Victoria & Abdul (43 page)
Authors: Shrabani Basu
His grandfather, Hiranand Vaswani, had occupied Karim Lodge when the family had come from Pakistan after the partition in 1947. The biggest movement of people in history had seen nearly 15 million refugees crossing the border on both sides between India and Pakistan, leading to riots, looting and wanton killing. In the darkest days after independence, Hindus crossed over from Pakistan to India, and Muslims from India moved to Pakistan for fear of becoming minorities in their homeland. The descendants of Karim’s extended family, the grandchildren of his brother and sisters, left the acres of land that they owned and went to Pakistan. The land was seized by the Ministry of Rehabilitation in Agra and distributed to Hindu refugees from Pakistan.
‘We lost our land in Pakistan and we were housed here. Those were troubled times,’ said eighty-seven-year-old Himesh Chand Chaturvedi, who lives in one of the smaller original houses of the estate, a few hundred yards from Karim Lodge. The sprightly man with a flowing beard gave me a mischievous smile. ‘I found a pile of letters in this house written by Karim. My wife made me throw them away, as they were of no use to anyone. How did I know you would come looking for him after all these years?’ Chaturvedi remembered some of Karim’s descendants who had not left immediately for Pakistan. ‘Some of the family were still left here,’ he said, trying to recall the names and faces of the people all those years back. ‘The children used to play in the garden. Karim had no children of his own, so they were his brother’s grandchildren.’ I figured they would have been the children of Karim’s favourite nephew, Abdul Rashid.
Chaturvedi recalled how people would still talk about Abdul Karim, the
ustad
, and his relations with Queen Victoria. There were many stories about how he was trained for the job, how he became the Queen’s teacher and acquired a special place in the Court. There were stories about how Karim Lodge was built with bricks and labour from Agra Jail, so it could be ready for him on his return. He recalled how he had read some of the letters which were lying in the house. They were from Karim to his wife, asking her to send him certain spices, or his favourite
pan
and
supari
(betel nut). ‘He would give her instructions about which mail company to send the parcels with. There were many, many letters …’
Suddenly the old man sprang up and walked to the main entrance of Karim Lodge.
‘This is the gate that Abdul Karim’s carriage would drive up to. Here he would alight in his smart clothes and turban and walk indoors,’ said Chaturvedi, his mind racing back to the stories he had heard. ‘People spoke about him for years …’
The Munshi had lived quietly with his memories after his return from England. Though he knew the strength of the feelings against him in the Palace, he had never spoken any ill of the Royal family or the Household. The Queen’s family never understood that he had provided her with the companionship over the last decade of her life, which they themselves had not been able to offer.
An ambulance rattled past us to the nursing home at the back of the house. A nurse in starched whites was briskly attending the line of patients sitting in the neon-lit room, the silence broken only by the occasional cough and the sound of her white shoes clicking on the marble floor. Karim’s carriage had stopped coming here a hundred years ago. A forgotten grave, a laminated telegram and the memories of an old man were all that was left of him in his native city. Agra had moved on.
OTES AND
S
OURCES
RA – Royal Archives
QVJ – Queen Victoria’s Journals
QVJ/HIND – Queen Victoria’s Hindustani Journals
ADDL/MSS – Additional Manuscripts
IOR – India Office Records
AKJ – Abdul Karim’s Journals (1887–97). Unpublished
1. Agra
1
AKJ, and article in
Black
magazine, 15 June 1985
2
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/8b, Viceroy to Secretary of State, 8 September 1887, Simla
3
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/1, Queen to Viceroy, 18 December 1890, Windsor
4
AKJ (Year 1887)
2. A Jubilee Present
1
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/6, Dufferin to Cross, 20 March 1887, Calcutta
2
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/9, Cross to Dufferin, 22 April 1887, London
3
Ibid., 28 April, London
4
Sunity Devi,
The Autobiography of an Indian Princess
, quoted in Lucy Moore,
Maharanis
(London: Viking, 2004), p.104
5
AKJ (Year 1887)
6
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 21 June
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/9, Cross to Dufferin, 24 June 1887
10
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 22 June
11
Ibid., 23 June
3. An Indian Durbar
1
RA MRH/MRH/HH/1/214a: 3 July 1887
2
RA MRH/MRH/HH/1/214b
3
Arthur Ponsonby,
Henry Ponsonby, His Life From his Letters
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1943), p.383
4
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 28 June
5
Ibid., 30 June
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 28 July
9
Ibid., 3 August
10
Ponsonby,
Henry Ponsonby
, p.130
11
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 6 August
12
Ibid., 11 August
13
Ibid., 20 August
4. Curries and Highlanders
1
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, 1887, Vol. 1
2
Ibid.
3
Queen Victoria,
Our Life in the Highlands
(London: William Kimber, 1968, revised edition), p.14
4
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, 1887, Vol. 2
5
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/HIND/7: 24 May 1899
6
RA VIC/ADDU/104/1
7
RA VIC/ADDA12/154
8
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 18 September
9
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/9, Cross to Dufferin
10
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 29 September
11
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/9, Cross to Dufferin
12
IOR MSS/Eur/F130/6, Randolph Churchill, Secretary of State, to Dufferin
13
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 9 October
14
Ibid., 2 December
15
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/HIND/7: 24 May 1899
16
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1887: 31 December
5. Becoming the Munshi
1
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, Vol. 2
2
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/HIND/9
3
Michael Nelson,
Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera
(London: Tauris Parke, 2007), pp.21
4
RA VIC/MAIN/L/24/30, Ponsonby to Queen, 31 July 1888, St James’s Palace
5
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1888: 11 August
6
RA VIC/ADDA/15/5188, Queen Victoria to the Duchess of Connaught, 3 November 1888, Balmoral
7
RA VIC/MAIN/Y/172/85, Queen Victoria to Sir Theodore Martin, 20 November 1888, Windsor
8
RA VIC/ADDU/104/2: 25 September 1888, Balmoral
9
RA VIC/ADDU/104/3: 25 September 1888, Balmoral
10
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1888: 2 November
11
Christopher Hibbert (ed.),
Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals
, (London: Penguin, 1985), p.314
12
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/1, Queen to Viceroy, 22 February 1889, Windsor
13
Ibid., Viceroy to Queen, 21 April 1889, Viceregal Lodge, Simla
14
Ibid., Queen to Viceroy, 22 March 1889
15
Ibid., Queen to Viceroy, 8 April 1889
16
Ibid., Queen to Viceroy, 17 May 1889
17
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, Vol. 2, Queen to Reid, 13 May 1889
18
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, Vol. 2
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/1, Queen to Viceroy, 18 July 1889, Osborne
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid., Viceroy to Queen, 15 June 1889, Viceregal Lodge, Simla
24
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, Vol. 2
6. A Grant of Land
1
Reid Archives, Scrap Book, Vol. 2
2
RA VIC/ADDU/32/1890: 17 May
3
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/1, Telegram No. 28, Queen to Lansdowne, 11 July 1890, Windsor
4
Ibid., Telegram No. 32, Lansdowne to Queen, 6 July 1890, Viceregal Lodge, Simla
5
Ibid., Telegram No. 29, Queen to Lansdowne, 1 August 1890, Osborne
6
Ibid., Telegram No. 32, Queen to Lansdowne, 27 August 1890, Balmoral
7
Ibid., Telegram No. 33, Queen to Lansdowne, 28 August 1890, Balmoral
8
Ibid., Telegram No. 36, Lansdowne to Queen, 2 August 1890, Simla
9
Ibid., Telegram No. 39, Lansdowne to Queen, 23 September 1890, Simla
10
Ibid., Letter No. 41, Lansdowne to Queen, 21 October 1890, Simla
11
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/3, Cross to Lansdowne, 30 October 1890, India Office, Whitehall
12
RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1890: 7 October
13
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/3, Lansdowne to Cross, 19 November 1890
14
Ibid.
15
IOR MSS/Eur/D558/1, Telegram No. 39, Queen to Lansdowne, 29 October 1890, Balmoral
