Sharbani Basu at the launch of the Cordoba Heritage Series.
The following is a guest post by Amjad Saleem, head of communications for The Cordoba Foundation.
I am a self-confessed history geek who loves nothing better than to get into a story from the past — especially one that is as relevant to today’s policy discussions and societal concerns as it was when it first occurred.
Few stories, however, have managed to tick all the boxes for me as well as the story of Victoria and Abdul. When I first came across the book Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant, written by Shrabani Basu, it was an innocent interest in a historical story that made me venture in, but by the time I was finished, I was convinced that this was something greater. It is what prompted me to convince our organisation to feature it in the launch of our new Cordoba Heritage Series, which kicked off on the 10th of May 2012.
Even for those of us who have at one stage or another studied Victorian history, this is a relatively unknown story.
In June 1887 two Indian servants were sent to Queen Victoria as a present for her Golden Jubilee. One was the 24-year-old Abdul Karim. Young Karim immediately caught the Queen’s eye and was rapidly promoted to become her Indian Secretary in 1894. He cooked her curries, became her Hindustani tutor and delighted the elderly Queen with his stories about India, especially as she had not visited the sub-continent despite having the grand title of ‘Empress of India’, and soon became the lonely monarch’s closest companion.
She honoured him with titles, gave him houses in Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne and extensive land in Agra. However, this relationship did not go over well within the strict hierarchical world of the royal household. They were not only opposed to the idea of a servant being catapulted into such prominence by the Queen’s side but were also scandalised by his race. At a time of great flux for the British Empire in India, the idea that there was an Indian advising the Queen ‘on Indian politics’ became unacceptable, and rumours started to circulate that Abdul Karim was passing the Queen inflammatory advice about India and that he was a spy leaking sensitive and secret foreign policy information.
On the eve of her Diamond Jubilee her family and courtiers even threatened to declare her insane in a bid to quash a potentially scandalous relationship. Despite these objections, the Queen stood by Abdul Karim, even accusing her household of racial prejudice, till her last days, refusing to let him go. When she died in 1901, he was the final person to see her before she was buried and walked behind her funeral casket at her request. However, with her death, Abdul Karim became an ostracised man and was immediately exiled back to India, with members of the royal household marching into Abdul Karim’s home, seizing all items bearing the royal crest and burning all his letters from the Queen.
He died eight years later at the age of 46, a largely broken man in virtual obscurity, a far cry from the times he was the most recognised member of Queen Victoria’s household. In the partition that followed the independence of India in 1947, his descendants were forced to move to Pakistan, where they were relatively unknown, and the story of Abdul Karim was forgotten from their history, until Shrabani found them whilst doing research for her book. Now his mausoleum in Agra, India, is being cared for by his great-grandson and the story has since made the news in the UK in the past few weeks with an article in one of the tabloids, a documentary on TV, and the author’s sale of the movie rights for the book.
Victoria & Abdul is not only the story of an unusual relationship between the Empress of India and a humble servant, which flourished at a time when the British Empire was at its height, but it also allows us a glimpse at the narrative of the British Empire and their attitude towards their subjects, which provides the foundation for much of our heritage and legacy today.
Queen Victoria was definitely a pioneer in her fight for equality against racism and status. What makes the story even more interesting is that for the last 10 years of her life, her bodyguards and servants were all Indian Muslims led by Abdul Karim. The relationship between the crown and Islam could have been fractious given the socio-political contexts of Crimea and the Ottoman empire, yet Queen Victoria was adamant about how she would approach the relationship with her Muslim subjects and the support she would give those under her rule. This is an important message that transcends the history pages for today.
As the UK prepares to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of a reigning monarch for only the second time in its history, there are many similarities between that time and now. Despite the difficulties that often transpired between the so-called ‘Muslim world’ and ‘the West’, the story of Victoria and Abdul shows that true friendship and loyalty transcend these boundaries of race, ethnicity and faith. This is the heritage that we collectively have and must proudly propagate in the face of those who seek to be divisive.
This is what we at The Cordoba Foundation seek to do with our Cordoba Heritage Series, which is aimed at exploring, understanding and appreciating our common heritage and creative legacy to offer solutions to difficult questions of identity and belonging in today’s ‘West’. By exploring the shared history that acknowledges the many sources of Western culture in the East, we recognise the history of empire as a history that belongs equally to all its heirs, of every race, faith and nation. It is in doing this study that we can establish a firm and secure identity for Europe and its second- and third-generation migrants.
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Guest posts on our blog are written by individuals with whom we collaborate externally. We publish them to stimulate discussion and debate by exploring ideas. The opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the official position or views of the British Council.
Linking the Ivory Tower to the Newsroom
This is a guest post from Shelia B. Lawani, a member of the Our Shared Future Opinion Leaders Network. Ms. Lawani, journalist and lecturer at the Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland, is currently the Special Advisor to the Publisher at Foreign Policy magazine.
The conference in Southeast Asia started harmfully enough on that hot and sticky Sunday. I was the final speaker that day and decided to share my thoughts before a room of academics on publishing opinion pieces that concern religion and faith in the mainstream media.
The comments – I’ll be diplomatic – hit me like bullets.
“Publishing in the American media is a joke,” one well-known academic said.
“The media have an obvious bias and agenda,” said another.
One year after that conference and more than 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, I hold this truth to be self-evident: The mainstream media are largely made of generalists – not area specialists – and academics should do their part to add to the public body of knowledge. News organizations also need to make a space for them.
The advent of blogs, Twitter feeds and other social media venues have changed the landscape in American journalism. Web sites pop up containing news on domestic and international affairs pop up every day.
This cacophony of voices should not come at the expense of the academics, whose voices are necessary in assisting the public to sift the fact from the fiction. That is particularly true in a globalized post-modernist world in which many see one aspect of international affairs as a dichotomy between the West and Islam. Academics insert sanity and historical knowledge often absent from the work of journalists.
My advice to academics who want to publish: Be smart. Academics can make editors hungry for work with a few simple approaches.
The breakdown in the academic-mainstream media relationship is not just due to academics. Journalists bear responsibility, too, and there are steps they should take to prevent bridges from being burned.
There is no question that the mainstream media inAmericaare in the middle of a great transition. Journalists – print, online, TV and radio – have to do more with less every day, and the public’s need for news and information has never been greater.
Essential in this process is the academic, and, yes, the journalist, too.
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Guest posts on our blog are written by individuals with whom we collaborate externally. We publish them to stimulate discussion and debate by exploring ideas. The opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the official position or views of the British Council.
In a recent editorial, The Washington Times poses a provocative question: “If Islamism is OK for Egypt, why not America?”
The article attempts to shine some light on the thought process of Egypt’s “Islamists” and to explain why their motives should be neither tolerated, nor seen as a legitimate political entity. The Washington Times editorial board writes, “Islamist parties in Egypt and elsewhere are promoting democracy simply as a means of consolidating their power. They see the process as a ratchet effect, with every gain they make as one more step toward erecting a Shariah-based theocracy.”
According to the article, there is no such thing as “political Islam,” and anything described as such is simply a masquerade aimed to distract us from the true goal of setting up a caliphate in Egypt. The authors also argue that recent democratic trends advanced by the Arab Spring are irrelevant, because, from Ayman al-Zawhri’s point of view (the head of al-Qaeda), it makes no difference whether a caliphate is born of the “ballot, bomb or bullet.” They go on to suggest that to Islamists the most important thing is the “victory of Islamism, which the White House also seems to endorse.”
But this article does not tell the whole story. Throughout the editorial, the authors fail to define who they are referring to when using the term “Islamist”—an all too common mistake, and one that can lead to the formation of widespread misperceptions.
We’ve chosen three winners from our 100 Questions About Islam blogging contest, which we’ve been publishing throughout this week. Our last winning entry is from Olivia Grace Newman, a student in psychology at the University of Houston-Victoria.
Muslim to non-Muslim communication taking place across today’s society occurs in a technologically advanced arena, in which many sources exist unchecked for validity. Alas, bridging the communication gap that exists between Muslim and non-Muslims is further intensified by an uncensored news media that extends beyond the page, onto television and computer screens worldwide. As a result, in order to begin improving relations, people must first take into account the notion that not everything published portrays Islam in a true light. Rather, as suggested by Goran Larsson, information is often skewed by personal opinions held, in most cases by minority sectors, about the religion and its followers. With this in mind, mending relations between Muslims and non-Muslims appears to depend on people from both sides not only educating themselves on the issues at hand, but also making a point to be aware of the fact that not all the information available to the public is reliable.
Islam has influenced society in countless ways which transcend the purely philosophical and theological contexts, and often persist unaccredited to the Muslim culture. For instance, according to Richard Bulliet, various items considered mainstays of daily living from bars of soap, coffee, and orange juice, as well as the glaze of a coffee cup and the clear glass of a drinking cup all originated in the Muslim world. Furthermore, the printing and paper constituting the newspapers read by millions each day come from the Muslim world. Aside from the aforementioned contributions, Islamic civilization has introduced innovative concepts that have since been utilized by European powers, and brought to the forefront of Western culture. Case in point, Professor Mehran Kamrava recounts the significant concept of zero, used globally today, which originated with Islamic scientists. Also, modern civilization has the ability to thrive in the otherwise intolerable arid, desert climate thanks to the Islamic architectural design which allows for circulation, brought on by the functional structure of edifices designed to bring air down from great heights utilizing natural resources to improve daily living.
As mentioned previously, today’s ever-evolving media has the potential to sway public opinion with biased information, thus many issues are misunderstood about Islam. The aforementioned is illustrated by Jonathan Brown as he points out the differing images associated with Sharia, or the idea of god’s law. Throughout Muslim-majority areas, such as Egypt, the mention of Sharia law conjures positive images derivative of justice and respected values; whereas presenting the same phrase to people outside of the Islamic culture manifests negative images. Brown goes on to make the analogy that Sharia law and its implications are to the Muslim world as the founding fathers and the constitution are to U.S. citizens. On a similar note, the Arab Spring demonstrations are often misinterpreted by non-Muslims, and have affected the public portrayal of the Islamic people. However, as illustrated by Eid Mohamed, the Arab Spring protests represent acts of self-resistance, not to be confused with terrorism. For, in many cases, protestors march with signs written in English declaring their affection for democracy. By and large, the events of the Arab Spring, as with most intercultural situations, are best understood by considering an alternative perspective.
We’ve chosen three winners from our 100 Questions About Islam blogging contest, which we will publish throughout this week. Today we feature a post from Chelcie Oliver, a student in psychology at the University Houston-Victoria.
When I began to research the topic of Islamic culture, I was very hesitant, even intimidated. Muslims have become vilified in our society, due in large part to the continuing conflict in the Middle East and the United States’ “War on Terror.” In every conflict, there is an antagonist and a protagonist; it is no different today in this real-life horror story. The difference is the perspective. For this writing, I hope to maintain a state of neutrality and allay some of the fears instilled by the media by simply offering objective insight to another walk of life that may be foreign to the reader.
In an attempt at a fresh interpretation, I admit that I avoided watching the proffered videos initially. I researched instead as a blank slate, with the intention that I might be able to better see why it’s often so difficult to relate to the Islamic culture.
Obviously, Islam is far from a new concept. According to Islamic history, Muhammad was born to a family of traders in Mecca in 570 CE, he was approximately 40 when the angel Gabriel brought him the message of God. Gabriel told Muhammad that there was only one God, called Allah; warned him of the wickedness of worshiping idols and the coming of Judgment Day; and gave him the words of the Koran. There are similarities between this story and that of Moses on the Mount.
It’s not surprising that there are parallels, considering that Muhammad knew Christianity, and even taught of Christ. The two shared many of the same virtues; the key differences appear to be centered in use of violence, which explains a lot where modern stereotyping is concerned.
Just as Jesus, Muhammad spent his life teaching monotheism and the word of Allah; where Christ’s teachings were love and passive resistance, Muhammad and his followers fought. After the exodus to Medina in 622 CE, which is also the apparent starting date of the Muslim calendar, he returned to Mecca less than a decade later and conquered it. European people did much the same in the Crusades, except that, in that instance, it was the Knights Templar who fought for the Church. If one overlooks the differences in eras, and situational details which brought the rise of the individual armies, the wars are very similar. Holy wars are to exert the authority of God over the masses by force, subjugating them to individual religions.
Why, then, do we continue to view Islam as a foreign and radical culture?Although there is much fear of the Middle East and it seems the area is constantly in turmoil or at war, it’s unrealistic to say that the face of the enemy is Islam. Granted, a large portion of Northern Africa is Muslim, parts of Europe, Indo-China, andAsiaare, as well. In the course of my research, I discovered that one becomes Muslim with only the declaration of the Shahada; a testimonial statement that there is “no true god but God (Allah)”. Taking into consideration the nomadic nature of the culture, this is a brilliantly efficient way to gain followers; it’s no wonder that Islam is often called the fastest growing religion in the world.
Regardless of whether you believe in one god or many, or if you don’t believe in religion at all, the stereotyping of entire cultures is absurd. Rather than donning blinders of hatred and stereotypes, there are never reasons to fear something that you know nothing about. It’s not a difficult thing in this modern age to fire up the virtual world at your fingertips and vanquish the darkness of ignorance.
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Guest posts on our blog are written by individuals with whom we collaborate externally. We publish them to stimulate discussion and debate by exploring ideas. The opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the official position or views of the British Council.
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