clamour, although not very far. Complicated plans were drawn up to release 25,000 prisoners, and also to distribute a whole series of honours to higher and lesser orders of Indian nobility. There were no gold coins, but a jubilee medal designed by Sir Frederic Leighton was struck, Randolph Churchill being forced to apologise to the queen for leaving off the ‘I’ for Imperatrix in ‘VRI’ on the first version of the medal. None of this really satisfied anyone. In India the local elites who came forward to claim their honours were criticised for their fawning deference.14 At home, the release of so many convicts alarmed politicians: questions were asked about the prisoner amnesty in both Houses of Parliament. Assurances were given that this was simply an ‘ancient Oriental custom’ and would not be part of the jubilee in Britain.15
However, a western custom worried the viceroy. Mindful of the Indian National Congress, Dufferin’s government wanted politics kept out of the jubilee. Hence the decision to vet every single address intended for submission to the queen. Those emanating from municipal associations and sabhas were policed closely. The slightest demand for reform, for example a proposed address from Barisal in Bengal, calling for educational reform and summoning up the spirit of the 1858 proclamation, was only let through after careful scrutiny.16 Mostly, however, the government came down hard on addresses that offended taste or grammar rather than patriotism. In Bombay presidency, the Jubilee Committee of Jambusar were told that their illustrated address showing a kneeling daughter representing their town showing her love to her mother by placing a garland of ‘Peace, Prosperity and Progress’ around Queen Victoria seated on a throne ‘cannot be regarded as fit for presentation to Her Majesty’. In another intervention, the Literary and Social Club of the Native Christian Community of Bandora in Goa were told to change a reference to the queen managing to ‘reduce’ the once turbulent peoples of India to loyal subjects to having managed to ‘convert’ them instead.17 Evangelical bias was more welcome than political radicalism.
All this censorship made for a mundane uniformity. Many of the addresses and speeches were formulaic. They were dull recitals that started with a potted biography of the queen, and then moved on to describe the achievements of her rule in I
ndia and the benefits bestowed on the ‘teeming millions’ – a phrase that stuck like glue – of her Indian subjects, before closing with a homily on her domestic virtues and the deep sympathy she had often shown for the plight of the Indian people caught up in famine and pestilence. There was an uncanny sameness about the addresses, as though they had been copied from a single source. They had. Many were carbon copies of the text circulated by the viceroy at the beginning of February. The same eulogies also rang like a chorus through many of the vernacular biographies that poured from the presses in 1887.18 Moreover, the jubilee of the queen – her personal milestone – became conflated with the progress of British rule in India. Government officials tried to turn the jubilee into an upbeat endorsement of the achievements of British administration, especially since 1858. This fell flat. Many Indian localities skirted around that piece of protocol by making the queen, and not the Government of India, the focal point of their celebrations.
Depicted in a transparency, or in a photograph, or by a reproduction of a portrait, Queen Victoria was carried aloft on elephants, or inside carriages and palanquins, in the processions leading to the durbar, and then placed on a dais, or inside an improvised pandal marquee or on a throne during the ceremony itself. Local Indian officials addressed her image, sometimes paid homage with a bow or salute, or prostrated themselves before her. The city of Madras celebrated the jubilee in June as well as February and on the second occasion thousands of copies of a carte de visite photograph of the queen were distributed freely during the procession. Indianised depictions of the queen were common, the elongated nose and darkened eyes of the coinage and the postage stamps now transposed into print. For example, a Hindi account of the jubilee in London – Landan-jubili – published in Lahore in 1888, included a coloured portrait of the queen, fair-skinned but dark-eyed, whilst the Bombay Gazette illustrated its coverage of the June celebration with a head shot of the queen with dark eyes and unadorned except for a flowing head scarf. Triumphal arches were another recurring feature in the celebrations, illuminated by electric lights, candles and torches, or simply made to glisten with ghee and oil, with variations on the queen’s title inscribed on the sides and centrepiece of the arch: ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’, ‘Queen-Empress’, ‘Queen-Mother’. Hindus drew the queen into their own forms of worship: for example she appeared in the guise of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, in a temple at Ranaghat in Bengal.19
The jubilee in India unleashed local philanthropy rather than imperial grandeur: the repair of temples and mosques, the building of bathing tanks, the endowment of scholarships for schools, both English and vernacular.20 In this way the memorials of 1887 and ten years later tell us more about civic patriotism than they do an unqualified loyalty to Britain. Official causes could hardly compete. Only a trickle of jubilee subscriptions found their way into the funds being raised for the Imperial and Colonial Institute. Many local committees agreed from the outset that they would not donate to the Prince of Wales’s Institute project. Even in Bombay, where the prince’s brother, the Duke of Connaught, was a member of the jubilee committee, it was decided that ‘no portion’ of the funds would go to London, but instead would be used for the Victoria Technical Institute in the city.21 By the end of 1887 only a small amount had been raised in India for the Imperial and Colonial Institute.
Despite these snubs, Lord Dufferin declared the jubilee a success. ‘[O]fficialism has for once stood to one side’, he stated in his official speech from Calcutta, ‘and has left the Nation face to face with its Empress.’ From London, Cross, the secretary of state, chimed in cheerily, saying he didn’t know ‘if natives can cheer’, but if so Dufferin must be suffering from ‘deafness’ now.22 On the ground, British officials patted themselves on the back for getting the tone of the occasion right. The Commissioner of the Northern District Bombay described the local celebrations as ‘an enthusiastic expression of unmistakeable loyalty, without a single symptom of coldness, or even unsympathetic warmness’, whilst the Collector at Kaira (Kheda) in Gujarat stated that the ‘proceedings are the spontaneous results of native feelings, and have been inspired as little as possible by official leading’.23 Such sentiments breathe a sigh of relief as much as triumph. The Government of India had left little to chance in 1887. Every single detail of the jubilee celebrations across India had been agreed in advance, and the flow of loyal addresses and gifts was rigorously controlled all the way from village, town hall and princely palace back to Windsor. Yet there was no disguising the magnitude of the event. Queen Victoria heard first-hand about the proceedings in Poona and Bombay. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught both described to her how a million people had turned out in Bombay, her statue brilliantly lit up for the occasion: ‘never has there been such a universal display of loyalty to one person in India’.24 A selection of literary tributes were sent on to the queen. By the time the main jubilee came round in Britain, around 200 addresses from India, all contained in elaborately crafted caskets and cases, had been sent to Buckingham Palace. On behalf of the queen the viceroy announced her gratitude, and separate acknowledgements were sent to all the princes.25 India had led the way; now it was the turn of the rest of the Empire.
Four months later, in June 1887, Indian nobility visited London to take part in the jubilee celebrations there. In all, eleven Indian chiefs and nobles attended the June celebrations, each of them accompanied by a British official. Additionally, thirteen cavalry officers were sent over, at the queen’s request, to join the guard of honour that accompanied the queen during the various processions and military reviews featured in the jubilee schedule. Taken together, it was the largest and most impressive deputation of Indians ever to visit England during the queen’s lifetime. Key states were represented: Hyderabad (by Nawab Bashir-ud-Daula, a brother-in-law of the nizam), and Jodhpur (by Pratap Singh, the maharaja’s brother). The Gaekwar of Baroda came, seeking remedies for his ailments. Holkar of Indore also came in person, to the evident dismay of Dufferin, but to the delight of the London press who seized upon him as the most newsworthy of the visitors. There were also chiefs from smaller states prized by the British for their record in administrative reform, for example Cooch Behar (both maharaja and maharani, who arrived at the beginning of the summer), Bharatpur (the maharaja’s brother-in-law, Ganga Bakhsh, was sent), the Rao of Cutch and the Thakur of Morvi (Morbi).26 As Indian princes went, the Government of India felt assured that the modern and liberal side of the Raj was being despatched to represent India.
Except that was not really what the queen wanted. Towards the end of April, she indicated her desire that all her Indian visitors when in her presence wear Indian costume. This caused consternation. Most of the visitors had already departed from India, explained Dufferin, and anyway they were mostly westernised: the Maharaja of Cooch Behar never wore native dress, whilst Gurnain Singh (representing the Maharaja of Kapurthala) ‘is thoroughly European in all his habits’. Indeed, west was not always best. Dufferin warned that Holkar’s ‘only notion of a smart get-up is to make himself look as like an English jockey as possible’. Nonetheless, Dufferin ensured that new wardrobes of ‘oriental costume’ were organised in time.27 There was more to all this than the queen’s usual insistence that Indians look Indian. The Indian guests were effectively acting as a semi-official party representing the queen’s Indian dominion. They enjoyed pride of place at the jubilee service in Westminster Abbey on 21 June, riding on horseback in a group immediately in front of the queen’s carriage, the cavalry escort at the rear. In the Abbey, they sat in the choir stalls, with other dignitaries from the colonies.28 Then on 27 June they attended a reception at Windsor Castle, where they presented their own gifts and addresses to the queen in person, taking precedence over deputations from Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, all led by Englishmen. In return Holkar was knighted, and five of the other chiefs became Knight Commanders of the Star of India. The Thakur of Morvi stole the show, riding into the quadrangle of the castle on a fully caparisoned Kattiawar charger, w
hich he duly handed over to the queen. A few weeks later the eleven Indians joined the queen at Hatfield House as the guests of Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, whilst the cavalry escort took part in a fete at Hyde Park, and in the military review at Aldershot on 2 July.29 India thus took part in two jubilees in 1887, one at home and one in London. The delay between the two celebrations meant that the large volume of addresses generated in India in February could be sent on and included within the wider roll call of imperial loyalty on show in June, with Indian deputations on hand to present the tributes from India. From first to last, India was woven into the queen’s golden jubilee.
Loyal Legacy: The Imperial Institute
As soon as the jubilee was over, the government announced that there would be a permanent memorial of the fiftieth year of the queen’s reign. This was the Imperial Institute that eventually opened in 1893. First mooted in 1886 following the Imperial and Colonial Exhibition, as a building and organisation that would carry on the mission and aims of that exhibition, the initiative took on a grander ambition after the jubilee. The Prince of Wales presided over the project, Lord Rothschild and the Earl of Carnarvon were amongst its backers, and Lord Herschell, Gladstone’s former lord chancellor, chaired the organising committee. An architectural competition for the building was announced and won by Thomas Collcutt. Contributions were invited from the British public and from India and the colonies. Lord Herschell went off to India to solicit interest and money there.30 A site for the new institute was selected in South Kensington, in the heart of Albertopolis, and the foundation stone laid at the beginning of July 1887. Arthur Sullivan supplied an ode for the occasion, and the queen’s Indian visitors joined the ceremony.31
