Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

by Anand, Anita

  The journey home was a struggle for Bamba. It was June and every berth on every ship seemed to be taken up by the hordes travelling to England for the upcoming coronation of King Edward VII. There were even reports of crew members illegally renting out their own bunk space. Once Bamba secured passage, the crowded, week-long voyage was tense and depressing. She had had to listen to the excited chatter of passengers talking about a royal family she despised. Her avenues of escape from England were closing one by one, and she longed, more than ever before, to get to India and make a life for herself there. It may have felt as though she was asking for a ticket to the moon, but within a matter of months her dream would become a reality.

  9

  The Cubs Come Home

  After Bamba’s doomed American adventure, and her unceremonious return to London in late June 1902, the days seemed painfully long for Sophia. She had attempted to make Faraday as welcoming as possible for her dejected sister, ensuring that her room was beautifully furnished and the house was stocked with all the things Bamba liked. Catherine too had rallied for her sister’s sake: returning to England from Germany, she moved temporarily into the dog-ridden home she hated. As always, in times of emotional hardship the princesses enveloped each other, hoping that their mutual love would heal whatever wound had been inflicted.

  Despite their best efforts, Bamba’s mood only continued to darken. She loathed the idea of being back in the house that the Queen Empress had given them. Bamba found fault with the neighbours, the accommodation, the weather, and the meaningless social engagements which, in her opinion, cluttered Sophia’s life. She spent her days picking fights with everyone, from the household staff to the Lord Chamberlain himself. When she discovered that the sisters were not to be given their own royal pew in the chapel at Hampton Court, Bamba fired off a volley of complaints and refused to attend services until the situation was rectified. As always, her belligerent ways became the source of gossip, and the more the residents of Hampton Court talked about her behind her back, the worse her behaviour became. The situation put a considerable strain on Sophia’s own carefully cultivated relationships within the palace community.

  Like her older sister, Catherine too was listless at Faraday House. Apart from Sophia’s dogs and tobacco, which vexed her constantly, she longed to return to Miss Schaeffer and Germany. It became evident that Sophia would have to do something to lift both her sisters’ spirits, but she had no idea what. Bamba talked incessantly of her desire to go and live in the Punjab, leaving Sophia feeling both powerless and nonplussed. Quite apart from the practical difficulties of returning to their homeland, Sophia had little empathy or understanding of India.

  Only the trip they had taken together as far as Ceylon provided any optimism. They had behaved so well, and the Secretary of State for India had been untroubled by communications about them. Their only hope was that one day the Duleep Singh princesses might be rewarded for their invisibility. The prospect of waiting years, however, for the travel ban to be lifted was almost too much for Bamba to bear.

  Had anyone known that during this time Bamba had somehow got hold of a gun, and kept it loaded in her bedside table, they would have had a deeper sense of her crisis. Then, as luck would have it, the British Crown inadvertently gave Sophia and Catherine a chance to save their sister.

  On 9 August, only weeks after Bamba’s return, Edward VII was to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, becoming simultaneously ‘King of Great Britain and Ireland and all the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and the Emperor of India’. The country had been waiting for the announcement of the coronation for weeks. It had been planned for June, but an acute attack of appendicitis meant emergency surgery for Edward, leaving him bedridden for weeks and setting celebrations back by almost two months. With a sense of growing impatience Britain and her empire waited for their new king to take his place on the throne. In London a spectacular coronation was planned, to which Sophia and Frederick were invited, seated with senior royalty and aristocracy in the choir stalls of Westminster Abbey. Thousands of miles away, representatives of the Raj were also keen to make the most of Edward’s succession. The Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, 1st Marquess of Kedleston, had planned an extraordinary celebration in order to unveil Victoria’s son to his Eastern Empire. The world would never have seen a show like it before.

  Curzon commandeered vast tracts of land outside the north Indian city of Delhi. These were cleared of inhabitants, flattened, and in a matter of months a magnificent tent city was erected. It stretched for miles across the dusty plains. Thanks to an excellent civil administration, British engineering ingenuity and the vast Indian workforce at Curzon’s disposal, he was able to give the former scrubland its own telegraph system, light railway, shops, hospital, magistrates’ court, electricity grid and complex drainage system. To the inhabitants of Delhi it seemed as if a whole new civilisation had sprung up overnight. In contrast to the sprawl of the old walled city, Curzon’s creation was orderly, clean, and shimmered white in the intense Indian sunlight.

  The Viceroy billed his royal celebration ‘The Delhi Durbar’, a nod to the historical Mughal courts which had controlled most of the Indian subcontinent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As reports of the elaborate preparations reached England, important families scrambled to get tickets for the event. More than 150,000 people were expected to attend, and Catherine, Bamba and Sophia itched to join them.

  Curzon’s coronation city was divided into quadrants, or ‘camps’, to accommodate numerous Indian kingdoms and principalities, as well as British dignitaries and government officers of the Raj. The corralling of so many Indian potentates in one place, at one time, was unprecedented. Even before the Coronation Park was completed, flunkeys buzzed about the site with measuring tapes and maps, tasked by their royal masters to ensure that no reigning chief received preferential treatment. Petty squabbles were frequent and had to be mediated by the durbar committee, a group of overworked British civil servants whose job it was to mollify, contain, and if necessary cajole, rival Indian royals to be more reasonable. As well as dealing with their demands, the office also had to sort through and accommodate sacks of invitation requests and replies from England every day.

  The cost of constructing the temporary durbar accommodation alone was over a quarter of a million pounds (the equivalent of almost £25 million today1). This did not include the considerable fortune spent by Indian royals themselves. They competed to make their quarters more luxurious than their rivals, hauling in expensive silk canopies, statues and jewelled ornaments to decorate their camps. One Maharajah even insisted on installing a complicated ornate fountain which was somehow plumbed in, despite being in the midst of a dust bowl. Each area was uniquely styled to represent the region of its royal. While crossing from one end of the camp to the other, with the changing languages, styles of dress and smells of regional cooking, it felt like traversing India itself.

  Although money seemed to be no object, India could ill afford such expenditure for such fleeting festivity. A devastating famine between 1896 and 1897 had caused a human and financial catastrophe. Crops perished because of the lack of rain, and starvation and disease ravaged the country. The British-controlled dominions of the United Provinces, the Bombay Presidency, Madras, Bihar and the Central Provinces had been brought to their knees. Bubonic plague, malaria and cholera swept through cities, towns and villages, leaving populations decimated.2

  Barely had India begun to recover when a second famine hit in 1899. Poor monsoon rains resulted in harvests failing completely; millions of heads of livestock died in fields of dust. Without the bullocks there was no way the farmers could till their land; and milk ran dangerously short for already undernourished children. Wave upon wave of disease hit the survivors. The Lancet estimated that around 19 million people died of famine-related deaths between 1896 and 1902.

  The Viceroy was well aware of the problems. He had personally visited the worst-hit areas. Curzon, however, felt he
had more pressing concerns than the daily death tolls. Politics in India was changing rapidly, and it threatened the very existence of the Raj. Even moderate Indians were demanding radical reform and greater participation in government. Political leaders such as the Punjabi nationalist, Lala Lajpat Rai, advocated a boycott of British goods and institutions. More ominously for Curzon, other firebrand leaders, including Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, were calling for direct action. These men were rousing India’s youth to rise up and violently overthrow the British.

  Curzon knew how outnumbered the British were and felt compelled to remind Indians just who was in charge. The durbar was a very visual way to make his point. As his grand finale, Curzon planned to have every one of India’s rulers bow down before their British King Emperor. The symbolism would be unmistakable and lasting.

  There was just one problem with Curzon’s masterful idea. The very man he wished to honour, King Edward VII, refused point blank to travel to India. Some speculated that his health remained precarious after his appendectomy; others suggested, less kindly, that the former playboy prince simply could not be bothered with such tiresome duties of state. Whatever his reasons, the new king delegated the visit to his younger brother, the Duke of Connaught. Lord Curzon refused to scale back his ambition just because he was missing a king emperor.

  Like many in their social circle, Sophia, Bamba and Catherine applied weeks in advance for durbar passes, and initially their requests were ignored. A squabble ensued with the India Office about ‘misplaced’ paperwork and the three sisters bombarded the Secretary of State, the India Office and the durbar committee with complaints. If they were to be refused permission to travel, the Duleep Singh princesses demanded to know, in writing, the reason for it. The India Office’s Political and Secret Department, responsible for intelligence and difficult diplomacy, suggested in internal communications that it might be wise to tell the princesses they had simply applied too late to be accommodated. It was hoped the tortuous process of British bureaucracy might put them off. Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, wrote personally to the princesses informing them that due to lack of time it would be ‘impossible to provide suitable accommodation for them or to arrange for their proper reception’.3 Hoping that they might be discouraged by the polite rebuff, ‘his Lordship strongly urges the postponement of the visit’.4

  Far from being despondent, Sophia, Catherine and Bamba were jubilant. The very fact that the Secretary of State had accepted that the sisters could travel to India at a more convenient, later date, meant that they were no longer banned from the country. Unlike Victor and Freddie, who had not even bothered to apply for durbar passes, the Duleep Singh women were free to visit their homeland. The timing of the visit seemed to be the only thing up for debate. In a risky strategy, and perhaps calculating that all government departments were too severely stretched to notice them, the sisters opted to ignore Lord Hamilton’s advice and booked passage on a ship to India. They needed to move quickly, just in case the Secretary of State decided to issue further missives.

  Since no record of their booking can be found on ships’ manifests, it is possible that the princesses travelled under aliases. Bamba and Catherine ventured out first, and Sophia followed soon after on another ship, accompanied by her faithful Faraday housekeeper Margaret Mayes. When they reached Delhi, the princesses found that their durbar ‘home camp’ was indeed closed to them. The heirs of the greatest ruler of Punjab could not find a corner of canvas to sleep beneath. Nevertheless the name Ranjit Singh still carried enormous weight, and thanks to the nostalgic respect of others, the women were discreetly absorbed into accommodation far away from royal enclosures.

  As a curtain-raiser to his durbar, on 29 December 1902, Lord Curzon, in full vice-regal splendour, led a glittering parade through the streets of the old Mughal capital. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught rode at his side, and fifty of the most notable Indian kings and princes followed, seated on elephants in howdahs made of silver. Studded with precious jewels and heavy in their gold, they caught the light like a sparkling stream, meandering to the pounding sound of military marching bands. The procession took hours to snake its way through the city and signalled the start of two days of garden parties, polo matches and balls. All were designed to build anticipation for the durbar itself, due to take place on 1 January 1903.

  From first light on New Year’s Day the streets and rooftops of Delhi were crammed with spectators, anxious to see all they could. Most were not allowed near the durbar site itself, since those spaces were reserved only for the richest and most powerful guests. Provision had been made for 10,000 in the specially constructed amphitheatre at the edge of the tent city. Tens of thousands more who did not get a space in the enclosure were forced to stand on the plains beneath a rocky ridge, the sun beating down upon their heads. Some 34,000 troops took their places in what seemed like an endless patchwork of uniformed strength, stretching as far as the eye could see. Among them were more than 300 British and sepoy veterans of the 1857 Mutiny; white-haired and bent with age, they marched forward to the tunes of ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’. ‘It was a sight which moved many spectators to tears,’ the English newspapers said, ‘especially those whose memories could carry them back to the great struggle which decided the fate of the Empire.’5

  As more than a thousand musicians from various regimental bands struck up, the Viceroy, the Duke of Connaught, and a selection of the most important dignitaries took their places. Curzon cleared his throat and read the royal proclamation, declaring the absent King ‘Supreme Ruler of All India’. The valley shook with the pounding of gun salutes as more than a hundred of India’s maharajahs, rajahs and nawabs, as well as the chiefs from almost all the princely states, approached the King’s proxy and bowed before him. The ceremony took so long that shadows were lengthening by the time the last of them got to pledge their loyalty. Then, with the sun setting, British and Indian voices joined together in a crescendo of ‘God Save the King’.

  Festivities lasted a further eight days, with numerous fairs and banquets. Sophia and her sisters were not invited to any of them and the experience of being snubbed, on top of seeing other Indian potentates still in possession of their lands, titles and wealth, wounded all of Duleep’s daughters. They consoled themselves in the fact that the durbar had never been the main aim of their visit. They had come to see the Sikh kingdom, and they had come to find Bamba a home.

  The sisters made their way north to Lahore, their father’s former capital, while the rest of India continued to revel in Delhi. As they travelled, and even though they were attempting to keep a low profile, they found the country still rang with stories of the Lion, Ranjit Singh. Those who stumbled upon their identity fell at their feet, remembering the day when their father was thrown out of his kingdom, and Jindan was dragged away screaming. With the echoes of her ancestors ringing in her ears, Sophia finally reached Lahore and saw a city that neither her grandfather nor her father would have recognised. Amidst the minarets, temples and palm trees, there were now Victorian clock towers, grand European churches and numerous British barracks. Sombre European Gothic architecture filled spaces between the colourfully inlaid Mughal city gates, its solid grey a stark contrast to the teeming streets below.

  New Lahore was bisected by a recently constructed road, named ‘The Mall’,6 after the approach to Buckingham Palace. As her eyes adjusted to the throbbing human sea, Sophia looked upon the newest monument to rise up from the dirt. Only months before, an imposing new statue in honour of her godmother had been unveiled in middle of the city; under a vast white stone cupola sat a gleaming, bronze Queen Victoria.7 In one hand, she held the orb representing her global dominion and across her lap, the sceptre of power. There were no statues of Sophia’s father to be seen anywhere.

  As unhappy as the British were at the princesses’ presence in Punjab, there was very little either the Viceroy or the Secretary of St
ate could do about it, short of arresting them, and that would mar Anglo-Indian relations at a time when Curzon was fighting so hard to redefine them. The Duleep Singh women were scrupulously careful to adhere to the rules, denying anyone the opportunity to detain them. Instead the authorities decided to make things as awkward as possible. Sophia, Catherine and Bamba were openly shunned by senior British officials and were denied diplomatic support, normally extended to British subjects of rank. It was usual for senior officials to open their doors to travelling dignitaries, throwing parties for them and escorting them to see the sights; however no such courtesy was offered to the Duleep Singhs. They were on their own and the gesture was designed to humiliate.8

  The impact of their slight was offset somewhat by the enthusiasm of the Punjab chiefs, aristocratic Sikhs with lineages inextricably tangled with those of Ranjit Singh. One of the first to take the sisters into his protection was Sardar Gurcharan Singh, a distant relative of their father. He would become a close friend to Sophia and Bamba and would attempt to steer them away from political controversy. Even though Sophia and her sisters spoke no Indian language, and had manners and dress which seemed outlandishly European to many of the elders, they were welcomed as daughters into the homes of complete strangers. For the first time in her life, the colour of Sophia’s skin made her part of a majority, and not the visible outsider.

  Also keen to open his doors to the sisters was Harnam Singh, uncle of the Maharajah of Kapurthala, a princely state which had remained loyal to the British ever since the first Anglo-Sikh War. Harnam Singh’s family were great favourites of the British. They had sent troops to support the Raj during the Mutiny and had been richly rewarded for their service. Harnam Singh’s use of the word ‘mutiny’ to describe the events of 1857 enraged many Punjabis, who preferred to call it ‘the first war of Indian Independence’. Punjab was riven by its perception of history and although fifty years had passed since the bloodshed, differences in opinion continued to divide families as well as the communities they lived in. Some felt the British had brought order and continuity to the region while others believed they had been made slaves in their own country. Despite his controversial views, Sophia was charmed by Harnam Singh’s refinement and courtesy. His nephew, the Maharajah, had visited her exiled father in Paris at a time when nobody else wanted to know him. Bamba, on the other hand, rarely let her guard down in his presence.