On June 2, 1953, when young Elizabeth was crowned queen of the U.K., I was just about nineteen. It was big news of course, including in New Delhi, where I was, and where India’s independence had been celebrated in 1947. Immediately preceding the coronation, another event of global interest had occurred: the first ascent of Mount Everest, accomplished by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, who were part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt.
Nearly seventy years later, the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the advent of King Charles have also been events marked in the world as a whole, including in two large countries once ruled by English monarchs, India and the U.S.
More than five decades earlier, in 1901, when Queen Victoria died, that monarch, Elizabeth’s great-great-grandmother, had completed a reign of 63 years. Elizabeth surpassed her ancestor’s feat by a margin of seven years.
Time’s march brings perspective. Under Victoria, the British empire had expanded. Under Elizabeth, it shrank. The U.S. of course had freed itself from British rule well before Victoria.
But no one who notices the sizes of countries and their populations can avoid being struck by the impact made on the world by relatively small numbers of the English, the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh. No doubt the same can also be said about the influence of the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Danes. The evils of European imperialism are deep and also subtle, but they do not constitute the entire story.
Europe’s interaction with far places wounded those places but also brought them into the global economy. One unintended result of European imperialism was that Asians and Africans moved in large numbers to other continents. A further result is that if by a miracle Victoria were to reappear in today’s Britain, she would not recognize her country. The U.K.’s look, its sights and sounds, the foods its people eat, and the songs they sing, would seem quite strange to her.
We can be sure that Charles’s reign would see more alterations in Britain and elsewhere. In the years ahead, we will watch how democracy endures in the nations of the earth -- how liberty, equality, and fraternity fare in these times when, in many parts of our world, the dominant demand supremacy.
Coinciding with the succession of sovereignty in Britain is a physical makeover of New Delhi’s “power” zone, the so-called Central Vista that extends from Rashtrapati Bhavan, the residence of India’s president and former palace of imperial viceroys, all the way to Delhi’s Old Fort, or the Purana Qila. In between lie a four-pillared sandstone canopy that once contained a statue of Victoria’s grandson, George V, and the well-known India Gate, where soldiers who died for British-ruled India and for free India are honored.
A statue of Subhas Chandra Bose, brave fighter for freedom, now fills the space that remained empty since 1968, when George V was removed from his canopied pedestal.
The world changes. And yet much remains the same. With all its wish to rewrite history and rename places, the stridently nationalist new India builds on what was created by the Brits and before them by the Mughals. Even physically.