Jessica Douglas-Home’s A Glimpse of Empire (Michael Russell) has one of those provocatively old-fashioned titles guaranteed to alienate the kind of people who enjoy Woman’s Hour, You And Yours and Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. But that’s not the only reason you should give it to someone you love this Christmas.
No, the main one is that — apart from being charming, exquisitely but unshowily written, beautifully observed and handsomely illustrated with period photographs and etchings — it magically transports you to a much better world.
That world is the last days of the Raj and, specifically, the 1911 Royal Durbar in which the new King, George V, travelled to Delhi to be proclaimed Emperor of India. It was a controversial decision, the first time since Richard ‘Coeur de Lion’ that an English king had left Europe. But George was determined to do what his father and grandmother never managed: to attend the Durbar in person.
The Royal Durbar was an invention of Disraeli’s: a symbolic pageant designed to show the Indians who was boss. All the princes, maharajas, begums and gaekwars would parade before the Imperial power and pledge their loyalty. In return, they would get the opportunity to outdo the British in magnificence and excess (one maharaja had to be banned from bringing his pet tigers), while demonstrating to their subjects just how respected by and ‘in’ they were with their supposed colonial masters.
It was a neatly symbiotic relationship — not unakin to the one that kept the Roman Empire thriving for so many centuries. As long as the local rulers played the game they could carry on pretty much as if the British weren’t there. In the case of the Maharaja of Patiala, for example, this meant observing the splendid family tradition whereby once a year he had to appear before his subjects naked save for a breastplate composed of 1,001 brilliant blue-white diamonds and sporting — as an earthly manifestation of the God Shiva’s sacred phallic form — an enormous, throbbing stiffy. (Unfortunately, this became a habit and he began doing it every day round the palace, with his member bedecked with Patiala pearls.)
But woe betide the uppity princeling who stepped out of line. There was one such moment in 1911 when India’s second most important ruler, the Gaekwar of Baroda, snubbed the King. ‘On reaching the shamiana [the pavilion in which the King and Queen sat enthroned], he made a cursory bow from the waist, stepped backwards and then, wheeling around, turned his back on the royal couple and walked from their presence nonchalantly twirling a gold-topped walking stick.’
Though the imperial couple barely noticed the slight, the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, was coldly furious. ‘During the next few days,’ he wrote, ‘everybody was wondering what notice I intended to take of this incident. To those who enquired of me I merely said: “You will see later.” These words I knew would be repeated to the Gaekwar who, from my certain knowledge of his psychology, I felt sure would be getting more frightened every day by my inaction.’
Can you imagine any British diplomat talking like that today? His instinctive response would be to kowtow to the tricky foreigner rather than chastise him. Partly this would be the result of practical considerations (we no longer have the resources to back up our threats, cf. the current impasse with Iran) but mainly it’s an attitude of mind. So entrenched is cultural relativism, so indoctrinated have we become with the notion that the values which forged our Empire are a cause for embarrassment, that it would not occur to anyone in our political or administrative class to defend such a point of principle.
So how did the problem resolve itself in 1911? Rather well. Dropping into the tent of his friend the Governor of Bombay, the Gaekwar was appalled to receive a ‘not at home’. Later, the Gaekwar was met by one of his friends in a ‘state of agitation’. This was enough. He dashed off a letter to the Viceroy, pleading that such had been his nervousness in the presence of the King he had become confused and had turned to ask for direction on how to proceed.
Imagine that: merely the possibility of being snubbed at British imperial social gatherings was enough to bring this mighty, impetuous ruler to heel. And this, of course, is how a confident power exerts its will. It doesn’t need to make specific threats. It just needs to speak softly and carry a big stick.
In the case of the Royal Durbar, the big stick included live rounds in the rifles (the 1857 Mutiny was still well within living memory: more than 600 veterans paraded at the 1911 ceremony) and the clearance of Delhi’s busiest street, the Chandni Chauk. Houses were searched from top to bottom, rooftops closed, police posted at every window, while the city’s 300 worst troublemakers were summarily arrested (though held in comfort) the day before.
To modern sensibilities these precautions might seem excessive. But this says more about the suicidal follies of our own age than it does about the values of George V’s. As Douglas-Home notes with characteristic understatement: ‘No criticism of these precautions appeared in the press. The general consensus was that it was a wise step for a strong government to have taken.’
I’m not pretending, of course, that our Empire didn’t have its faults; nor that a world just three years away from the war to end all wars was perfect. But there’s no doubt that Britain had a confidence, a self-belief and a sense of purpose then which it is now tragically lacking. We’ve lost our mojo. Will we ever get it back?
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