by Anand, Anita
For Hari and Simon, the two halves of my heart
&
For the wonderful women in my life who teach it how to beat
Arise! Ye daughters of a land
That vaunts its liberty!
May restless rulers understand
That women must be free
That women will be free.
From ‘The Women’s Marseillaise’ (1909),
words by Florence Macaulay
Contents
Prologue
PART I - SOPHIA’S CHILDHOOD AND HISTORY, 1876–1898
1 Roots of Rebellion
2 Do Not Be Conspicuous
3 The Suffolk Mahal
4 The Fall
5 Scramble for India
6 The Old Nature Rises
7 Polishing the Diamond
PART II - THE REVOLUTIONARY YEARS, 1898–1914
8 A Thoroughly English Girl
9 The Cubs Come Home
10 Patron of Lost Souls
11 The Princess and the Madman
12 The Blood is Up
13 India Awake!
14 The Lost Princess
15 The Hampton Court Harridan
16 A Familiar Enemy
17 We Have No Hold
18 Indian Clubs
PART III - WAR AND PEACE, 1914–1948
19 The Lady Vanishes
20 Such Troublesome Times
21 A Solemn Promise
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Image Section
A Note on the Author
Prologue
Westminster
Friday, 18 November 1910
Soprano and alto voices rose from the polished wooden floor and bounced off the plaster ceilings. They amplified, spilling from the high windows, slapping onto the wet, grey pavement outside. Startled commuters, with their thick coats buttoned high, broke stride, craning to see who was responsible for the jarring noise. But the building was giving little away. The Portland stone women, carved in relief above the grand entrance, were tight-lipped and serene, and the window panes were curtained by a thin film of condensation. Only the blur of bright colours behind gave a clue. Slashes of purple, white and green sliced through the otherwise monochrome November morning. The suffragettes had evidently taken over Caxton Hall again, and they sounded angrier than usual.
Inside, massive banners dominated every available space. Eight-foot slogans proclaiming ‘Deeds Not Words’, ‘Strive and Hold’, ‘Arise! Go Forth and Conquer!’ made the very walls seem as if they were shouting. Below them sat hundreds of women dressed in the muted blacks and browns of the season. From their clothing alone it was clear that they came from a myriad of backgrounds. Plain bonnets pushed up next to expensive wide-brimmed, feather-trimmed hats. Some had furs and kid gloves, while others wore patched, floor-length dresses. Irrespective of their armour, all of them were dressed for battle.
Thirty-eight specially chosen suffragettes sat in tightly packed rows on the stage behind the speaker. Their eyes were fixed on Emmeline Pankhurst’s narrow back as she jabbed the air to emphasise her fury. Most of them could have single-handedly held audiences such as this in their thrall, but today they were the Praetorian Guard, and their stillness only seemed to accentuate the animation of their leader. At times it sounded as if Emmeline’s voice might fail her – but she managed to keep going. Emmeline always did. Only her pale face broke the uniform blackness of her costume and her mood.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson sat in the front row, to Emmeline’s right. Shifting her gloved grip on the elegant walking cane in her hand, she listened to words she had heard many times before. At once England’s first female surgeon, magistrate and mayor, Elizabeth had the ramrod straight deportment of a woman who was always ready to rise and speak. By 1910, long political rallies had become a trial for her seventy-four-year-old body, but she had no intention of missing the fight that day.
Also in the front row sat Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Pankhurst’s firebrand daughter Christabel. Every so often, the two loyal lieutenants, bristling and determined, passed messages to their leader. Scrawled writing on folded pieces of paper shuttled through the hands of lawyers, scientists and social philanthropists. All of them had furthered the cause of women’s rights, and all of them had come that day because Emmeline Pankhurst had summoned them.
Though she was doing her best to fade into the background, one face stood out among them all. It belonged to a quiet, bird-like woman seated right at the back of the stage. She was dressed in expensive Parisian couture and her brown face stared back fiercely at those who stared at her. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was as close to an international celebrity as it was possible to be in 1910. Many had been reading about her for years in the popular press: daughter of a flamboyant Maharajah, goddaughter to Queen Victoria, champion dog breeder, and resident of Hampton Court Palace. Fashion pages frequently declared her one of the best-dressed women in the country and shops would boast about her patronage. There were less desirable facets to Sophia’s fame, however. She was the daughter of ‘that man’, ‘the traitor’, ‘the one who had lost everything’. Whispers followed Sophia wherever she went. She was the dark princess, granddaughter of the greatest ruler the Punjab had ever known, descendent of warriors.
Since childhood Sophia had lived her life watched by invisible eyes. She had been placed under surveillance by the British government, her movements, along with those of her family, diligently recorded, by spies. Thanks to her father’s exploits, Sophia had experienced arrest and detention before even her tenth birthday. Her recent radical activities had earned her a special file of her own at the Political and Secret Department of the India Office, and it was getting fatter by the day.
Watched and judged by others for years, Sophia had been trained from an early age to maintain her poise and nerve no matter how uncomfortable the situation. Sitting stiffly in her chair at Caxton Hall, the Indian princess gave the impression of being much taller than she really was. At just a shade over five foot, she was usually the smallest person in a room. Her manicured fingers, heavy with emerald rings, drummed out the beat of the songs bellowed around her. Though she knew the words, Sophia refrained from joining in. She could play the piano better than most but knew that her voice was less than perfect; as was her custom, she sought to hide her imperfections. Though those all around her were absorbed by Emmeline’s speech, Sophia’s eyes had landed on a press photographer moving about on the balcony opposite. Sensing the exact moment his shutter would click, she peered out from behind the broad-shouldered woman in front and looked directly into his lens as he took his picture. In one of the only photos that exist of that historic morning, Sophia’s gaze is calm, direct and confident, even though events all around her were building to frenzy.1
The princess was about to pitch herself into a violent street brawl which would leave many – including herself – bruised and bleeding in the shadow of the mother of all parliaments.
Part I
Sophia’s Childhood and History, 1876–1898
1
Roots of Rebellion
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh’s arrival coincided with the severe heatwave of 1876. Some parts of the country had not seen a drop of rain for more than forty days by the time she was born on 8 August, and temperatures soared to thirty-six degrees Celsius. From her nursery in Belgravia, a short walk from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, Sophia gasped the dry and sweltering air into her lungs for the very first time. The heat seemed to speak of India.
Sophia’s emergence into the world coincided with a rebirth for her godmoth
er. After fifteen long years in purdah, mourning for her late husband Albert, Queen Victoria had chosen 1876 to venture into the world of the living again. A solid testament to her enduring loss stood in Hyde Park. Though the main body of the monument had been completed years earlier, the statue of Albert at its heart had been shrouded until now. Freshly gilded, the unveiled figure gleamed in the relentless summer sunshine. With one hand resting carelessly on his knee, the Prince Consort sat quietly under a garish Gothic edifice, its golden spire rising 175 feet into the air. Solid granite steps led down from each corner of the memorial to four pristine white marble figures, representing Africa, Europe, America and Asia, the continents of the British Empire. They simultaneously guarded Albert and looked out upon London, the seat of Victoria’s power.
Though she had agreed to be Sophia’s godmother and watch over her immortal soul, it was an inescapable irony that the seizure of the child’s inheritance had contributed to Queen Victoria’s latest accolade. Her Majesty’s government had bestowed the title ‘Empress of India’ on a delighted Queen, just weeks before Sophia’s birth.1 A visible reminder of all that Sophia’s family had lost came on the very day that Victoria arrived to open Parliament, when at her throat she paraded the Sikh Kingdom’s greatest talisman, the Koh-I-Noor diamond: ‘Her Majesty’s robe was of black velvet, trimmed with white ermine, over this was the dark blue riband of the Order of the Garter, clasped by diamonds . . . the Queen’s necklet (the famous Koh-i-noor) and stomacher were of the same precious stones, and over her widow’s cap gleamed the small crown of brilliants worn on these State occasions.’2
In the lifetimes of most of the peers and MPs who crammed into the chamber to hear the Queen’s historic speech, the Koh-I-Noor had belonged to another potentate. Sophia’s grandfather, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, had worn the vast gem strapped to his bicep as his north Indian Empire bowed to his will. To the British who watched and coveted his realm back then, the thought of possessing the diamond – the size and weight of a hen’s egg – had seemed an impossible dream.
Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Kingdom in the Punjab was hugely wealthy and expansive, extending from the borders of Tibet in the east to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass in the west. On old maps, before India and Pakistan were divided, if you were to slice off the top quarter of India, most of these territories were ruled by the Maharajah in Lahore. In a reign that lasted some fifty years, Sophia’s grandfather managed to unite Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims under one banner and brought unprecedented prosperity to the region.
The Punjab itself had an even more illustrious history stretching as far back as the origins of mankind. Harappa in the Indus Valley was one of the earliest known ancient civilisations. Its ruins dated back to the Bronze Age, making the region hallowed ground for archaeologists. To Indians it was much more. It was a place where gods and demons once walked the earth. Legend has it that when Kuru, an Iron Age king, first came to the region the gods miraculously transformed the chariot on which he rode into a plough. Yoked to two terrifying beasts, the Bull of Shiva – lord of destruction, and the Buffalo of Lord Yama – sovereign of the underworld, Kuru tilled the land, compelled to do so by instructions from a voice that only he could hear. When he completed his final furrow, Vishnu, one of the three most powerful Gods in the Hindu pantheon, descended to earth and asked Kuru to sow the virtues of mankind. Given that his pockets were empty, the King decided to sacrifice one of his own arms, shredding its flesh into a thousand pieces and planting each dripping gobbet as a fleshy seed in the earth. Feeling he should do more, he then offered up his other arm, both legs and head. The gods were pleased, and they blessed him, proclaiming that henceforth the land would be named after Kuru. Anyone dying upon it would receive moksha, a state of grace, freeing the individual from an endless cycle of reincarnation.
Generations later, during the tenth century BC, new furrows were ploughed into the ground at ‘Kurukshetra’ and filled once more with human gore. During an epic battle lasting eighteen days, Kuru’s descendants fought each other for his crown and kingdom, causing so many deaths in the process that sages claimed the heavens were almost torn apart with grief. Locals said that the spilled blood of heroes gave the Punjab the most fertile soil in all India.3
There was a less supernatural explanation for Punjab’s golden fields of grain. Literally translated, panj means ‘five’ and ab means ‘waters’. The region owed its bounty to the five mighty rivers running through it. The Sutlej, Jhelum, Ravi, Chenab and Beas stretched across Punjab like the splayed fingers of a hand.
Indeed, so burgeoning was the Punjab with crops and so rich were its mineral deposits that it became the prize that every invader wanted. Between 558 and 486 BC, the Persian Kings Cyrus the Great and his nephew Darius had ruled the Punjab’s lands, using the area’s wealth to finance their wars and its men to fill their armies. Soon after, Alexander the Great conquered Persepolis in 330 BC, and he too set his sights on India, thwarted in his ambition only by the men of the north. He described them as ‘Leonine and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldiers.’4 The mighty Alexander never managed to capture anything more than a small portion of the Punjab, and it too was lost soon after his death.
The greatest civilisations the Indian subcontinent has ever known, including the Mauryans, Kushans, Guptas, Hunas and Palas, all seized the lands in the north only to see them plucked from their grasp. In 1220, Genghis Khan, the Mongol leader of the largest contiguous empire in history, scythed through northern India on his way back to the Steppes. Crushing all resistance in his wake, he plundered the Punjab to the bone. Time and again palaces and temples rose and were crushed as victors sought to destroy any memory of what had gone before. In the flux, dark-skinned natives, pale traders and blood-stained invaders mixed. The tall, sharp-featured, caramel-skinned people who emerged over time were a genetic melding of Asia and Europe. Their beliefs and cultures had blurred edges, and Hindus and Muslims lived together in the villages, sharing a common language and culture. Though they prayed to their own gods, they danced to the same music.
Forged in a string of conflicts, Punjabis gained a reputation for ferocity; however it was nothing compared to that of their nearest neighbours. Tribes across the mountainous border were feared with good reason. Even though a series of mountains rose up between the Punjab and Afghanistan, stretching over 600 miles and soaring higher than 7,000 metres in places, they could not keep the two sides apart indefinitely. From 1451 to 1526, Lodhi Pushtun warriors from Afghanistan poured into the Punjab. Sikandar, the second sultan in the Lodhi dynasty, had little tolerance for the infidels of his new territory. He destroyed Hindu temples, built mosques and based the Punjab’s laws on the Quran and Sharia code. The Lodhis permitted non-Muslims to practise their religion only if they paid a tax, or jizya, for the privilege. Despite the uncompromising subjugation, it was during this period that a new religion was born. In villages around the five rivers, a tiny minority began to call themselves the Sikhs. In doing so, they confused everybody around them.
The first Sikhs did not look distinct from their neighbours. They spoke the same languages and shared the same ancestors as those who toiled by their sides but they did not share their spiritual beliefs. Like Muslims, the new Sikhs scorned Hindu idolatry, rejecting the pantheon of gods and goddesses. They talked of one true God but refused to accept Muhammed as his prophet. Like the Hindus, they believed in reincarnation and karma, but they did not accept the caste superiority of the Brahmins, who enjoyed primacy among the Hindus. They bowed only to one man, referring to him as their leader and teacher. His name was Nanak, and he would change the Punjab for ever.
Nanak was born in 1469 in a village not far from Lahore. His parents, Mehta Kalu and Mata Tripta, were high-caste Hindus living a humble but comfortable life, at peace with their Muslim neighbours. Nanak was said to be a contented child, much coddled by his sister Nanaki who was five years older than him. His parents had hoped their son would f
ollow in his father’s footsteps, acting as the local inspector of land revenues, but it soon became apparent that the child was unusual. Nanak was given to long bouts of prolonged introspection. Instead of watching his father’s cattle, as was his duty, he would slip into trances, leaving the cows to wander for miles, much to his father’s irritation. Some believed that miracles occurred when he was near. One day the boy fell asleep on the ground beneath a tree. As he slept, villagers noticed that while all the shadows around him lengthened and shifted, the shade over the sleeping boy remained constant. On closer inspection they saw that a large poisonous cobra had spread open its hood in order to protect him from the sun.
More than the miracles, reports of his wisdom began to attract followers to Nanak. At around the age of eight, most Hindu boys of high caste were required to attend a sacred thread ceremony. A long piece of string, comprising three strands, was draped across the boy’s left shoulder and tied in a knot at the hip. The strands represented the most powerful Hindu gods: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The thread was a visible contract between the individual and his Hindu faith: it conferred the right of education and marriage and without it a boy would grow up out of caste. Since the caste system was such a powerful concept among Hindus at the time, those who had no thread were considered untouchable. Teachers would shun them, just as high-caste parents would ignore them as matches for their daughters.
Nanak was presented for his thread ceremony when he was nine years old. Friends and family gathered to celebrate his coming of age; however, as the priest approached him, the boy grabbed his hand and refused to let him tie his knot. To gasps of disbelief, Nanak announced that faith should not need physical symbols and that a relationship with God should be private, discreet and pure. To growing discomfort Nanak added that since women and members of the lower castes were not allowed to wear the thread it had no value to him. The priest was furious, but others marvelled at such reasoning from a child so young.5 The boy left the ceremony without a thread, to the dismay of his own father.
