Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  Her first voyage took her from Bombay to Colombo where she would once more change ships. The SS Yorck would take her across the oceans to Bremen in Germany where Catherine would be waiting for her. The sisters had planned to spend some weeks together before Sophia had to make her final journey to England. Sophia longed to hear Catherine’s news, even though the two of them had kept up their correspondence during her stay in India.

  Catherine’s recent letters had not been soothing, and she had alarmed Sophia with talk of a brewing war in Europe. Both Bamba and Sophia had dismissed the idea, unable to believe that such a thing was possible. However, four days into her voyage the Yorck passed a German naval warship, the SMS Condor. The two vessels were so close at one point that Sophia could see that it was brimming with German sailors, making their way back to Europe.53 It was unusual for the Condor to be so far away from its patrol territory in the Pacific Ocean, where it had watched over Germany’s island territories for years. Sophia shrugged off the unusual sight and instead studied Urdu in her cabin, wrote letters on the top deck, and delighted the children in first class with Joe’s latest tricks.

  However, her sense of peace was shattered just a week into her voyage when the ship’s purser brought her a letter which had been sent to Aden, their last port of anchor. Bamba’s familiar writing was on the envelope. As Sophia opened it a newspaper cutting fell out onto her lap. What she read left her shaking with grief and anger. ‘Little did I expect the shock of what it contained . . . oh dear, oh dear poor poor India and the Indians. Lala Lajpat Rai has been arrested . . . and deported promptly from Lahore. Did the poor man expect this . . . Oh death . . . this one man one of India’s saviours.’54

  The inky newspaper cutting told her that Lajpat Rai had been picked up by the police and charged with sedition. The sentence was almost certain to be years of hard labour. Sophia, like many others in Punjab, feared that the punishment would kill him. As she headed back to Europe, she fumed in her diary against the country to which she was returning: ‘Oh you wicked English how I long for your downfall. How I loathe you all . . . I am your deadly enemy from hereafter. Such injustice I cannot stand . . . I don’t believe he was preaching sedition . . . Ah India awake and free yourself! I am afraid this [is] the end of all hope.’55

  14

  The Lost Princess

  In London, Sophia kept up to date with Lajpat Rai’s worsening situation by way of the British newspapers. It emerged that he had been sentenced without trial to indefinite detention, and had been spirited out of India to be held in solitary confinement in a Burmese prison. While in Mandalay he was denied access to lawyers and refused leave to appeal. In the words of Gokhale, the severity of the sentence had ‘literally convulsed the country from one end to the other’.1

  Swathes of outraged Punjabis flocked to the Home Rule cause like never before. A prominent militant nationalist from Maharashtra, Senpati Bapat, warned that if Lala Lajpat Rai was not released immediately, Bapat would shoot the Secretary of State for India himself. The Indian newspaper Vande Mataram wrote in an editorial: ‘The hour for speeches and fine writing is past. The bureaucracy has thrown down the gauntlet. We take it up. Men of the Punjab! Race of the lion! Show these men who would stamp you into the dust that for one Lajpat they have taken away, a hundred Lajpats will arise in his place. Let them hear a hundred times louder your war-cry – Jai Hindusthan!’2

  Sophia was frantic about Lajpat Rai’s welfare, as well as that of Bamba and Pauline, still in Lahore. The Daily Mail made for disturbing reading: ‘Troops of all arms are marching into Lahore from Mianmir in preparation for grave eventualities. Police, mounted and un-mounted are also being drafted from all parts of the province . . . Sir Denzil Ibbetson [the new LG] made a careful inspection of the defences of Lahore fort, and summoned reinforcements for the military.’3 According to the paper, Punjabi thugs were pouring into the city: ‘Bodies of stalwart rustics armed with bludgeons are moving into Lahore having been enlisted by seditious leaders. These gangs are now crowding into the native city. The Government has issued a proclamation declaring that all meetings of every kind in Lahore are forbidden and will be seen as unlawful assemblies. They are warning the public not to attend any such meeting.’4

  Sophia could only pray that Bamba was staying away from politics and that Pauline was safely locked up at home after dark. In reality, however, her sisters were more likely to tear each other apart than become the victims of street battles. From the moment Sophia had left them alone the two women had been at each other’s throats. Bamba accused Pauline of being lazy, rude, morose and ungrateful as well as having base morals. She claimed to have caught the young princess flirting with neighbours and accepting expensive gifts from friends: ‘I think she is quite incorrigible and she had better go back. She is too vulgar for anything,’5 wrote Bamba in one of her regular letters of complaint. Sophia had not bargained for such mutual loathing. In her absence all the old resentments were allowed to fly without censor. Pauline regarded Bamba as overbearing and over-privileged; she was also riled by her half-sister’s constant adulation of their father. To Pauline, Duleep Singh had been a shambling old drunk whom she loathed. In turn Bamba lashed out at Pauline’s mother, viciously attacking Ada for being little more than a common whore: ‘I have told her a good deal about her circumstances for I do not see things should be falsely represented . . . She attributes all that is bad to our father. This was too much for me, so I clearly told her the sort of woman her mother is and told her that she derives all her undesirable qualities from there.’6 Sophia had stayed with Bamba for six months, but after just six weeks, Pauline was put on a boat back to France. Bamba hoped never to see her again.

  Sophia was far too distracted to mediate between the pair. On her voyage back from India, she had concluded that all the British were uniformly wicked. Now, however, she was witnessing a group of Westminster politicians championing Lajpat Rai’s cause with as much passion as any Punjabi in Lahore. A small but vociferous group of cross-party MPs were repeatedly raising the case in Parliament. The Secretary of State was left flailing before his peers; Morley’s inadequate answers about Lajpat Rai’s arrest were met by scorn and noisy disbelief. On 29 May 1907 the Conservative MP from Liverpool, Dr V. H. Rutherford, once again led the charge against the Secretary of State:

  DR RUTHERFORD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether, in view of the fact that the arrest and deportation of Lala Lajpat Rai without trial has fired the indignation of His Majesty’s subjects in India, he will either bring him to trial or release him, and so help to restore law and order and respect for British justice.

  MR MORLEY: I am aware that the circumstances mentioned by my hon. friend have been viewed with lively disapproval by some sections of His Majesty’s Indian subjects and with lively approval by other sections, and I cannot at all agree with my hon. friend that either the trial or the release of the person detained would by any means help to restore law and order.

  DR RUTHERFORD: Will the Secretary of State inform the House on what charge this gentleman had been arrested and deported without trial?

  MR MORLEY: Under the regulations of 1818, under which he was arrested, the formulation of a charge can be brought forward and substantiation is not necessary.

  DR RUTHERFORD: Has the right honourable gentleman himself received any evidence justifying this serious undertaking on the part of the Indian Government?

  MR MORLEY: I have not the least desire to evade any of these questions, but it would be far more convenient if my hon. friend would possess himself in patience for only a week, when it would be my duty and satisfaction to explain to the House the whole of this matter.

  MR O’GRADY (Labour MP for Leeds East): I would like to ask the right honourable gentleman a simple question. Is it not a fact that this gentleman was arrested as a result of speaking at a meeting against the increase of the land and irrigation taxes? Does the right honourable gentleman consider that to be sedition? Does it come within the
purview of the regulations of 1818?

  MR MORLEY: My hon. friend calls that a simple question! To answer it would involve me in complexities which would take at least half an hour.7

  The cross-party group refused to be put off and thanks to their dogged determination, in September 1907, after he had spent six difficult months in prison, the Indian government was forced to release Lajpat Rai without charge. Not only did they let him go but the Colonisation Bill, against which he had fought so hard, was dropped by the Viceroy. The episode reminded Sophia of a truth she had lost briefly: not all the British were the same; some made very good friends indeed.

  In his private papers, Morley, who was later elevated to the House of Lords, admitted that his administration had treated Lajpat Rai abominably. The Secretary of State blamed his colleagues for causing him to lie to Parliament: ‘It seems clear from the papers that the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma refused Lajpat’s request to see his solicitor. This is in itself, a hateful thing to do, only worthy of Russia, or, say Australia, in her Italian days. But worse still, I was allowed to tell the House of Commons that access to a solicitor would of course be allowed . . . More than that, I was permitted to say that he was allowed to receive letters from his family. It now seems that some 50 such letters were stopped, and I was never told.’8 Sophia’s letters may well have been among those Lajpat Rai never read.

  Although in the months that followed Sophia remained passionate about both Lajpat Rai and his Swadeshi movement, her connection with India was becoming remote and unfulfilling. The passage of time and the miles which lay between her and Punjab were not being bridged well by her sister. Bamba’s letters dwelt more on her irritations with servants and the weather than on matters Sophia longed to hear of. Apart from Catherine’s fleeting visits, and her occasional trips to see Freddie and Victor, Sophia felt more cut off at Faraday House than ever before. She felt useless again, unable to do anything for her friends in India except read about their troubles in the papers. She sent money regularly for the upkeep of Punjabi schools;9 she sent money to her cousins, the Raja Sansis, and bought shipments of dolls for Bamba to distribute at local orphanages.10 But these acts did little to fill the void. Before she knew it, Sophia had slipped back into mundane routine. The greyness of London and the pointlessness of her life began to eat at her again. She lost weight and lost interest in all her former hobbies, showing Joe at fewer and fewer dog shows and failing to breed any new champions. Sophia spent almost nothing on new outfits and rarely went out. The newspapers forgot about her and she forgot about most of her friends. It was only a chance meeting with a young woman called Una Dugdale that re-infused her life with meaning.

  A few years younger than Sophia, Una Dugdale, the daughter of a naval commander, had much in common with the Indian princess. She too was a headstrong debutante and, like Sophia, she had been apolitical for most of her life. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Paris, where she studied singing, Una moved in influential circles and counted the London elite as her friends. She had first heard about the suffragettes and their cause from her friend, Frank Rutter, the art critic for the Sunday Times.11 However, it was not until she heard Christabel Pankhurst speak that she pledged her life to their cause.

  While Sophia was being converted to nationalism by the oratory of Lala Lajpat Rai, Una was being seduced by the words of Emmeline Pankhurst’s eldest daughter. In the summer of 1907 Una had attended an open air rally in London’s Hyde Park. She watched as Christabel roared and gestured like a woman possessed, denouncing injustices perpetrated against women and children by an uncaring patriarchy. Women must have the vote and they were willing to fight for it. Her words electrified the crowds and the press soon took to calling her the ‘Queen of the Mob’.

  From that moment Una Dugdale became a willing member of that mob,12 and she was but one of a growing number. On 4 February, under the banner of Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, more than 3,000 women marched in the cold, wet streets of London. More than forty disparate organisations representing factory workers, titled women, academics and temperance activists, came together to demand a place for women at the ballot box. In unremitting drizzle, under the persistent tramp of their boots, the ground turned to sludge. As Millicent Fawcett later recalled: ‘The London weather did its worst against us; mud, mud, mud was its prominent feature.’ The protest became known as the Mud March. For the first time the men in power heard a cohesive female voice demanding the right to decide how they should be governed. It was an echo of the cry Sophia had heard so frequently in India from the likes of Lajpat Rai and Gokhale.

  Just nine days later, Emmeline Pankhurst led a charge on Westminster itself. On 13 February, the Women’s Society for Social and Political Union convened the first ever ‘Women’s Parliament’ in Caxton Hall near St James’s Park. They then marched on the Houses of Parliament with the intention of handing in a petition to the politicians sitting inside the chamber. When they reached the gates, however, the women were told to disperse with immediate effect and police on horseback were sent charging into the crowd. Scuffles broke out and more than fifty suffragettes were arrested. The heavy-handed police reaction succeeded in galvanising the WSPU. Emmeline Pankhurst declared that the time for talking was over and that ‘Deeds not Words’ would change history.

  When Sophia’s path crossed with Una Dugdale in 1908, the latter was already a prominent member of the WSPU. (Dugdale would later become the first woman in England to refuse to use the word ‘obey’ in her wedding vows.) They met at a social event held at the Dugdale family home.13 Since Una hailed from one of the wealthier families in Warwickshire and, like Sophia, regularly travelled around the country for ‘the season’, it was surprising that the two women had not met before. No record of Sophia’s feelings on that day survive, and it is only thanks to the meticulous record-keeping of another leading suffragette, Mary Blathwayt, that we know Sophia was captivated by Una’s passion.14 When Una spoke of the WSPU, her lilting voice grew high-pitched and animated. She rolled her Rs like an actor relating a soliloquy in the spotlight of a major theatre.15 To the softly spoken princess, Una seemed wildly exciting, as did her colourful descriptions of suffragist skirmishes with police. Sophia signed up as a member of the WSPU that very afternoon, pledging a lifetime commitment to the cause of women’s rights. In the absence of Catherine, Bamba and Eddie, very quickly the WSPU became Sophia’s new family.

  Had she not become obsessed with the suffragettes in 1909, Sophia might have ended up with a more conventional family of her own. That same year, she received a desperate letter from one of her Raja Sansi cousins in Punjab. Gurdit Singh had recently lost his wife and wrote begging Sophia for help, telling her that he had two sons, aged fifteen and ten, and one daughter aged five who needed the love of a mother and the prospect of a decent future, neither of which he felt he could provide. Gurdit Singh reminded the princess of the hardships his family had endured for her father’s sake. His English may have been strained but his message was clear: ‘The calamities and troubles which I faced during my life are too many . . . I am unable to support and educate my children. Therefore I must respectfully and humbly request and pray for so benign affectionate cousin that is you, that you like to keep with you one of my three children in England.’16

  Gurdit Singh’s desperation caused him to ramble in the letter, sometimes he begged Sophia to keep one of his children, sometimes just the boys and sometimes all three. He wanted them to receive a good education so that their life might be easier than his own. He had reason to hope for a positive response, for two years before, Sophia had put the idea into his head herself: ‘I will be more than happy to have either of your sons . . . I cannot speak Urdu or Punjabi, so he will have to learn to speak English . . . of course you realise that having anything to do with us, will not gain him any high posts in India, in fact it will probably do the opposite thing, as the government are not fond of us.’17

  In other letters Gurdit
Singh, referring to himself as her ‘unfortunate cousin’, confessed to Sophia that hardship was driving him to very dark thoughts: ‘I consider it will be better if god give me an early death, because I do not like to alive further in the separation of my so beloved wife. It is too much sorrow for me . . . Kindly excuse me that I repeatedly trouble you, because I am assured that there is no anyone else to sympathise with me besides you in this transitory world. Your this kindness I will never forget as long as we live in this world. I shall ever pray for your long life and prosperity.’18

  Sophia now had the chance of becoming an adoptive mother to three children who were her own flesh and blood. But the opportunity, which once she might have leapt at, had come too late. Sophia had already committed herself. She wrote back to her cousin declining the offer but promising to send whatever money she could whenever she could.

  Sophia was just finding her feet within the women’s suffrage movement when, in February 1909, her sister Catherine proposed a visit from Germany. The two of them had not seen each other for months and Sophia hoped to take Catherine to watch the state opening of Parliament. Her respect for politicians had grown since she had seen some of them fighting for the rights of her mentor Lajpat Rai, and been shaken again thanks to the denouncements of the suffragettes, who accused them of maliciously denying women the vote. She wanted to see them with her own eyes and to have Catherine’s considered opinion.