“Qayṣar-i Hindūstān Vīktūriyā”: Negotiating Loyalty in Late Nineteenth-Century Parsi Laudatory Verse

Abstract

To mark Queen Victoria's jubilee celebrations, many Indian authors composed laudatory literature and music in their vernacular languages. Although these works were often dismissed as “enthusiastic effusions” from poets of dubious ability, they offer intricate examples of the varied meanings the queen's presence had for Indian writers. They illustrate the subtle manipulation of laudatory verse for purposes other than praise; and they frequently offer instances of sophisticated, multilingual intertextuality and reuses of literary traditions of praise (and subversion) in India's precolonial past. This article examines examples of Persianate laudatory writing produced by three Parsi writers in colonial India and demonstrates how these works performed “loyalty” in contested, ambivalent ways.