It’s a well-known fact that there were many civil servants in British India who were enthusiastic supporters of the Empire. One popular photo, which does the rounds on social media, shows a smiling turbaned and shirtless Indian man next to a happy-looking British constable. The caption written by modern-day Indian patriots isn’t exactly printable in this publication, but goes on the lines of the policeman asking the Indian to show his loyalty and the latter agreeing to insult his people and culture.

Ahead of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, which marked the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as emperor and empress of India, many civil servants in India tried to curry favour with the colonial rulers. Among them was J Chandran Avargal, who served as registrar of assurances in Mangalore.

In early 1911, Chandran approached AYG Campbell, who was the private secretary to the governor of Madras with a translation of the British national anthem “God Save the King.” Calling his work a “humble offering from a lowly but loyal subject,” the bureaucrat in Mangalore requested Campbell to place the translation before the governor.

“The British National Anthem is, it will be universally admitted, eminently well-calculated to engender and foster feelings of sincere loyalty and genuine patriotism in the hearts of His Majesty’s Subjects, throughout His vast Empire,” Chandran wrote in a letter to Campbell. “But as long as it is in English it cannot but fail to effectively appeal to the minds of the great majority of Indians as they do not know that language.”

He added that there should be an authorized version of the “loyalty-inspiring” anthem in “vernacular” languages. “My prayer to His Excellency is that my version may be recognised as one such and that, if it pleases His Excellency, an order may issue in the Educational Department that it has been so recognised and that it would be gratifying to Government if it be taught in all classes of the vernacular, and in the elementary classes of the Anglo-Vernacular schools of Malabar.” Chandran claimed his translation sang “well to the exceedingly beautiful tone of the original.”

No matter how much one knows about the loyalty of some to the British Raj, the tone of such letters never fails to shock the reader. But then again, Chandran would have never imagined in 1911 that India would become an independent nation three and a half decades later. For a civil servant of that era it would have made the most practical sense to support the Raj. It is probably the same thought process that guides some people who work for independent (in paper) institutions in some electoral autocracies in 2026.

The education department shared Chandran’s translation and the English original with its senior translator, who appreciated the effort but pointed out several issues. He said the title was a “misnomer” and “misleading in as much as it is not a faithful rendering into Malayalam” of the English original.

The senior translator added that Chandran’s work was “not in accordance with the genius of the language.” He, however, did say that the composition “was otherwise good and harmonious.”

The education department discussed Chandran’s proposal in detail, but decided to not use his translation because of what the senior translator had to say. Officials from the department, however, thought it was a good idea to translate the anthem to Indian languages.

“If small children habitually sang such a song it would do them no harm and might check childish leanings to sedition,” an official with initials ‘MH’ wrote in a memo. “I should like every child to know the national anthem in his vernacular as English children do in theirs,” he added.

The official said he was impressed with schools in Austria, which had the lyrics of the national anthem framed and hung on school walls, along with a photo of the emperor and supported such an idea in India.

There seem to be some adapted translations of “God Save the King” in some Indian languages, but there isn’t a trace of a Malayalam version in the public domain. One would probably have to ask a nonagenarian who lived in Kerala in the 1940s to confirm if his or her school taught them a Malayalam version of the British national anthem.