by Miles Taylor
Mountbatten was also charged with keeping the two new countries within the British Commonwealth as dominions. Both Jinnah and Nehru agreed to Pakistan and India moving to dominion status on independence for an interim period.51 As the Raj wound down the British gave up their baubles without too much fuss. Attlee’s Labour government offered to give back the imperial crown from the 1911 durbar (that never happened). Other symbols were hard to let go. The monarchy, for one. Former viceroy Lord Halifax suggested that the king and queen travel to Delhi to say ‘goodbye and good luck’. Mountbatten even tried without success to have a miniature Union Jack included in the new flags of both Pakistan and India.52 Such minutiae did not really matter. Mountbatten got what he came for. When the transfer of power was made in the middle of August 1947, sovereignty passed from the Empire not to two new republics, but to two dominions. In Karachi on 14 August, Mountbatten read out a message from the king, welcoming Pakistan to ‘its place in the British Commonwealth of Nations’. The next day, from their thrones in the durbar hall in the Viceroy’s House in Delhi, Lord and Lady Mountbatten presided over the handover ceremony in India.53 Another message was read from the king, welcoming the ‘fulfilment of a great democratic ideal to which the British and India people alike are dedicated’. There was no ritual lowering of the Union Jack in Delhi, although this did happen elsewhere, for example at the residency in Lucknow. Rather, the new dominion flags were run up, what Mountbatten called ‘the great event of the day’. Later that evening, at a large banquet, Nehru toasted the king, and Mountbatten toasted the ‘new dominion of India’.54 Still no mention was made of a republic, either in Karachi or Delhi. Later that year, Gandhi marked the transfer of power in his own inimitable style, sending a wedding present of a table cloth to Princess Elizabeth, the heir to the throne, knitted by a Punjabi girl from yarn spun by his own hands.55 As gifts from India to the royal family went, Gandhi’s gesture was humble, a change from the tributary nuzzars of old, yet its meaning was clear. Until 1947, the spinning wheel, suggesting economic self-reliance, had been at the centre of the campaign for swaraj. Since 1921 it had featured in the INC’s tricolour flag for the new nation. After independence, the chakra in the national flag now stood for truth and virtue, for satya and dharma, invoking Ashoka, the Indian ruler of the second century. The qualities once found in kings, emperors, queens and even empresses would now symbolise the new republic.
So the British left the Indian subcontinent, and left the interim dominion governments of India and Pakistan to debate and decide what a republic in South Asia might be. Mountbatten stayed on as governor-general of India, whilst Jinnah undertook the equivalent role in Pakistan. Statues and other wondrous signs of the Raj began to be removed from public display.56 The constituent assemblies of the two new countries now took their time in deliberating their new constitutions. In India it became clear that the new state would be a unitary republic. A Sanskrit name was chosen for the new India, ‘Bharat’, meaning a universal ruler, or a chakravati, both words that had been used on many occasions to describe the rule of Queen Victoria. Now it had real force. The promises held out to the larger Muslim princely states by both Cripps and Mountbatten proved illusory as the Instrument of Accession was enforced across India. In Pakistan, where there were fewer princely states to manage, the process of accession was less brutal and proved more drawn out.57 There was resistance in India, from both Muslim and Hindu princely states. The Nizam of Hyderabad, whom the British had spent decades bossing and bullying into the Empire, tried to hang on to his independence until the troops of the new Indian army moved in. Bhopal, always conspicuous in its loyalty to the queen-empress, held out too.58 In the south, Travancore, whose raja had supplied the queen with her imperial throne way back in 1851, staved off incorporation into the new India until 1956, its prime minister, C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, defending to the last an alternative idea of the ancient Hindu polity, one based on kingship, and refusing to accept that British paramountcy had automatically passed to the new Indian government.59
Something like a British monarch remained in both of the new constitutions: the figure of the president. In India, the presidential role was modelled on the British constitution, its prerogative substantial in theory – head of the armed forces, head of the executive, responsible for appointing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and invested with legislative power in the event of Parliament not sitting. In practice, like the British monarch, the new president of India conceded executive authority to the prime minister, and was content to advise and warn, but never control. For guidance on how to achieve this sleight of hand, the makers of the Indian constitution turned to Walter Bagehot and his classic 1867 account of limited monarchy.60 The royal way of doing things was admired for once. Only later when the Indian constitution came under fire did reminders of the monarchy-Raj resurface. In the 1970s Indira Gandhi was likened to an ‘Empress of India’, especially during the Emergency of 1975–7, when she used the 42nd amendment to curtail the functions of the Supreme Court, and to undo the independence of the Indian Parliament.61 In Pakistan, the president was initially allotted a similar role as a simple constitutional backstop, although the ‘Objectives Resolution’ of March 1949 gave him more extensive emergency powers, and, by the time the new Islamic republic of Pakistan was declared in 1956, its first president, Iskander Mirza, was armed with more authority than that enjoyed by his family forebears, the Nawabs of Bengal, let alone the queen-empress of India.62
One area of controversy remained in India around the lingering influence of the British Crown: Indian membership of the British Commonwealth, a status that many members of the Constituent Assembly described as a new form of colonialism. During the constitutional debates, Hasrat Mohani, who had first called for national independence back in 1921, was a consistent opponent of India’s hybrid ‘dominion republic’ status.63 Dissent only died away after the meeting of Commonwealth heads of state in London in April 1949, when the republic of India was confirmed as a member of the Commonwealth (the offending ‘British’ descriptor was lopped off), an association that India had joined freely, and ‘as such’ recognised the king as its head. It seemed a good compromise, although Indian constitutional historians such as B. N. Rau still scrabbled around for a historical precedent, finding one in the Licchavis of Bihar, a republican state of the sixth century bc that had formed an alliance with the Gupta empire.64 History mattered.
By the close of 1949 India had its republic. A final royal proclamation of 22 June 1948 did away with the title of king-emperor. At the end of November 1949, the new constitution was finished. It looked forward to India as a ‘sovereign democratic republic’ (‘secular and socialist’ would be added later). It looked backwards too. There was a time, Ambedkar pointed out, when India was ‘studded with republics’ and, he added for good measure, elected and limited monarchies too. Rajendra Prasad, shortly to become India’s first president, recalled India’s republics from 2,000 years before.65 Such an invention of tradition served its purpose, underlining Nehru’s claim that there was an inevitability about India’s emergence from empire as a republic. In fact, there was no untrammelled path from imperial monarchy to republic, from the formation of the Indian National Congress in November 1885 to 26 January 1950, when the new nation formally commenced. Historians of modern India treat the struggle for independence in the half-century after Queen Victoria’s death as a two-cornered contest, between Indian nationalism and the British government. Yet there was always a third body in the ring. That was the Crown, truly the elephant in the room of modern Indian history. Indian attachment to the idea of a patriot queen, a beneficent monarch, persisted well into the early twentieth century. Only in the 1920s did the argument emerge within Indian nationalism that the monarch, government and imperialism were one and the same thing. At that point, the idea of imperial monarchy was reappropriated by the British, in order to see off the INC, but with diminishing effects. By the end of the Raj the monarchy was as unpopular in India as the res
t of the edifice of British rule. Not until 1961 did Queen Elizabeth II venture out to India and Pakistan, almost the last countries of the new Commonwealth to receive a royal visit. On that occasion all went well. Prasad and Nehru beamed with pride as the queen sat through the Republic Day celebrations of 26 January. In London, The Times reflected on how the visit showed up the failure of Disraeli’s old romantic vision of making Queen Victoria Empress of India, how Disraeli had been wrong to push her forward as a symbol of political authority, but never one of social cohesion. Only now with the queen as head of the Commonwealth, the paper went on, was there a version of monarchy that was not alien to the Indian people.66 As a postcolonial sentiment the observation was undoubtedly timely. Monarchy had indeed fallen from fashion in India with a resounding thud. As a historical proposition, as this book has tried to show, it was not always so. As empress, Queen Victoria had brought monarchy to life in nineteenth-century India. And in its own way, India had resuscitated royalty back in Britain.
APPENDIX
QUEEN VICTORIA IN INDIAN VERNACULAR,
1858–1914
This listing includes all titles published relating to Queen Victoria and her family, of which only a small subset has survived in libraries. Unless otherwise indicated the principal source for this compilation is the annotated quarterly lists of books and periodicals published in each presidency and province as supplements to the Government of India Gazettes from 1867 onwards (IOR SV412, now available in digitised format from the British Library: https://data.bl.uk/twocenturies-quarterlylists/tcq.html).
Assamese
Moore, Reverend P. H., Rajarajesvari Bhikitoriya (Calcutta: Arunoday Ray, 1898)
Barua, Padma Nath, Maharani, or Queen Victoria (Tezpur: Assam Central Press, 1902)
Bengali
De, Muheshchundru Das, The Illumination (Calcutta: Mutilal Das, 1870)
Raya, Rajkrishna, Bharat-Bhagya; or, India’s Good Fortune (Calcutta: Albert Press, 1877)
Tagore, Sourindro Mohun, Victoria-Giti-Mala, or A Brief History of England in Bengali Verses, composed and set to music in commemoration of the assumption by Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen Victoria, of the Diadem ‘Indiæ Imperatrix’ (Calcutta: Punchanun Mookerjee, 1877), University of Edinburgh Library, Special Collections Ma.8.27
Mookhopadhyaya, Gopal Chandra, Victoria Rasuja, or the History of the Imperial Assemblage (Calcutta: Srisha Chandra Bhattacharja, 1879), West Bengal State Library, http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/3855
Biswas, Tarakanath, Maharani Bhikitoriya Charita/Life of Queen Victoria (Calcutta: Rajendra Lal Biswas, 1885), West Bengal State Library, http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/10221
Tagore, Sourindro Mohun, Bhikitoria Giti Mala, Songs in Honour of Empress Victoria (Calcutta: Stanhope Press, 1887)
Gupta, Ambika Charan, Maharani Victoria, or a happy reign (Calcutta: Uchitavakta Press, 1887), West Bengal State Library, http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/5250
Sen, Chandi Charan, Maharajni Bhiktoriya Charita Chitra Samabalita/The Memoirs of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (Calcutta: Mani Mohan Rakshit, 1887)
Ray, Dasharathi, Raj Putra. The Grandson of the Queen (Calcutta: Rajendralal Ghosh, 1889)
Malik, Binod Bihari, His Royal Highness the Prince Albert Victor Clarence Edward in India (Calcutta: I. C. Bose & Co., 1890)
Nath, M. N., Bharateshvari Bhiktoriya/The Empress Victoria (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1890)
Pal, Bipin Chandra, Rajnimata Bhiktoriya. Life of Her Majesty Empress Victoria (Calcutta: Kartik Chandra Datta, 1891; repr. 1904), National Library Kolkata, 182.cc.904.7
Rainey, J. Rudd, The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort: Father of the Future Emperors of India. Condensed and translated into Bengali from Sir Theodore Martin’s work, with the author’s permission (Calcutta: Sanskrit Press, 1892)
Rouse, G. H., Maharanir Sakshya/The Testimony of the Queen (Calcutta: Christian Tract Society, 1895)
Ghosh, Ambika Chandra, Rajarajeswari Victoria (Calcutta: Arundoday Roy, 1895), West Bengal State Library, http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/4446
Sen, Srigovinda, Bhikitoriya Mahotsav (Calcutta: Sannyal & Co., 1897)
Sarkar, Purna Chandra, Sri Srimati Maharani Bharatesvarir Hiraka Jubili Jayadhvani/The Shout of Victory on the Occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of the Maharani the Empress of India (Chittagong: Barada Kanta Chakravati, 1897)
Banerji, Kamakhya Charan, Bhikitoriya Charit. The Life of Queen Victoria (Dacca: Gopi Nath Basak, 1898)
Mitra, Ananda Chandra, Bhikitoriya Gitika, A Lyric Poem on the Life and Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India (Calcutta: Guru Das Chatterji, 1900)
Das, Rajnarayan, Adarsha Ramani Maharani Bhikitoriya. A Model Woman the Great Queen Victoria (Calcutta: R. Datta, 1900)
Young, Reverend A. W., Maha Rani O Baibel/The Queen and Her Bible (Calcutta: Christian Tract Society, 1901)
Iyasin, Mahammad, Matah Bhikitoriya/Mother Victoria (Nator: the author, 1901)
Mukhopadhyaya, Pramathanatha, Practiya-pratibha (Calcutta: Bharat Mihir Press, 1901), National Library, Kolkata 182.cc.901.1
Chaudhuri, Mahhamad Maulavi Mokhlesar Rahaman, Soka Bharati/The Melancholy Condolence of HGM Queen Empress Victoria (Dinajpur: Haji Munsi Jamiruddin Chaudhuri, 1902)
Mukherji, Asutosh, Bhutapurva Bharatesvari Bhikitoriya Bharati/Poems on the Late Empress Queen Victoria of India (Calcutta: Gurudas Chatterji, 1903)
Bhattacharya, Kalika Prasad, Bharate Juboraj/Prince of Wales in India (Comilla: Ananda Press, 1905)
Anon., Victoria Ewam Tahar Goshana Patra/The Queen Victoria and Her Proclamation (Benares: Jung Bahadur Singh, 1910)
Burmese
Nyun, Maung San, Short Meanings on Victoria the Great (Rangoon: ABM Press, 1905)
Gujarati
Prince Albert. Selections from the Prize Translation of a Gujarati Poem . . . by a Parsee Poet named Muncherjee Cawasjee (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1870)
Chakubhai, Bulakhiram, Yuwaraj yatra; or, the Travels of the Prince (Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Times Press, 1875)
Bhownaggree, Mancherjee Merwanjee, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands (Bombay, n. p., 1877), National Library of Scotland X.222.f
Wadia, Putlibai Dhanjibhai, Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen-Empress’s More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands from 1862 to 1882 (Bombay: the author, 1886)
Desai, Iccharam Suryaram, Rajatejomayi maharan.i sri Vikt.oriyanum. jivanacaritra (Bombay: Gujarati Printing Press, 1887; 2nd edn 1907), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (IND) 14.B.74
Kabraji, K. N., Maharaninun Yashavardhan/Narrative of the Queen-Empress Glory, Being a Brief Sketch of the Goodness and Greatness of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India (Bombay: Bairamji Fardunji & Co., 1887)
Sangle, Reverend A. M., Our Queen Empress (Bombay: the author, 1887)
Badshah, Bhagwanlal R., An Elegy on the Death of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India (being Gujarat’s memorial tribute to her beloved sovereign) (Ahmedabad: the author, 1901)
Hamirsinh, Parwatsinh, Kaisarehinda Namdar Shri Maharniji Victoria Viraha, or In Memoriam Queen Victoria, Late Empress of India (Ahmedabad: the author, 1901)
Vidyaram, Kavi Bhaishankerji V. (Pandit), Victoria Virah Vilap, or In Memoriam Queen Victoria (Ahmedabad: Aryodaya Press, 1901)
Hindi
The Queen’s Travels in Scotland and Ireland, translated into Hindi by Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh Bahadur, Maharaja of Banaras (Benares: n. p., 1875), RCIN 1053105
Harishchandra, Bhartendu, Manomukulamala (Benares: Medical Hall Press, 1876), University of Edinburgh Library, Special Collections Ma.7.32/2
Harishchandra, Bhartendu, Victoria’s Flag of Victory: A Poem in Hindi (Benares: n. p., 1882), Cambridge University Library, 8833.c.52
Hara Devi, Landan-jubili (Lahore: Imperial Press, 1888), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (IND) Hindi Hara 1
> Anon., Victoria Maharani ka Vrittanta/Life of the Queen-Empress of India (Allahabad: Christian Literary Society, 1896)
Lal, Dewan Mohan, Prabhutwa Shahanshahi. The Grandeur of the Empress (Agra: Kewal Kishen Chand, 1896)
Sannyasi, Swami Alarama Sagar, Bhiktoriya Raja Darpan. A Mirror of the Rule of Her Majesty the Queen-Empress (Bankipur: Sahib Prasad Sinha, 1897)
Mehta, Lajjaram Sharma, Srimati Maharani Bharatesvari Viktoriya ka charita, or Life of Queen Victoria, Empress of India (Bombay: Khemraj Shrikrishnadas, 1901), Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. DS 554.M4 (Orien Hind)
