Spy Princess

by Shrabani Basu

  Another colleague at the time, Dorothy Ryman, remembered Noor as someone who always had a smile or a pleasant word for others, despite the hard knocks they had to take while training and the tedious nature of the job. Once a week the women had to stay in their rooms for special cleaning sessions, darning their grey cotton socks and bringing their uniforms up to scratch for the kit inspection. It was usually accompanied by a chat around the stove and a cup of hot cocoa before lights out at 10.30 p.m.

  In April 1941 Noor was sent to No. 929, Balloon Squadron, Forth and Medhill, for further signal training. One of her close friends was Joan Clifton and on 10 June 1941 the two women were posted together to HQ No. 6 Group, RAF Bomber Command at Abingdon. Noor was now promoted to Aircraftswoman 1st Class. The station at Abingdon was an advanced training centre for bombers and Noor and Joan were often on duty together working side by side with the men transmitting and receiving messages. The work was very technical but Noor soon mastered it, proving herself far better than many of the men. She was always ready to help others and most people liked the shy young Indian woman.

  Another colleague, Nora Wenman, remembered Noor as an efficient operator. She remembered that her Morse key seemed to have a wide gap and there was a loud ‘clackety-clack’ sound as she used it. Her colleagues used to call her ‘Bang Away Lulu’ because of the sound, but Noor would simply smile at their teasing.7

  After nearly ten months with the WAAF, Noor had adjusted to the working environment. The fact that the people around her knew nothing about her and her family background came as something of a welcome break. Noor did not want to appear exotic to them and was determined to find her own identity. She never spoke to her colleagues about her father, or her ancestry, or the Sufi faith. She remained Nora Inayat Khan to them and attended regular church service, since her religion was registered as Church of England. In Suresnes and in the Sufi circle, she had always been known as Hazrat Inayat Khan’s daughter. She had made small beginnings in Paris in establishing her own identity as a writer. Now Noor had to reinvent herself among people who did not know her at all.

  In many ways the anonymity of being a number was welcome to her. Back in Paris, the Sufi brotherhood could be oppressive. They constantly supervised the lives of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s children and set the code of conduct for them. Noor’s friend Jean Overton Fuller got the feeling that when it came to the Inayat Khan children and the Sufis ‘there was a lot to look up to, but a lot to get away from.’8 In the cramped rooms of the hostel of the WAAF, Noor felt a sense of freedom and purpose and felt she could breathe again.

  Noor’s friendship with Joan sustained her when the regimental life began to tire her. For some time Joan and Noor shared a room in a large house outside Oxford at Boar’s Hill, which had been taken over by the WAAF. They made the most of their posting and decorated their tiny room with posters and knick-knacks. The women also rented a radio as both enjoyed listening to music. They bought old bicycles to ride to work and cycled through the countryside, sometimes singing together on the way back. Often they would cycle to Oxford, where Amina Begum lived and worked in a hospital. When they had a 30-hour break, they would hitch-hike to London and enjoy a day out. Joan remembered Noor as a happy young woman who was always smiling, but she was acutely aware that Noor missed her home and her life in France.9 It was obvious to Joan that she was very attached to her family and spent most of her time fretting about her mother and her sister and brothers.

  Neither of the young women particularly enjoyed the regimental aspect of service life, but they made the most of it. Noor would tell Joan that once the war was over she would get married and have lots of children and resume her writing career. While the training at Abingdon threw up new experiences for Noor, the everyday aspect of service life did not appeal to her. She was no good at drill, had no coordination between her hands and feet and was often clumsy.

  At Abingdon her colleagues remembered her for being completely selfless and always willing to help. The hours at Abingdon were long. They worked in shifts – maintaining contact with the planes which were on training flights – from 4.30 p.m. to midnight, then again from 8.00 a.m. next day to 4.30 in the afternoon and then again the next day from midnight to 8.00 a.m. The shifts were done by two pairs of operators, one pair sleeping while the other pair kept watch. Noor, who was already an accomplished operator and far ahead of the others, would help them. F.R. Archer, a young aircraftsman, remembered how Noor would often volunteer to forgo her sleep to help others even though she was exhausted herself.10

  Meanwhile back in London, Vilayat had discovered to his dismay that his eyesight was weak and did not fit the requirements for the RAF. He applied now to the Navy instead and was asked to study for an examination in navigation. He continued to live in London in a small room in Premier House, 150 Southampton Row in Bloomsbury and barely managed to make ends meet. Noor would come to see him whenever she managed to get an overnight pass. She would sleep on the bed while Vilayat slept on the balcony. Noor would inevitably try to tidy up Vilayat’s tiny room when she was there. Brother and sister remained very close. Sometimes they would go to see a film in London or visit the zoo. Here Vilayat compared Noor to a deer, saying, ‘Tipu Sultan was a tiger, my father was a lion, I am a gargoyle and Noor – Noor is a deer.’11

  Claire had begun to study medicine in Edinburgh, and the family scrimped and scraped to pay her fees. Noor was always concerned about her mother and worried about her health. She felt that hospital work was far too strenuous for someone as frail as Amina Begum.

  On 19 June 1941, a year after they had left France, Noor saved up and bought a copy of Nehru’s An Autobiography and presented it to Vilayat for his birthday along with a score of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. An Autobiography had been published in 1937 and had attracted considerable publicity. Since they had come to England, both Noor and Vilayat had become more aware of the Indian Independence movement.

  In London and Oxford, Noor had met many Indians involved with the freedom struggle and had become acutely aware of political developments back home. Led by the flamboyant Krishna Menon, the India League in London had come to play a significant role in mobilising Indians abroad. It also had the support of Indophiles and theosophists such as Horace Alexander, Agatha Harrison, Fenner Brockway, Wedgwood Benn, Marie Seton and others. Young Indian barristers like P.N. Haksar regularly attended the meetings as did Indira Nehru’s fiancé, Feroze Gandhi. From its offices in the Strand, the India League brought out a weekly newspaper keeping people in Britain up to date with developments in India and promoting Indian independence. London was buzzing with young Indians, many studying law or economics at the London School of Economics while doing their bit for the freedom struggle, and Noor and Vilayat were very aware of this work.

  The war in Europe had seen the Indian push for independence enter a new phase. Most leaders of the nationalist Congress party were in favour of the war against Fascism, but they wanted some concessions and reassurances in return for backing England. Other leaders, such as Subhas Chandra Bose, favoured an alliance with Germany to get rid of imperialism. Noor admired Bose’s patriotism but did not agree with his politics. She favoured those of Nehru and Gandhi, but she also had strong views of her own.12

  Though she firmly believed that Britain should give Indians their freedom, Noor was convinced that Indian leaders should not press for independence when Britain had its hands full fighting the war. She felt that if the Indians backed Britain and won many gallantry medals it would create a sense of confidence in them, and the British would readily grant independence to India after the war. On a personal level Noor always felt that, as an Indian, her part in the effort from her post in Abingdon would in its own small way have a positive effect for Indians as a whole. She once told Jean Overton Fuller: ‘I wish some Indians would win high military distinctions in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied services which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge betw
een English people and Indians.’

  Her brother Hidayat was convinced that if Noor had survived the war, her next cause would have been Indian independence. She was passionately opposed to forces of occupation and she often discussed the future of India with Vilayat. She would sometimes talk about going to India after the war, and worried about the fate of the Congress leaders.

  The spit and polish of service life at Abingdon began to tire Noor out, and she became restless, feeling that she was too far away from the real action. Towards the end of 1941 Joan and Noor applied for commissions. Joan was recommended for Code and Cypher and Noor for Intelligence. Joan’s interview came up earlier and she was sent on a Commission Course in April 1942.

  Noor, still waiting for her interview, was posted to No. 3 Signals School at Compton Basset in Wiltshire on 11 May 1942, for a further seven-week Advanced Signals and Wireless course. Again her proficiency was marked with an A and she was clearly making very good progress. Noor was now selected to be part of a small group that would receive training in a secret course of signals and instructions. The intensive course involved a lot of mathematics and Noor soon found herself studying geometry and trigonometry, and having to pore over technical wireless books. She kept up conscientiously and found that she was far ahead of many of the men who had trained in these earlier, and had quick and appropriate answers to many of the problems that came up.

  Throughout her training period Noor made sure that her mother never felt too isolated, and visited her whenever she had the time. On Amina Begum’s birthday she always received the customary poem and handmade card from her daughter. Though busy with her signals training at Wiltshire, Noor wrote cheerily to her mother:

  So dearest, chin up, it’s your birthday,

  And all that we wished shall come true,

  We’re on duty but its play-day,

  And life is just all pink and blue.

  And our cheers are going all over England,

  Three cheers from the Bodleian lanes!

  Three cheers by wireless from Scotland!

  Three cheers from the RAF planes!

  Looking after her mother was always Noor’s top priority. She had taken on the responsibility at the age of thirteen and it sat heavily on her shoulders well into adulthood. She gave her WAAF earnings to Amina Begum and strove to make her life a little more comfortable. Her colleagues admired her devotion to her mother. While they used their days off to meet their boyfriends or go dancing, Noor would inevitably spend hers with her mother.

  Noor was posted back to Bomber Command, Abingdon, on 12 August. After what seemed to her like an endless wait, her interview date for the commission finally came up. It was to be at the end of August 1942. A few days before the interview she wrote to her brother asking him to lend her a pound so that she could get a perm and look smart on the day. The letter was apologetic as she knew that Vilayat was living a hand-to-mouth existence and had hardly any spare cash. Yet it was clear she was very keen to get the commission and felt her appearance would matter. Vilayat borrowed the money from Jean Overton Fuller and sent it to Noor, who was delighted and thanked him profusely.

  She splurged on a ‘Eugene’ perm and went for the interview on 28 August 1942. But things took a very unexpected direction when Noor was asked about her attitude to Indian independence. Never one to lie about her beliefs, Noor was forthright with her answer. She told the board that she believed Indians should be allowed to organise their own defence and form a sort of Home Guard which would be armed so they could defend themselves against the Japanese. She knew that this idea was not popular with the British, who were reluctant to allow Indians to possess arms in case these weapons should be used against them.

  Although she sensed the disapproval of the board, Noor carried on passionately explaining her views. One of the officers then asked her if she would back Indian leaders who took steps against Britain. She said she would support any responsible Indian leader in a step they thought necessary. Asked then whether this was not contradictory to her oath of allegiance to the Crown, Noor was equally forthright. She told the board that as long as the war with Germany was on, she would be loyal to the British government and the Crown. But after the war she may reconsider her position and might find that she had to support India against Britain in the fight for independence. It was the voice of Tipu Sultan’s great-great-great-granddaughter speaking.

  Noor was very aware that the situation in India was highly volatile at the time. In 1941, India’s eastern flank lay open to invasion from Japan. In March 1942, worried about getting Congress support for the war, Churchill sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India to meet with Congress leaders and address the ‘India question’. Churchill promised India full dominion status after the war if the Congress cooperated during the conflict. But the Cripps mission failed. Gandhi described it as a ‘post-dated cheque on a failing bank’ and called on Indians to ‘Do or Die’.

  In London the War Cabinet watched the crisis in alarm and authorised Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, to make widespread arrests including the entire Congress leadership if he needed to.

  On 8 August 1942 Nehru called on the British to ‘Quit India’, launching a major movement, and overnight the top Congress leadership was jailed. They remained in jail for over two years (Nehru himself for two years, ten months) as the war raged in Europe. By the end of 1942, over 60,000 people had been arrested in India.

  Churchill was remorseless. ‘I have not become the King’s first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire,’ he declared.13 The British were using the resources of the Empire to fight the war and hundreds of thousands of Indians were being recruited to the services to fight in Africa, Italy and in the jungles of Eastern India and Burma. Noor was well aware of these developments, as her passionate address to the board made clear.

  Unknown to her, even as she was speaking her mind on Indian independence, Indian leaders were being watched by Indian Political Intelligence, the British internal intelligence service MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) which dealt with external intelligence. A section of MI5 running deception, headed in Delhi by the flamboyant Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, was planting agents and double agents on Indian soil. One of these double agents14 was to watch over Nationalist Indian leader Subhas Bose, who had escaped from house arrest in India in 1941 and travelled to Germany where he was trying to get German support for Indian independence.

  Against this background of Indian unrest, Noor’s brutally frank answers must have stunned the board. Noor thought she had blown her chances and was upset that she had allowed herself to become emotional. But at the same time she was not one to lie about her beliefs. Vilayat told her the British may like her straightforwardness but Noor was not hopeful that she would get the commission.

  On 2 September Vilayat passed his exams for the Navy and received a letter asking him to join HMS Collingwood in two weeks. Noor helped him pack and took away all his remaining possessions to Oxford. Around the same time, her friend Joan got engaged, left the post at Abingdon, and went off to Ireland where she settled down with her husband. Noor began to feel lonely. With Vilayat and Joan both gone, she felt she was the only one stuck in a rut in Abingdon. She did not get her commission till several months later but was promoted to Leading Aircraftswoman (LACW) on 1 December 1942.

  But things were moving very quickly in another direction for Noor. Unknown to her, while she was working diligently at her Morse, the authorities at Military Intelligence were carefully following her progress.

  On 21 October 1942, an internal memo of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) suggested that Noor Inayat Khan, WAAF No. 424598, be called for an interview at 1600 hours on 10/11/42 at Room 238, Hotel Victoria. The brief entry simply said: ‘Has interesting linguistic qualifications which might make her of value for operational purposes.’15

  The fact that Noor was bilingual, equally at home in French as in English, was of interest to the SOE.
They had their own plans for the dreamy writer of children’s stories. Soon Noor received the formal letter inviting her for an interview at the War Office in London. She was to meet a Captain Selwyn Jepson at the Hotel Victoria in Northumberland Avenue on 10 November 1942.

  Despite her disagreement with Churchill’s stand on Indian independence, Noor was now heading for a job in a department that had been specially created by Churchill. She was to be recruited as his secret agent in the war against Fascism.

  FOUR

  Setting Europe Ablaze

  After a year with the WAAF, the shadowy world of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) would be a totally new experience for Noor. The shabby rooms of the Victoria Hotel, where she had to report, belied their importance. In one of the bedrooms on the third floor, the SOE had set up an interview room. It was here that they vetted potential recruits. The stark room consisted of a kitchen table, two hard chairs (one, according to SOE (F-section) chief Maurice Buckmaster, in a ‘permanent state of collapse’), and a naked light bulb. There was the faint smell of disinfectant and very stale shaving soap.

  The SOE was born in the summer of 1940 when the Battle of Britain was in full flow. As the RAF clashed daily over the skies of London with the German Luftwaffe, Winston Churchill presided over his War Cabinet in the bunkers below Whitehall, making plans to fight the Germans on the beaches and in the air. But already a small group were plotting a different sort of battle, one that would be unconventional and one that was conceived out of the need to fight the very core of the Nazi regime. Britain was the last country in Europe still facing up to the German military machine. Hitler and the Third Reich had already overrun Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and finally, in June 1940, France. The war had now come to Britain’s door. On 16 July 1940, Hitler signed the Führer’s Directive No. 16, Operation Sealion, for the invasion of Britain.