However, historian Shrabani Basu manages to put together an account from history that reads very much like a story. The majority of documents relating to the Munshi and his queen, their personal correspondences and letters have been destroyed. Historians and we can only speculate what sort of bond Queen Victoria and her closest confidant actually shared. They utterly failed to grasp this relationship which was beyond class, caste, color, and language. Nobody understood what Queen Victoria saw in her beloved “Munshi”. She trusted him fully and treated him as far more than a servant which spurned jealously and ill feeling among Indian servants and the household at large. Karim taught her Hindustani (Urdu) in the course of 13 years and updated her with the political scenario in India at the time. Abdul Karim gives the aging Queen Victoria the companionship she needed during the last years of her life that many within her own family and household failed to provide. Extremely proud was she to bear the title of Empress of India and rule a country that was 3000 miles away. Queen Victoria never had the chance to travel to India but she was always enamored by its people and culture. The work is enhanced by the inclusion of black and white photographs, paintings, and archival documents such as newspaper articles which really make this book an interesting read. Through this insightful work, Basu gives us an intimate glimpse into the household affairs of the most powerful woman on earth, at the time. Victoria and Abdul is an eye-opener to the personal life of Queen Victoria in the last decade of her role as Empress of India. The book reads like a novel that’s substantiated by reports in the form of facts and excerpts from original documents. It’s a well-researched account of the 13 years Abdul Karim spent in the presence of Queen Victoria as her Munshi or personal instructor. Victoria and Abdul by Shrabani Basu is a part of my Non-fiction November reading list. It was not until I was invited to a screening of the film Victoria and Abdul by Bloomsbury Publishing, India that I was presented with an unbelievable true story. Clearly, I was unaware of the extent of interest the Queen showed in the ruling of the Indian subcontinent. Back then, I didn’t know what to make of it. As a student, I remember seeing pictures of Queen Victoria surrounded by her Indian servants in one of my History textbooks in school.
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