The royal friendship that was erased from history
It was on a family trip to Osborne House on Britain’s Isle of Wight that Shrabani Basu discovered a secret that had lain untold since Queen Victoria’s death.
The Indian journalist had taken her two teenage daughters to the former Queen’s palatial holiday home to view the restored Durbar Room; an original banquet hall. Here she noticed several portraits and a bust of an Indian servant called Abdul Karim.
‘‘He didn’t look like a servant,’’ explains Basu. ‘‘He was painted to look like a nobleman. He was holding a book, looking sideways. Something about that expression struck me, and when I moved along, I saw another portrait of him looking rather gentle. It was very unusual.’’
At the time, in 2003, everything she knew about Queen Victoria’s Indian servants came from a book she had written on curry several years earlier – namely that the Queen had loved curry (chicken curry and daal being a particular favourite), and had servants from India who cooked it for her every lunchtime. ‘‘I was intrigued,’’ says Basu. ‘‘I knew I had to look into this.’’
In a project that spanned five years and three countries, Basu slowly uncovered the story of Victoria and Abdul – a 24-year-old former Indian Muslim clerk who had been granted as a ‘‘Golden Jubilee gift’’ to the Queen, and became her closest confidante.
This curious friendship is the subject of a new film starring Dame Judi Dench and Bollywood star Ali Fazal, Victoria and Abdul. It’s based on Basu’s book of the same name, which brings to life the relationship that caused such controversy that upon Queen Victoria’s death, her family tried to erase the story of Abdul entirely. Their letters were burned, and mentions of him in the Queen’s own journals excised by her daughter, Beatrice. References to Abdul by other historians were brief, and painted him a ‘‘rogue’’ who used the Queen to climb the social ladder.
The true nature of the pair’s 13-year friendship was consigned to history’s recesses until Basu went to Windsor Castle and viewed the Queen’s Hindustani journals – a collection of ‘‘exercise books’’ where Abdul would teach her what we now know as Urdu. ‘‘No-one had seen them up to that point,’’ explains Basu. ‘‘The blotting paper fell out of these journals which hadn’t been opened for 100 years – presumably because all Queen Victoria’s biographers had been Western and couldn’t follow Urdu.’’
Delhi-raised Basu could, and read 13 volumes of the Queen writing about Hindustani lessons, visiting Abdul when he was ill, taking tea with his wife and seeing their cat’s new kittens. Her passion for India was obvious. It showed a completely different side to the Queen’s life.
After Victoria’s death, Abdul returned to Agra, and there Basu found his ruined mausoleum. ‘‘It was a big moment,’’ says Basu. ‘‘I felt, now I’ve found his grave, this man’s story had to be told. It became a passion. Within a few months, it had taken over my life. I mean, it was the Queen and a young Muslim man – what’s not to be curious about? The more and more I got into it, it became more and more gripping.’’
She tracked down relatives in Karachi, and an old trunk that revealed Abdul’s untouched personal journals. They detailed his story – coming to England at 24, to take up what he thought was a prestigious position in the Queen’s household, but was actually just a glorified ‘‘exotic servant’’ role. ‘‘There was a bit of arrogance as he wrote about that and, after a couple of months in England, he writes about how he wants to go back to his wife in India. He tells the Queen, but she asks him to stay, saying she enjoys his company and wants to learn Hindustani from him.’’
That discovery was crucial, as it proved that the existing narrative about the roguish Abdul wasn’t true.
‘‘It put their whole relationship into a different perspective,’’ says Basu. ‘‘He was devoted and has nothing but praise for her, about how good she is, how she’s kind and has always stood up for him.’’
Over the next few years, Basu pieced together the true story of what she says was a deep friendship: ‘‘Sometimes she’s a mother figure to him; sometimes he’s her closest friend... he spoke to her as a human being and not as the Queen. Everyone else kept their distance from her, even her own children, and this young Indian came with an innocence about him.’’ – Telegraph Group