Royal Progress

The mood was to revel, forgive and forget. In New Delhi more than a million Indians turned out to welcome respectfully and affectionately Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who came not as an empress inspecting her subjects but an honored visitor to a Commonwealth partner.

Fifty years ago her grandfather had been the last British monarch to visit India. Stolid King-Emperor George V had to be reminded by his viceroy to wave to the populace so as to elicit the cheers befitting the occasion. Last week India's President Rajendra Prasad recalled pointedly that, back in that day, "the circumstances were different." But the unfond memory was not permitted to mar his granddaughter's visit. Although observers rated the welcome accorded President Dwight D. Eisenhower as more spontaneously enthusiastic, the pomp and the grand occasions befitting an empress were not denied Elizabeth though she was an empress no longer.

Dead Shot. Jaipur's maharajah offered her a ride on a ceremonial elephant. As Elizabeth eyed her prospective conveyance, the voice of Prince Philip was heard. "Fasten your seat belt," he cried. The Queen grinned and clambered up to her seat. Two days later, Philip took stage center himself when the maharaja put on a tiger hunt. The first day neither the efforts of more than 100 beaters nor the lure of scores of staked-down bullocks and goats produced even a single cub. But on the second day a handsome, 9-ft. 8-in. tiger loped into sight.

Philip, perched on an elevated tower, dispatched it with his first shot. Only in faraway London was there disapproval, where uncompromising animal lovers were outraged by Philip's use of live lures. The professionally plebian Daily Mirror offered a disdainful parody:

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

Tell me, was it just a fluke

You got potted by the Duke?

No such sour note flawed the Republic Day parade in New Delhi. Lancers of the 61st Cavalry pranced by on spirited horses; the 13th Grenadiers Camel Corps galumphed past, and troops of elephants ponderously raised their trunks in salute. More meaningful to many Indians was the sight of a British Queen laying a wreath of 500 white roses at the shrine of Mohandas Gandhi.

Abiding Impact. Still to come were many, many things: a moonlight stroll through the parks of the Taj Mahal, lunch at the lovely Lake Palace in Udaipur, a visit to the burning ghats of Benares. Then, this week, on to Pakistan, supper with the Wali of Swat, a drive up to the fabled Khyber Pass.

To some Indians the visit had merely jogged remembrance of things thankfully past. Said President Prasad: "Our relationship with the United Kingdom is a part of our own history of the past 200 years. The British impact on India has in many ways been an abiding one." But now that they were free, many Indians were ready to acknowledge that the British may have ruled too tenaciously but not without fondness--and, at times, even rather well.

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