Prinzessin Sophia Kaur von Lahore

Princess Sophia Alexandrovna Duleep Singh ( sə-FY-ə; 8 August 1876 – 22 August 1948) was a British suffragette. Her father was Maharaja Dalip Singh, who had lost his Sikh Empire to the Punjab Province of British India and was subsequently exiled to England. Sophia's mother was Bamba Müller, who was half German and half Ethiopian, and her godmother was Queen Victoria. She had four sisters, including two half-sisters, and three brothers. She lived in Faraday House in Hampton Court, given to her by Queen Victoria as a grace-and-favour home.

During the early twentieth century, Singh was one of several Indian women who pioneered the cause of women's rights in Britain. Although she is best remembered for her leading role in the Women's Tax Resistance League, she also participated in other women's suffrage groups, including the Women's Social and Political Union.

Early life

Sophia Duleep Singh was born on 8 August 1876 in Belgravia and lived in Elveden Hall, Suffolk. She was the third daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh (the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire) and his first wife, Bamba Müller. Bamba was the daughter of Ludwig Müller, a German merchant banker of Todd Müller and Company, and Sofia, his mistress, who was of Abyssinian (Ethiopian) descent. The Maharaja and Bamba had ten children, of whom six survived. Singh combined Indian, European, and African ancestry with a British aristocratic upbringing, which her string of names reflected. She was named Sophia for her maternal grandmother, the formerly enslaved woman from Ethiopia; and Alexandrovna in tribute to her godmother, Queen Victoria ("Alexandrina Victoria"). Some sources also report an additional forename, Jindan, after her paternal grandmother, Maharani Jind Kaur. Because of the family's complex history, the India Office kept them under surveillance in case they became involved in any political activity around India.

In the aftermath of the Second Anglo-Sikh War, her father had been forced, at age 11, to abdicate his kingdom to the East India Company and give the Koh-i-Noor diamond to Lord Dalhousie. He was exiled from India by the East India Company at age 15 and moved to England, where Queen Victoria treated him with maternal fondness. She and Prince Albert were impressed by his handsomeness and regal bearing. They formed a close bond with him over the years. The queen was godmother to several of his children, and his family's upkeep was provided for by the East India Company. Duleep Singh converted to Christianity at a young age, some time prior to his removal from India. In later life, he reconverted to Sikhism and espoused the independence movement in India as he became more aware of the way in which the politics of the British Empire had resulted in the loss of his own kingdom.

Singh's brothers included Victor Duleep Singh and Frederick Duleep Singh; her two full sisters were Catherine Duleep Singh, a suffragette, and Bamba Duleep Singh.

Singh developed typhoid at age 10. Her mother, who was attending her, contracted the disease, fell into a coma, and died on 17 September 1887. On 31 May 1889 her father married Ada Wetherill, a chambermaid, with whom he had two daughters. In 1886, when Sophia was ten, her father attempted to return to India with his family against the wishes of the British government; they were turned back in Aden by arrest warrants.

Queen Victoria was fond of Duleep Singh and his family, particularly Sophia, who was her goddaughter, and encouraged her and her sisters to become socialites. Sophia, with her fashionable address, wore Parisian dresses, bred championship dogs, pursued photography and cycling, and attended parties.

After a period of ill health, her father died in a rundown Paris hotel on 22 October 1893 at age 55. She inherited substantial wealth from her father at his death in 1893, but she and her siblings were put under the guardianship of Arthur Craigie Oliphant until they reached their majorities. Age 17, Singh was sent to a school in Brighton.

In 1898 Queen Victoria, her godmother, granted Sophia and her sisters Bamba and Catherine a grace and favour apartment in Faraday House, Hampton Court with a £200 a year allowance for expenses. Singh did not initially live in Faraday House; she stayed at the Manor House in Old Buckenham, near her brother Prince Frederick.

The British government lessened their vigilant watch on the shy, silent, grief-stricken Singh, which proved a misjudgement. She made a secret trip to India with her sister, Bamba, to attend the 1903 Delhi Durbar, where she was ignored. This impressed on Singh the futility of public and media popularity, and she returned to England determined to change her course. During a 1907 trip to India, she visited Amritsar and Lahore and met relatives. This visit was a turning point in her life, as she faced the realities of poverty in India and what her family had lost by choosing to surrender. In India, Singh hosted a "purdah party" in Shalimar Bagh in Lahore (her grandfather's capital). During the visit, all the while shadowed by British agents, she encountered Indian independence activists such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai and expressed sympathy for their cause. Singh admired Rai, and his imprisonment by the authorities on "charges of sedition" turned Sophia against the British Raj.

In 1909 her brother bought Blo' Norton Hall in South Norfolk for himself and a house in Blo' Norton, Thatched Cottage, for his sisters. That year, Sophia attended a farewell party at the Westminster Palace Hotel for Mahatma Gandhi.

Bamba Duleep Singh, Sophia's oldest sister, married Dr Lt Colonel David Waters Sutherland, principal of King Edward's Medical College in Lahore. They had no children.