Sophia duleep singh net worth
Sophia Duleep Singh: Indian princess who fought for women to vote in UK
Sophia grew up in the family's home in Suffolk but had a tumultuous childhood, Anand writes. Duleep Singh was exiled to France in after failed attempts to reclaim his throne, and abandoned his family to debt.
But the family's close relationship with Queen Victoria helped them secure a home and yearly allowance from the India Office, a department of the British government.
When Sophia grew up, she was given a grace-and-favour apartment by the queen in the Hampton Court Palace, outside which she would later go on to protest for the right to vote.
"From an early age, [Sophia] learned to negotiate between the easy existence granted to her as a member of Britain's elite and her ambiguous position as an Indian woman living in Britain during the heyday of the British Empire," historian Elizabeth Baker writes in a chapter in the book The British Women's Suffrage Campaign.
Over her lifetime, Sophia made about four visits to India, each of them closely monitored by British officials who feared that the presence of Duleep Singh's family would foment dissent.
In , Sophia met freedom fighters Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai in Lahore (now in Pakistan) and was moved by their speeches and political conviction.
"By April , Sophia had spent six months in India and had witnessed firsthand the growing political turbulence in India.
The push for Indian self-determination had seduced her," Anand writes in her book.
In , a few months after returning to the UK, Sophia joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a suffrage group led by British political activist Emmeline Pankhurst.
She later also joined the Women's Tax Resistance League, whose slogan was "No Vote, No Tax".
Sophia participated in these movements with great vigour.
In , she threw herself at the prime minister's car as it was leaving Downing Street, holding a banner that said "Give women the vote!". The same year, she left her census form blank and refused to pay taxes.
A photo from shows the princess standing outside the Hampton Court Palace where she lived, selling copies of The Suffragette newspaper next to a board that read "Revolution!".
The photograph made her "the face of 'Suffragette Week', an initiative concocted by the WSPU to recruit more members and inundate Britain", Baker writes.