ABSTRACT
On 1 January 1877 Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. The event was grandiosely orchestrated on the plains north of the old city of Delhi, the former capital of the Mughal emperors and was attended by at least 84,000 people, most prominent among them the Indian princes and chiefs with their retinues, colorfully decked in precious clothes and jewels. In what he imagined to be the language of oriental symbolism, the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, staged the feudal order of India – the traditional rulers, the princes and the landlords, the ‘natural leaders’ commanding the allegiance of the people, joyfully paying obedience to their suzerain. It was British rule, embodied in the supremacy of the empress, so the message went, that created order out of the unbounded diversity of the multiple Indian communities, allocating each of them their proper place. As required by the childlike nature of the peoples they governed, this order was displayed through a riot of symbols appealing to all the senses, through the carefully graded gun salutes for the princes, through the protocol governing distance and proximity to the Viceroy, the gifts of perfume and betel leaves, and the resounding titles awarded (von Hirschhausen 2009).
