When Queen Elizabeth II acceded to the throne in 1952, the British Empire had recently lost the proverbial ‘Jewel in the Crown,’ India, and the subcontinent was still reeling from the bloodshed of the partition that had led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
Despite the bitter history of colonialism in South Asia, Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University, told VOA, it’s ‘remarkable’ that the queen