Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  12

  The Blood is Up

  Sophia took a boat from Colombo to the bustling port of Madras the very next day. Noise, heat and sweat hit the princess as soon as she walked down the gangplank, clinging to her like a second skin. The port was crawling with chaotic industry and the air was thick with salt and the smell of fish and hot metal. Glistening men attempted to bring their catches in, navigating through stevedores bellowing orders at men carrying cargo. The British engineer Sir Francis Spring, pioneer of the Indian railways, was attempting to reshape Madras. He wanted to protect British freight from the frequent cyclones which slammed into the Coromandel coastline, and work was well under way. Huge machines on the waterside chewed up great sections of the docks, while wiry, dark-skinned men wove their way in between showers of sparks and rubble, balancing baskets of dirt and rock on their heads.

  Anxious to leave the sensory assault behind her, Sophia departed Madras almost as soon as she arrived, embarking on the first of many bumpy rail and road journeys north to Lahore. As she watched the changing landscape with its blurring, vibrant colour, she scribbled in her diary, the train jogging her handwriting: ‘Very delighted to be in India once more.’1

  Every day, Sophia set aside time to write and always included – in extraordinary and often painstaking detail – her mealtimes: what time she ate, what she was served, how much she consumed . . . Having dealt with the contents of her stomach in tightly packed lines of spidery writing, she would go on to describe what she had seen. There were very few crossings out in Sophia’s diary. She was as free flowing on the page as she was circumspect in her speech.

  In contrast to her first visit to India this trip had been rubber-stamped by the India Office. As a result, the princess was met with great civility by the Residents of the states she passed through. The Raj Residencies acted as intermediaries between the Viceroy’s office and the numerous princely states. When nawabs and rajahs heard that the granddaughter of Ranjit Singh was travelling through their territories, they asked their local Residents to bring her to them. Welcoming her warmly, they allowed her access to places no white man was usually allowed to go. Sophia spent time in the zennanas, the female quarters, which were closed off to the outside world. There she was presented with rare silks and priceless gems to inspect by ranis and begums who lived their lives in purdah. Because Sophia was an unusual visitor, a hybrid of East and West, kings and princes invited her to dine with them too, treating her like an equal. There were usually British officials present during these meals, ostensibly there to offer Sophia assistance. In reality they noted down every word that passed her lips.

  It was what she learned of fallen empires which inspired Sophia to write most vividly. The earliest of her journal entries are peppered with notes about her father’s lost lands; she was fascinated to learn of other dynasties which had also faded under conquest. When Sophia reached the fourteenth-century city of Daulatabad in the western state of Maharashtra, the ancient ruins there whispered to her of a once-great empire.2 Daulatabad had been the capital of the mighty Tughlaq dynasty, a line of rulers who had their origins in Turkey. Muhamed bin Tughluq had in 1327 forcibly uprooted his people from Delhi and moved them to the middle of an alien central-Indian landscape. There, under the gaze of a mighty fort high up on the Deogiri, or ‘Hill of the Gods’, he commanded his people to flourish.

  Sophia marvelled at the fortress, unable to understand how such a once-mighty edifice had been reduced to rubble. Perhaps thinking of her own family’s decline, she imagined an invisible enemy had breached its walls: ‘How anyone would ever have penetrated it I cannot think, it must have of course been taken through treachery.’3

  Muhamed bin Tughluq proved to be a despotic and ultimately ridiculous man. He had moved his people from an area of comfort to one of great hardship. For two years he watched them struggle fruitlessly in the arid heat. Eventually they abandoned the place due to the lack of water, leaving to rebuild their lives in Delhi. Their ruler’s authority disintegrated along with the homes and fort they left behind. Medieval India had once cowered before the Tughluq’s mighty sultanate; however nothing remained of it but vine-covered stones. Like braille, the history of India could be read in the rocky ruins left by a succession of victors and vanquished.

  Before leaving Daulatabad, Sophia heard that a stranger had been looking for her. Bamba had promised to send a man to help her on the journey weeks ago but nobody had materialised, and Sophia had given up hope of an escort. Someone called Pir Kareem Baksh had left his calling card in numerous locations hoping to find her.4 She had been expecting a muscular footman to aid her with her bags but was met instead by a diffident young man who was not even strong enough to lift her lightest luggage. Baksh was Bamba’s tutor and personal secretary, an acknowledged scholar in Persian, Arabic and English, and of practically no use at all.

  Bamba, however, relied on him for everything, addressing him with the honorific ‘Pir-ji’, even though he was well below her in social status. Sophia noted grumpily in her diary: ‘Bamba thought it might be amusing to have a travelling history lesson.’ Karim Baksh settled in the train compartment and, as they set off for the final ten-day leg of the journey, he pointed out landmarks and told stories. Sophia was less than grateful, grumbling in her diary about having ‘no servant to help with baggage etc.’5 – although she should have known that such practical considerations rarely occurred to her sister.

  Sophia’s irritation dissipated as the train neared its destination. ‘Getting quite excited as we near Lahore now,’6 she scribbled on 17 December. There were numerous porters waiting for her when the train pulled into the colonial grandeur of Lahore station. As they hauled her luggage from the carriage like a line of busy ants, her sister arrived with great flourish, looking every inch the Indian princess. Unlike Sophia, who sweated in her tailored European clothes, Bamba had thrown herself into native costume, arriving in a stylish sari. Despite her recent troubles, she looked cool and beautiful, even though Sophia would only admit it grudgingly: ‘B arrived in a sari, of course I had feared that, but she was looking very well. Had a very smart buggy and cream horse. We drove to her home, which was about where I expected . . . a very nice house, very big.’7

  Bamba’s sprawling bungalow, The Palms, stood on the Jail Road, on an affluent outer belt of the city. As the address suggested, the house was also near one of Lahore’s three main prisons. It stood close to the Upper Bari Doab, a canal which provided a corridor of cool air and greenery, and near Lahore’s great racecourse and polo fields.8 These were playgrounds of the British sahibs, and Bamba was surrounded by Englishmen, despite having moved thousands of miles away to escape them. The proximity of the twenty-two-acre Birdwood Barracks made the area one of the safest in the city.

  Sophia marvelled at how quickly Bamba had put down roots. Her home was filled with artefacts from all over India, and was both warm and welcoming. Special attention had been given to Sophia’s accommodation: ‘She had bought such a lot of furniture to make my room nice . . . such extravagance for so short a time.’9 Pir-ji lived in an annexe to the main house. (‘I do not quite approve myself,’ wrote Sophia in her diary, ‘but he is very nice and B is more obstinate than me.’10) It was perhaps Bamba’s stubbornness that prevented the sisters from discussing the real reason for Sophia having been summoned to India in those first few days.

  The morning of 25 December started in a disconcerting manner. Bamba woke early and told Sophia she was going off on her own, to visit ‘friends’. When Sophia asked if she could come too, finding it strange to be abandoned on Christmas morning, she was told in no uncertain terms that she had to stay at home. It would not be the only time that her sister ‘went all alone and would not let me go with her’.11

  The hours ticked by and Bamba finally returned in the late afternoon. Sophia noted in her diary that soon after a local fabric pedlar arrived with a delivery of material for Bamba’s new saris. Knowing that Christmas was important to his client, he ha
d also brought boxes filled with edible treats. But Bamba did not seem happy at all, seeing this as another attempt to kill her: ‘The silk man came and brought some Indian food which looked excellent, but which B wouldn’t let us eat for fear of poison. B is quite of the opinion that she was poisoned last winter when she was so ill and it certainly seems suspicious.’12 Feeling sorry for the baffled pedlar, she watched him go, leaving the untouched boxes behind him.

  The strain of being at Bamba’s house surrounded by what at best was paranoia and at worst mortal danger soon began to grate: ‘I don’t know why she remains in this horrible unsafe country when she is in fear of her life all the time,’ Sophia confided to her journal. ‘But in the moving of her, I don’t know how I am going to get her away in the spring.’13 Sophia was right about the difficulty facing her. Despite Bamba’s conviction that someone was trying to kill her, she resolutely refused to leave India. A ferocious row threatened to erupt between the sisters for the rest of the day, but neither of them would begin it.

  In an effort to rescue their first Christmas together in years, Sophia did not ask the questions that plagued her, and Bamba did not volunteer any explanations. The silent standoff stiffened an already awkward atmosphere as the two went through the motions of decorating the house and preparing a festive evening meal. Ironically, a bout of breathless choking saved the day: ‘We had a real Xmas and in the evening had the Christmas tree, and cake for tea and mince pies for dinner. And then B got something stuck in her throat . . . and she was sure they are trying to kill her . . . so made herself sick and then found out it was just something unfortunately hard in the vegetables . . .’14

  Sophia wondered if the threat of assassination was largely in her sister’s mind. Whatever the truth of the situation, the spluttering fit diverted attention sufficiently. Despite Bamba’s self-induced vomiting, Sophia concluded in her diary that they had had a ‘perfectly lovely evening’.15

  Bamba took to escorting her little sister to as many social engagements as she could. Lahore had a scene that could fill any socialite’s calendar, although it soon became clear that Bamba herself hated the endless round of parties and those who attended them. At one reception Sophia noticed her sister bridle upon the arrival of the most important Englishman in Punjab. The Lieutenant Governor, or ‘LG’ as she referred to him, was a man most people threw themselves at. Sycophancy followed him wherever he went, but Bamba stayed well away, even avoiding the traditional line-up to meet him. ‘B hardly knew anyone and we did not stay long – the LG was there . . . B does not bow to him ever.’16

  The LG was Sir Charles Montgomery Rivaz, a long-serving British civil servant who had worked his way from mid-level Raj bureaucracy, up through the Viceroy’s office and into the most powerful position in the Punjab. It was clear that Bamba loathed him and it was not long before Sophia understood why. Sir Charles and his wife, Lady Rivaz, had humiliated Bamba on several occasions, either snubbing her at social events or blocking her entry to them altogether. Their behaviour angered Sophia greatly. Her rage would have been considerably worse had she known what they said about Bamba behind her back. At the very highest levels of the Raj, Sophia’s sister was being painted as a morally bankrupt character, unsuitable for refined company. Bamba was widely maligned by the British, much in the same way that her grandmother Jindan had been during her lifetime.

  A document in the Political and Secret Department described an episode which had cemented Bamba’s reputation: ‘From the time the daughters of the late Maharaja Dulip Singh first arrived in the Punjab until the occasion of Lord Curzon’s last visit to Lahore in 1905, the Lieutenant Governor and Lady Rivaz asked them to the periodical entertainments at Government House, Lahore and Barnes Court, Simla. On the occasion of Lord Curzon’s last visit to Lahore the Princess Bamba, who had then adopted Indian dress, was invited to a garden party to meet Their Excellencies and appeared in an oriental costume which, to say the least of it, was distinctly improper.’17

  Another note in a Duleep Singh classified file went into greater detail about Bamba’s apparent fashion faux pas: ‘A very puzzling case – it seems to be admitted that the lady was wearing a native dress – and that too an ordinary native woman’s dress, with an “anjou” structure across the breasts and the body naked from that down to the navel.’18 The outfit was said to have so offended the guests that later, in 1905, when the Prince of Wales (the future King George V) and Princess Mary visited Lahore, Bamba was shunned from all banquets and garden parties. She was even barred from the ladies-only ‘purdah party’ to which all her friends had been invited. For the granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, former ruler of all of the Punjab, such a slight was hard to bear: ‘Sir Charles Rivaz felt that if the Princess Bamba were to come to either the garden party or the purdah party in the costume I have alluded to, it would be an insult to Her Royal Highness. The Princess, therefore, received no card of invitation. Previous to this I should have said that Lady Rivaz wrote to Sirdarni Umrao Singh, who was a friend of the Princess Bamba, and begged her to persuade the latter to adopt a more fitting costume, Indian or otherwise. The Sirdarni replied that she had already spoken and this had provoked such an outburst that she dared not approach her again.’19 Bamba was mortified, particularly by Rivaz’s decision to involve her friends in her censure, and never forgave the LG or his wife.

  Rivaz with his stern moustache and aloof airs swiftly succeeded in alienating Sophia too when on Boxing Day he gave the keynote speech at Punjab University’s degree ceremony. What Sophia heard made her feel distinctly uneasy: ‘He made a long speech . . . and it was more or less advising the students not to try and govern for themselves except very much under his boot.’20 Although Sophia was perturbed by the idea of Indians living as second-class citizens in their own country, she did not identify herself as one of them. When Punjabi friends of her sister asked her if she was happy to be ‘home’ in the ‘mother country’ she was bemused. Sophia simply did not feel for India the way her sister Bamba did. Whenever Bamba slated the British in her company, Sophia would defend them passionately, reminding her how kind her friends were, and how much she liked them. There seemed to be a new level of friction between the sisters which had never existed in England.

  In the weeks that followed, Bamba tried to make her sister understand why she would not leave. She set out to make Sophia love India and hate Britain as much as she did, arranging for folk singers and musicians to come to the house, ordering her cooks to create complicated menus of spicy food. Sophia was a lover of heat, both in the weather and her cuisine. Despite her previous bland diet in England, she took her curries as spicy as the kitchens could make them.

  As soon as the festive season was over, Bamba planned to take Sophia to see some of the old Sikh Kingdom, convinced that if she could show her little sister the injustice of British rule she would come to feel as she did. The lesson began as soon as the train pulled out of Lahore station. Bamba took Sophia on a short trip to Jullunder, a city some eighty miles away. The city had been wrested from its rulers in 1807 by their grandfather Ranjit Singh and before that formed the easternmost of Alexander the Great’s territories. The British guard on the train insulted the Duleep Singh party repeatedly. As Sophia wrote in her diary, he was ‘first rude to Pir-ji and then came to give us the tickets and was disgustingly rude to B’.21 Bamba had become immune to such slights from the British, but Sophia was not prepared to tolerate them: ‘I intend to write to the LG about it and have him dismissed. I shall not put up with that sort of thing.’22

  Things only got worse when Sophia and Bamba attended the New Year’s Eve celebrations back in Lahore. The day began with an afternoon at the races, one of the few occasions where Indians were allowed to compete directly with the British. Still bruised from her train experience, Sophia cheered on the Indian jockey: ‘We saw the Patiala man win with one of his horses which was very nice. I do not think they were favourites; however it was delightful to see an Indian win something.’23 Later that night ther
e was a ball, the pinnacle of the Punjab’s social calendar, thrown by Sir Charles Rivaz for all the dignitaries in his jurisdiction. Sophia had been invited, and for once, so had her sister.

  Sophia chose a Parisian ballgown of finest pink silk which she had brought with her from England. As she preened in the mirror, Bamba came in and begged her to change into something more conservative. Sophia refused, telling her that such fashions were all the rage in London and Paris and should certainly be good enough for Lahore. As Joe darted in between their legs, Bamba continued to argue that her décolletage was unsuitable for the function ahead and eventually Sophia agreed to make alterations to her neckline: ‘B insisted on making my pink dress higher for fear of shocking Indians.’24 In reality it was not the judgement of Indians that Bamba was worried about but the cruel tongues of British socialites. Even though the sisters could disagree passionately, Bamba was at heart a protective older sister.

  When they reached the ball, Sophia realised that she and her sister were the only brown faces on the guest list: ‘It might have been an English ball to look at the room, full of people – about 500 I should say and all English.’25 The sisters felt at once conspicuous and ignored as they descended the steps to the main ballroom. Bamba had been tense from the moment they left the house and very soon Sophia too wished she had not come. Nobody asked her to dance and very few people came to speak to them. Their coldness hurt Sophia deeply, since she had encountered some of the guests socially before back in England. Seeing the princesses lurking forlornly in the corner while the others waltzed around them, one man eventually took pity and asked Sophia for a dance later in the evening. He never came back to fulfil the promise.

  Sophia was also stung by the absence of Lady Rivaz. Protocol dictated that she should have been there to look after the princesses. An excuse had been made on her behalf, which Sophia did not believe – taking her absence as a direct snub. ‘Lady R was not there at all, not being well they said,’ she told her journal, ‘all sorts of things probably invented.’26 Sir Charles behaved no better. Visiting dignitaries were always presented to the Lieutenant Governor, but despite waiting all night for an introduction, none was made. Then Rivaz’s aide-de-camp came to speak to her and badly mispronounced her name: he asked, ‘If I was Princess Ha Ha Ha’.27 She left it to another to explain the correct way to say her uncomplicated name.