Character analysis
The Munshi
in The Empress by Tanika Gupta
The Munshi — a title that translates to "teacher" or "clerk" — is the name taken by Abdul Karim as he serves as Queen Victoria's Indian secretary and language tutor. This role places him as a servant, confidant, and cultural representative within the royal court. His journey showcases a remarkable transformation from a mere gift of the colonial administration to one of the most trusted figures of Victoria in her later years. Initially introduced as an exotic curiosity among other "gifts" from the Empire, the Munshi quickly stands out for his intelligence and quiet dignity, winning Victoria's sincere affection and trust, which challenges the rigid hierarchies of the British court.
He possesses a calm self-assurance — he neither acts subserviently nor seeks rebellion, but holds his elevated position with a balanced confidence that conveys both strength and vulnerability. He teaches Victoria Hindustani, and these lessons become moments filled with mutual curiosity and true connection, turning the expected power dynamic between monarch and subject on its head. His presence reveals the hypocrisy of the Empire: while he is celebrated as evidence of Victoria's kindness toward India, he is also resented and monitored by courtiers who refuse to accept a brown man's closeness to the Queen.
His journey reaches a critical point with the fragility of his status — entirely reliant on Victoria's protection, he represents the experience of the colonized subject whose dignity hinges on the goodwill of imperial authority. He is both elevated and confined, honored and at risk, making him one of the most poignant figures in the narrative.
Who is The Munshi?
Abdul Karim — who adopts the title the Munshi, meaning teacher or clerk — enters Tanika Gupta's The Empress as one of several Indians presented to Queen Victoria as living demonstrations of imperial bounty. He is a colonial gift: a man delivered alongside objects and curiosities to ornament the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations. From the moment he is distinguished from this context, Gupta insists on his interior life. The Munshi carries himself with a composed, watchful dignity that refuses the posture of gratitude the court expects. He does not perform servility, nor does he reach for open defiance; instead he occupies the space between those positions with a quiet, deliberate self-possession that unsettles everyone around him. Educated, multilingual, and perceptive, he reads the court's hostility with accuracy and endures it with remarkable equilibrium. Gupta constructs him not as a symbol but as a fully inhabited person — one whose intelligence is never in question, even as his humanity is perpetually contested by those with the power to define it.
What is The Munshi's arc and motivation?
The Munshi's trajectory moves from anonymous colonial exhibit to the most intimately trusted figure in Victoria's later court — and Gupta uses that rise to expose how precarious elevation within an imperial structure can be. His motivations are layered: at the surface, survival and advancement within the only system available to him; beneath that, a genuine desire for human connection and recognition on equal terms. His Hindustani lessons with Victoria become the engine of his arc. What begins as a function — teaching the Queen a few phrases to burnish her image as Empress of India — deepens into something neither party expected: real intellectual exchange, real affection, a relationship that inverts the expected colonial hierarchy precisely because Victoria chooses to learn rather than simply to possess. As his influence grows, so does the court's organised resentment, and the Munshi's arc tightens into a study of how far dignity can be sustained when it depends entirely on the protection of one woman's favour rather than any structural right.
What are The Munshi's key moments?
The Hindustani lessons are the play's emotional centrepiece: Victoria stumbling over pronunciation while the Munshi corrects her with patient authority reverses, scene by scene, the usual teacher-student dynamic of empire. Here he holds knowledge the most powerful woman in the world lacks, and Gupta frames this explicitly as a kind of reclamation. Equally significant is the court's mounting campaign of surveillance and suspicion — courtiers scrutinising his correspondence, questioning his background, treating his proximity to Victoria as inherently transgressive. These scenes do not merely dramatise racism; they reveal how institutional power manufactures threat where none exists. The moments in which Victoria defends him against Lord Salisbury and the assembled hostility of her household are charged because the audience understands, even as Victoria does not fully articulate it, that her protection is total but also temporary — mortal, contingent, terminable.
What are The Munshi's most important relationships?
Victoria is both the Munshi's shield and his structural limitation. Their bond is genuine, and Gupta does not sentimentalise it into simple imperial benevolence: Victoria sees him, listens to him, fights for him. But the relationship also crystallises his central predicament — that his dignity exists only within the radius of her authority, not independent of it. Lord Salisbury functions as the institutional face of the hostility the Munshi navigates daily: aristocratic, certain of hierarchy, unwilling to distinguish between a threat to the Queen and a threat to his own sense of imperial order. The contrast with John Brown is structurally illuminating; Brown was another intimate outsider whose closeness to Victoria scandalised the court, yet the Munshi discovers that the court's tolerance has a racial threshold Brown never reached. The parallel with Sarah Forbes Bonetta is thematic rather than dramatic: both were absorbed into Victoria's personal circle as evidence of imperial kindness, both were simultaneously instrumentalised and genuinely loved, and together they trace the empire's habit of elevating individuals while leaving the structures that diminish them entirely intact. Against the Rani of Jhansi — present in the play as a counterpoint of armed resistance — the Munshi represents a different, equally complicated mode of survival: accommodation, navigation, proximity to power rather than confrontation with it.
How is The Munshi connected to the other characters?
- Queen Victoria
The central and defining relationship of the Munshi's arc. Victoria elevates him from servant to confidant, defending him fiercely against courtiers who resent his influence. Their Hindustani lessons become scenes of genuine warmth and intellectual exchange, yet the relationship also underscores his vulnerability — his dignity and safety rest entirely on her favor, exposing the fragility of his position within the imperial court.
- Lord Salisbury
Lord Salisbury represents the institutional hostility the Munshi faces. As a figure of British political power and aristocratic suspicion, Salisbury embodies the court's resistance to the Munshi's closeness with Victoria, viewing him as a threat to propriety and imperial order rather than as a person of merit.
- Sarah Forbes Bonetta
A thematic parallel: like the Munshi, Sarah Forbes Bonetta was a person of color brought into Victoria's intimate circle as both a genuine object of affection and a symbol of imperial benevolence. Together they illuminate how the Empire simultaneously elevated and instrumentalized its colonial subjects.
- John Brown
John Brown is a structural predecessor to the Munshi — another intimate outsider whose closeness to Victoria scandalized the court. The parallel invites comparison between how race and class each shaped the court's tolerance of Victoria's unconventional attachments, with the Munshi facing the sharper edge of that hostility.
- Rani of Jhansi
A counterpoint figure representing Indian resistance to Empire, where the Munshi represents accommodation and navigation within it. Together they frame the spectrum of responses available to colonized subjects — rebellion versus survival through proximity to power.
Questions readers ask about The Munshi
What does the title 'the Munshi' actually mean?
"The Munshi" is a title meaning teacher or clerk, which Abdul Karim adopts in his role as Queen Victoria's Indian secretary and language tutor. Rather than a personal name, it serves as a functional designation — yet Gupta uses it to signal his intellectual authority, since the man the court dismisses as a colonial gift is, by his very title, the one who holds knowledge others must seek to receive.
How does the Munshi's relationship with Queen Victoria develop over the course of the play?
What begins as a formal arrangement — the Munshi teaching Victoria Hindustani to polish her image as Empress of India — deepens into genuine intellectual exchange and sincere mutual affection. Victoria defends him fiercely against courtiers and Lord Salisbury, fighting for his place at court. Gupta is careful not to sentimentalise this bond: the relationship also defines the Munshi's central vulnerability, as his dignity rests entirely on Victoria's protection rather than any structural right of his own.
Why does the British court resent the Munshi so much?
The court's resentment stems from his proximity to Victoria, which courtiers treat as inherently transgressive for a brown man rather than a sign of his merit. Figures like Lord Salisbury monitor his correspondence and manufacture suspicion around him, revealing, as Gupta frames it, how institutional power invents threat where none exists. The contrast with John Brown — a previous intimate outsider the court ultimately tolerated — makes clear that the hostility the Munshi faces has a specifically racial dimension.
How is the Munshi similar to Sarah Forbes Bonetta in the play?
Both the Munshi and Sarah Forbes Bonetta are people of colour absorbed into Victoria's intimate circle as living evidence of imperial kindness, and both are simultaneously genuinely loved and instrumentalised by that same imperial structure. Gupta uses them together to argue that benevolence and exploitation within empire are not opposites — they are expressions of the same system, which elevates individuals while leaving the structures that diminish them entirely intact.
How does the Munshi's position compare to that of the Rani of Jhansi?
The Rani of Jhansi represents armed resistance to empire, while the Munshi represents accommodation and survival through proximity to power. Gupta places them as counterpoints on a spectrum of responses available to colonised subjects — neither is presented as simply right or wrong, but each carries its own costs, and together they ask the audience to weigh the possibilities and limits of defiance versus navigation within an imperial structure.
What makes the Hindustani lessons so significant in the play?
The lessons are the play's emotional centrepiece because they invert the usual teacher-student dynamic of empire: the colonised subject holds knowledge that the most powerful woman in the world must come to him to learn. Victoria stumbles over pronunciation while the Munshi corrects her with patient authority, and Gupta frames this reversal explicitly as a form of reclamation — a moment in which the colonised man's expertise cannot be dismissed or overridden by imperial rank.
Is the Munshi ultimately a free or a trapped figure by the end of the play?
He is both — and the tension between those states is the core of his tragedy. Elevated far above the anonymous colonial exhibit he started as, he is nonetheless entirely dependent on Victoria's mortal, contingent favour for his safety and dignity. Gupta makes clear that his position is honoured and precarious at once: there is no structural guarantee beneath him, so his freedom exists only within the radius of one woman's authority and expires the moment that protection does.
Use this in your essay
Dignity under conditional protection
Argue that the Munshi's arc exposes the impossibility of genuine selfhood within an imperial structure, where dignity is granted rather than inherent and can be rescinded at any moment. How does Gupta use Victoria's favour to simultaneously humanise and confine him?
Inverting the pedagogy of empire
The Hindustani lessons position the colonised subject as the teacher. Explore how Gupta uses this reversal to interrogate the knowledge hierarchies on which empire depended.
Race versus class in the court's tolerance
Compare the court's treatment of the Munshi with its retrospective tolerance of John Brown. What does the difference reveal about the specific anxieties provoked by a brown man's intimacy with the monarch?
Instrumentalisation and genuine affection
Using the Munshi and Sarah Forbes Bonetta together, analyse how *The Empress* argues that imperial benevolence and imperial exploitation are not opposites but expressions of the same structure.
Accommodation versus resistance
Place the Munshi in dialogue with the Rani of Jhansi to construct a thesis about the spectrum of responses available to colonised subjects and the costs attached to each.