A diplomatic disaster: Looking back at the Queen’s 1997 visit to India

Queen Elizabeth II (Photo by Toby Melville - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

For most Indians, Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom and the world’s longest-serving monarch, who died on Thursday, existed only in name.

Despite the loss of the “jewel in her crown”, the Queen was fond of India, a country she visited thrice.

She was received in 1961 and 1983 with a rousing welcome by the Indian government and its people. But unfortunately, it is her third visit in 1997, a diplomatic disaster, that is remembered the most in India.

An invitation to the Queen to visit the country on the 50th anniversary of its Independence was agreed between the PV Narasimha Rao government in Delhi and the Conservative Party government of John Major in London.

Major visited India in January 1997, a few months ahead of the Queen's visit, to participate in an Indo-British trade summit in Kolkata and drum up support for British companies doing business in India.

Accompanied by a large contingent of British businessmen, he also visited Bangalore to review a number of joint-venture projects in the city.

Fallout of the Pakistan visit

The Queen’s visit, it was thought, would further strengthen bilateral relations, particularly business ties that the Tory establishment was keen to build.

However, governments in both countries changed by the time the British monarch embarked on her visit to the subcontinent. The Conservative Party in the UK was replaced by Tony Blair’s Labour Party and IK Gujral became the Indian Prime Minister, supported by a number of regional parties.

The Queen’s visit was doomed even before her arrival in India from Pakistan. In her banquet speech in Islamabad, the British monarch read out a prepared statement, asking India and Pakistan to resolve the longstanding Kashmir dispute.

Her speech delighted the Pakistani leadership, who wanted the Kashmir issue to find a mention in visiting leaders’ speeches to help internationalize the “dispute.”

The situation worsened when British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who was accompanying the Queen, told Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that he was ready to mediate between the two countries to find a solution to the Kashmir issue.

India’s opposition to third-party involvement

India has always remained highly sensitive to any attempt by a “third party” to mediate on the Kashmir issue, which it sees as a bilateral one that is needed to be solved by India and Pakistan without involving others.

Third-party involvement is also seen as an attempt to dilute the Shimla Agreement signed by the two countries in 1972 in which India and Pakistan agreed that outstanding issues, including Kashmir, will be resolved bilaterally and through peaceful negotiations.

Cook was among the Labour Party faction that believed in active mediation to set the world right, particularly in the former British colony.

Its position on the Kashmir dispute was clear: “Britain must accept its responsibility as the former imperial power” in the Kashmir dispute.

“Britain is under an obligation to seek a solution based on our commitment to peace, democracy, human rights and mutual tolerance.”

Many in the Indian establishment hold Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee responsible for manipulating the UN resolution in favour of a plebiscite to decide the fate of Kashmir.

Cook’s comments were seen in New Delhi as part of the British arrogance towards its former subjects and questioning their competence to resolve a dispute without help of the former colonial master.

Prime Minister Gujral, who was then in the Egyptian capital Cairo on an official visit, reacted to Cook’s remarks by describing Britain as a “third-rate power.”

Indian officials also found the British Foreign Secretary’s offer audacious because Britain itself was unable to find a solution to the Northern Island dispute that killed hundreds of people and had been continuing for decades,

Jallianwalla Bagh

Both sides tried a damage-control exercise to improve the diplomatic atmosphere with the British government denying the remarks made on Kashmir and the Indians discarding Gujral’s disparaging remarks about Britain as misreporting by the media.

But the visit of the Queen got even worse when she visited Amritsar to pay obeisance at Jallianwala Bagh to hundreds of victims who died in firing by British forces.

At the state banquet in Delhi, the Queen acknowledged “some difficult episodes in our past”, identifying Jallianwala Bagh as a “distressing example.”

At the massacre site, the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, bowed her head and placed a wreath. But she did not apologise as some sections in India had demanded.

But the solemn occasion turned into another controversy with a remark by the Duke of Edinburgh. Though Indian estimates say thousands had died, the British estimates put the death toll at 379.

On his way out, Prince Philip asked an official the total number of dead. When he was given the number, he remarked that the death toll of 2,000 was “exaggerated” and felt the numbers must include those wounded in the firing as well.

Benchmark to measure diplomatic debacles

On the last leg of her visit, when the Queen wanted to deliver a speech at a banquet, she was reminded that Indian protocol only allows one speech for a visiting dignitary, which she had delivered in Delhi.

Although the visit has become a benchmark to gauge a diplomatic disaster in Delhi's diplomatic circles, a more sympathetic image of Queen Elizabeth II, who ruled for seven decades, has been kept alive in widely popular Netflix serials like the Crown and other similar shows for millennial viewers.

But in an age of growing iconoclasm, the reign of the longest-serving British sovereign will most certainly be put to closer scrutiny soon.