Requiem for a queen
Queen Elizabeth will be best remembered in India as the monarch who carried the burden of Britain’s colonial legacy with a certain grace and lightness that allowed the two countries to stay anchored to the future rather than the past.
She did this without having to fall back on any formal State-sponsored apology to a former colony.
Instead, she relied on the gestalt of her presence and the gravitas of the British monarchy to navigate past the animus of 200 years of shared history.
India was five years into its nationhood when Elizabeth of the House of Windsor ascended the British throne in 1952.
But it was only on her third and final State visit to India in 1997, coinciding with 50 years of Indian Independence, that the British Queen approximated a public atonement for the atrocities perpetrated under British colonial rule.
“It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past. Jallianwala Bagh is a distressing example,” the Queen told guests at a State dinner in her honour, later placing a wreath at the memorial in Amritsar at the site of the carnage by British troops under General Dyer in 1919.
That moment was the closest Britain ever got to a formal recognition by a head of state of colonial-era excesses perpetrated in its former colony.
Prior to and since that visit, the Queen had hosted three Indian presidents – Dr S. Radhakrishnan in 1963, R. Venkataraman in 1990 and Pratibha Patil in 2009 – reverting to the formal protocols prescribed for Britain’s head of state.
“Britain and India have a long-shared history which today is a source of great strength in building a new partnership fit for this new century,” the Queen said at a banquet in honour of President Patil at Buckingham Palace.
Fast forward to more recent times, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi sifting his private collection of memories and recalling how, on one of his visits to Buckingham Palace, the Queen displayed a handkerchief gifted to her by Mahatma Gandhi.
That gesture is now the stuff of folklore, and myriad interpretations.
In many ways, the late Queen could be said to have been the benign face that Britain projected to the rest of the world to soften its sordid colonial past, as well as to steady the ship of State through the turbulent seas of domestic politics.
To that extent, perpetuating the monarchy as an institution acquires significance as an instrument of statecraft to the political establishment in modern-day Britain, if only to deflect attention away from its own state of disarray.
The Queen had sworn in Liz Truss, following a bruising battle for the Tory leadership, as Britain’s new prime minister barely days before she passed away, leaving the throne to her heir, Charles.
The Queen’s demise came 17 months after her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away aged 99.
As the old order gives way to the new, the British monarchy looks set to carry on playing its titular role, both in Britain as well as its former colonies grouped under the Commonwealth.
Queen Elizabeth will be best remembered in India as the monarch who carried the burden of Britain’s colonial legacy with a certain grace and lightness that allowed the two countries to stay anchored to the future rather than the past.
She did this without having to fall back on any formal...
Queen Elizabeth will be best remembered in India as the monarch who carried the burden of Britain’s colonial legacy with a certain grace and lightness that allowed the two countries to stay anchored to the future rather than the past.
She did this without having to fall back on any formal State-sponsored apology to a former colony.
Instead, she relied on the gestalt of her presence and the gravitas of the British monarchy to navigate past the animus of 200 years of shared history.
India was five years into its nationhood when Elizabeth of the House of Windsor ascended the British throne in 1952.
But it was only on her third and final State visit to India in 1997, coinciding with 50 years of Indian Independence, that the British Queen approximated a public atonement for the atrocities perpetrated under British colonial rule.
“It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past. Jallianwala Bagh is a distressing example,” the Queen told guests at a State dinner in her honour, later placing a wreath at the memorial in Amritsar at the site of the carnage by British troops under General Dyer in 1919.
That moment was the closest Britain ever got to a formal recognition by a head of state of colonial-era excesses perpetrated in its former colony.
Prior to and since that visit, the Queen had hosted three Indian presidents – Dr S. Radhakrishnan in 1963, R. Venkataraman in 1990 and Pratibha Patil in 2009 – reverting to the formal protocols prescribed for Britain’s head of state.
“Britain and India have a long-shared history which today is a source of great strength in building a new partnership fit for this new century,” the Queen said at a banquet in honour of President Patil at Buckingham Palace.
Fast forward to more recent times, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi sifting his private collection of memories and recalling how, on one of his visits to Buckingham Palace, the Queen displayed a handkerchief gifted to her by Mahatma Gandhi.
That gesture is now the stuff of folklore, and myriad interpretations.
In many ways, the late Queen could be said to have been the benign face that Britain projected to the rest of the world to soften its sordid colonial past, as well as to steady the ship of State through the turbulent seas of domestic politics.
To that extent, perpetuating the monarchy as an institution acquires significance as an instrument of statecraft to the political establishment in modern-day Britain, if only to deflect attention away from its own state of disarray.
The Queen had sworn in Liz Truss, following a bruising battle for the Tory leadership, as Britain’s new prime minister barely days before she passed away, leaving the throne to her heir, Charles.
The Queen’s demise came 17 months after her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, passed away aged 99.
As the old order gives way to the new, the British monarchy looks set to carry on playing its titular role, both in Britain as well as its former colonies grouped under the Commonwealth.
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