A life shaped by empire, identity and defiance
If you were asked to name the key figures in the struggle for women’s rights in the UK, Emmeline Pankhurst or Emily Davison, the protester killed by King George V’s racehorse, will probably spring to mind. It is unlikely you will turn to Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, but this daughter of a deposed Maharaja played a vital role in the fight for equality. Journalist Anil Dawar shares her story.
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh’s tale does not fit neatly into familiar narratives. She stood alongside Emmeline Pankhurst proclaiming the same messages but unlike Pankhurst, Singh was not brought up on radical politics. Instead, she was shaped by empire, racialisation and dislocation, as well as a lifetime resisting the social constraints forced upon her by her sex and race.
Her life was an intersection between early feminist history and race and empire. She was an Anglo-Indian princess who grew up in palaces at a time of global upheaval. But instead of using that position to protect her privilege, she used it to fight the inequalities she and countless others had inherited by chance of birth.
‘Ethiopian, Punjabi, German, British, Sikh, imperial’
Sophia Jindan Alexandrovna Duleep Singh was born in Belgravia in 1876 to Maharajah Duleep Singh and Maharani Bamba Müller. Her father had inherited the Punjab kingdom aged just five, only to have his empire annexed by the British after the Anglo-Sikh Wars of the 1840s. He was taken from his mother, brought under the guardianship of British officials and drawn into the orbit of Queen Victoria.
The princess’s full name helps to reveal the complexity of her heritage – Ethiopian, Punjabi, German, British, Sikh, imperial. She represented a world shaped by migration, colonisation and enforced separation, forces many racialised communities still recognise today.
Singh’s early childhood at Elveden Hall in Suffolk was surrounded by the trappings of imperial life. Her father remodelled the English manor to resemble a Mughal palace complete with exotic birds. When his wealth, which depended on a political arrangement with the British government designed to render him powerless, was frittered away, the India Office forced him to sell his home, shattering the 10-year-old princess’s life.
The Maharajah abandoned his family and a year later the Maharani died. Once again, the British state intervened to manage Singh and her sisters. Queen Victoria, her godmother, arranged guardians, schooling and a home at Hampton Court Palace.
‘The emotional pull of that moment is hard to overstate’
Growing up inside an imperial system that subjugated her ancestral homeland and dismantled her lineage shaped Singh’s political views and informed her activism. Her early experiences had shown that power protects itself and proved justice must be fought for. This political awakening came through travel and the realisation that society welcomed her status but not her heritage.
When Singh travelled to India as a young woman, she was greeted by crowds that recognised her not as Queen Victoria’s goddaughter, but as granddaughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh empire. The emotional pull of that moment is hard to overstate. A princess raised in exile, she had encountered a public who, for the first time, saw her not as Britain defined her but as history remembered her.
She also witnessed the insidious effects of colonial rule – poverty, political repression and the marginalisation of Indians. It was here she realised her father’s legacy was not the romantic tale recounted in English drawing rooms, but one part of a wider pattern of dispossession.
This experience sharpened her understanding of injustice and sense of responsibility. Crucially, it changed her racial identity from that of an ornament for the British royals into a spur to action.
Once back in Britain, Singh became deeply involved with London’s Indian community, using her social position to raise funds to support and educate her compatriots. These are the two worlds she inhabited for the rest of her life – British aristocratic spaces that claimed her and the racialised migrant communities who needed her.
‘Profile and visibility was her greatest weapon’
This growing radicalisation meant it was not long before Singh joined Pankhurst’s movement, the Women’s Social and Political Union. Her presence was both powerful and politically disruptive. A British-Indian princess standing outside Hampton Court Palace selling copies of The Suffragette newspaper was impossible to ignore. That profile and visibility was her greatest weapon.
Singh understood that her royal status offered a level of protection not extended to racialised or working-class women and she used it as armour. On the frontline during ‘Black Friday’ in 1910, when hundreds of women were assaulted by police in Parliament Square, she intervened to save a fellow protester and file a complaint on their behalf.
She also joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League, refusing to pay taxes on the ‘No Vote, No Tax’ principle. Her possessions were seized and auctioned (but bought back by fellow members).
In the fight for equality, Singh was confronting every structure used to silence women. Her racial identity added another dimension to this resistance. A woman of colour standing up to courts, police and political leadership unsettled assumptions about gender, racial obedience and belonging.
The princess’s form of resistance connected the struggle for women’s suffrage to the wider context of racial justice, an idea the mainstream movement often failed to address.
‘Singh’s activism extended beyond women’s rights’
Singh’s activism extended beyond women’s rights. During the First World War, she volunteered as a nurse for wounded Indian soldiers – men usually erased from Britain’s wartime memory. She also raised funds for the Red Cross and Indian servicemen.
A commitment to diaspora communities was lifelong. She supported stranded Indian sailors and women students. She never forgot that racial inequality operated differently and more harshly for those without her privilege. Wherever she moved, she created networks of support for marginalised people. She lived her politics at street level, not simply in grand statements.
Singh died in 1948, the year the NHS was founded, the Empire Windrush set sail and India shook off the imperial yoke to become an independent nation. On her instructions, her ashes were taken to her ancestral lands. She did not live to see how her activism helped reshape Britain but her fingerprints remain everywhere.
Her name appears on the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square. Her image appears on Royal Mail’s ‘Votes for Women’ stamp. But the truest legacy of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh runs deeper.
She was a woman of colour who challenged both sexism and empire, used her privilege to protect others and show that identity – even one as complicated as hers – can be a source of strength.
Perhaps her greatest legacy is as a reminder that justice is rarely achieved by those who accept the world as it is but is rather won by those who insist on imagining something better and are brave enough to stand in the way of history until it arrives.
Anil Dawar is a journalist born in London to Asian and British parents. He specialises in home affairs and education issues.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
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Photo © Museum of London
