anita anand sophia princess suffragette revolutionary

She was bold and fearless, attacking politicians, putting herself in the front line and swapping her silks for a nurse's uniform to tend wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefields. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War – and, above all, the fight for female suffrage. Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic presented at court, afforded grace and favor lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace, its grounds stocked with leopards, monkeys, and exotic birds.

It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. In 1876, Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty.

Anita anand sophia princess suffragette revolutionary