Long live the queue: 'The greatest bit of British performance art'

Watching the dogged determination of those in the queue to view the Queen's coffin was both awe-inspiring and comic - a marvel of organisation, discipline, and singularity

In 2016, Britain made history by choosing to exit the European Union. Six years later, it made history in connection with another kind of exit: The queue to view the coffin of Britain’s longest-serving monarch lying in state in Westminster Hall. Ten miles or 16 km long at its zenith, some 250,000 people stood in line, some of them up to 24 hours, for a momentary glimpse of the flag-draped coffin of a queen who presided over the dissolution of the British Empire. Watching the dogged determination of those in the queue was both awe-inspiring and comic. Was this the reason Britannia once ruled the waves?

You can see why the British were intensely proud of the queue — it was called just that with characteristic understatement, no capital letters involved. It was a marvel of organisation, discipline, and singularity. You could join it but not leave it.  There was no ticketing system but those who needed the toilet or a drink of water, were given a coloured wristband to visit facilities set up along the route. You could not jump the queue — even English football royalty David Beckham waited his turn for 10 hours — or save a place for someone else in the queue. You could not take a stool or tent because the queue kept moving. There was even a queue — inevitably dubbed QE 2 — to join the main queue. This must have been the only queue ever to get lead live coverage on global TV. The BBC even had a red button service showing the front part of the queue. “Tell me this isn’t the greatest bit of British performance art that has ever happened,” an incredulous British friend wrote.

For an Indian watching this on telly with royal commentators gushing over the “essential Britishness” of the spectacle of people standing patiently in line, the puzzling thing was this. As Britain’s largest colony India inherited many cultural and institutional traditions, good and bad. Effortless excellence at military pageantry, relatively widespread knowledge of English, a penchant for paperwork in triplicate, police forces that oppress rather than protect citizens, divide and rule….But one thing that never entered independent India’s DNA was the fine art of standing in line.

From the toniest airport and coffee boutique to the railway station, ration shop and voting booth, a queue in India is an entirely notional concept. Where you stand and how long you stand in one depends on class, caste, gender and, mostly, sheer chutzpah. Jumping a queue is a special (and secretly admired) Indian talent. The British media made much of its queue but the fact is that disciplined queues are pretty much the norm in most countries — and that includes South East Asia and China. 

In India, queues are unique in their multiplicity and indiscipline. We have separate queues for ladies, the elderly, and for the disabled (there was one of these in the QE queue too that closed early). Mysteriously, standing in these reserved categories still doesn’t get you to the top of the queue any faster unless you possess that mysterious quality of “influence”. Indians passively accept the fact that politicians, film stars, celebrities and even minor personalities (such as the relative of a politician) get right of way by default —including at queues to greet the bride and groom at a wedding. These innately inequitable unwritten rules apply even to queues at the hustings, that five-yearly display of democracy of which Indians are so proud.

Deep down, though, who can blame anybody for wanting to jump a queue in India? That’s because the default configuration of an Indian queue is its unpleasantly adhesive quality. Social distancing became a hypothesis — and remained just that — only after Covid-19. Mostly, the average Indian’s queueing technique involves standing as close to the person in front as is physically possible, for reasons that no one can explain.

We are told that the British — indeed, most Europeans —learnt queue discipline during and immediately after World War II to access rations for everything from food to clothes. But in India, pop sociologists say chronic queue indiscipline is the result of living in a corrupt shortage economy till the 1990s. The admirable point is the everlasting forbearance of the average queuing Indian. Despite being forced to line up for chaotic hour upon hour to replace demonetised notes in 2016, voters of India’s most populous state queued to deliver an astounding victory for the same party that precipitated this crisis. That’s surely as wondrous as the late QE’s queue.