Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim: Love Knows no Barriers!
– By Dr Dhanpaul Narine
Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim- 1897
He was 24, she was 68 and it was love at first sight! There was another crucial difference: she was the Queen of England and he was her loyal servant. He waited on her, taught her Urdu and Hindi and she saw much of the world through his eyes. Their affair lasted ten years and on her death vigorous attempts were made to expunge the records and to confine him to the dustbin of history.
The story of Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim is one of love against all the odds. The genesis of this relationship began with the death of Prince Albert, the devoted husband of Queen Victoria. His passing in 1861 left a void. Queen Victoria sought male company in John Brown but when he too passed she was extremely lonely.
Read more: Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim – By Dr. Dhanpaul Narine
Comments
Queen or no Queen ..what would a 24 year man want with a big old 68 year old woman . I think it was more probably friendship and love for a friend. All old people love being with young people because it makes them feel younger . My best friend was 30 years older than me and she full of wisdom and fun that made me love her as a friend
I would say more mother and son relationship because she was lonely and missed her husband ..her family and friends obviously didn’t like it. Can’t understand why people would write this gutter rubbish about them having .a sexual relationship
. The author must have run out of things to say!@@@
“His influence in domestic and international affairs grew as he gave advice on matters relating to the treatment of Muslims in India.”
I read the implication as: ‘Abdul had been feeding Queen Victoria false partisan information, viz. that Muslims were being mistreated in India’. This very likely would have had British policy implications such as to elevate the already ascendant Muslim population vis a vis the Hindus. (Invader Muslims have been the ruling powers in most of India since 1206 AD until the British Crown eclipsed them in 1858).
It is a well-documented fact that the British favoured Muslims over Hindus and this favoritism would most likely have been intensified with the huge influence Abdul had over Queen Victoria. Here are some examples of this imbalance in treatment of Muslims vs Hindus. Citing just Shashi Tharoor’s Era of Darkness, the British Indian government is shown to favour Muslims in a number of instances.
Examples:
As a counter to the Indian National Congress, a group of nationalistic middle-class, educated Indians of ALL religions, Britain instigated the formation of the Muslim League – ostensibly to ‘divide and rule’ as well as to promote Muslim interests. Unfortunately, Muslim went along.
In 1905 Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal ‘promising that the partition would bring unity between the ruling Shia and the Sunni Muslim sects’. This then was to be a counterweight against Hindus.
Lieutenant Governor of Bengal Bamfylde Fuller said “ ‘that of his two wives (meaning the Muslim and Hindu sections of the province) the Mohammedan was the favourite’”. This led Muslims to read into his words that the British would “grant them impunity for anti-Hindu violence, which then spread in East Bengal. Assaults, rape abductions against the Hindu minority followed: ‘thus’, reported Henry Nevinson, ‘a new religious feud was established in Eastern Bengal’”. Nevinson further writes:
“I have invariably found English officers and officials on the side of Mohammedans….It was against the Hindus only that the petty persecution of officialdom was directed. It was they who were excluded from Government posts; it was from Hindu schools from which patronage was withdrawn. When Mohammedans rioted, the punitive police ransacked Hindu houses…”[Sounds a lot like Guyana under the PNC regime].
This said favouritism led to the partition of India with Churchill supporting Ali Jinnah’s (father of Pakistan) demand for a separate Muslim homeland. To secretly communicate with Jinnah, the great British hero statesman, Winston Churchill, adopted an alias (adopting his private secretary’s name) Miss E. A. Gilliat.
So, the aging Victoria’s uncommon affection for her Munshi very likely influenced inimical British policies on India’s Hindus.
Veda Nath Mohabir