Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and the Munshi
“If this is impossible,
perhaps the Viceroy wd give strict orders and prevent the Mahomedans and the
Hindus from interfering with one another, so that perfect justice is shown to
both.”
After the Indian “Rebellion” of 1857 (now known as the First
Indian War of Independence), the British East India Company, which had ruled much of India, was dissolved, and its conquests
turned into the hands of the British crown. The Queen had a relatively balanced
view of the conflict, and condemned atrocities on both sides. She
wrote of "her feelings of horror and regret at the result of this bloody
civil war", and insisted, urged on by Albert, that an official
proclamation announcing the transfer of power from the company to the state
"should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious
toleration". At her behest, a reference threatening the
"undermining of native religions and customs" was replaced by a
passage guaranteeing religious freedom. While I would never seek to
glorify British colonialism of India (in fact, I have spent most of my academic
career condemning it), I have always found Queen Victoria’s personal
relationship with the Indian continent and its inhabitants a much more complex,
and fascinating, subject.
In 1877, Benjamin Disraeli, Conservative Prime Minister, had Queen
Victoria proclaimed as Empress of India. India was already under crown control
after 1858, but this title was a gesture to further intertwine monarchy and
empire, and closer bind India and Britain.
The
Royal Titles Bill was brought before Parliament in 1876. It faced opposition
from Liberals who feared that the title was synonymous with absolutism. Queen
Victoria opened Parliament in person, the first time since the death of Prince
Albert, to announce the change in royal title. Celebrations were held
in Delhi led by the Viceroy, Lord Lytton.
The most well known and interesting
example of Victoria’s relationship with India is found in her relationship with
Abdul Karim, as portrayed in the 2017 film, Victoria & Abdul. (The book this
film is based on is also well worth a read, one of my favs! It’s really
interesting for examining the history of racism in Britain, as well as just a
fascinating historical story of two unlikely besties).
“It is
a great interest to me for both the language and the people, I have naturally
never come into real contact with before.”
Mohammed Abdul Karim was an Indian Muslim born in1863. He knew
Persian and Urdu and had travelled across North India and Afghanistan as a
teenager. Karim's father participated in
the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in August 1880. After the war, Karim's father
transferred to a civilian position at the Central Jail in Agra, while Karim
worked as a vakil ("agent" or "representative"). After
three years in Agar, Karim resigned and moved to Agra, to become a vernacular
clerk at the jail. His father arranged a marriage between Karim and the sister
of a fellow worker.
Prisoners in the Agra jail were trained and kept employed as
carpet weavers as part of their rehabilitation. In 1886, 34 convicts travelled
to London to demonstrate carpet weaving at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition
in South Kensington. Karim did not accompany the prisoners, but assisted Jail
Superintendent John Tyler in organising the trip, and helped to select the
carpets and weavers. When Queen Victoria, then in her sixties, visited the
exhibition, Tyler gave her a gift of two gold bracelets, again chosen with the
assistance of Karim. The Queen had a longstanding interest in her Indian
territories and wished to employ some Indian servants for her Golden Jubilee.
She asked Tyler to recruit two attendants who would be employed for a year.
Karim was hastily coached in British manners and in the English language and
sent to England, along with Mohammed Buksh. It was planned that the two Indian
men would initially wait at table, and learn to do other tasks.
When Karim first travelled to England, he waited on the
Queen at Frogmore House in Windsor. Shortly after her first meeting with Karim,
Queen Victoria revealed in her diary that she had started learning some words
in Hindustani after becoming acquainted with her two new servants. Karim soon
began teaching the Queen Urdu. From there, their relationship went from
strength to strength.
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“My good Abdul Karim’s departure is vy. Inconvenient…I miss
him terribly!....I have such interesting and instructive conversations with him
about India – the people, customs and his religion…’
In 1888, the year after Karim arrived in England, Queen
Victoria granted him a new position, titled “Munshi”, to signify his role as
her personal language teacher. However, their conversations did not solely
concern language. The pair also talked about subjects including philosophy and
politics.
Throughout their 14-year friendship, which lasted until Victoria’s
death in 1901, the monarch made her fondness for Karim apparent. As part of his
role in the royal household, he supervised other Indian servants, and was
assigned a room at the Queen’s estate Balmoral Castle in Scotland. And in 1899,
Karim was appointed a commander of the order (CVO), an honour given to him on
the monarch's 80th birthday.
However, other members of the royal family did not share the
monarch’s affinity for the young man, making it clear they did not wish to
treat him above the rank of servant. And when they expressed their dislike for
Karim, the Queen stood her ground in his defence.
One of the reasons why many may not have been aware of Queen
Victoria’s friendship with Karim was because much of their correspondence was
burned. Having made his disapproval for Karim clear during the Queen’s
lifetime, following her death, her eldest son, Edward, ordered that letters
sent between the pair be destroyed.
Individuals in the royal household had not approved of the
“rapid advancement” of Karim to Queen Victoria’s close confidant: “Racialism
was a scourge of the age; it went hand in hand with belief in the
appropriateness of Britain’s global dominion. For a dark-skinned Indian to be
put very nearly on a level with the queen’s white servants was all but
intolerable, for him to eat at the same table as them, to share in their daily
lives was viewed as an outrage”.
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“I wish to observe with respect to Abdul that he has changed
very much and though his manner may be grave and dignified he is very friendly
and cheerful…he is very handy and intelligent and obliging and is useful for
his great knowledge of his own language and of course I am now quite accustomed
and at home with him.”
Basu, author of Victoria and Abdul, uncovered private papers
written by members of the Queen’s household, including the monarch’s doctor,
Sir James Reid. In one paper, Reid made his objection to Karim abundantly
clear, writing that the Queen had developed “Munshi mania”. The historian
stated that Karim has been portrayed as a “rogue” in Western biographies, as an
individual “who manipulated the Queen and got famous”.
Basu first gained an interest in Karim after spotting a
painting of him at Osborne House in the Isle of Wight, a former residence of
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. “I knew that Abdul Karim had come from India
to England to serve Queen Victoria in 1887, but the portraits told me he’d been
painted as a noble man”, she said, noting that he had been painted “beautifully,
in red and gold”, and depicted holding a book.
Karim’s descendants later revealed they had kept his
journals safe. Karim did not have any children of his own, as he and his wife
were unable to conceive, so his descendants came from his relatives.
“When [the journals] were handed over to me, it was an amazing moment,” Basu said. “There’s a line in one that says, ‘Whoever’s hand this falls into, I hope they like this story.’ And after over a hundred years it had fallen into my hands.”
Although the film offers a fictionalised version of their
friendship, Basu stressed that the events that take place in the feature did
occur: “The thing is, it’s not fiction …it’s
not some cooked-up ‘jewel in the crown’ Raj nostalgia story. This happened.
Queen Victoria learned Urdu, she wanted her mango and she stood by Abdul Karim.
It sounds like a fantasy, but it isn’t.” She signed their letters “your closest
friend”, “your true friend”, and “your loving mother”, which show that to
Victoria, Abdul was more than just a servant. When Victoria died, the Munshi
was the last person to see her alone.
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“I am so very fond of him…He is so good & gentle &
understanding all I want & is a real comfort to me.’ She also praised Karim
for being ‘such a good influence with the others … he & all of them
set such a good example and so respectable"
For those of you who don’t know, my studies have specialised in interreligious relations and colonialism in India, and I have been attempting to learn Hindi/Urdu for over a year (rather unsuccessfully) so when I first learned of Victoria’s efforts to learn Urdu I was both intrigued and inspired. There is a lot to criticise of Victoria’s role as Empress of India and of her leadership of a global empire which oppressed millions across the globe – and directly led to the death of millions of Indians. Whatever her personal opinions, Victoria was used as a figure head for the “civilising” mission of the British Empire which relied on portraying natives as uncivilised savages and thrived on social Darwinism which portrayed people of colour as inherently inferior. A strong case if made by those who suggest that Victoria viewed her Indian subjects as “pets” to show off and use for her own amusement, and some of her diaries and quotes reveal a clearly racist attitude that was typical of her time. However, I also believe that nonetheless, Victoria, held a fairly progressive view of race and culture in the context of her day. The resistance that she and Karim faced from the Royal Household and wider society show the racist society that they were living in and her constant defence of him – verbal, legal, and personal – suggests that she did genuinely care for him. The honours bestowed upon him and the access he was given to the queen was equal to that of a white servant (as so many protested) which shows that for Victoria, race and religion were no barrier to someone’s success. If Victoria had really viewed Indian society as barbarous and heathen, she would not have taken the effort to learn one of its languages (which she did so very well, I might add) and learn about its people and history. She was also admiring of their faith: “… an excellent, clever truly p[i]ous & very refined gentle man, who says, ‘God ordered it’. Not a murmur is heard for God’s Orders is what they implicitly obey! Such faith as theirs & such conscientiousness set us a gt. example.”
One of the things which struck me most when reading Basu’s
book was that Karim’s influence allowed Victoria to see the victimisation of
the Muslim community in India, whom both the British and Hindu elites often
blamed for any violence. Victoria actively condemned this attitude and spoke in
defence of the Muslim community several times during key moments in Indian
history. The British “divide and rule” policy when it came to religion proved
fatal for millions of people in the following century, but it can be argued
that Victoria genuinely thought that religious tolerance was the best policy, which
somewhat went against her supposed role as head of the church and the missionary
goals of British colonialism. Again, I am in no way seeking to defend British
imperialism in India or anywhere else, but in many ways Victoria’s efforts to
introduce Indian culture to British society and to give its citizens a
(literal) seat at the table at the highest levels is something to be celebrated
and continued today (albeit in very different circumstances, of course). The
Munshi’s treatment after Victoria’s death (including being evicted from his
home, his possessions seized, and all evidence of his correspondence with the
queen burnt before his eyes) are testament to the fact that it was Victoria’s
support alone which enabled him to reach the position that he did and shows how
markedly different her attitudes were to those of the establishment at the
time.
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“I take a little lesson every evening in Hindustani and
sometimes I miss writing by post in consequence. It is a great interest and
amusement to me. Young Abdul (who is in fact no servant) teaches me and is a
vy. strict Master, and a perfect Gentleman. He has learnt English
wonderfully—and can now copy beautifully and with hardly any faults.”
(Picture is my own)
I am lucky enough to have seen Queen Victoria’s “Hindustani”
journals close up at the current Eastern Encounters exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery
at Holyrood Palace and honestly it was one of the most special moments of my
life. Apart from making me feel vastly inferior about my own failure at
learning the language, to me it was a physical reminder of Victoria’s interest in
and efforts to know her Indian subjects better. The last section of the
exhibition deals closely with Victoria’s relationship with India, and doesn’t shy
away from the more problematic aspects of it. However, I was really touched by
the notebooks, and of these sketches of her Indian servants which remind us of
the more human side of Victoria – of the woman who was educated and curious,
artistic and cultured, who had a personal relationship with those she ruled, not
just a detached figurehead sitting on an imperial throne looking down on
inferior races. I can really relate to her desire to understand this exciting
and faraway land that she was unable to see for herself, and empathise with her
attempts to see it through the eyes of those who were lucky enough to call that
land home. If anyone gets the chance to see the exhibition, I’d highly
recommend it – it has so many examples of beautiful Mughal and Hindu religious
art as well as exploring the relationship between Britain and the Indian
subcontinent so there’s really something for everyone! The following photos were all taken by me at the exhibition, so including a wee copyright thing even tho i dont really care if they get stolen because i want everyone to see them!
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