Suffragette Indian Princess with plaque from English Heritage
A blue plaque honoring an Indian suffragette princess was unveiled at her former London home.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of the last ruler of the Sikh Empire, goddaughter of Queen Victoria and campaigner for women’s suffrage, was celebrated by English Heritage at Faraday House in Hampton Court.
A member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant group led by Emmeline Pankhurst, she used her status and wealth as a member of the Punjabi royal family to campaign for gender equality.
Guests at the ceremony included film director Gurinder Chadha, actress Meera Syal, Professor Helen Pankhurst and Lord Singh.
Anita Anand, author of ‘Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary’, told the PA news agency: ‘We owe Sophia a great debt of gratitude because without her courage and the courage of women like her, it cannot be expected that we will would do.” have the right to vote in this country.
“She was one of those bloodthirsty women who never do what they’re supposed to do.
Ms Anand added: “Women’s story falls through the cracks and black women fall through it.
“Her strength should not be forgotten, and it is only right that we see her on a plaque so that young girls as they walk by can ask, ‘Who was she?'”
Sophia lived with her sisters Bamba and Catherine at Faraday House, a residence of grace and favor granted to her by Victoria in 1896.
Her early childhood in Suffolk was turbulent: her father, Maharaja Duleep Singh, left his young family to live in Paris, and her mother, Bamba Muller, suffered from alcoholism.
In their parents’ absence, the sisters were raised in Folkestone and Brighton by their guardian Arthur Craigie Oliphant and his family before moving to Faraday House as adults.
WSPU member Una Dugdale persuaded Sophia to join the union in 1908 and from 1909 she was active in the Richmond and Kingston-upon-Thames district branches of the suffragette organisation.
Sophia sold copies of The Suffragette newspaper from her parking space outside Hampton Court Palace and once threw a suffragette poster that read “Give women the right to vote!” at Herbert Asquith’s car at the State Opening of Parliament in 1911.
A member of the Women’s Tax Reform League (WTRL), a movement that refused to pay various taxes, insurance, and royalties under the slogan “No Vote, No Tax,” Sophia has been summoned to court and fined several times because she abstained from personal licenses for jewellery, dogs and a carriage.
Sophia attended “Black Friday” on November 18, 1910, when more than 300 suffragettes marched from Caxton Hall to Parliament Square demanding a visit to the Prime Minister.
The demonstration erupted in violence when the Prime Minister refused to see the suffragettes and police attacked the women who refused to leave.
together with dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and wife Pankhurst, Sophia resisted police during the fighting and even saved a woman from an officer.
In addition to campaigning for women’s suffrage, she also supported the Indian Women’s Education Association in London.
She volunteered during both World Wars, nursed Indian soldiers during World War I, and housed evacuees during World War II.
In 1915 she was one of 10,000 women who took part in the Women’s War Labor Procession led by Mrs. Pankhurst.
On her death in 1948, she survived her goddaughter Drovna, to whom she solemnly vowed to always vote as an adult.
A film partly based on her life, Lioness, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/environment/meera-syal-english-heritage-gurinder-chadha-victoria-sikh-b1084078.html Suffragette Indian Princess with plaque from English Heritage
