BENGALURU: If you haven't heard of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, then you're certainly not alone. Yet reading about her, it seems almost unbelievable that the granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, 'the Lion of the Punjab', who was born in Victorian London and lived through both world wars, has managed to evade the history books so successfully. Not least because her incredibly rich life brought her into contact with some of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' best-known figures - from Queen Victoria to Emmeline Pankhurst via Winston Churchill, Lajpat Rai and Gandhi.
Anita Anand's comprehensive 400-page biography seeks to address this omission, and with its meticulous research yet complete readability, it will be surprising if Sophia doesn't catapult its vivacious subject into the public consciousness, both here and in the UK. The work is fully footnoted, making it as useful for the academic reader as it is fascinating for the layperson. Anand's sources span the proceedings of the House of Commons, to letters written by Sophia to her family and friends, census data, newspaper cuttings and receipts, and Sophia's diary. Many of the delightful personal touches (such as her spending 'the sugar ration for an entire fortnight' on a birthday party for one of the evacuees lodged with her) come from the authors first-hand interviews with people who knew Sophia, including her goddaughter Drovna, who also passed on many of her mother's recollections of her time as Sophia's housekeeper.
The blurb promises a focus on Sophia's membership of Emmeline Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), but the book is actually far more wide ranging, giving the reader the broad historical, social and economic context needed to appreciate Sophia's circumstances. Beginning with the story of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's incredible rise to power, before his Sikh empire fell to the British in the reign of his young son, Sophia's father Maharaja Duleep Singh, Anand juxtaposes Sophia's birth in 1876 with Queen Victoria's coronation as 'Empress of India' just a few weeks before. The irony goes further - while the Empress agreed to act as godmother to the young Princess, in the same year she wore Ranjit Singh's famed Koh-I-Noor diamond to the state opening of parliament, 'a visible reminder of all Sophia's family had lost', in Anand's sharp analysis.
While the Victorian context is essential, the most interesting sections come with the development of Sophia's own social and political consciousness, gradually flourishing after her first trip to India in 1903, when she was in her twenties. Meeting Umrao Singh Sher-Gil brought her into contact with the ideas of the Theosophical Society, perhaps nudging her towards philanthropical work on her return to London. Her second trip to the subcontinent brought her into direct contact with Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lajpat Rai, and the latter's imprisonment (charged with sedition) seems to have been instrumental in her increasing disillusionment with the policies of the British Empire. This perhaps in part explains her changing mentality - as the bills from boutiques in Paris decline, her involvement with the WSPU flourishes.
Sophia's suffragette activities went beyond attending meetings, and collecting funds outside her Hampton Court home (which itself raised more than a few eyebrows), and extended into the very heart of the movement. Her almost celebrity status and considerable commitment to the cause persuaded Emmeline Pankhurst to make full use of her 'Princess'. Sophia was part of the famed Caxton House vanguard which marched to Parliament to protest against the stalling of the Conciliation Bill in 1910, was called to court on numerous occasions for refusing to pay her taxes until universal women's suffrage was granted, and was chosen to manage the floral tributes when a memorial to Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in 1930. It seems fitting, then, that the woman who made her goddaughter promise to, 'never, ever fail to vote' will now be remembered for the significant contribution that she made to the cause of women's suffrage.