It’s Sophia Duleep Singh, omg…

I use this as a vegan food blog, but I needed to make an exception for World Book Day, Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. I want to tell you about an incredible woman I read about who I find endlessly inspiring. I cannot stress her significance enough, but I’ll try my best to keep it brief… Daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire in Punjab and his Christian missionary German/Ethiopian wife, she was an exiled princess who lived quite the aristocratic lifestyle in Britain. Though she experienced upheavals and family deaths in childhood and early adulthood, her godmother Queen Victoria granted her an allowance and a free apartment. She was an It-Girl of her time who enjoyed high fashion, dog breeding, parties and chain smoking expensive cigarettes.

This was until the early 1900s when she left England with her sisters, against orders of the British government. It was then she witnessed the contrast of extreme poverty and wealth of the people living in colonised India. She developed links with Indian Nationalists and returned to Britain with an altered attitude. She realised being a fashionable socialite was empty and unfulfilling, so became involved in radical social change movements, primarily the Suffragettes, using her public status to draw attention.

Attending the notorious Black Friday protest in 1910, she stepped in when she saw a woman being brutally attacked by a policeman. She took it upon herself to relentlessly write letters seeking justice for this incident to the Home Office, which eventually even pissed off Winston Churchill who marked the file “send no further reply to her”. She ran out in front of the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith‘s car with a “Give Women the Vote” banner. She consistently refused to pay her taxes, as a member of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and in court was bold enough to demand recognition as a citizen with a voting right before she would ever pay them. Bailiffs auctioned off her jewellery… which fellow Suffragettes bought and gave back to her.    

There is so much to say about this defiant and dedicated woman who went on to become the leader of the Suffragette Fellowship after Emmeline Pankhurst’s death, yet she is largely unheard of. Not to mention her work as a nurse during World War I and her role in the independence of India. She devoted her entire life to the advancement of women. A freedom fighting woman of colour in early 1900s Britain… can you even imagine? She lived long enough to see through everything she fought for.

I find it incredulous and hugely sad that I only heard about her six months ago, just after the Suffragette film was released. Although important and long overdue, it does not make any sense to me how a film about inequality could completely exclude non-white women. I was moved to tears many times when reading Anita Anand’s book (links below). Tears of relief for learning of a bad ass European/Indian feminist, tears at the tragedies throughout her life, and tears of frustration that she had been excluded from my history classes and denied a voice. I would absolutely recommend this book, as it goes into fascinating detail on the colonisation of India, how witnessing social injustice affected her, being a mixed race woman in Britian, her many awe-inspiring achievements and why records tried to suppress any trace of her. As a British Indian woman, reading about her life resonated with me, and she should never be allowed to slip into obscurity. In many Asian cultures it is still frowned upon for a woman to fully speak her mind. She is the kind of cultural icon we need, and thanks to Anita, we finally have her. If a Punjabi princess followed her heart and questioned society 100 years ago, then we certainly can today.

To me, she truly is punk as fuck and the most original riot grrrl… SOPHIA DULEEP SINGH (8^th August 1876 – 22^nd August 1948).

 

The book: Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary – Anita Anand

Short podcasts on her life: Part 1 and Part 2

BBC short documentary: Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary presented by Anita Anand