In Other Words

Victoria & Abdul by Shrabani Basu

Not many people know that Queen Victoria was learning Hindustani in the last decade or so of her life. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once described that language as a golden mean between Hindi and Urdu. Under the guidance of Abdul Karim, a Muslim Indian man, Queen Victoria assiduously wrote several journals worth of Hindustani sentences, and took pride in speaking the language with her attendants.

Victoria & Abdul by Shrabani Basu tells the story of how Queen Victoria developed an unexpected bond with Karim, who was presented to her at her Golden Jubilee celebration. While this is a surprising story, and Queen Victoria’s kindnesses toward Karim are certainly moving, what is missing here is a sense of the political reality of the time: Queen Victoria became Empress of India after Britain brutally squashed the 1857 Indian Mutiny, and the era of Queen Victoria’s reign also coincided with devastating famines in parts of India, including the Great Famine of 1876-1878.

Karim was only twenty-four when he was sent from his hometown in Agra, India, to Queen Victoria’s palace, as her table attendant. Remarkably, he soon impressed upon the queen that he came from a good household in India, that he was a doctor’s son (his father was a hospital assistant), and that a menial job such as waiting tables was below his station. His charm endeared him to the widowed queen, and he moved up the ranks with astonishing speed to become her Hindustani tutor or her He also eventually served as her Indian secretary, and helped with the tasks of reading and responding to her considerable daily correspondence.

So far, so good. What is jaw-dropping is that Karim, who had little formal education, soon began to advise the queen on Indian affairs at large. “The Queen had been convinced by Karim that her Muslim subjects were far more loyal to the Crown than the Hindus,” Basu writes. “This was against the general line of the British administration’s thinking at the time, as the Muslims were seen as the main agitators in the Indian Mutiny, since the uprising had been led in the name of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.” It is puzzling that Victoria did not have more qualified Indians advising her on matters of such critical importance.

Over the years, the promotions and the press attention Karim got led to some toxic palace intrigue. Not only was the royal household resentful of the queen’s bond with Karim, they also viewed it through a racist lens. The backbiting against Karim became so nasty that the queen had to forbid her household to refer to him (and her other Indian servants) as “the Black Brigade.” Despite her pleas, the household rebelled against the perks given to Karim, and the queen had many a tearful meeting with her doctor in order to restore even a pretense of calm.

A portrait emerges here of Queen Victoria as a sensitive, maternal figure, ever willing to learn, and especially keen to have a warm, meaningful connection with another person. As her bond with Karim deepened, she encouraged him to stay on in Britain and to have his wife and mother-in-law join him. She frequently wrote to him, missed him when he took a holiday in India, and even signed letters to him as “Your Loving Mother.”

This was not the kind of legacy her heir Edward VII wanted her to leave. One shocking scene occurred when, days after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, her daughter Princess Beatrice, along with Queen Alexandra and some guards, barged into Karim’s cottage. They demanded all the letters Queen Victoria wrote to him, which they proceeded to destroy in a bonfire. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. After Karim’s death in Agra, when he was in his forties, King Edward VII sent British Raj officials to Karim’s door in Agra twice. There, they frightened and harassed Karim’s wife and nephew until the remaining letters from Queen Victoria were handed over.

Thanks to Basu’s investigative eye, the story of the friendship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim has been resurrected despite the almost obsessive efforts of King Edward VII to suppress it. In the end, Edward VII needn’t have worried so much. Karim does not come across as a particularly interesting man; he was mostly a competent, warm person who genuinely connected with the Queen, and made sure he was rewarded for the services he gave her.

This brings us to the political tone-deafness in this book. While the queen intervened personally to have a handsome land grant made to Karim in Agra, and while she professed an interest in Indian culture (though she never visited the country), it is surprising that in this account, she was more distraught about Karim’s land grant being delayed by a few months than about a famine in which millions of her Indian subjects starved to death. Basu does not address this discrepancy in Queen Victoria’s attitude. What the reader is left with instead is a more personal story: that Queen Victoria was a disciplined student of Hindustani in the last decade of her life, and that she fought ferociously to keep her munshi, who meant so much to her. One is left feeling that when two people make a lasting impression on each other, it is a rare and even a magical circumstance. Even monarchs need companionship, something their royal households may not be able to provide.

— Priyanka Kumar