Victoria and Abdul: The Friendship that Scandalized England

Victoria and Abdul: The Friendship that Scandalized England

Previously undiscovered diaries have been found by an author based in the UK which show the intense relationship between Queen Victoria and the Indian man employed to be her teacher.

The diaries have been used by London-based author Shrabani Basu to update her book Victoria and Abdul - which tells the story of the queen's close relationship with a tall and handsome Indian Muslim called Abdul Karim.

The diaries add weight to suggestions that the queen was arguably far closer to Mr Karim than she was to John Brown - the Scottish servant who befriended her after the death of her beloved husband Prince Albert in 1861.

They show that when the young Muslim was contemplating throwing in his job, soon after his employment started, because it was too "menial", the queen successfully begged him not to go.

'Closest friend'
Mr Karim was just 24 when he arrived in England from Agra to wait at table during Queen Victoria's golden jubilee in 1887 - four years after Mr Brown's death. He was given to her as a "gift from India".

Within a year, the young Muslim was established as a powerful figure in court, becoming the queen's teacher - or munshi - and instructing her in Urdu and Indian affairs.

Mr Karim was to have a profound influence on Queen Victoria's life - like Mr Brown becoming one of her closest confidants - but unlike him, was promoted well beyond servant status.

"In letters to him over the years between his arrival in the UK and her death in 1901, the queen signed letters to him as 'your loving mother' and 'your closest friend'," author Shrabani Basu told the BBC.

"On some occasions, she even signed off her letters with a flurry of kisses - a highly unusual thing to do at that time.

"It was unquestionably a passionate relationship - a relationship which I think operated on many different layers in addition to the mother-and-son ties between a young Indian man and a woman who at the time was over 60 years old."

Principal mourners
Ms Basu hints that it is unlikely that the pair were ever lovers - although they did set tongues wagging by spending a quiet night alone in the same highland cottage where earlier she and John Brown used to stay.

"When Prince Albert died, Victoria famously said that he was her husband, close friend, father and mother," Ms Basu said. "I think it's likely that Abdul Karim fulfilled a similar role."

A LOVING RELATIONSHIP
In pictures: Victoria and Abdul's 'deep friendship'

Mr Karim's influence over the queen became so great that she stipulated that he should be accorded the honour of being among the principal mourners at her funeral in Windsor Castle.

"The elderly queen specifically gave this instruction, even though she knew it would provoke intense opposition from her family and household," Ms Basu said.

"If the royal household hated Brown, it absolutely abhorred Abdul Karim."

During his service with the queen, Mr Karim was bestowed with many honours as the royal party travelled around Europe meeting monarchs and prime ministers.

He taught her how to write in Urdu and Hindi, introduced her to curry - which became a daily item on the royal menu - and eventually became her highly decorated secretary.

I am so very fond of him. He is so good and gentle and understanding... and is a real comfort to me
Queen Victoria talking about Abdul Karim
He and his wife were given residences on all of the main royal estates in the UK and land in India. He was allowed to carry a sword and wear his medals in court - and was permitted to bring family members from India to England.

"Mr Karim's father even got away with being the first person to smoke a hookah [water-pipe] in Windsor Castle, despite the queen's aversion to smoking," Ms Basu said.

"The queen's munshi was named in court circulars, given the best positions at operas and banquets, allowed to play billiards in all the royal palaces and had a private horse carriage and footman."

Unceremoniously sacked
That Mr Karim inspired the empress of India could be seen not just by her newfound love of curry. Her eagerness to learn Urdu and Hindi because of his teaching was so strong that she even learned to write in both languages - and gave him a signed photo written in Urdu.

She also used his briefings on political developments in India at the turn of the 19th Century to berate successive viceroys, her representatives in India - much to their displeasure - on measures they could have taken to reduce communal tensions.

"At a time when the British empire was at its height, a young Muslim occupied a central position of influence over its sovereign," Ms Basu said.

"It was a relationship that sent shockwaves through the royal court and was arguably a relationship far more scandalous than her much reported friendship with Mr Brown."

THE KARIM DIARIES
On meeting Queen Victoria for the first time: "I was somewhat nervous at the approach of the Great Empress... I presented nazars (gifts) by exposing, in the palms of my hands, a gold mohar (coin) which Her Majesty touched and remitted as is the Indian custom."

Quoting a letter written by Queen Victoria imploring him not to resign: "I shall be very sorry to part with you for I like and respect you, but I hope you will remain till the end of this year or the beginning of the next that I may learn enough Hindustani from you to speak a little."

On 'good fortune': "Some Indian jugglers happened to be in Nice while Her Majesty was there. When Her Majesty came to hear of them she sent a request to have them brought before her to exhibit their tricks. The Queen was highly amused and delighted - and the honour which was given to these poor jugglers must have made them happy for life."

Such was the level of ill-feeling he generated that barely a few hours after the queen's funeral, her son Edward VII unceremoniously sacked Abdul Karim.

In addition, he ordered that all records of their relationship - kept at Mr Karim's homes in India and the UK - should be destroyed.

But remarkable detective work by Ms Basu in India and Pakistan unearthed Mr Karim's diaries - kept by surviving family members since his death in 1909 - which detail his 10 years in London between Queen Victoria's golden and diamond jubilees.

The diaries and other correspondence were taken back to India by Mr Karim and his nephew, Abdul Rashid, after their dismissal and were in turn sneaked out of India to Pakistan 40 years later when his family migrated during the violence at the time of partition.

A surviving family member in India read about Ms Basu's book in a local newspaper and told her that the diaries were being kept by another branch of the family in Karachi, which she duly tracked down.

"I was fortunate enough to have unearthed a truly remarkable love story," Ms Basu reflected.

Shrabani Basu's updated book, Victoria and Abdul, is published by the History Press.

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s part of the festivities to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, celebrating 50 years on the throne, the Queen hosted dozens of foreign rulers at a lavish banquet. She led a grand procession to Westminster Abbey in open carriage, escorted by the Indian cavalry, greeted screaming crowds on her palace balcony, and enjoyed fireworks in the garden. But of all the jubilee’s memorable events, it was the queen’s encounter with Abdul Karim that became the most significant. The young man had arrived in the United Kingdom as a “gift from India,” one intended to help Victoria address the Indian princes at her banquet. Karim would quickly prove to be the queen’s most trusted confidant, and the most despised member of the royal court.

Queen Victoria’s unusually close friendship with her Indian servant began at the 1887 celebration and spanned 14 years, a period captured in the new movie Victoria & Abdul, starring Judi Dench as the titular queen. Karim was the queen’s beloved munshi, the teacher who gave her daily Urdu lessons, educated her on Indian affairs, and introduced her to curry. Queen Victoria in turn showered him with gifts, titles and honors, much to the resentment of the royal family. When the queen died in 1901, her children burned every letter she sent Karim, whom they unceremoniously deported back to India. Yet his record lives on, thanks in large part to his diary, preserved by generations of descendants.
That diary was only recently unearthed by Shrabani Basu, the historian who wrote the movie’s source text. As Basu recounts in her book of the same name, Karim was born near Jhansi, the second-oldest child of six. His father, Haji Wuzeeruddin, was a hospital assistant, a skilled position that required some medical qualifications. While this occupation did not place Wuzeeruddin in the upper class, it was a good job, one that allowed him to hire a Maulvi, or Muslim scholar, to tutor his son. Under the Maulvi’s tutelage, Karim learned both Persian and Urdu. He eventually secured a clerk position at a jail in Agra, one where his father and the brothers of his soon-to-be wife both worked. It was there that Karim was handpicked to serve the somewhat recently christened Empress of India, Queen Victoria.

The jail superintendent, John Tyler, offered Karim the opportunity. Tyler had recently escorted 34 inmates to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London, where he showed off the carpets they had woven as part of their rehabilition program. Queen Victoria was impressed, and had asked Tyler during his trip about selecting two Indian attendants to assist her at her Golden Jubilee. The men would facilitate communication with Indian dignitaries and wait on the queen. Karim was paired with Mohamed Buxshe, an experienced servant who ran the household of a British general. Compared with Buxshe, Karim was woefully unprepared for his new duties. But before he departed for London, he received a crash course in palace etiquette and the English language, as well as a brand-new wardrobe.

Queen Victoria’s first impression of Karim was recorded in her diaries, where she deemed him “tall with a fine serious countenance.” After their jubilee duties concluded, Karim and Buxshe traveled with the queen to her summer home on the Isle of Wight. There, Karim distinguished himself by surprising the sovereign with one of his favorite recipes. Using spices he had brought from Agra, Karim cooked a chicken curry with dal and pilau. According to Victoria biographer A.N. Wilson, the queen declared the dish “excellent” and added it to her regular menu rotation.

Eager to immerse herself further in Indian culture, Victoria asked Karim to teach her Urdu, or, as it was known at the time, Hindustani. Their lessons initially seemed somewhat relaxed. “Am learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants,” Victoria wrote. “It is a great interest to me, for both the language and the people.” That interest soon turned to zeal. In an effort to improve communication between teacher and student, the queen doubled Karim’s English lessons, and he was a fast learner. Within two months, Victoria had ceased sending Karim instructions through her staff and begun writing him directly. Within a few more, she had bestowed upon him the title of Munshi Hafiz Abdul Karim, making him her official Indian clerk and relieving him of his menial duties.

Victoria and Abdul: The Friendship that Scandalized England
Near the end of her reign, Queen Victoria developed a friendship with an Indian servant, elevating him to trusted advisor and infuriating her court
Victoria and Abdul
(Courtesy of Focus Features)
By Kristin Hunt
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
SEPTEMBER 20, 2017
12.1K35772
As part of the festivities to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, celebrating 50 years on the throne, the Queen hosted dozens of foreign rulers at a lavish banquet. She led a grand procession to Westminster Abbey in open carriage, escorted by the Indian cavalry, greeted screaming crowds on her palace balcony, and enjoyed fireworks in the garden. But of all the jubilee’s memorable events, it was the queen’s encounter with Abdul Karim that became the most significant. The young man had arrived in the United Kingdom as a “gift from India,” one intended to help Victoria address the Indian princes at her banquet. Karim would quickly prove to be the queen’s most trusted confidant, and the most despised member of the royal court.

Queen Victoria’s unusually close friendship with her Indian servant began at the 1887 celebration and spanned 14 years, a period captured in the new movie Victoria & Abdul, starring Judi Dench as the titular queen. Karim was the queen’s beloved munshi, the teacher who gave her daily Urdu lessons, educated her on Indian affairs, and introduced her to curry. Queen Victoria in turn showered him with gifts, titles and honors, much to the resentment of the royal family. When the queen died in 1901, her children burned every letter she sent Karim, whom they unceremoniously deported back to India. Yet his record lives on, thanks in large part to his diary, preserved by generations of descendants.


That diary was only recently unearthed by Shrabani Basu, the historian who wrote the movie’s source text. As Basu recounts in her book of the same name, Karim was born near Jhansi, the second-oldest child of six. His father, Haji Wuzeeruddin, was a hospital assistant, a skilled position that required some medical qualifications. While this occupation did not place Wuzeeruddin in the upper class, it was a good job, one that allowed him to hire a Maulvi, or Muslim scholar, to tutor his son. Under the Maulvi’s tutelage, Karim learned both Persian and Urdu. He eventually secured a clerk position at a jail in Agra, one where his father and the brothers of his soon-to-be wife both worked. It was there that Karim was handpicked to serve the somewhat recently christened Empress of India, Queen Victoria.

The jail superintendent, John Tyler, offered Karim the opportunity. Tyler had recently escorted 34 inmates to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 in London, where he showed off the carpets they had woven as part of their rehabilition program. Queen Victoria was impressed, and had asked Tyler during his trip about selecting two Indian attendants to assist her at her Golden Jubilee. The men would facilitate communication with Indian dignitaries and wait on the queen. Karim was paired with Mohamed Buxshe, an experienced servant who ran the household of a British general. Compared with Buxshe, Karim was woefully unprepared for his new duties. But before he departed for London, he received a crash course in palace etiquette and the English language, as well as a brand-new wardrobe.

Queen Victoria’s first impression of Karim was recorded in her diaries, where she deemed him “tall with a fine serious countenance.” After their jubilee duties concluded, Karim and Buxshe traveled with the queen to her summer home on the Isle of Wight. There, Karim distinguished himself by surprising the sovereign with one of his favorite recipes. Using spices he had brought from Agra, Karim cooked a chicken curry with dal and pilau. According to Victoria biographer A.N. Wilson, the queen declared the dish “excellent” and added it to her regular menu rotation.

Eager to immerse herself further in Indian culture, Victoria asked Karim to teach her Urdu, or, as it was known at the time, Hindustani. Their lessons initially seemed somewhat relaxed. “Am learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants,” Victoria wrote. “It is a great interest to me, for both the language and the people.” That interest soon turned to zeal. In an effort to improve communication between teacher and student, the queen doubled Karim’s English lessons, and he was a fast learner. Within two months, Victoria had ceased sending Karim instructions through her staff and begun writing him directly. Within a few more, she had bestowed upon him the title of Munshi Hafiz Abdul Karim, making him her official Indian clerk and relieving him of his menial duties.


This developing relationship alarmed members of the court, because it felt all too familiar. Prior to Karim, Victoria’s closest confidant had been her Scottish servant, John Brown. The queen had leaned heavily on Brown after her husband Albert’s death, so much so that several members of the court derisively referred to her as “Mrs. Brown.” (The movie adapation of that story, Mrs. Brown, also starred Dench as Victoria.) But Brown had died in 1883, and no servant had taken his place in the queen’s inner circle. Karim, however, was increasingly stepping into that role. He was traveling constantly with Victoria and, as Michael Nelson notes in Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riveria, even occupying Brown’s old bedchambers.

Although Karim’s diaries suggest nothing romantic, his relationship with Queen Victoria was oddly intimate. The two turned heads when they spent the night at Glassat Shiel, a remote cottage in Scotland that the queen had previously shared with John Brown. (After his death, she had vowed never to return.) Basu notes that Victoria signed letters to Karim as “your closest friend” and “your loving mother.” He was also afforded perks few servants could fathom. The queen not only allowed the Munshi to bring his wife over to England, but hosted his father and other family members. Karim enjoyed his own personal carriage and the best seats at the opera.

In their letters to one another, Victorian courtiers wished awful fates upon the Munshi. Basu shares several nasty excerpts in her book. Lady-in-waiting Marie Millet rued, “Why the plague did not carry him off I cannot think, it might have done one good deed!” Private secretary Arthur Bigge wished Karim and his father “a happy and lasting retreat in the Jail!”

Some royal associates had reasonable complaints about Karim’s extravagant requests. He frequently asked the queen for favors, such as securing his father a pension or his former boss a promotion. But it wasn’t just his arrogance that annoyed them. Historians have plainly pinned the hatred on 19th-century racism. As Carolly Erickson writes in Her Little Majesty, “For a dark-skinned Indian to be put very nearly on a level with the queen’s white servants was all but intolerable, for him to eat at the same table with them, to share in their daily lives was viewed as an outrage.”
The queen was well aware of this animosity towards Karim, and did not tolerate it. Fritz Ponsonby, her assistant private secretary, articulated her unwavering stance in a letter. “The Queen insists on bringing the Munshi forward, and if it were not for our protest, I don’t know where she would stop,” he wrote. “But it is no use, for the Queen says it is ‘race prejudice’ and that we are jealous of the poor Munshi.” Victoria heaped gifts and titles upon Karim partially because she knew the court would not pay him the same respect once she was dead. But she made sure her friend would be comfortable and remembered.

While Karim already enjoyed homes at the royal residences of Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne, Victoria also secured a land grant for him back in Agra. She commissioned multiple portraits of him, and had him written up in the Court Circulars and local gazettes. In her final wishes, she was quite explicit: Karim would be one of the principal mourners at her funeral, an honor afforded only to the monarch’s closest friends and family. Victoria could not control what happened to the Munshi from beyond the grave, but she did everything in her power to mitigate the harsh treatment she presumed her family would inflict upon him.

The queen’s fears were justified. Upon her death on January 22, 1901, Victoria’s children worked swiftly to evict their mother’s favorite adviser. Edward VII sent guards into the cottage Karim shared with his wife, seizing all letters from the queen and burning them on the spot. They instructed Karim to return to India immediately, without fanfare or farewell.

Victoria’s heirs could not completely erase the Munshi from public record, but they edited and obscured his narrative to the best of their abilities. Karim died in Agra in 1909 with his correspondence destroyed and no children to preserve his memories. But something had survived the guards’ bonfire: his personal diary. The book secretly stayed in the family of Abdul Rashid, the Munshi’s nephew, for several generations. His descendants shared the journal with Basu in 2010, over a century after the queen’s death. Karim’s diary gave incredible new details on an unexpected, intense friendship that crossed class and racial lines -- one that began over a delicious plate of chicken curry.


'How I uncovered the hidden friendship between Queen Victoria and her Indian servant Abdul'
It was on a family trip to the Isle of Wight’s Osborne House that Shrabani Basu discovered a secret that had lain untold since Queen Victoria’s death. The Indian journalist had taken her two teenage daughters with her to the former Queen’s palatial holiday home to witness the restored Durbar Room; an original banquet hall.

As Basu wandered through the house’s Indian wing, she couldn’t help notice several portraits and a bust of an Indian servant called Abdul Karim. “He didn’t look a servant,” explains Basu, 54, from her North London home. “He was painted to look like a nobleman. He was holding a book, looking sideways. Something that about that expression struck me, and when I moved along, I saw another portrait of him looking rather gentle. It was very unusual.”

Shrabani Basu has written a book about Queen Victoria and Abdul which has now turned into a film
Shrabani Basu has written a book about Queen Victoria and Abdul which has now turned into a film CREDIT: JOHN LAWRENCE/TMG
At the time, in 2003, everything she knew about Queen Victoria’s Indian servants came from a book she had written on curry several years earlier - namely that the Queen had loved curry (chicken curry and daal being a particular favourite), and had servants from India who cooked it for her every lunchtime.

“It was in the back of my mind all along, so when I saw the portraits of Abdul, including a tableau of ladies serving him, I was intrigued,” says Basu. “I knew I had to look into this.”

Victoria and Abdul Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul
Victoria and Abdul Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul
In a project that spanned around five years and three countries, Basu slowly uncovered the story of Victoria and Abdul - a 24-year old former Indian Muslim clerk who had been granted as a ‘Golden Jubilee gift’ to the Queen, and ended up becoming her closest confidante until she died.

The astonishing story of the curious friendship between the Queen and her Indian servant, to whom she a bestowed a title of ‘Munshi’, will now be told this September in a new film starring Dame Judi Dench and Bollywood star Ali Fazal. Based on Basu’s book Victoria & Abdul which is being republished this week, it brings to life the relationship which caused such controversy that upon Queen Victoria’s death, her family tried to erase the story of Abdul entirely.

The many letters that the pair wrote to each other were burnt, and the mention of him in the Queen’s own journals were edited out by her daughter Beatrice. References to Abdul by other historians were brief, and had him painted as a ‘rogue’ who had used the Queen to climb up the social ladder.

The true nature of the pair’s friendship, which spanned 13 years, was consigned to the depths of history, until Basu went off to Windsor Castle and asked to look at Queen Victoria’s Hindustani journals - a collection of ‘exercise books’ where Abdul would teach her what we now know as Urdu.

Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim in 1880
Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim in 1880 CREDIT: MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY 2015
“No one had seen them up to that point,” explains Basu. “The blotting paper fell out of these journals which hadn’t been opened for 100 years - presumably because all Queen Victoria’s biographers had been western and couldn’t follow Urdu.”

Basu, however, had been brought up in Delhi and could make sense of the journals. She read through 13 volumes of the Queen writing about Hindustani lessons in Balmoral, visiting Abdul when he was ill, and visits to take tea with his wife - who she had granted permission to come from India to join him - and see their cat’s new kittens. Her passion for India was obvious, from her desperate wish to eat a mango and her view of the Karims as her equals. It showed a completely different side of the Queen’s life that had been previously recorded.

After the Queen’s death, Abdul returned to Agra and it was here where Basu found a ruined mausoleum which would have once been studded with gems and rubies. His inscriptions still lay engraved on the tombstone.

“It was a big moment,” says Basu. “I felt, now I’ve found his grave, this man’s story had to be told. It became a passion. Within a few months, it had taken over my life. I mean, it was the Queen, a young Muslim man - what’s not to be curious about? The more and more I got into it, it became more and more gripping.”

A portrait of Abdul Karim
A portrait of Abdul Karim in 1892 CREDIT: MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY 2015 
Abdul had never had children with his wife, but eventually, Basu discovered his nephew’s descendants, who introduced her to relatives in Karachi. There, locked up in a trunk in their attic, were Abdul’s untouched personal journals. They detailed his story of coming to England, to take up what he thought was a prestigious position in the Queen’s household, but was actually just a glorified ‘exotic servant’ role.

“He was a clerk who had never done menial work,” smiles Basu. “There was a bit of arrogance as he wrote about that, and after a couple of months in England, he writes about how he wants to go back to his wife in India. He tells the Queen, but she asks him to stay, saying she enjoys his company and wants to learn Hindustani from him.”

That discovery was crucial, as it proved that the existing narrative about Abdul as a rogue who used the Queen just wasn’t true. “It put their whole relationship into a different perspective,” says Basu. “He was devoted and has nothing but praise for her, about how good she is, how she’s kind and has always stood up for him.”

Over the next few years, Basu pieced together the true story of 68-year-old Queen Victoria, Empress of India, and Abdul, the young Munshi who stayed with her until her death in 1901. She found letters from the Queen where she signs off as “your closest friend,” “your true friend” and “your loving mother.”

A vintage illustration of Queen Victoria on the arm of her Indian servant Abdul Karim
A vintage illustration of Queen Victoria on the arm of her Indian servant Abdul Karim CREDIT: POPPERFOTO/POPPERFOTO
“Sometimes she’s a mother figure to him; sometimes he’s her closest friend”, explains Basu. “At the same time, the physical aspect is important. Two Indian servants came - one she describes as very short, very dark and she describes Abdul as handsome. It’s important she goes for the tall handsome one.”

She stresses their relationship would not have been sexual, though “there might have been some hand holding or a few intimate moments”, but was a true friendship: “He spoke to her as a human being and not as the Queen. Everyone else kept their distance from her, even her own children, and this young Indian came with an innocence about him. He told her about India, his family and was there to listen when she complained about her own family.”

Victoria and Abdul Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul
Victoria and Abdul Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul CREDIT: PETER MOUNTAIN/© FOCUS FEATURES
Some of the letters between the pair are written with a frankness we would never expect. She writes to Abdul about his wife’s difficulty in conceiving, advising, “She should be careful at the particular time every month not to tire herself," and tells Abdul: “There is nothing I would not do to help you both, as you are my dear Indian children and you can say (any) thing to me.”

When he is criticised and subjected to racial abuse - from her son and heir to the rest of the household and the staff - she stands up for him. He is part of the ‘black brigade’ from India, accused of theft, being a spy, and of lying, but Queen Victoria refuses to believe the lies, and in memos to her children, reprimands them for a lack of respect.

“He was an ordinary commoner from Agra who had close to the Queen,” points out Basu. “They were snobs and Queen Victoria told them as much. She told them this is not acceptable. She was definitely ahead of her time.”

“There was a young Muslim at the heart of the Royal court during the most crucial years of Victoria’s reign, of the longest-reigning monarch in an empire at its height,” Basu explains. “This young man caused so much confusion. It’s delightful and funny, but it’s also sad, and more than anything, it’s a reflection of the times they lived in.”

Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu is published by the History Press. To order your copy for £9.99 plus p&p call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk 




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