: Rewind: Empire Optics #IndiaNEWS #News By Pramod K Nayar As the world, in different ways, expresses its feelings on the passing away of Queen Elizabeth II, several commentators have also referenced

Rewind: Empire Optics #IndiaNEWS #News
By Pramod K Nayar
As the world, in different ways, expresses its feelings on the passing away of Queen Elizabeth II, several commentators have also referenced the imperial connections of this monarch. On her first visit to India in 1961, Elizabeth had been accorded a warm welcome, starting with Dr S Radhakrishnan, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajendra Prasad at the Delhi airport. She was the second British monarch to visit India, after King George V in 1911. She would return to India later too. During her 1983 visit, Elizabeth bestowed the Order of the British Empire on Mother Teresa. She would also come in 1997, to join India’s 50th Independence anniversary celebrations.
It was an entirely different nation that Elizabeth was visiting: an India that had stopped being part of her imperial escutcheon. But the cavalcade, the romance and the glamour continued. The rides on elephants, the royal receptions recalled a key feature of the Empire: public spectacles. All of these spectacles are documented in huge visual archives that have now been reproduced in the wake of her death. This visual archive of British monarchs and their colonies may be traced back to the 19thcentury. Today, a different visual archive of new vistas, renamed cities and streets and new sculptural icons also emerges, as ironic continuities, in the postcolony.
First Views of Empire
Panoramas of India had been exhibited in England since the early decades of the 19th century. Robert Ker Porter’s ‘The Great Historical Picture of the Storming of Seringapatam’ — 2,550 square feet of canvas — of the battle with Tipu Sultan opened at the Lyceum Theatre in London’s Strand in April 1800 and was a hugely popular exhibit. This introduced the imperial spectacle to the British public where scenes from India, with all their melancholic or triumphant features could be experienced. The English viewer in London was a sovereign gazing over his ‘possessions’. It gave the Britons at home a sense of imperial identity, destiny and responsibility.
Spectacles showcasing their colonies were necessary for the Britons back home to acquire a sense of imperial identity, destiny and responsibility
Later there would be the 1877 Delhi durbar and the 1911 Pageant of London, of which accounts survive in the form of Talboys Wheeler’s The History of the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi and SC Lomap�&p��]�[و[�N��]�[��وHY�X[�وۙۋ�0��Y��KH�[��ܛ��وH[�K�X�[�H[�XKٙH��Y��YH�H��]��^H�ۜ�]]YHXZ�[��وH��X[[�K��H��X[8�&[��[۸�&B�]��]]YY[��X�ܚXH]8�&��[�[�x�&K��XZ��]��[�HX�X�[XY�[�][ۈ[��X�[]K�

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