Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  His plan came to him in a dream. He would do nothing. More accurately, Gandhi would encourage the whole of India to do nothing with him. Under Rowlatt strikes were illegal, so instead Gandhi called for a day of national prayer on 7 April 1919. Shopkeepers, factory workers, office clerks, teachers, students and civil servants were encouraged to stay at home and spend their time ‘meditating and fasting’. It was to be a day of spiritual cleansing.

  At first the British did not take Gandhi seriously, but when the day itself dawned, the whole country was blanketed by an unearthly silence. Streets were empty, shops were closed and factory gates remained locked. The railway and telegraph systems snarled up and froze as operators, coal shifters, coolies, engineers and guards stayed away. For twenty-four hours the Raj was thrown into paralysed chaos. For the first time, one man had united the nation in a coordinated act of resistance and shown the British how tenuous their hold on a country of more than 250 million people could be.

  A scattering of violent incidents marred Gandhi’s wholesale triumph. The most serious of these occurred in Punjab’s Amritsar, where youths chose to mark the day with a march that ended in brutal clashes with the police. The Punjab government, terrified of the spread of lawlessness, responded ferociously with baton charges and gunfire, while the courts put the main cities in lockdown. Duleep Singh’s old kingdom was simmering once again.

  The boiling point came when two of Punjab’s leading nationalists, Dr Saif-ud-Din Kitchlew, a Cambridge-educated Muslim lawyer, and Dr Satyapal, a middle-class Hindu who had held the King’s commission during the Great War, were invited to meet with the deputy commissioner, Miles Irving, about an edict banning them from speaking in public. The two men were keen to reverse the decision and so entered Irving’s home prepared for a legal showdown. To their shock, almost as soon as they set foot inside, they were arrested and spirited away for immediate deportation to Nepal. Their friends, who had been asked to wait on the veranda outside, had no idea why the meeting was taking so long. It was only when a British officer came and told them to leave without Satyapal and Kitchlew that the truth became known.

  The streets erupted in fury as news of the betrayal and subsequent arrests spread. Crowds gathered, screaming ‘Habeas corpus’ at the British soldiers who nervously held them back, trying to stop them from marching on Irving’s home. At one particular standoff, on a railway footbridge in the middle of the city, crowds surged forward and soldiers opened fire. A handful of people were shot and killed. Word went out that the British were now firing on unarmed men. Mobs of Indian vigilantes armed with long sticks began to target the Angrez (English) wherever they could find them. A terrified bank manager who greeted an angry group with gunshots was subsequently battered to death, his body burnt with his office furniture. Post offices, railway stations and offices were set alight; soldiers responded with more bullets and more killing. Rumours were being fanned along with the flames. It was said a British female doctor had laughed in the desperate faces of Indians bleeding to death from bullet wounds inflicted at the bridge.

  Hoping to punish her for her heartlessness, a mob found a missionary school teacher instead and mistaking her for the doctor, dragged the young woman from her bicycle and beat her savagely, leaving her for dead in the dirt. When later the assailants found out she had in fact survived, crawling into a neighbourhood house on her hands and knees, they returned to finish her off. It was only thanks to the courage and quick thinking of a local Indian woman that the missionary survived, hiding in her house with her benefactor’s young children, while the mob was directed elsewhere. After two days of lawlessness, when it became clear that nothing could be done to get the nationalist leaders back from Nepal, the rage on the streets seemed to subside into miserable resignation. The British, however, had been left shaken. Sir Michael Francis O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant General in the region, believed a short, sharp shock was needed to remind the people of Punjab who was in charge.

  On 13 April 1919, a large public meeting was called by nationalists in Amritsar’s Jallianwallah Bagh, to discuss the arrests of Satyapal and Kitchlew and hear from those who might take their place. Since the two men had been non-violent Gandhians, like most of their followers, no trouble was expected. Jallianwallah Bagh was an open area nestled between tall tenement buildings in the heart of the city. It lay just a short distance from the Golden Temple, the most holy shrine of the Sikhs. Then, as now, there was only one entrance to the Bagh. This alleyway is narrow enough to make it difficult for three people to walk through side by side. Emerging from the gloom, visitors are met by seven flat, open acres, disturbed only by the sight of a squat, wide well at its centre.

  Organisers had promised a peaceful meeting. All were invited and many drifted in and out during the course of the day. The atmosphere was convivial, lazy even. Though they knew they were breaking the recently enacted Rowlatt laws by meeting in such numbers, the Bagh was still filled with men, women and children and a cheery atmosphere prevailed. Their carefree attitude might have had something to do with Vaisakhi, the most joyous festival in Punjab’s calendar, a celebration of the spring harvest. In full swing, every street corner was taken by somebody trying to sell something to the tide of humanity passing by. Men with colourful turbans ladled great dollops of spiced chickpeas onto hot and oily flat breads. Swirls of sugary syrup bubbled in vats of oil. Smells and sounds writhed around each other as snake charmers filled the air with reedy music, and pedlars shouted loudly, jangling their rainbow-coloured glass bangles.

  By about half past three, around 15,000 people had crammed into the gardens. Some listened to the speeches, others stretched out and dozed; many read newspapers or simply had picnics with their loved ones. The open space made a pleasant change from the hectic streets outside. While they lazed, elsewhere in the city a column of men led by Amritsar’s martial law commander, Brigadier Reginald Dyer, was in a state of high alert. By 3.40 he was marching 150 men from the Gurkha regiment towards the Bagh. Two armoured cars mounted with heavy machine guns brought up the rear.

  At the street entrance to the gardens, Dyer ordered his men to drive the vehicles into the Bagh, but the alley was too narrow. Instead, rifles on their shoulders, the soldiers marched through in single file. Once through to the Bagh, Dyer ordered his men to quick-march into position, as far as they could stretch around the perimeter. People in the gardens looked on at the sudden activity in confusion. Expecting an imminent order to disperse, some started to pack up their picnic things. Those closest to the exit even tried to leave, but soldiers had blocked the only way out.

  Suddenly and without any warning, Dyer commanded his men to open fire on the thickest parts of the crowd. Gurkhas swivelled to follow swarms of terrified, screaming Indians as they ran for cover that did not exist. Women wailed for their children, and bodies began to pile up as families tried to shield one another from the hail of bullets. The firing lasted for between six and ten minutes; in all the soldiers fired over 1,500 rounds of ammunition, killing or wounding over 1,500 people.2 If he had been able to get them through to the gardens, Dyer later confirmed, he would have turned his machine guns on the unarmed civilians too.

  When the ringing silence eventually descended, the smell of cordite hung heavy over the Bagh like an acrid, choking veil. Curfew had already been called in the city, and nobody was allowed to remove bodies, or take the wounded for medical attention. People stayed where they fell, and remained there all night. Those who survived cradled the dying, comforting them as best they could, as the brown dust of Jallianwallah Bagh turned black with blood in the first shadows of the long night ahead.

  At dawn the sound of wailing filled the city and spread throughout Punjab like a torrent of pain. One hundred and twenty bodies were retrieved from the well alone. Estimates of fatalities have been hotly disputed. An official British investigation at the time put the figure at 379, but Indians insist that the figure is closer to a thousand dead. Dyer was unrepentant and at a formal enquiry following the mass
acre insisted that he had ‘done a jolly good thing’. The Lieutenant General of the Punjab also endorsed Dyer’s actions that day, describing them as ‘quite correct’ under the circumstances.

  While the authorities were attempting to teach the people of the Punjab a lesson, others were attempting to do the same to Sophia and her family. India had changed during the war years and a new breed of men had become the icons of the country. Nationalists took the places on pedestals vacated by rajahs and nawabs; they lived among the common people, spoke like them, and in Gandhi’s case, even dressed and ate like them.

  A telegram from the Viceroy to the Secretary of State of India in April 1919 reveals the official thinking about the Duleep Singh family at this time: ‘In Punjab Dhuleep Singh family is almost forgotten and generous treatment need not therefore be advocated on general political grounds. General policy is to make substantial reduction in political pensions on successions.’3 The idea of throwing Sophia out of Hampton Court had already been considered and dismissed, but she and the rest of the family could be financially squeezed instead.

  Frederick, the only male heir left in the Duleep Singh line, would continue to receive the stipend promised to him after his father’s death; Victor’s widow, however, saw her income slashed to the bone. Anne wrote to the India Office numerous times after her husband’s death, begging the bureaucrats to show some understanding: she was sinking under tax demands and her late husband’s gambling debts, but they refused to back down.

  Duleep’s second wife, Ada, who had once been the toast of Monte Carlo, was in an even more parlous state. In 1914 she had volunteered for the French Red Cross at Limoges and as part of the ambulance corps had tended to soldiers in the dressing stations behind the lines at Verdun, the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Ada returned to London in 1919, never wanting to see France again. With debts of over £17,000 and nowhere to call home, she was desperate.4 Freddie showed his stepmother great kindness, giving her money, sometimes anonymously, and the promise of a room at his home. However, Ada wanted independence, and showing the same pragmatic determination as the girl who had clawed her way out of Lambeth, she offered the India Office a deal. If they helped her get a small house, and perhaps a hat shop of her own, she would support herself and would not bother them for funds again.

  Ada’s daughter Pauline was also in financial trouble. Her husband had been killed among the clouds of poison gas at the battle of Loos in September 1915, and she had been left bereft.5 Pauline once again drifted towards Sophia for comfort and became a frequent guest at both her home and Freddie’s. Although Sophia was glad to help her half-sister, the truth was, she was not faring too well herself.

  At the end of the war, as the nation rejoiced and even though she had ensured Catherine’s safe passage out of Germany, Sophia was slipping into melancholia again. She needed companionship as well as something useful to do. Catherine was now back in Germany nursing Lina. The suffragettes only met occasionally and tales of their past triumphs did little to sustain her. From time to time the princess would invite Indian soldiers, barracked at Hampton Court, into her home, but the visits were merely temporary and fleeting diversions;6 the Indian soldiers soon went home to their own families, leaving Sophia to brood on her lack of one.

  Bamba was no help at all. She wrote less frequently and refused to discuss a return to England. As well as the volatile political situation in Punjab, which absorbed her completely, Bamba had another reason to stay. During the war, when Sophia was busy nursing soldiers in Brighton, Bamba had got married.7

  Her husband, Lieutenant Colonel David Waters Sutherland, was a professor of pathology at Lahore Medical College and a principal at the city’s prestigious King Edward College. Having served in the Indian Army, Sutherland had risen through the ranks to hold the position of Honorary Surgeon to the Viceroy of India.8 In the midst of the Great War, in 1915, and without warning, Bamba sent telegrams to her family letting them know she should now be addressed as ‘Princess Bamba Sutherland’. It was a typically dramatic and unpredictable announcement.

  The family was stunned, and no one more so than Sophia who had met Sutherland briefly in 1907. He had made so little impression on her then that she barely mentioned him in her diary. Everyone could see he had next to nothing in common with their sister, except perhaps a shared love of medicine, and even that common ground was problematic. Sutherland’s success was a constant reminder of Bamba’s failure in the field. As those close to her knew, the princess did not handle such reminders well. The most glaring obstacle to the marriage’s credibility was the fact that David was white. Bamba had only ever expressed a romantic attraction to Indian men and her disdain for English people made her wedding all the more implausible. The wedding ceremony, which nobody had been able to attend, had been perfunctory rather than joyous, not that Bamba seemed to mind. Her attitude added fuel to speculation that the relationship with Sutherland was less to do with love than money. According to the terms of their inheritance, both Catherine and Bamba stood to gain dowries of £10,000 upon their marriages.

  Real or not, her sister’s marriage threw Sophia’s own loneliness into even sharper focus. Now in her forties, she rattled about the large house at Hampton Court without anyone to share her life. Her beloved Joe was long dead and no other dog would ever replace him in the princess’s affections. There were no suitors to divert her, and friends were all busy rebuilding their own lives after the war. To add to her misery, the bills were mounting and she was struggling to make ends meet. The only brief respite came in August 1919, when Sophia had the opportunity to do one final, simultaneous service for the suffragettes and for India.

  In response to increasing unrest, the Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu and his Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, decided to frame a new Act of Parliament. They proposed a dual form of governance, or ‘dyarchy’, to appease the nationalists. It would allow around ten per cent of Indian men to vote for a newly created stratum of local government. Indian politicians could stand for these provincial bodies and have a say in issues such as health, education, sanitation and agriculture. However the Viceroy, and by extension the British, would still wield ultimate power in the important matters of state, such as policing, taxation, the military, foreign affairs and trade.

  As the Government of India Bill started its journey through the House of Commons, groups were invited to give evidence before a Parliamentary Joint Select Committee. One of the first to book passage to London was the Women’s Indian Association. The association had lobbied for equal rights since its creation two years before and was outraged that women had been entirely left out of the proposed new democratisation. Three were chosen to represent the interests of around 125 million Indian women as the men in Westminster shaped their law.

  One of them was Annie Besant, who at seventy-two had lost none of her vigour or conviction. She had been elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1917, and had become close to Gandhi, although they often clashed over his methods. Annie was an ardent constitutionalist, and disliked his ‘clever’ circumvention of the law. Their difference in opinion did not stop Annie from devoting her whole life to his cause of Indian Home Rule. She spoke at rallies, produced pamphlets and regularly wrote articles in her Theosophist magazines savaging the Raj. Just weeks before she set sail for London, Annie had been fighting the Madras government in the courts over its decision to seize her printing presses.

  By Annie’s side was Sarojini Naidu, who at forty was already regarded as a national treasure in India. Commonly known as Bharatya Kokila (‘The Nightingale of India’), her hugely popular poetry spoke of love and longing. Her politics in contrast was blistering and uncompromising. Sarojini was one of the youngest and brightest stars in the Congress movement, able to hold huge crowds in the palm of her hand. She had been a child prodigy, winning a place at university at the age of twelve. At sixteen, she had won scholarships to study first at King’s College, London, and later at Girton College, Cambridge, w
here she attended lectures and published volumes of poetry at the same time.

  Sarojini returned to India just as Bengal was being ripped apart by Curzon’s partition. She joined the nationalists and rose through the ranks at lightning speed. Not only was she a favourite disciple of Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate, she also became a close friend of an up-and-coming Congress politician, Jawaharlal Nehru. Her looks and personality were at odds with her formidable reputation. Girlish and giggly, Sarojini had a gift for cheekiness which charmed when it could easily have offended. While others genuflected before Gandhi, she teased him, poking fun at his prominent ears, and later would playfully call him her ‘Mickey Mouse’. The two would be devoted to one another all of their lives.

  Herabai Tata had neither the fame of Sarojini Naidu nor the reputation of Annie Besant; however as honorary secretary of the Women’s Indian Association in Bombay, she was one of the most powerful people in India’s women’s movement. She came from a family of wealthy industrialists, and was, thanks to Sophia Duleep Singh, the only one of the three who would proudly describe herself as a suffragette.

  Born in 1879, Herabai had been married off at sixteen, became pregnant immediately and had her first child a year later. It was not until Herabai met Sophia, on holiday in Kashmir in 1911, that she became political. Her daughter, Mithun Lam, who was just thirteen at the time, recalled the women’s first meeting. At first it was something Sophia was wearing that piqued her interest: ‘She always wore a small green, white and yellow badge with “Votes for Women” inscribed on it. Naturally, my mother’s attention was drawn to it, and as we got friendly, she informed us that she was a member of the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom . . . Thus her talks with Princess Sophie [sic] and the literature she sent immediately aroused my mother’s interest.’9 This was the year that Sophia had thrown herself at the prime minister’s car as it exited Downing Street, spoiled her census form and appeared in court charged with the non-payment of taxes. With her evangelical zeal, the princess managed to cast a spell on them both. After meeting her, Herabai and Mithun devoted their lives to getting Indian women the vote.