The British royal family may not be much of a family—Queen Elizabeth II is happily married, most of her children are happily divorced—but by golly, is it royal! The diamond jubilee of her reign was the ultimate costume drama. It slipped from one century to another with sangfroid born out of majestic indifference to common style, which is as it should be. If royalty were deflated by common sense it wouldn’t look very exalted, would it? Who on earth could wear trousers with yellow strips running along the side, as in the worst Hollywood parodies, and live to tell the tale, except the princes of the House of Windsor?
It was real only in the sense that it was occurring at a particular time and place. Its magnet was set in the ethereal. Even nature knew when it had met its equal. London’s rain is, of course, quintessentially British, so the four-day pageant began in dark, gloomy, threatening and wet weather. But while English rain has every right to make ordinary citizens miserable, it dared not tousle the hair of Her Majesty. It paused just long enough for her to enter the comfort zone of the royal barge, a gold-plated float that looked like it had once been owned by the original river queen, Cleopatra.
When a courtier, trying to be familiar in front of the cameras, thought that the weather was safe enough a topic for his Queen, she turned in that uniquely arch-motherly way and asked, “Were you surprised?” Breathless BBC, which mutes sound to protect the royals from any surprise, raised the volume on this remark and all Britain sighed in joy and adoration. Another decade had been purchased from history. A prosaic analysis of Queen Elizabeth the Second’s reign, written perhaps by a nasty Frenchman, would indicate that while her father lost India, all she did in six decades was to lose every bit of the rest of an empire that had arguably begun its ascent four centuries ago when Elizabeth the First shooed off the Spanish Armada. But only the dyspeptic recall unnecessary facts.
Our contemporary Elizabeth is both traditionalist and realist. She took the departure of nations in her stride. Emotion is a liberty that is not permitted to an empress. The one thing that grieved her during six decades on the throne was the loss of her personal yacht, Britannia, commissioned by a royalist Winston Churchill in 1954 and decommissioned by that deceptively oily Tony Blair in 1997. It was famously the only occasion on which the Queen wept, or, to put it more accurately, allowed her eyes to moisten. It is well known that the only time the Queen smiles is at the races. On 3 June she beamed.
Britain’s House of Windsor has survived with grace and wisdom because it understood something that its equivalents across Europe never could comprehend: That influence is a better bargain than power. Through the turmoil of the 20th century they never claimed victory so could not be blamed for defeat. European autocracy was fatally wounded in the First World War, which ended in 1918. The Romanovs of All the Russias collapsed midway. The Hapsburgs of Austro-Hungary could not survive defeat. The Kaisers did not survive surrender. The Ottomans of Turkey refused to depart ceremoniously and so were kicked out unceremoniously.
The Windsors left the foreground to politicians, who were dispensable and dominated the background, where they became indispensable to their people. When it comes to a bond with their subject, this buck stops at Buckingham. No politician was permitted on-stage during the jubilee celebrations, least of all the Prime Minister of Britain, who is merely elected. Democracy was sent off on a much-needed holiday.
So when the fireworks relapsed into smoke, the band stopped playing and litter was cleared on the morning after, what did it all mean? More than words can easily communicate. The British people were uplifted; the symbol of their state had raised their spirits and restored their sagging self-belief.
Depression is not an exclusive British phenomenon. It would take a very optimistic, or indeed a very foolish, Indian to look jolly today amid the corruption of Delhi and disarray across the country. But when Indians seek comfort from their symbol of state, who do they get? Pratibha Patil. That is descent to existential angst. I have a solution. Why shouldn’t India borrow the Queen of England for a bit? We would keep her only for the winter months, when the weather in any case is foul in Britain. The Queen is still happy to display the India connect. Her top jewellery comes from the subcontinent: The Lahore diamond, which she flashed during the jubilee, and the Kohinoor. Her residence in Delhi, Rashtrapati Bhavan, was built by an Englishman so she should be able to live in the style to which she is accustomed. And a coronation in Delhi would give her a third reason to smile.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.
