Coming together
The Commonwealth of Nations is more popularly known as the Commonwealth. It is a unique political association of 53 member countries and nearly all of them were former territories of the British Empire. The head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth II although she doesn’t have any actual political power over any of the nations and the headquarters is the Marlborough House in London, the U.K.
May 24 is observed as Commonwealth Day in some of the Commonwealth nations like India. It was formerly known as ‘Empire Day’ and also the birth anniversary of Queen Victoria. The official Commonwealth Day, however, is observed on the second Monday of March every year.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the formation of the Commonwealth and the theme for 2019 is ‘A Connected Commonwealth’, which offers opportunities for the people, governments and institutions of this richly diverse family of nations to connect and work together at many levels through far-reaching and deep-rooted networks of friendship and goodwill.
You might have heard of ‘The Commonwealth Games’. These are kind of similar to the Olympics but only the nations that are part of the Commonwealth can take part. It also takes place every four years and the first Games was held in 1930 in Hamilton, Canada, and the most recent one took place in 2018 at the Gold Coast, Australia. The next Commonwealth Games will be held in Birmingham, England in 2022.
Slide through the images below to get a better idea of the Commonwealth and answer the questions that follow.