by Miles Taylor
Nowhere in the new queen’s realm were the reins on her power held tighter than in India. Since the late eighteenth century Britain had governed the presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras through the East India Company.3 The Company also administered British relations across the rest of the Indian subcontinent. The Company did not hold power without responsibility. The governors were accountable to the British Parliament via the president of the Board of Control who sat in the Cabinet. Successive renewals of the East India Company’s charter in 1813 and 1833 loosened the grip of the Company, opening up India to missionaries, ending the Company’s monopoly over trade in and out of India, and removing the influence of Company stockholders from any say in Company policy. Most important of all, the 1833 charter renewal invested the Board of Control with full authority over the Company and centred that authority in Bengal, with the governor there becoming governor-general of all of British India. For the first time, British policy in India was made as much in London as in Calcutta. The modernising instincts of the era began to take over. Free trade, state education and legal codification were all experimented with in India in the late 1820s and 1830s, despite not yet being established practice back home.4 In this so-called ‘dual government’ by Company and Parliament there was no room for anyone else. Certainly not for an ageing monarchy whose track record at managing overseas conquests was poor. Much ambiguity and potential confusion remained, however. In theory the British Crown retained patronage over one part of the armed forces in India – the royal troops – and also had the final say over the selection of the three governors, as well as senior judicial and ecclesiastical appointments. The monarch was the head of the Church of England in India, and, since 1813, the Crown had been the nominal sovereign over all Indian territories. Who exactly was in charge?
This chapter explores how the role of the Crown in the Government of India was understood at the outset of Queen Victoria’s reign. For many, it was Whig business as usual in India. But not everyone saw it this way. For some, Victoria symbolised national regeneration and a fresh start. Indian rulers responded to her accession by welcoming her imperial authority. Victoria’s accession also coincided with the expansion of the evangelical mission to India – new bishoprics were established at Madras in 1835 and Bombay in 1837 – and the new queen became a focal point for various Christian campaigns. With her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 and the change of government in Britain from Whig to Tory under Sir Robert Peel the following year, Victoria severed her dependence on the Whigs, and began to see India through different eyes.
Empire by Treaty
By 1837, there were over forty separate treaties formalising relations between Britain and India. Not one of them mentioned the British monarch. From the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 through to the contentious agreement with the King of Awadh concluded by the governor-general, Lord Auckland, shortly after Victoria came to the throne, the details of British government in India were set out in an assortment of official documents, negotiated between agents of the East India Company and the ruling houses of the various Indian kingdoms and territories.5 These treaties confirmed financial and military arrangements, and specified the extent to which the British government could interfere in the internal administration of each state. Many had been concluded amidst the dying embers of battle, as Britain consolidated its hold over India during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with Mughal authority waning in the north and centre of India, and Maratha chiefs and their French allies being swept aside in the south. These treaties also covered trading concessions, and by the 1830s were being used by the British government in India to regulate sati (widow-burning) and female infanticide. Their remit was not confined to the Indian subcontinent. Nepal (1816), Burma (1826) and (as a temporary protectorate) Java (1811) were all brought under British control through the mechanism of the Company treaty. The same formula was extended across the Indian Ocean to Arab states and to eastern Africa, mainly to enforce compliance with the abolition of the slave trade.6 Taken together, the treaties provide a compendium of British supremacy in India. Oddly, no one saw fit to list them until the early 1830s, and a full assessment was not provided until the mid-1860s.7
Without exception, the East India Company and not the Crown signed off these treaties. Since the revolution of 1688–9, the Company had distanced itself from royal patronage, and operated with considerable autonomy, virtually a sovereign state in its own right.8 Company men on the spot were the treaty signatories along with the Indian ruler. In this way the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765, which at the stroke of a pen placed millions of Indian peasant cultivators under Company rule, was a gentleman’s agreement between Shah Alam II, the Mughal emperor, Robert Clive, the commander of the East India Company forces, and John Carnac, commander of the Bengal forces. In theory, Company officials could make treaties like this in India on a whim. Only from 1784 was it required that all treaties had to be ratified by the governor-general in Council, who in turn reported to London. By then the British Parliament was still reeling from the scandals surrounding the Nawabs of Arcot, the rulers of the Carnatic region of eastern India. Allied by Company treaty to the British forces in their fight against French and Maratha armies, the Nawabs ran up huge debts to finance their troops, and many of their creditors were English and Scottish MPs. The ‘Arcot interest’ in the House of Commons proved at the time an irresistible lobby, and the Nawabs in turn appealed for support by writing to George III (and to Queen Charlotte), amplifying their complaint with diamond jewels.9 Sorting out the debts of the Nawabs took decades. The incident served as an enduring reminder of the need to keep the English constitution out of Indian politics. Some of the most important treaty settlements of the period – such as the Treaty of Seringapatam – were stamped with the military imprimatur of the ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Force of His Britannic Majesty’, but even these documents made it clear that the legal authority on the British side was the Company. All of this made perfect sense within the context of trade and rule overseas by a chartered company. Introducing the person of the sovereign to the treaty might present problems. It elevated the Indian signatory to a status that the Company was reluctant to recognise, and it created the possibility of Indian rulers considering themselves lieges or allies of the British Crown, with the right to approach the monarch directly, as had the Nawab of Arcot. Controlling the Crown at home meant distancing it from sources of venality in India.
Inevitably, in the absence of the monarch in person, the Company itself came to play the role of de facto sovereign. This was partly by design. Victorious over Tipu Sultan in Mysore, and over the Mughal stronghold of Delhi, Richard Wellesley, the governor-general, set about turning the Company seat of Calcutta into the capital of British India. The new headquarters was a palace. Government House was completed by 1803, and included a throne room, where the governor-general’s throne dwarfed a jewelled stool captured from Tipu. Government House became the focal point of Calcutta society, and also the venue for delegations of Indian rulers.10 It was as much Irish as English. There were obvious parallels between Dublin Castle, the seat of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Government House. Dublin Castle had got its own throne room or ‘presence chamber’ in the 1780s, where Irish lords swore allegiance to the British Crown, and the Lord Lieutenants of Ireland enjoyed viceregal powers not unlike those developing in India. Both Wellesley and his successor Cornwallis swapped the top post in India for its equivalent in Ireland.11 In other respects, Wellesley and his successors fashioned a more improvised style of kingly rule without the king. They began the convention of approving dynastic succession in Indian states. In 1803 Wellesley’s brother Arthur attended in person the installation of Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, the new Maharaja of Mysore, and in 1819 the Marquess of Hastings went to Lucknow to authorise the enthronement of the King of Awadh, Ghazi-ud-Din Haider Shah.12 Governors-general at Calcutta also started the practice of firing royal salutes to mark the accession of new rulers in the Indian princely
states. In use from 1803, the gun salute was a significant step in applying royal protocol by proxy to India.13
As was the durbar tour. Dating from the years of Mughal rule, durbars were ritual meetings of rulers with their dependents from whom they were owed homage. Durbars involved the exchange of visits and gifts – nuzzer – the form of the visit, and the value of the gift depending precisely on the status of the two parties involved. Beginning in 1814 with Lord Moira (governor-general 1813–23 and known as the Marquess of Hastings from 1816), the Company incorporated the ritual of the durbar into a new routine of regular tours of Indian treaty territories allied to or indirectly controlled by the British. Travelling by river in a golden barge with a regiment of soldiers, and making encampments along the route, Moira held durbars at Benares (Varanasi), Lucknow and Bareilly, and met the sons of the Emperor of Delhi at Allahabad. He evidently disliked the fawning ceremonial involved, believing it only served to keep up the appearance and not the reality of Indian princely power. Company officials were not supposed to take gifts from Indians, so anything of value presented at the durbar was immediately sent back to the toshakhana (treasury) in Calcutta and sold off.14 Hastings’s successors Amherst and Bentinck followed suit with durbar tours of their own. By the 1830s, governors-general were spending as much time ‘up-country’ on the road, river and in the saddle as at their desk in Calcutta.15 For the Company, the durbar tour was the means of keeping tabs on the extent of lands and loyalty under British control. Some Company officials favoured cosying up to the courts. From Rajputana James Tod envisaged a new romanticised feudalism, calling for William IV to lead local rulers under the ‘banner of that chivalry of which your Majesty is head’.16
Ultimately, the Company legitimated royalty in India by leaving intact the Mughal emperor. Although defeated at the battle of Delhi in 1803, the Emperor Akbar II was allowed to maintain his court inside the Red Fort in Delhi.17 One explanation for this state of affairs was that the Company was authorised by an imperial farman to administer former liege states of the empire. For its part the Company was content to leave Akbar II inside his gated enclave with his poets and painters. But it was an awkward stalemate. Hastings refused to show deference to the imperial title, whilst Akbar II did not recognize the Company as the paramount power. Over the years that followed the formal powers of the Delhi emperor were reduced by the British. The Nizam of Hyderabad and the Nawab of Awadh were encouraged to become royal rulers in their own right, and so end their obeisance to the emperor at Delhi. The nizam refused, but a king of Awadh was proclaimed, as we have seen, at Lucknow in 1819. This only served to cause confusion. Frustrated by the Company, Akbar II turned to the British monarchy for redress, sending his portrait to the dying George IV, a gift that was accepted by his successor, William IV. In 1832, Akbar II followed up by sending a delegation to Britain, headed by the Bengali reformer (and former Company servant) Ram Mohan Roy, who quickly became the toast of Unitarian and liberal activists in London and around the country. Although lionised for his efforts to end sati, Ram Mohan Roy’s mission was not an official success. He only got as far as meeting the king’s brother, the Duke of Sussex, and tragically died before making the return trip to Calcutta. Furthermore, the squeeze on Akbar II was tightened. In 1835 the residual title of ‘emperor’ was downsized to ‘king’, and the emperor’s image was removed from coinage in India.18 When his son Bahadur Shah Zafar succeeded him in 1837, a few months after Victoria became queen, there was thus little left of the imperial reach of the Mughal throne. The new kings of Awadh were in no better state. In an era when new monarchies were being invented across Europe and Latin America, the court at Lucknow was neither puppet nor master. The Awadhi court also looked to the British court for recognition. In 1835, the new King of Awadh sent over gifts to William IV, and his ‘ambassador’ was received at St James’s Palace by William IV and Queen Adelaide.19 The pattern was becoming clear. The retention by the Company of the forms of royal rule in India left the lines between Company and Crown blurred, and when the Company paid no heed to Indian royalty, the British Crown was expected to respond. So much for undivided sovereignty.
A Whig Queen
The death of William IV and accession of Victoria was announced on 20 June 1837 in London and at the beginning of September in Calcutta. In London there was no reference to India or indeed any other part of the Empire in the proclamation of the new monarch, nor at her coronation a year later. Her official title was ‘Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith’ and although the shorthand ‘Queen of these realms’ was also used, there was nothing to indicate that Queen Victoria’s dominion stretched beyond the British Isles. In India a more expansive view was taken. The circular of the governor-general informed the princely houses of India of the accession of Victoria to the ‘imperial throne’. In a sermon marking the event in Calcutta, an exuberant chaplain described how the new queen ‘can look east and west and north and south, and view in every quarter, dominions that own her sway’.20
Sway, however, was not the same as rule. In Britain and in India it was taken for granted that Victoria would abide by the constitutional norms of the day limiting her power. For example, the East India Company Court of Directors were quick to send her an address of congratulations. At their July meeting, leading lights of the Company were all effusive in their admiration for the new queen, but could not avoid lacing their laudations with a hint that she might let them get on with matters their own way: they prayed ‘that the welfare of the millions of subjects in your Majesty’s Indian territories intrusted to Parliament by our charge, may be preserved and advanced under your Majesty’s mild and beneficent sway’.21 The same line was taken in India. When the Raja of Alwar attempted to a send a nuzzur of gold directly to Victoria on the occasion of her succession, he was told that this was not possible, as ‘the Governor-General is the representative of the British nation and power’, and ‘he is willing to receive in Her Majesty’s name the expression of the good will of her Indian allies and the homage of her Indian subjects and dependents’.22 Lord Auckland, the governor-general, saw no special reason to mark Victoria’s accession officially. The townspeople of Calcutta sent an address of congratulations to the queen, but the absence of any government representation at the public meeting convened to agree the address was noted.23 In India there was also some incredulity at the news of the accession of a female ruler. From Rajahmundry (Rajamamaherdravaram) in Madras it was reported that one local raja found it beyond his comprehension ‘how she was to contrive to reign, and how men were to agree to obey her’. Back in Calcutta, Emily Eden, sister of the governor-general, Lord Auckland, recorded the remark of James Prinsep, the man at the mint charged with stamping rupees with Victoria’s head: ‘I wish we had never changed the stamp; I should not wonder if the natives were to mistrust a coin with nothing but a woman’s head on it.’24
Only the princely states of India responded to the accession of the new British monarch with a sense of decorum. The governor-general’s September circular was despatched to forty-one royal houses. Over the next four months, more than half of them sent back their formal replies to Calcutta, enclosing kharitas (formal letters) of congratulation to the queen, via the governor-general. Some were ornate ornamental addresses, some came with separate accounts of the ceremonial firing of cannon, drumrolls and elephant fights organised to accompany the pronouncement. The Maharana of Udaipur went into silent seclusion for the day.25 From Lahore in the Punjab came perhaps the most eloquent of all the addresses, from Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the ‘lion of the Punjab’. The ‘letter of felicitation’ undoubtedly lost something in its translation from Persian into English, but the sentiment was clear, invoking a sacred garden paradise. Tidings of the new queen, the letter declared, meant that ‘the gardens of dominion received fresh attraction and the bowers of imperial sway assumed throughout a verdant aspect. It has caused the Salsabil26 of joy to permeate from all sides and opened the channels of felicity in every direc
tion’.27 Without waiting for approval from Calcutta, Ranjit Singh entrusted the letter to the safe keeping of his military aide, General Jean-Baptiste Ventura, to take to London and deliver in person to the queen.
Ranjit Singh’s personal epistle was timely diplomacy. The letter came just at the moment when the armed forces of Ranjit Singh’s Sikh kingdom were joining with the British in overthrowing the Afghan king, Dost Mohammad Khan, and replacing him with Shah Shuja Durrani.28 Queen Victoria was drawn further into this pact when Lord Auckland finally met Ranjit Singh one year later on the banks of the Sutlej river at the end of November 1838, ahead of the invasion of Afghanistan. In front of their large entourages, Auckland and Ranjit Singh exchanged gifts, and, as Auckland later described, ‘one of them, I was sure, he would receive with more than ordinary satisfaction’: a portrait of the queen, drawn by his sister, Emily Eden, and ‘framed at Delhi in Gold & Jewels’.29 This presentation was not only most probably the earliest unveiling of the likeness of Queen Victoria in India, it was also the first instance of the British authorities using the image and name of the queen to ease their way through the complexities of imperial rule. Lord Auckland may have been reluctant to proclaim the new sovereign with pomp and circumstance in Calcutta, but he had no hesitation at all in presenting her portrait to Britain’s most valuable ally of the era. It suggests a neat irony, to which this book will return frequently. Constitutional propriety both in Britain and in India relegated Queen Victoria to a minor role in Indian statecraft; power relations on the ground demanded she show her face whenever possible.