On January 29, 1922, the Mahar Parishad (“Assembly of the Untouchable Mahar caste”) of the Central Indian provinces held a three-day session in Nagpur. Its advertisement in the weekly Vijayi Maratha (“The Victorious Maharashtrian”) newspaper declared that “the usual issues pertaining to social, political and educational progress of the Untouchables will be discussed.” The unusual highlight of the session, which found special mention in the public advertisement on the front page of the newspaper, was that “the son of our most revered Badshah, the Prince of Wales is scheduled to visit Nagpur on 30 January. Hence the representatives of the Mahar brethren are exhorted not to miss the opportunity to have a Darshan [a sighting] of the prince.”Footnote 1
Such public displays of affection for the British royals by colonial Indian subjects do not find a significant place in the popular narratives and imagination of the history of modern India today. This, in spite of the fact that every school-going student in an Indian school is expected to learn the history of the Indian freedom struggle.Footnote 2 This hypomnesia, the underrepresentation of memories that do not conform to the anticolonial narrative, might be understandable for a postcolonial society. However, a monochromatic representation of the struggle for creation of the Indian nation—as if it were an epic battle between the good nationalists and the bad colonialists—has engendered a constricted understanding of Indian modernity in general and the processes involved in the making of the Indian nation in particular. For example, one of the most popular textbooks of modern Indian history claims that “[t]hus, from the beginning, the Indian National Congress, and in fact the entire national movement opposed caste privileges, fought for equal civic rights and equal freedom for the development of the individual without distinctions of caste, sex or religion.”Footnote 3 If this narrative were true, then separate assemblies for different untouchable castes, such as the one mentioned above, would not exist even after the Indian National Congress had existed for half a century since 1885. Another virally popular book that claims to be about “India's experience with British colonialism” (Tharoor's An Era of Darkness) does not probe the ideological streams within the Indian national movement well enough to explain why the colonial experience was not the same for everyone in India. A nuanced understanding of the story of decolonization necessitates a rigorous examination of the interplay of various exploitative structures within Indian society. Such a study reveals that structures of exploitation such as caste and class determined the location from which colonial subjects prioritized their choices.
The texts consulted for this article were produced by authors that come from different caste-class locations in the Bombay Presidency in Western India during the colonial era. They were composed for commemorating events such as the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne (1897) or the visit to India of the Princes of Wales (1876, 1922) and King George V (1911) and other occasions. Some have been composed as general pleas of the subjects addressed to their royal masters. Still others are not addressed to the royals but allude to them. They are all composed in the Marathi language and one in Sanskrit as well.
These texts offer an opportunity for us to understand various points of view about the British royalty as manifested in the world of Marathi speakers ranging from the harshly critical to the unabashedly loyalist, with many shades in between. This variety might make us aware of the multihued nature of Indians’ responses to colonial realities. The conveniently labeled extremists can be seen writing heartfelt obituaries for the queen, while the reformers accused of fraternizing with the enemy have cited historical examples of British kings being forced to accept popular demands for political rights.
A survey of such a variety of sources may help us realize that Indian modernity and the creation of the Indian nation are phenomena that have come into being as a result of multiple interests, objectives, and methods. The yardstick of modern nationalism has a fixed and negative image of what royalism represented for the colonial subjects. However, Indians from disadvantaged locations were faced with difficult choices—for example, the choice between the life of an Untouchable deprived of basic human rights and the dignified life of a colonial army recruit. Colonial exploitation was a reality, but the opportunities offered under British rule were also invaluable for many of Indians. These nuances might help us understand the reasons behind the present-day contestations of events from the colonial past.Footnote 4 This might eventually help us refashion the narratives of our history that are created for public consumption.
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In the Bombay Presidency, one of the earliest authors to speak up about the colonial conquest was Lokahitawadi,Footnote 5 who wrote Shatapatre, 108 letters to the editor of the weekly Prabhakar between 1848 and 1850. Born in the caste of Brahmins and having served as a colonial administrator, Lokahitawadi is usually understood as an author who advocated rigorous social reforms as an antidote to colonial subjugation. He offered a stinging self-critique of the high castes for being selfish and parochial, and thus responsible for the loss of political power. As such, he is seen as an admirer of the British. When it came to matters of governance and administration, Lokahitawadi opined that colonial rule was, in fact, an opportunity to bring about political and social reforms. He cited the examples of King John and the demand for the Magna Carta, King Charles I and the popular uprising against him, as well as the removal of King James II. Juxtaposing these examples with the Indians’ inertia in rising against a monarchy, he opined, “Such uprisings have been unheard of in India.” He substantiated his statement with the Sanskrit maxim, “When the king robs you of everything, is lamenting not futile?”Footnote 6 However, he argued that one can look up to the examples of the British monarchs and learn that it is indeed possible to initiate political reforms and to bring a king to his knees if he pursues repressive policies. Thus, as early as 1850, with the aim of improving the Indian polity and administration, Lokahitawadi was citing cases of popular pressure influencing the British royals. It certainly was a novel way of advocating reforms, and one that has not been given due visibility in the history of Indian modernity.
Unlike Lokahitawadi, his contemporary Jotirao Phule (1827–1890) hailed from a supposedly inferior location in the caste hierarchy. He did not advocate that British royals were rulers that needed to be reined in. Sincerely believing in Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1858, Phule felt that improving the lives of the downtrodden people was a responsibility that needed to be shouldered by the queen. In his tract called The Cunning of Brahmins published in 1869,Footnote 7 not long before the infamous Deccan Riots,Footnote 8 Phule exhorts the queen to be answerable for the loss of livelihood as experienced by the debt-ridden cultivators. He stated this in no uncertain terms: “Respected Lady, the Queen! Search yourself for an answer now that the onus is on your head. Try to understand that you should not err from doing your duty. You should provide education” (Phadke 124). He lauded the initiative of the queen as she “set an example for the world by abolition of slavery” and asked her to “visit and grant freedom to the enslaved people here” (124). Contrary to the popular imagination of being an anglophile, Phule did not mince words as he asked the queen, “How can you sleep peacefully, when you are the owner of the flock? You should emancipate these poor brethren” (124).
In 1869, Phule also composed a ballad to commemorate the prowess of the Kshatriya hero from the seventeenth century, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (Phadke 63–109). There was a reason for this commemoration. The Peel Commission of 1859 (that is to say, the report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the organization of the Indian army, chaired by Lt. Gen. Jonathan Peel, MP) had accelerated the so-called martial races theory, which claimed that certain castes were not worthy of being enlisted in the military as they lacked the martial qualities.Footnote 9 Hence, the ballad was a reminder for the rulers that the non-Brahmins had ample evidence of military prowess in their past and that they should not be denied the opportunity to enter military service. The eagerness of the supposedly lower castes to serve in the colonial military machine is seen with suspicion even today,Footnote 10 while the Brahmin compradors in the colonial administration are not. The ballad concluded with the indictment that “the power of the Queen in India is not as alert as one would like it to be” (Phadke 109). Phule claimed this was because the “Brahmanical power reigns supreme everywhere.” He concluded the ballad by urging the queen to “Godspeed and save the non-Brahmins from these cunning people” (109).
Thus Phule's engagement with the royals was not that of adulation and admiration alone. He admired the progressive elements of the British royalty but did not flinch from making the royals aware of the reality on the ground. Later in 1876, when he was invited for a dinner with the prince of Wales in Pune, he shared the table but chose to be dressed like a common peasant so as to draw the prince's attention to their plight. He also gave a little speech wherein he requested the prince to let the queen know about the plight of peasants in India.
These examples from Lokahitawadi and Phule demonstrate that Marathi writings about the British royals need not be considered as those of loyalists and anglophiles, but one may instead view them as the initial articulations of a dialogue with the colonial monarchs initiated by the subjects who sincerely believed that they were as much British subjects as an Englishman living in England. The British royals figured in Lokahitawadi's writings as exemplars of certain qualities, and he wanted his fellow Indians to learn from these royals and their history. Phule took a more direct approach with the royals. He tried to convey the Indian reality to the prince and the queen. He urged the queen to fulfil her duty toward her Indian subjects. This belief in the benevolence of the royals was not unrelated to Phule's caste location. The promise given in the queen's Proclamation of 1858 that “all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law” was the ray of hope for the downtrodden masses that Phule represented.Footnote 11 His appeals and requests to the queen were sincere and hopeful, knowing fully well that any Indian ruler regaining power would mean regression to a life steeped in caste-based discrimination.
The disillusionment began to set in during the later years of the nineteenth century. The frank assertion of rights came to be replaced by rigid and formal avowals of loyalty to the Crown, making respectfully docile requests for the royal blessings by descendants of former rulers who now signed off as the humble servants of the English Crown. For example, in 1876, when the prince of Wales visited India, Raghunathrao Vitthal Vinchoorkar composed a Sanskrit poem entitled “An Account of the Indian Journey of the Prince of Wales.”Footnote 12 This composition typifies the formal and docile turn taken by Maharashtrian writings about the royals during this time.
Vinchoorkar's epithets occupied three lines of the title page—he was a “First Class Sirdar, Companion of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India and Raja Oomdut ul Mulk Bahadur,” quite a mouthful, considering that the prince of Wales is named simply as the prince of Wales. The author composed the Sanskrit poem and also had it translated into English because he felt that “this book deserves to be read by cultivated minds, both natives and Europeans.”Footnote 13 The book in itself is a well-crafted panegyric composed in perfect metrical verses. It is divided into several cantos dealing with a description of the British nation, the capital of England, Queen Victoria, the reasons for the prince's journey, a description of India, his stay in Mumbai, and an epilogue.
Just one example of the changed narrative about the British royals from this poem may be cited here:
अन्यायवर्तिजगतीपतिदुर्निवार-
पीडातुरान् सकलभारतवर्षसंस्थान्|
लोकान्निरीक्ष्य दयया परमेश्वरेण
विक्टोरिया तदवने खलु योजितास्ति||
[Verily was Victoria appointed to protect all the people of India by the great God out of his mercy, seeing them afflicted with irremediable miseries (brought on) by unjust kings.]Footnote 14
The author was a descendant of the famous Sirdar Vinchoorkar family that served the Peshwas, from whom the British had conquered most of the Bombay Presidency region. Despite being a descendant of the erstwhile nobility, Vinchoorkar did not find anything amiss in composing a poem that openly blamed the earlier rulers as unjust. This poem and the sentiments evoked therein are representative of the literature that addressed, described, and exhorted the British royals in the hope of gaining or continuing to receive what they thought were royal favors.
Another group of Indians nurtured the hope that the royals would help them improve their lot. Phule had founded Satyashodhak Samaj (“Truthseekers’ Society”) in 1873. Its members shared Phule's hopes from the queen. Throughout her reign, the members of this society continued their attempts to communicate the living conditions of the Indian cultivators to the queen. For example, in 1894 the weekly Deenbandhu (“Brother of the Oppressed”) newspaper published a poem by an anonymous Dalit farmer hoping to communicate the lived experiences of the farmers with the queen.
I urge my countrymen to communicate the unbearable condition of our remaining life to my Queen. We have wasted our bodies in agriculture since we have been born; but we have not even once earned enough food for our children.Footnote 15
In 1895, Krishnarao Bhalekar, a staunch advocate of Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj, put up a large poster at the entry gate of the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Pune. It read “Dear God! There are a few humans that strive to prevent the meek from being exploited by the mighty. Our Queen Victoria is one such human. The beginnings of education and establishment of order in this country are the fruit of her blessings. We want her to be aware of the plight of our farmers suffering from poverty and ignorance.”Footnote 16 Such voices of dissent within the Indian National Movement have largely been ignored in the historiography of modern India.
The long reign of Queen Victoria also meant that there were a large number of references to her in the wider literature of nineteenth-century Maharashtra. Parshurampant Godbole, a collaborator of many a British administrator in the Bombay Presidency, composed the following poem in her honor.
Our Queen should enjoy forever all kinds of happiness.
We sing her songs because She's a delight for us.
Her enemies with folded hands, admire her military camps everywhere.
Her pure coins, marked as Victoria are accepted everywhere.Footnote 17
It is not great poetry, of course, but Her Majesty's financial and military power is amply underlined in the wordy couplet probably intended to make a show of loyalty and wordplay.
The show of loyalty was not limited to Queen Victoria. In 1901, as the new Queen Alexandra was supposed to celebrate her husband's coronation, a women's magazine ran a story describing in glowing terms how the new queen had specially sent for her coronation dress to be hand-embroidered by the artisans of India.Footnote 18 Such ritualistic obeisance took many forms. Every day, schoolchildren in Maharashtra in the early twentieth century were made to recite a specific poem praising King George V. As a former schoolchild later recalled, it read as follows: “O King, George the Fifth, you are great. You should take care of this earth. You are respected by the learned people. May you enjoy peace, company of children and grandchildren, happiness and long life.”Footnote 19 Similarly, when King George V and Queen Mary were scheduled to visit Bombay in 1911, the weekly Dinmitra (“Friend of the Oppressed”) carried an editorial of welcome. The editorial stated, “India is like a weak child eager to meet her parents. If the parents want some real good to be achieved by the weak child, they should feed the child with the tincture of Compulsory Education.”Footnote 20 Sometimes, there appears to be veiled criticism implied in the ostensible declarations of loyalty. For example, in 1898 the Deenbandhu reported that Queen Victoria had been prudent with her expenses and that she managed to put aside a small amount from her income to make a “modest purchase of 37000 acres of land” in England.Footnote 21
A rather surprising tribute to the queen's authority is found in an emotionally charged editorial of the most popular nationalist Marathi weekly, Kesari. It was written by B. G. Tilak as an obituary to the queen.Footnote 22 Tilak, a leading nationalist figure of the early twentieth century,Footnote 23 was well known for his anticolonial position in Indian and British politics. In spite of that, the queen's obituary bears a rare display of sympathy toward the British monarch. The personal details about the queen and her calm and composed demeanor, her sensitivity toward the Indian subjects, and such other virtues admired in the editorial make one wonder if one is indeed reading the Kesari. The important takeaway of the obituary seems to be that “the Proclamation of the queen is a historically important document in that it grants unequivocal legitimacy to our Demands for Political Rights, which are just and ethical beyond doubt.”Footnote 24
This was not the first time that Tilak offered a favorable evaluation of the queen's reign. In 1897, Kesari carried three consecutive editorials to comment on the diamond jubilee of the queen's accession to the throne.Footnote 25 The queen was praised for not using her prerogatives arbitrarily, unlike the previous sovereigns. This praise was followed by the survey of the extent of the empire and an appeal to pay better attention to the demands of Indian subjects. The last of these editorials, published on June 22, 1897, also served to disguise Tilak's clandestine involvement in the murder of an British official, Mr. Rand, the plague commissioner of Pune, which took place on the same day.Footnote 26 The Kesari had earlier fanned the popular opinion that Mr. Rand's efforts to sanitize the city and isolate the plague patients were transgressing native beliefs about caste and purity. In cases such as this one, the editorial praises showered on the queen were intended to obfuscate the radical ideology espoused by the newspaper. At the same time a scandal had surfaced following public anger against the handling of the plague outbreak in the Bombay Presidency in 1897. One morning in 1898, the queen's statue in Bombay was found to be smeared with tar. It was rather difficult to clean up the tarnished monument. Finally, a professor of chemistry from the Wilson College in Mumbai managed to clean it up. This is reported in a snippet from the Deenbandhu, which remarks that it indeed must be a cause of pleasure for all the loyal subjects of the queen that a professor of chemistry managed to remove the tar from the tarnished face of the queen's statue.Footnote 27
There are other examples of how the diamond jubilee was celebrated in the Bombay Presidency in contrasting ways. For example, a schoolteacher in a girls’ school in Hatkanangle in southern Maharashtra, also named Tilak (Govind Pandurang, no relation), published a poem entitled “Victoria Raneegeet” to honour the “Queen of the Universe,” Maharani Victoria. He was generously helped by a local British administrator, Mr. Whitcombe, who had purchased a few copies with advance payment. The writer exhorted all subjects of Her Majesty to be grateful for her reign and hoped that they would sing these verses in her praise. The poem consists of many stanzas describing what the poet feels are the great deeds and achievements of the queen. The queen's proclamation, her pioneering work in laying the foundations of many different branches of the central and regional administration, her civil and military administration—all are praised in the poem. As the poet lists out the queen's pathbreaking achievements, the first benevolent act in his list is the setting up of schools—not irrelevant considering that the poet is a schoolmaster: “The Queen loves us, her subjects so. She has created schools for us to help us drink the nectar of Knowledge.”Footnote 28 A unique feature of this poem is the description of the queen in her role as a mother. The poet writes:
Nine virtuous babies were born to the Queen. However, because of Destiny, only seven of these virtuous children survive in the world today. Under her rule, we do not face any shortages. The world is indebted due to our Queen's beneficence.Footnote 29
The poem ends with an appeal to the British administrators to buy copies of the poem for distribution in government schools. The schoolmaster was probably trying to achieve more than one thing from the book, namely, praising the queen, winning the favor of the administrators in the school department, and perhaps some pecuniary benefits if enough copies of the book were sold.
Not all praise for the queen stemmed from personal motives. Dhondiram Namdeo Kumbhar, an ardent supporter of Jotirao Phule and a founding member of the Satya Shodhak Samaj, wrote a tract entitled Vedachar in 1897 criticizing high-caste dominance within Hinduism. He concluded the text with a poem:
We should be grateful to the English Rule. We should praise it.
We have begun to understand the Human Rights. We are free of robbers because of the English Rule.
Victory to the Maharani, who has given us the tongue for speaking.
Oh Queen, you are great. In your reign, you have given knowledge to the ignorant.
Dhondiram sings her praises daily, he says that dear Queen, you are just great!Footnote 30
Gratitude for the queen in this case stemmed from the fact that the queen had assured that benefits of her rule, including modern education, would be available for her subjects irrespective of their social status, and the author had indeed experienced the difference it made to the lives of the unprivileged.
In many of these eulogies from Bombay Presidency, the queen was seen as an exemplar. She figured in a number of texts as an ideal ruler, an ideal woman, or both. Nazeer Ahmed's Miraat ul Arus (“A Mirror for the Ladies”), originally published in Urdu in 1869, was translated into Marathi in the late nineteenth century.Footnote 31 The work is a novella wherein stories of a family are intertwined to present some examples of ideal womanhood for the intended middle-class Marathi female readership. At one point, a lady in the book raises doubts as to how a woman can possibly discharge the duties of a monarch. Another lady counters by stating that it is indeed the ministers who help all monarchs in their work, and the queen must also be taking such help. She gives the example of the begum of Bhopal and says that Queen Victoria is no different, merely that the scale of her empire is much grander. Then a lady asks if the queen has a husband and children. Others assure her that “she indeed had a husband who sadly passed away due to old age but the queen has a number of children and grand-children.”Footnote 32 The queen becomes an acceptable ideal once she is safely ensconced in a familial setup.
Other texts quote religious scriptures in order to endorse the authority of the royals. A poem in 1895 quoted a Christian scripture stating that “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. (Romans 13)”Footnote 33 This poem appeals to God to “grant life, strength, Wealth, victory and happiness to our merciful queen. Her enemies should run away. Her authority should spread far and wide. Her subjects should live happily together without strife. Her children and grandchildren should be always happy.” The poet was a newly converted Christian composing a panegyric for the queen while trying to reconcile his new faith with loyalty to the crown. The poem appeared in a special children's supplement of the weekly newspaper Dnyanoday published by the American Marathi Mission. The motivating forces behind the Marathi speakers writing about the British royals were thus varied. The personal and the political were irreversibly intertwined.
At first sight the obsequious tone of these royal eulogies of Bombay Presidency remains unchanged across the late colonial era. When the prince of Wales visited in 1922, he was welcomed by a number of organizations. The Patil Parishad of the Bombay Presidency passed a resolution on the prince's arrival, affirming their allegiance to the Crown. This resolution, the Vijayi Maratha of February 20, 1922, reports, was received favorably by the prince: his secretary communicated the prince's pleasure at the message of their allegiance and wrote that the prince was deeply concerned about the cause of the progress of the farmers and patils.Footnote 34 The same issue carried the news of another meeting held in Satara district to collect some funds for starting a boarding school for non-Brahmin students. The news report mentions that the meeting concluded with slogans of victory to the Badshah George V, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj. The same issue reports that a public meeting of over 1,500 Suryavamshi Matang people was held in Kudal, Satara district. The first resolution was of allegiance to the Crown. This was followed by demands for compulsory education and decriminalization of the communities branded as “criminal tribes.”Footnote 35 A review of news reports of this period shows that the first resolution of any such meetings would always proclaim allegiance to the Crown. The Indian organizations seem to have devised a formal and normalized procedure of conveying their grievances and demands to the king in the hope that he might indeed make a difference to their lives.
However, there were also strong nationalist strains in the reception given to the prince of Wales in 1922. A very popular literary representation of the royals in Maharashtrian writings was the poem composed by the twentieth-century social reformer and prolific anticaste writer, K. S. Thackeray. He described the visit of the prince of Wales to Pune in 1922 and the unveiling of the equestrian statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by the prince, a ceremony that would have been unthinkable in the 1890s. Thackeray stated, “Britannia has arrived here to pay her respects to the King Shivaji.”Footnote 36
To conclude, the British royals form the subject matter of a large body of literature composed in colonial Maharashtra. These literary pieces offer an insight into the different emotive forces behind the addresses, descriptions, panegyrics, and criticisms aimed toward the royals. One needs to have a textured understanding of these sources, situating them in the contemporary ethos and caste-class location of the authors. Hasty generalizations and labeling of persons as loyalists or extremists are not useful, considering the surprises that these literary sources throw at researchers. A detailed study of these and other source materials can enrich our understanding of the processes that led to the creation of the Indian nation. It may also remind us that Indian modernity was a product of a crisscross of factors and not a uniform and chronological journey.
