- Monday, March 10, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving British monarch who passed away on Thursday (8) at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, had made three state visits to India, starting in January 1961.
There was a lot of excitement in the South Asian nation around her visit. It is said that during her first visit which happened 14 years after India achieved Independence from British rule in 1947, nearly a million people had gathered at the route the monarch had taken from the airport in Delhi to the official residence of the Indian president.
Jawaharlal Nehru was the prime minister of India then while Rajendra Prasad was the president.
According to a report that came out in The New York Times about the late queen’s visit to India, “Indians forgot their troubles this week. Not completely, of course, but economic hardship, political squabbling and worry about Communist China, the Congo and Laos seemed to fade in the background. Queen Elizabeth II was here, and the capital, at least, appeared determined to make the most of it.”
It also said that people went to the capital in trains, buses and even oxcarts and tried their best to get a glimpse of the royal couple — Elizabeth II, who was 34 then, and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, five years older than her.
“They seemed to look upon the Queen and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, as impresarios who made it possible to forget and have fun,” the report added.
The daily also said that “Elizabeth came not as a patronising ruler on a tour of an empire, but an equal”. She was the first British monarch to ascend the throne after India became independent.
It was a six-week tour for the royal couple in the subcontinent and they made a rich discovery of India. The queen went to the cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata (then known as Bombay, Madras and Calcutta) besides the capital Delhi and also visited the Taj Mahal in Agra; the Pink Palace in Jaipur and the ancient city of Varanasi. She attended various receptions; spent a couple of days at a hunting lodge of a king and also took an elephant ride. The royal couple were the guests of honour at India’s Republic Day ceremony on January 26, 1961.
During that trip, Queen Elizabeth II went to a steel plant in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal which was made with Britain’s help and interacted with its workers. In Kolkata, she visited Victoria Memorial, a monument built in the memory of Queen Victoria, who was the longest-serving British monarch before Queen Elizabeth II. While she was riding an open car from the airport to the city of Kolkata, a reporter of India’s state broadcaster All India Radio had quoted a Yorkshire Post editorial saying that she might not be the empress of India but the enthusiasm of the Indian people proved that she still ruled a million of Indian hearts, BBC said in a report.
The late queen’s second visit to India happened in November 1983 which was timed with a summit of Commonwealth leaders held in New Delhi. Then, the royal couple had stayed in the visitors’ suite at a presidential palace which was restored to the viceregal decor and the food included “old, Western style dishes” since the queen reportedly liked “simple meals”, BBC added.
Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India at the time.
Queen Elizabeth II’s third and final visit to India took place in October 1997 when the royal family in Britain was going through a challenging time. While the queen’s visit coincided with the 50th anniversary of India’s Independence, it also came in the wake of the death of Princess Diana in August the same year.
Inder Kumar Gujral was the prime minister of India then.
The final trip of the late queen also had a controversial episode. She was to visit Jallianwala Bagh, a memorial park in the northern state of Punjab which marks one of the lowest points of British rule in the subcontinent as it was where the colonial rulers had carried out a bloody massacre as hundreds of unarmed Indians were gunned down by British troops (April 1919) while attending a public meeting.
On the eve of her visit to the site, the queen, 71, said at a banquet reception in Delhi, “It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in the past – Jalianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness.”
The speech had not satisfied those who wanted an explicit apology from Britain over the massacre but appeared to placate the kin of those who were killed as they called off a demonstration plan at the airport in Amritsar, the Indian city where the site is located. Also at the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh community, the queen was allowed to enter wearing socks after she took off her shoes.
