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TRACING A CULTURAL MEMORY: COMMEMORATION OF 1857 IN THE DELHI DURBARS, 1877, 1903, AND 1911*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2016

SONAKSHI GOYLE
SONAKSHI GOYLE*
Affiliation:
Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
*
Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067[email protected]
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Abstract

The three imperial durbars held in Delhi for the coronation of British monarchs as the rulers of India were gatherings of royalty, administration, and the military, organized in the years 1877, 1903, and 1911. As impressively invented, improvised, and self-styled orientalist representations of the late Victorian tradition, these durbars were pageants of power, prestige, and authority, creations of their organizing viceroys: Robert Lytton (1877), George Curzon (1903), and Charles Hardinge (1911). But, as this article shows, they were also commemorative exhibitions of the triumphant memory of the event of 1857 (variously called the Indian Mutiny, Sepoy war, War of Independence), especially in Delhi which had to be emphasized regularly for perpetuating myths about British superiority and invincibility. Spread over a period of thirty-five years, these rituals of commemoration were performed through four illustrative choices. These were the selection of site, selection of mutiny veterans as participants, the construction of mutiny memorials, and contribution to the growth of mutiny pilgrimage tours. Drawing attention to the successive formation of 1857 as a seminal ‘cultural moment’ through its periodic commemoration, the present article brings to focus the enduring significance of the event for the British empire in India, which had to be re-visited time and again for purposes of legitimation and cultural appropriation.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 799 - 815
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article benefited greatly from a study visit to libraries and archives in London, United Kingdom, generously funded by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), New Delhi. I would like to thank Prof. Bhagwan Josh for his continued guidance, Dr Kundan Kumar for patient readings of drafts, and the editor of this journal and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve this work further.

References

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4 Although the term ‘event of 1857’ is preferred to denote the series of incidents in India in the years 1857–8 and its cultural memory, others such as simply 1857, mutiny, struggle, revolt, rebellion are also used in order to capture the sense of the times as also for practical necessities of providing variation.

5 For the sake of consistency and historical accuracy, the original spelling of South Asian placenames have been retained, so Bombay and not Mumbai, Cawnpore and not Kanpur.

6 For an idea of the sheer volume and diversity of literature on 1857, see Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of darkness: British literature and imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, NY, 1988), pp. 199–226; Erll, Astrid, ‘Re-writing as re-visioning: modes of representing the “Indian Mutiny” in British novels, 1857 to 2000’, European Journal of English Studies, 10 (2006), pp. 163–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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15 Lytton to Queen Victoria, 21 Apr. and 4 May 1876, qu. in Cohn, ‘Representing authority’, pp. 187–8.

16 Cohn also details how the population of the relatively small city, still recovering from the destruction of the rebellion, was treated as a conquered people and one of the concessions announced on behalf of the queen at the assemblage was the reopening of Zinat-ul-Masjid for public worship and the restoration to the Muslims of Delhi of the Fatehpuri Mosque confiscated in 1857. Cohn, ‘Representing authority’, p. 188.

17 James Talboys Wheeler, The history of the imperial assemblage at Delhi (London, 1877), p. 47.

18 ‘Imperial assemblage’, Delhi Gazette, 4 Jan. 1877; ‘The capital of India’, Delhi Gazette, 5 Jan. 1877.

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21 (No title), Times, 8 Dec. 1911.

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24 Hardinge to Crewe, 25 Aug. 1911, qu. in Sir Courtenay Ilbert, The coronation durbar and its consequences: a second supplementary chapter to the government of India (Oxford, 1913), pp. 468–70.

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27 Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Leaves from a viceroy's notebook and other papers (London, 1927), p. 34.

28 Wheeler, Delhi coronation durbar, p. 112.

29 ‘Mutiny veterans in the Delhi durbar’, Basumati, 25 Sept. 1902.

30 Mortimer Menpes, The durbar (London, 1903), p. 58.

31 Wheeler, Delhi coronation durbar, p. 112.

32 Gertrude Bell to Florence Bell, 31 Dec. 1902, Letters of Gertrude Bell (2 vols., London, 1927), i (www.archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb186-gb.pdf).

33 ‘The coronation durbar’, Civil and Military Gazette (CMG), 2 Jan. 1903.

34 ‘March of progress’, Pioneer, 3 Jan. 1903.

35 Lovat Fraser, At Delhi (Bombay, 1903), p. 172.

36 Wheeler, Delhi coronation durbar, p. 112; Kedleston, Leaves from a viceroy's notebook, p. 35.

37 ‘The mutiny veterans address to the viceroy’, CMG, 6 Jan. 1903; ‘Delhi coronation durbar: the mutiny veterans’, CMG, 7 Jan. 1903.

38 ‘Veteran's camp at Delhi: European veterans’, Pioneer, 6 Dec. 1911.

39 John Fortescue, Narrative of the visit to India of Their Majesties King George V, and Queen Mary and of the coronation durbar held at Delhi 12th December 1911 (London, 1912), p. 137.

40 ‘King George's reply to the mutiny veterans’, His Majesty King George's speeches (Madras, 1932), p. xxxii.

41 ‘The veteran's camp at the durbar’, Pioneer, 8 Sept. 1911; ‘The durbar: gathering of veterans’, Pioneer, 3 Dec. 1911; (No title), Pioneer, 6 Dec. 1911.

42 Frank van Vree, ‘The art of commemoration and the politics of memory’, Open, 7 (2004), pp. 16–32, at p. 16.

43 Curzon, Lord Curzon, pp. 440–2.

44 G. O. Trevelyan, The competition wallah (Cambridge and London, 1864), p. 111.

45 Rudyard Kipling, ‘Little house at Arrah’, Pioneer, 24 Feb. 1888.

46 Rudyard Kipling, ‘In the year “57”’, CMG, 14 and 23 May 1887.

47 St John, Andrew, ‘In the year “57”: historiography, power, and politics in Kipling's Punjab’, Review of English Studies, 51 (2000), pp. 62–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tickell, Alex, ‘Cawnpore, Kipling and charivari: 1857 and the politics of commemoration’, Literature and History, 18 (2009), pp. 1–19 Google Scholar.

48 Scotland, Douglas W., ‘The little Arrah house’, Kipling Journal, 94 (1950), p. 16 Google Scholar, at p. 16.

49 Curzon, Lord Curzon, p. 447.

50 W. H. Russell, The prince of Wales tour: a diary in India; with some account of the visits of His Royal Highness to the courts of Greece, Egypt, Spain and Portugal (London, 1877), p. 391.

51 Goswami, Manu, ‘“Englishness” on the imperial circuit: mutiny tours in colonial South Asia’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 9 (1996), pp. 54–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 62–70.

52 Russell, Prince of Wales tour, pp. 393–4.

53 George Wheeler, India in 1875–1876: the visit of the prince of Wales: a chronicle of His Royal Highness's journeyings in India, Ceylon, Spain, and Portugal (London, Calcutta, and Bombay, 1876), p. 227.

54 Russell, Prince of Wales tour, p. 395.

55 Ibid., pp. 401–2.

56 Ibid., p. 403.

57 Wheeler, Visit of the prince of Wales, pp. 234–5.

58 Russell, Prince of Wales tour, p. 405.

59 Mary Elizabeth Corbet, A pleasure trip to India, during the visit of H.R. H. the prince of Wales, afterwards to Ceylon (London, 1880), p. 82.

60 Russell, Prince of Wales tour, p. 417.

61 Wheeler, Visit of the prince of Wales, pp. 236–47.

62 Ibid., p. 251.

63 J. Drew Gay, The prince of Wales in India or from Pall Mall to the Punjaub (New York, NY, 1877), p. 257.

64 See Illustrated London News, Mar.–June 1859, Jan. 1868, Mar.–Apr. 1875, Dec. 1886, June 1887, and Dec. 1905.

65 James Routledge, English rule and native opinion in India (London, 1878), p. 241.

66 Earl of Ronaldshay, The life of Lord Curzon, being the authorized biography of George Nathaniel Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K. G. (2 vols., London, 1928), i, pp. 92–4.