2022 marks Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee – an astonishing 70 years on the throne. No other monarch of the United Kingdom has passed this milestone, either in the past, or likely to in the foreseeable future, and is the second longest-serving monarch in the world. It’s history in the making.
But as a British Asian, and with ancestry that has been directly affected by Empire – indeed is the reason I am even British – the moment gives me pause to reflect on what the wider institution around the Queen has committed and represented in the name of King, Queen and country over the many years it has survived.
But don’t be mistaken – this isn’t an anti-British, anti-monarchy or anti-imperial blog. Those issues are for a separate conversation, and I have views about those. Yet, even given the bloody weight of its destructive history, I cannot be but equally awed by the exceptionally unique nature of the monarchy: it is perhaps the only family on Earth that has the privilege of being able to trace their ancestry back a thousand years; and I am sometimes nonplussed at the sheer influence and impact it has had over the centuries in shaping our modern world – this is not an understatement.
Without absolving responsibility of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of monarchy, and without declaring any type of pacification or capitulation, the past is the past and the present is the present. The present no doubt is influenced by the past, and this is why it can’t be forgotten; but it also means we should never forego our need to continually contextualise and understand. This is true for much of the history relating to anti-racist work, which seeks to hold people to account of their own accord and by their own admission – realisation resulting from context and understanding. If this can’t be achieved, then anti-racism hasn’t been achieved.
As I reflect my context as a British Asian, the gravity of it, in this moment, at the end of celebrations marking the Queen’s jubilee, does not escape me.