Public Comment

Queen Elizabeth was the enigmatic queen and embodied the myth of the good monarch. She never voiced her opinions in public, never expressed joy or sorrow. She always rose to the occasion swept up in the royal pageantry energized by the roaring crowds. She assumed her role of head of her government. All public events were meticulously choreographed by a battalion of advisers who groomed her for new role after she became head of state following the sudden death of her father, King George VI. She had been born into incredible wealth and privilege and had been schooled with private tutors. 

She held weekly meetings with her prime minister who advised her on government policies. According to the “Paradise Papers” leaked to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeit , the Queen avoided high UK taxes by depositing much of her wealth in offshore tax havens. 

Under her watch she dutifully acquiesced to all major government actions including repressive colonial policies which denied basic human rights to her subjects. While the Queen was enjoying all the creature comforts and adoration, her government was on a rampage using brutal force to cling onto the last vestiges of wealth and power. 

Some argue that she was a prisoner of circumstance and was following the traditional duties and values that had been established for members of the Royal Family for centuries. Her supporters argue that the queen should be celebrated for her unwavering and steadfast "service" to her country. But what does that mean? Wearing colorful hats and dresses, smiling to crowds and accepting bouquets of flowers does not remove the stench of rampant colonialism. Not all her former subjects expressed sorrow at her passing. 

Examples: 

Shortly before the Queen’s death, Uju Anya, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, called the monarch “the chief monarch of a thieving, raping, genocidal empire” on Twitter and wished her an “excruciating” death. “Give us our diamonds back and I’ll pretend to be sad!” wrote Scaachi Koul, a culture writer for Buzzfeed. Social media users of Indian origin were also sentimental about the Kohinoor diamond, set in a crown that Queen Elizabeth II would often wear. Queen Consort Camilla, the wife of King Charles III, Elizabeth’s son, is now expected to wear the diamond. Outrageous! thundered among many of the Queen’s detractors. 

The Bengal famine of 1943. An estimated 2.1 to 3.8 million Bengalis perished, from starvation, malaria and other diseases. 

“Did she not understand the trauma we experienced because of colonialism?” says Nandita Godbole, author of the forthcoming cookbook, Masaleydaar. 

During her seven decades of reign, Elizabeth visited India thrice and Pakistan and Bangladesh twice. In her last visit to India in 1997, she acknowledged the “difficult episodes” in the past and cited the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre as an example. She also visited Jallianwala Bagh and placed a wreath at the memorial. 

However, her move at Jallianwala Bagh was criticized by several scholars, including Indian politician Shashi Tharoor. “We do know that much of colonialism’s horrors over the centuries were perpetrated in the name of the Royal Family. But when she and her consort visited Jallianwala Bagh, she could only bring herself to leave her name in the visitors’ book, without even an expression of regret, let alone of contrition or apology, for that vile British act of deliberate mass murder,” Tharoor said in a debate at Oxford University. 

The Queen’s visit to Pakistan in 1997 fueled more outrage. In her official speech in Pakistan, she told India and Pakistan to “stop squabbling” and end their historic disagreements” which was especially jarring given Britain’s deliberate role in fomenting religious tensions. 

Elizabeth inherited decades of abuse and a history of colonialism, and instead of discarding that legacy, she embraced it, through the Commonwealth of Nations, which replaced British colonialism with “soft power.” This allowed Britain to maintain a chokehold on poorer nations and British expats in New Zealand, Canada and Australia. 

In 2018, British politician Jeremy Corbyn had suggested rotating the leadership of the Commonwealth among all the countries, but the Queen’s “sincere wish” was to have her son, King Charles III succeed her. Really? Don’t the British have any shame? 

As head of the Commonwealth, Britain continues to have delusions of grandeur even while its economy is in free-fall following BREXIT. 

Did the Queen’s government offer reparations to India whose estimated wealth of $45 trillion was stolen. 

Did the Queen voice her opposition to: 

Malayan Emergency (1948-1960); Repression of the Mau Mau rebellion (1952-1 960); 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democracy and theft of its oil worth $trillions. 

Covert war in Yemen (1962-1969); Propaganda offensive in Indonesia (1965-1966); January 30, 1972, the bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland. 

In 1922 Balfour Declaration gifted Palestinian land to Zionists which has caused major ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their ancestral land.  

On 21 June 1948, HM Windrush arrived in Britain with, among other migrants from the Caribbean, 492 Jamaicans on-board who had been invited to the country to work; they officially disembarked from the ship on 22 June 1948 only to be returned home in 2020. Sending desperate asylum seekers to Rwanda to face an uncertain future is only the latest deplorable racist actions by HM government. From the 1950s to 1970s during the height of decolonization, British authorities launched Operation Legacy, a campaign to destroy all government records in the colonial administrations prior to their countries’ transition to independence. Administrators urged these records be burned or thrown into the sea in order to erase any evidence that could potentially “embarrass Her Majesty’s government.” 

Queen Elizabeth did nothing to alleviate the suffering of “her people”. She wielded “soft” power to deflect unwanted attention from high crimes of the empire being committed in her name. 

Perhaps a local UK citizen has the right idea: 

“Despite the best attempts of the U.K. media to disenfranchise and suppress our voices, there are many here in the U.K. who believe that the monarchy represents the very worst excesses of social inequality and injustice. 

We would like to see this archaic and ridiculous charade abolished. The United States and many other countries have rejected monarchy. Please leave us to resolve the issue ourselves, without the distraction of outside voices”.