Empress

by Miles Taylor

  In the late autumn of 1859 Canning set out on a series of circuits of northern India. Taking an 18,000-strong retinue of Indian soldiers with him, he met face to face with the Indian princes in order to explain the transfer of power. Canning kept Queen Victoria in the picture throughout. Over the next fifteen months there were twenty-five durbars, starting with a meeting with the royal family of Awadh in Lucknow in October, and ending with the first Indian investiture of the Star of India at Allahabad in November 1861. All told, the ceremonies involved some 1,300 native chiefs. The durbars mixed private visits and public meetings, thereby avoiding any hierarchy, either of Europeans over Indians or amongst rival Indian chiefs. Charlotte Canning accompanied her husband, photographing and sketching as they travelled, and William Simpson, the famed artist of the Crimean war, went along too. Both sent back these durbar snaps to the queen, some of the first likenesses she had seen of princes in India.63 Canning used these durbars to deliver individually tailored messages from the queen, telling of her gratitude for the loyal support of the chiefs, reiterating the pledges of the proclamation and summoning civic spirit. For example, at Lahore in February 1859, he told the Punjab chiefs that they were needed – not only to fight. The ‘Government of the Queen also claims your service’, Canning declared, in times of peace, and they should expect to be appointed as magistrates and revenue officials, not for their own private gain, but for the public good. At Lucknow in November 1859, he spoke to the Taluqdars of Awadh, ‘in the name of the Queen your sovereign’, saying that now that their estates had been restored, they might be improved. By May 1860, Canning felt able to report back to the queen of what he had found across northern India: ‘a deeply founded disposition to loyalty in these Princes and Chiefs which needs only to be evoked by a steady, generous and considerate, but at the same time firm treatment, in order to become a main bulwark of Your Majesty’s authority throughout India’.64

  More than 150 sannads – treaty agreements – were issued following Canning’s durbar tours of 1859–61, formalising the promises contained in the queen’s proclamation, namely that native titles, properties and succession would henceforth be honoured by the Government of India. Virtually all of the sannads stated that Her Majesty was ‘desirous that the governments of the several Princes of Chiefs of India who now govern their own territories should be perpetuated’ and promising that on failure of natural heirs the British government would confirm the adoption of a successor ‘in accordance with religion and race’.65 The sannads re-established the Raj as an empire held together by treaty, only this time in the name of the Crown, not the East India Company.

  Reforming princes now joined the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, established by the Indian Councils Act of 1861. A consultative body, lacking the teeth of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, the Legislative Council was nonetheless a sign of changing times. Starting with the appointment of Ishwari Prasad Narayan Singh, the Maharaja of Benares, at the beginning of 1862, seven maharajas joined the Legislative Council as ‘non-official’ members in the 1860s. Distinguished not only for their support during the rebellion of 1857–8, they were also princes whose territories were considered models of enlightened administration. Some, for example Metab Chand, the Maharaja of Burdwan (Bardhaman), and Ram Singh II, the Maharaja of Jaipur, had turned over their state revenues to famine relief. Yusef Ali Khan, the Nawab of Rampur, whom Canning met at Fatehgarh in November 1859, modernised banking in his state. Vijayarama Gajapati Raju III, the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, and the Maharaja of Benares were both patrons of education. Membership of the Legislative Council brought them regularly to Calcutta, creating the opportunity to forge new friendships, for example between the Maharajas of Jaipur and Vizianagaram.66 These princes were conspicuous in their public displays of affection to the queen and loyalty to Britain. The Maharaja of Benares translated her Highland journals into Hindi, the Maharaja of Burdwan paid for a statue of the queen in Calcutta. From a land where drought killed millions, they sent their support for the parched people of England. The Maharaja of Benares funded a well in a Cotswold village in 1864, and in 1867 the Maharaja of Vizianagaram commissioned a drinking fountain in Hyde Park, London.67 Perhaps they were only a decorative element to the viceroy’s government – apart from the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, they rarely intervened in legislative council debates in the 1860s – but the queen welcomed ‘the attempt to introduce a native element to the government’.68

  One prince who was not sent a sannad nor invited onto the Viceroy’s Council was the Maharaja of Mysore. Since 1831 the kingdom of Mysore had lain under the direct rule of the British. Krishnaraja Wadiyar III was effectively a puppet king, subject to the watchful eye of the Commissioner Lieutenant-General, later Sir Mark Cubbon. There being no treaty to uphold, the threat of annexation in the event of a lapse of rule still hung over the Wadiyar dynasty.69 The ageing Wadiyar saw the queen’s proclamation of 1858 as his chance to resolve the situation. Celebrations in Mysore to mark the transfer of power were more effusive than those that took place in other courts. The maharaja wrote directly to the queen, expressing his gratitude for how his country had been restored to him when a child. Passing over the years of direct British control, he told the queen of how much he valued her respect for ancient rights, usages and customs, as well as for the freedom of religion, and for the promise of clemency: ‘so merciful and humane an act could only emanate from the heart of a British Queen’. With Cubbon departed – the octogenarian Commissioner left Mysore in 1860, dying at Suez en route home – Wadiyar III also let it be known that he had no intention of letting the state lapse. He wanted to see his own monarchy fully restored, and he turned to the queen, or the ‘Empress of Hindostan’ as he called her, for assistance. Presents were sent – horses, cattle, jewellery – and later, come the first opportunity, the wedding of the Prince of Wales, followed by the birth of a grandson, Prince Albert Victor – more congratulatory addresses came from the Wadiyar to Windsor.70 Canning and Wood quickly twigged what was going on, bemoaning the behaviour of ‘these pensioner princes’, but also aware that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert ‘think that we have been very shabby indeed’ towards the maharaja.71 A kharita from the queen, acknowledging the presents, was delivered to Wadiyar. It only encouraged him more. Agents came to London to make his case. They appealed to the queen’s proclamation of 1858 – ‘a document worth more than the 70,000 British bayonets now in India’ – and the liberal press of London chimed its approval.72 For a couple of years the fate of Mysore hung in the balance, annexation always a possibility. Then in 1867 the Government of India decided to recognise the adopted heir to the throne. Wadiyar III would not be restored, but his grandson, Chamarajendra, born in 1863, would be groomed under British tutelage and become maharaja on turning eighteen. Moreover, he would be allowed to name his successor, so the Wadiyar dynasty effectively was reinstated in Mysore. Explaining the decision to the House of Commons, Stafford Northcote, the secretary of state for India, likened the new policy to ‘the great Emperor Akbar and his successors availing themselves of Hindoo talent and assistance’. For Indian ears, Northcote gave the announcement a royal tweak: ‘Her Majesty desires to maintain that family on the throne in the person of His Highness’ adopted son.’73 In fact, the queen made no pronouncements on Mysore, either privately or publicly, yet both the maharaja and the Government of India played her as a bargaining tool.

  The Mysore case proved instructive. Other Indian princes were now encouraged to reach out to Queen Victoria and press their own claims, for example Tukoji Rao II, the Maharaja Holkar of Indore. Aggrieved over being forced to cede territory to the British after the rebellion of 1857–8, following a question mark over his loyalty, Holkar took on John Dickinson, veteran Indian lobbyist, to make representations on his behalf in London. Dickinson encouraged Holkar to ingratiate himself with the royal family in England, to make himself ‘personally known to the Queen’. As he explained, ‘if your Highness would show yourself in our imperial Court and take yo
ur place there as one of the first of the Indian princes, and the recognised head of the Maratha Power, you would gratify our royal family, and make valuable acquaintances among our aristocracy.’74 Another example was the Nawab of Tonk, removed from his Rajputana state for allegedly ordering the murder of a political rival and his family. He too petitioned the queen directly, he too found an agent, a retired army officer, Iltudus Thomas Prichard, to make his case in London. There were plenty more where these wronged princes came from. In 1872, Frederick Chesson, long-time secretary to the ‘Aborigines Protection Society’, bundled together Tonk, the Nawab of Surat, the Ranis of Tanjore and others into a collective appeal for public attention, invoking the queen’s proclamation.75 It was an odd development, this alliance of radicals, legal guns-for-hire, ex-army officers and Indian royalty, seeking protection from the queen, but it speaks volumes about the momentum gathered by the 1858 proclamation within a few years of its pronouncement.

  Lobbying also began to be carried out in person. In 1876 Sir Salar Jung, the wily prime minister of Hyderabad, came all the way to Windsor. Assured by his agent, the banker Thomas Palmer, that the 1858 proclamation meant that Hyderabad’s debts to the East India Company might be renegotiated, Salar Jung sought out a private audience with Queen Victoria. Salar Jung’s visit to Europe had several purposes, not least to seek finance for the railway being projected for the state. From the queen, however, he wanted restitution of the Berars, the lucrative cotton districts of the state that had been annexed to British India in 1853.76 Lytton, the viceroy, had hoped to hold back Salar Jung at Calcutta. Salar Jung could not be restrained, however, despite suffering a fall in Paris. Wheelchair-bound, he met with the queen at the end of June 1876.77 The encounter left both parties unsatisfied. It was reported to Queen Victoria that the Hyderabadi minister had not been allowed to discuss anything ‘but the heat of the weather’, and she wondered whether he might be offered another visit. This was ruled out. For good measure Lytton warned the queen that Salar Jung had brought with him enough cash and jewellery to bribe Parliament several times over. Her door remained open nonetheless. At the end of August she complained to Disraeli that it was ‘unfortunate’ that Salar Jung had not been permitted to state his own case, which every one of her subjects had the privilege of doing.78

  The most controversial test of princely power in India in the first two decades of Crown rule came in Baroda, a princely state dispersed across several small tracts of territory to the north of Bombay presidency. Its ruler, the Gaekwar, Khanderao, was a moderniser and conspicuous supporter of the queen. In 1866 he funded a statue of her that was erected in Bombay. However, in 1870 he died suddenly and was succeeded by Malhar Rao, his less favoured brother. Soon the new Gaekwar and the British resident Colonel Robert Phayre were at loggerheads, the Gaekwar accused of corruption in his administration, to which he responded with charges of overzealous interference by Phayre. In 1874, as a sign of good intentions, the Gaekwar brought in Dadabhai Naoroji from Bombay as his dewan, and the Government of India, for its part, made plans to replace Phayre.79 Then chaos ensued. An attempt was made to poison Phayre, and the Gaekwar was implicated in the plot. A commission of inquiry was appointed, its membership equally divided between three Europeans and three Indians (Jayajirao, the Maharaja of Gwalior, Ram Singh, the Maharaja of Jaipur, and Dinkar Rao, the former Dewan of Gwalior). Despite trial by media, in which the new Gaekwar was depicted as an uncivilised savage, the Indian commissioners concluded that his alleged role in the assassination attempt was unproven. Still, the viceroy was advised to remove the Gaekwar from power, on the grounds that he had not administered his state properly. It was a weak charge, a clumsy compromise, and the English press quickly pounced on the manoeuvre.80

  A royal solution was found. Queen Victoria had been kept informed of the trial, and she knew there were misgivings amongst British officials over the extent of the Gaekwar’s guilt. She expressed her concern over this first ever removal of an Indian prince under her rule, observing that the act should not happen without her public sanction. Whilst she could not be mentioned in the sentence passed on the Gaekwar, she requested that she be referred to in some other way, not least to register her gratitude to the three Indians on the commission.81 So she was. Back in Calcutta, Charles Aitchison drew up a ‘proclamation’ announcing the removal of the Gaekwar, and introducing Queen Victoria as the peacemaker. Wanting to mark the services of the previous Gaekwar, the proclamation explained, the queen was re-establishing a native administration in Baroda, and in so doing was pleased to accede to the request of the previous Gaekwar’s widow, Jamnabai, that she adopt a suitable person from the family line as the new ruler.82 To help tidy up matters, Holkar of Indore’s dewan, Madhava Rao, was sent to Baroda to assume ministerial duties there. Furthermore, the education of the adopted heir, Gopalrao, now renamed Sayajirao, was entrusted to an English tutor. Not one maharani, but two – the former Gaekwar’s widow and the queen – were credited with mopping up the mess of their menfolk. The whole episode closed out with a visit from the Prince of Wales to Baroda at the end of 1875, diverted from Bombay by the Government of India, to give the new occupant of the throne the royal seal of approval. It was a telling moment; a precedent had been set. When Indian affairs became critical, the monarchy was mobilised into action.

  With varying degrees of success, the native chiefs of India were thus drawn into the Raj of the queen after 1858. Through sannads, durbars and courtly diplomacy, the Government of India used the name and the authority of the queen to ease its passage through princely India. The queen was deployed as an instrument of colonial rule in a manner that was hardly appreciated or even known about back in Britain. Yet it was a policy that created its own dilemma. The more that royalty was dangled before the princes, the closer contact many of them desired with their queen. Whilst only a handful ever travelled to the English court, many others chanced their arm through agents, or through sending presents and memorials. Such traffic proved hard to control, but the Government of India did its best. In 1861, following the flurry of presents sent to the queen in the wake of the transfer of power from Company to Crown, an initial attempt was made to control gift diplomacy in particular, and direct contact with the queen more generally. Henceforth, presents and memorials had to be approved first by either the local government (the presidency and the provinces) or by the Government of India at Calcutta. Charles Wood drew up a template letter that might be sent to any Indian prince considering an unsolicited offering to the queen. Having sorted out the new order of the ‘Star of India’, Wood was now accomplished at such tasks, knowing his sovereign and her sensitivities all too well. ‘Beautiful as are the gifts which your Highness has presented to the queen and interesting as they are in her eyes,’ the pro-forma reply to princes stated, ‘Her Majesty commands me to say that the most acceptable part of the offering is your Highness’ very friendly letter.’ He signed off with an intimate touch worthy of a manual on etiquette: ‘Kind words from a distant friend are the most precious of all gifts.’83

  But the gifts – and the words – continued to come. Exceptions to the new rules were easily found: a silver couch from Munger in Bihar, jewellery from the Maharaja of Patalia. So in 1867, it was ruled that all correspondence addressed to the queen must be transmitted via the Government of India. Still there was no ebbing of the flow. The following year, the viceroy, Lord Lawrence, complained that more needed to be done to prevent Indian princes and ‘noblemen’ using presents to the queen as the means of making a ‘request for indulgence or favour’. Part of the problem was that the queen proved willing to accept such presents. ‘It is a rather troublesome business altogether,’ observed Northcote, the secretary of state for India, ‘as there is no saying where this sort of thing is to stop.’ The Government of India tried to stop direct contact from the queen’s side. In 1873, as the Palace was deluged with memorials from India congratulating the Prince of Wales on his recovery from serious illness, the 1867 rules were reiterated, t
his time with the stipulation that the queen would reply to Indian addresses only on special occasions.84 Five years later the screw tightened further, with a new protocol that the Government of India would use its discretion to decide which memorials would go to the queen, and whether a reply from the viceroy would suffice. In 1881 a further obstacle was introduced. All vernacular addresses must be accompanied by an English translation and be checked for legibility and spelling. Finally, in 1906, it was ruled that the Government of India would consider correspondence to be sent on to the king-emperor only in cases in which the Indian memorialist had already addressed the local government or the authorities in Calcutta.85 In the half-century since the queen’s proclamation the Government of India had been transformed from postman to the sovereign to censor of the royal mail.

  For the princes, as for the people of India, there was real meaning to the transfer of government from the East India Company to the queen after 1858. Sovereignty had been an elusive element in Company rule. By the 1840s there was much confusion in Britain and India about the dual power of the Company and Crown within the territories under direct British administration, and diminishing clarity about the status of independent and ceded states. After the rebellion of 1857–8, Britain needed a quick fix in India to reassert control and to dismantle rival claims to power. Legitimacy was found in the shape of the queen, a distant monarch who symbolised clemency, justice and fairness. She was written into everything that the Government of India did after 1858; her name and status lay at the centre of the new architecture of imperial rule. Lest she appear only to be a symbol, or cypher, successive viceroys encouraged a style of governance in which the queen appeared to be present, as interested in the workings of the Indian empire as were her officials. The queen was a genie let out of the lamp, to magic away the terror and strife of the rebellion. As with all genies, it was hard to predict what her effect might be. The Government of India underestimated the influence that the queen’s proclamation of 1858 would have over the political culture of the Raj, certainly in her lifetime. The queen’s words, which the Government of India had itself done so much to publicise, were turned to over and again as the means not to resist British rule, but to make it more accountable. British officialdom underestimated something else too. No one anticipated that the queen would herself abide to the letter by the new powers of prerogative granted to her by the legislation of Lord Derby’s government in 1858. She and Prince Albert plunged into Indian affairs with a passion that surprised and alarmed her political advisers. Queen Victoria took seriously her responsibility to fellow rulers in India, with whom she expected to be in direct communication, whatever conventions were invented to prevent that happening. She proved proprietorial over her formal powers of command, especially in the army, less so in the Indian Civil Service, an institution to which she never really warmed. For the next forty years the queen hardly ever missed an Indian despatch. The Raj radiated royal rule and she was its centre. She personified power in India much as the tsar did in imperial Russia, or the kaiser in Germany. She was an empress in practice as well as in name.