On holiday, sitting in my cousin’s flat in Delhi, my son said, in the manner typical of a 21-year-old, “Oh, shit! The Queen’s died!” As I contemplated the news, not knowing quite how I felt, and then as I began to read reports of crass comments by people who mistake unmitigated criticism and insults for greater insight, I remembered the taxi-driver who took me to Heathrow about a week, or a lifetime, ago.

He was from Sri Lanka. My parents had become naturalised British citizens when they had the chance, and reluctantly surrendered their Indian passports required by India’s 1967 Passport Act. Although sad at the time, they had never regretted it. I was curious as to my taxi driver’s experience of being an immigrant in Britain since the mid 1990s. “How had he found life in Britain?” I asked. He put his hands together and said, “I thank God for the Queen! For leading such a country.”

Surprised at the depth of sentiment, I probed more. His straightforward expression belied a fascinating tale of everyday virtue. When my taxi driver arrived on Britain’s shores, he was the eldest son of a large family of two younger sisters, a younger brother, a mother who had died when he was young, and a father who had drunk and gambled away the dowry. My taxi driver found himself the effective head of his household, and his journey to Britain was part of fulfilling his family duty. A tenuous familiarity with British culture through past colonial ties, plus a rudimentary understanding of English, made Britain his country of choice.

His patriotism had little to do with with pomp and ceremony

He arrived in Britain, duly reported to the relevant authorities who told him it could take up to six months to process his work permit. Meanwhile he had to stay in a cheap hotel in east London and could not work. However, six weeks later, he received a letter telling him where to go to obtain his National Insurance Number, from which point he would be permitted to work. This allowed him to work as a cabbie and repatriate some of his earnings. He could do what his father could not — ensure his sisters were duly married and settled, and his brother educated. Years later he obtained indefinite leave to remain and finally acquired citizenship. Britain, he concluded, had allowed him to live a good life not just for himself, but for his family. Britain had provided him with a chance to restore the family honour squandered by his father.

His patriotism and praise for the Queen was grounded in this sense of honour, duty and an ability to work for something beyond individual self-interest. It had little to do with a fascination with pomp and ceremony, and even less to do with nostalgia for the Empire. When epistocrats make such accusations, all they do is show their contempt for the lives and experiences of ordinary people. 

Queen Elizabeth was not an ordinary person, or rather, she agreed to sacrifice a life in more ordinary mode when she accepted public office and pledged to serve her country 70 years ago. Her conditions of life could not be more different from my taxi-driver’s. Yet the standards she stood for and the values she embodied are held in common. They weave threads of voluntary affiliation that allow all manner of individuals to place themselves in a larger picture. The picture is not one of common immiserating discrimination, but of common aspiration for a good life — “a life well-lived”, as Charles said of his mother. Although the substance of “well-lived” differs for each individual, a shared acceptance and commitment to these national-level values is what allows peaceful co-existence among a multi-ethnic citizenry who, at local levels, hold a wide range of more personal affiliations and values. 

Queen Elizabeth is officially mourned in India on Sunday 11th. The flag on public buildings will be at half-mast and official entertainments are cancelled. Most of the coverage in the mainstream press has focused on factual information about the Commonwealth or constitutional procedures. But there are also familiar gripes. 

The Times of India reports of tweets calling the Queen “an active participant in colonialism” and, along with the Hindustan Times, raises the question of the Kohinoor diamond. The Times of India refers to Sashi Tharoor’s predictable call for its return “as a symbolic gesture of expiation”. In 2016, a public litigation attempt was made to force the British government to return the famed jewel. Then the Solicitor-General of India told the Supreme Court that the diamond had been given to the British as part of a treaty following the Anglo-Sikh war in 1849, it was not a stolen object and as such, there were no grounds for calling for its return. 

Modi’s government is playing fast and loose with history

That was six years ago. Would the verdict be the same today? There is evidence that Modi’s government is playing fast and loose with history in a similar way to those who disparage him in the West. Queen Elizabeth’s death is widely recognised as the end of an era. In India, a less dramatic event marked the end of an era almost coterminous with the Queen’s reign. On Thursday, 8 September a major avenue and site of annual Republic Day parades, Rajpath, was renamed Karvatya Path. MP Meenakshi Lekhi, officiating at the New Delhi Municipal Council meeting where the name change (with strong encouragement from Modi) was authorised, called Rajpath “a colonial legacy”. Who would have thought a BJP MP would have something in common with the likes of Sadiq Khan?

Rajpath had originally been named Kingsway, and renamed Rajpath after Independence. It is intersected by another major Delhi road called Janpath — path of the people. Rajpath could have referred to the Raj, but according to historian Swapna Liddle, it could also refer to “swaraj”, which means self-government or independence. Together the roads could be seen as a material embodiment of India’s social contract between state and people at the time of Independence — hardly “a legacy of colonialism”. 

Modi may not express the open contempt for popular democracy as some Western counterparts, but like them, he seems willing to manipulate historical truth for narrow partisan interests. There are important differences in the use of historical revisionism in Western developed nations and India, but in both cases, the end of eras — whether in Britain or in India — do not, for the moment, promise greater freedom or solidarity.