To mourn the Queen or not? It’s complicated

The symbolic, one-day mourning in India for the Queen provoked considerable outrage on social media.

- SWAPAN DASGUPTA

Among the indignant were avid supporters of Prime Minister Modi, the cultural nationalists who have endorsed the government’s moves to rid India of mental servitude—or dimmitude, as some prefer to call it. A free India, they asserted, had no business honouring a monarch who symbolised an unrepentant British Empire which, apart from economic exploitation, had contorted the soul of India.

This proverbial storm in a teacup has not prevented the government from following diplomatic niceties and paying homage to a remarkable woman who, apart from being the daughter of India’s last King-Emperor, was also head of the Commonwealth — a grouping that is bound by the imperial connection. India neither disrespected a long-serving head of state just to settle scores with the past, nor did it go overboard in expressing grief. Diplomacy and detachment went together.

Yet, when it comes to viewing Britain — both the past and the present — detachment is almost impossible. Any perspective is inevitably tied up in very contradictory impulses.