371. The First British Indians: Last Sikh In Lahore (Ep 3)

Summary

Empire: World History — Episode 371

“The First British Indians: Last Sikh in Lahore (Ep 3)”

Released June 24, 2026
Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand

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Overview

In this third part of their “Daughters of the Last Maharaja” mini-series, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the turbulent life of Princess Bamba Duleep Singh—eldest daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh and a self-styled Queen of Punjab. They chart her journey from privileged yet scrutinized childhood in England, through failed ambitions and frustrated rage in Chicago, to her final decades as an unyielding exile in Lahore, witnessing empire, partition, and loss. The episode is a meditation on loss, identity, colonial dispossession, and the psychological costs paid by those dispossessed by empire.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introducing Princess Bamba Duleep Singh (02:43 – 04:47)

• After Sophia and Catherine, the focus turns to Bamba, the boldest and most contentious of the Duleep Singh siblings.
• Known for her tempestuous nature and fierce resistance to British rule.
• Lived from 1869 (born in London) to 1957 (died in Lahore).

"The story of Bamba in a nutshell is this is a woman who refused to ever accept what the British did to her father. And eventually she will go and try and reclaim her father's stolen kingdom."
— Anita Anand (04:47)

2. Their Upbringing and Bamba’s Rebellion (04:50 – 08:57)

• Bamba, marked as the “worst temper in the nursery,” internalizes the loss of her father’s kingdom and grows increasingly hostile toward the British.
• Queen Victoria is cold toward Bamba, whom she deems “difficult.”

"She is the least favored in the family, but all she has are her sisters. They are proper sort of... fingers on a fist; together they can do anything, but they are against the world. That is her psychology."
— Anita Anand (08:06)

3. Education, Ambition and Obstinacy (08:45 – 10:44)

• Bamba and Catherine attend Oxford, but Bamba refuses to conform, scowling in every photograph, and leaves without achieving a degree.
• Her resistance to being managed or controlled persists into her adult life.

"She never smiles in any of these photographs from Somerville. She's annoyed... she wanted to cut the strings."
— Anita Anand (09:45)

4. Attempt to Become a Doctor in America (10:44 – 16:29)

• Bamba aspires to be a doctor—a radical goal for women at the turn of the century.
• She travels to Chicago’s Women’s Medical College in 1900, an extraordinary feat as a South Asian woman.
• Faces freezing weather, racism, and scorn from the American press.
• Despite nearly completing her qualification, the trustees of Northwestern University rescind the right of women to qualify as doctors, rendering her efforts futile.

"A dark, timid looking woman of small stature... she just screams at them, 'Leave the dogs alone. And don't you put anything in the paper about them either.'"
— Reading from US press, paraphrased by Anita Anand (13:09)

"After all that, she's gone right through this training, and then they've sort of taken it all away... 'Women cannot grasp surgery.' That is a direct quote from the university."
— William Dalrymple & Anita Anand (16:07)

5. Return to England: Rage and Estrangement (16:29 – 18:05)

• Returns to London, angrier and more intransigent.
• Her relationship with sisters remains foundational; she warns Sophia not to trust the British.

6. Delhi Durbar and Final Break From Britain (18:05 – 19:39)

• Bamba insists on uninvited participation in the 1902 Delhi Durbar.
• After visiting Punjab, standing in the gardens of her forebears, she decides to stay permanently in Lahore.

“She is going to live and die here and, you know, stuff it to anyone who doesn’t want her to do that.”
— Anita Anand (18:18)

7. Becoming a Nexus for Nationalists (20:25 – 23:14)

• Bamba’s Lahore residence becomes a focal point for Indian nationalists.
• Leaders like Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai visit.
• Befriends Saraladevi Chaudharani, revolutionary and Tagore’s niece, foreshadowing the trust Indian radicals place in her.

8. A Pragmatic, Peculiar Marriage: Survival and Legitimacy (23:14 – 26:34)

• Uncustomarily, Bamba marries Lt. Col. David Waters Sutherland, an Australian-Scottish doctor in the Indian Medical Service, primarily for a dowry and the protection British-married status offers.
• Remains emotionally and physically distant from her husband, but the marriage secures her place in Lahore.

"There are no children... he's busy, she's busy... they don't spend much time in the same hemisphere in their married life."
— Anita Anand (26:05)

9. Preserving Legacy, Facing Loss (29:20 – 36:29)

• Bamba arranges for her grandmother Jindan’s ashes to be returned to Lahore (1924).
• Remains Christian (as do all her sisters), countering persistent mislabelling as “Sikh princesses.”
• Husband's death in 1939, from afar, leaves her more isolated.
• Partition (1947): stays in riot-torn Lahore, and survives thanks to Birji, her loyal Muslim secretary.
• Endures physical hardship, loneliness, failed health, and fails to flee like many others.

"She’s constantly writing letters of complaint that she can't get a seat on the bus from Model Town into the city. She still calls herself, to the very end, the Queen of the Punjab, the last true sovereign of the Sikhs. But, you know, to everybody around her in this new country, Pakistan, that is springing up around her, she's an anachronism."
— Anita Anand (37:05)

10. A Lonely End—Final Years and Death (36:29 – 41:32)

• Watches all her siblings die before her, and becomes obsessed with stories of betrayal and sterilization conspiracies during their youth, possibly as a way to rationalize their line’s extinction.
• Dies in Lahore in 1957, buried without Sikh rites in the city’s Christian cemetery—a final, deep irony.

“There are no Sikhs at her funeral. The funeral is arranged, oddly enough, by the Deputy High Commissioner of the British High Commission, which is a sort of terrible irony.”
— William Dalrymple (40:18)

"If you open this grave, you will just not know who is rich and who is poor... The difference between royalty and civility vanishes when the bones are dug up."
— Persian couplet from Saadi, translated from Bamba’s tombstone (41:11)

11. Surviving Legacy—Artifacts and Memory (41:20 – 41:35)

• Personal collection survives in the Bamba Museum at Lahore Fort.
• Her home, garden, and nearly all visible trace erased; only artifacts and history remain.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “She is the least favored in the family, but all she has are her sisters... together they can do anything, but they are against the world.” — Anita Anand (08:06)
• “She is going to live and die here and, you know, stuff it to anyone who doesn’t want her to do that.” — Anita Anand (18:18)
• “If you open this grave, you will just not know who is rich and who is poor... The difference between royalty and civility vanishes when the bones are dug up.” — Persian couplet on Bamba’s grave (41:11)
• “She still calls herself, to the very end, the Queen of the Punjab, the last true sovereign of the Sikhs. But, you know, to everybody around her in this new country, Pakistan... she’s an anachronism.” — Anita Anand (37:05)
• “She died bitter, angry and actually quite alone.” — Anita Anand (39:22)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:43 – Episode introductions; context for Bamba
• 04:47 – “She refused to accept what the British did to her father…”
• 08:45 – Bamba’s childhood, temperament, and education
• 10:44 – Bamba’s quest to become a doctor; journey to America
• 13:09 – Press coverage on Bamba’s arrival in Chicago
• 16:29 – Bamba’s rage and frustration after returning from America
• 18:05 – Going to Punjab; breaking from Britain
• 20:25 – Interactions with Indian nationalist leaders
• 23:14 – Bamba’s marriage to Sutherland
• 29:20 – Preserving legacy, grandmother’s ashes
• 34:20 – Partition and aftermath, survival in Lahore
• 39:22 – Bamba’s final years, loneliness, and bitterness
• 41:11 – Saadi’s couplet on her tombstone
• 41:20 – Her artifacts at the Bamba Museum, Lahore Fort

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Conclusion

Through the story of Princess Bamba, Dalrymple and Anand offer a portrait of a woman at war with empire, fate, and herself: combative, proud, ultimately isolated, yet determined to claim ownership over her legacy and identity. Her life encapsulates both the grandeur and the deep personal desolation wrought by imperial dispossession. The episode ends with a teaser for the next, even more tragic, installment: the story of Duleep Singh’s illegitimate daughters, setting the stage for further drama on the margins of empire.

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Next episode:
The tale shifts to Princess Pauline and Princess Irene—invisible outcasts whose tragic fates reflect the dark underbelly of imperial history. Empire Club members can listen early!

Transcript

[William Dalrymple]

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[William Dalrymple]

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[Anita Anand]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Dalrymple.

[William Dalrymple]

So this is now part three of the four we're going to be doing on the daughters of the last Maharaja of the Punjab. We've met Sophia, now famous from Anita's fantastic unknown 10 years ago now one of the most celebrated figures of British Indian history. It's fair to say I think we met last week. The far less well known and far more private Catherine with her friend living in Prussia and fleeing away from England and Today, Anita, you are going to introduce us to the one who went home to India, to the Punjab.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, this week we're gonna meet. I think she's gonna be your favorite Bamba, the queen. You like a diffic.

[William Dalrymple]

She sounds pretty stroppy to me.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I think you like a stroppy woman. Testament to that is this podcast.

[William Dalrymple]

But look, I would say so. I wasn't gonna say anything.

[Anita Anand]

No, I'll say it for you, it's okay. Self styled Queen of the Punjab, Bamba Duleep Singh. Later, Bamba Sutherland.

[William Dalrymple]

I like the fact that she has a good Scottish collection. The Scots and the Punjabis, both good whiskey drinkers, both great dancers. There's an essay to be written on Scots Punjabi collections. But anyway we won't there quite yet.

[Anita Anand]

Well, this is the episode for you then. Like Bamba is the eldest of the Duleep Singh sisters. She's born in London in 1869. She dies in Lahore in Pakistan in 1957. 57, yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

Not that long ago within living memory. Not that long ago at all.

[Anita Anand]

So I should clarify, you know, there are two BAMBAs in this story. There is Maharani Bamba, her mother, the one who Duleep Singh married.

[William Dalrymple]

Half German, half Ethiopian.

[Anita Anand]

Indeed. And the one who he finds in the Cairo mission. And then there is Princess Bamba who we're talking about today.

[William Dalrymple]

Today, who is a beauty as we discovered last time. She's the most beautiful of the sisters.

[Anita Anand]

See, do you think she's. I think she's ferociously beautiful. But she wasn't deemed to be beautiful in her day because she was darker skinned. I mean, you know, terrible but true.

[William Dalrymple]

That's still not just then today in India the same prejudice is very much around.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, look, the story of Bamba in a nutshell is this is a woman who refused to ever accept what the British did to her father. And eventually she will go and try and reclaim her father's stolen kingdom. Honestly, it's very quixotic though, you know, like a. Like a tilting in the wind. She buys a house 5 minutes walk from Lahore Fort and she will stay there throughout the rise and the fall of the British in India, through partition, through the creation of Pakistan. And that is where she dies and that is where she is buried.

[William Dalrymple]

It's another fantastic story and again, quite different from the others. I think you've got to do a new edition of your book, Anita.

[Anita Anand]

You think another three volume excavate all

[William Dalrymple]

these, this new material. Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Oh, I finished the book that I've been commissioned to write first 25 years late. Oh, dear. So Bama was born on the 29th of September, 1869, and she's born in Knightsbridge and the third child of Maharaja Duleep Singh and Bamba Muller, the mother after whom she's named.

[William Dalrymple]

What does it mean? Bamba? Arabic for pink.

[Anita Anand]

Pink. That's right. Yeah. Because the reason that Bamba mother was. Was given the nickname is because she was so shy and so retiring that she blushed whenever she was noticed. And that's why people called her Bamber. But this is a Bamber who's going to spend the whole of her life trying to be noticed and kicking up Mary Hell. Let me tell you what kind of child she is. Okay, so she is. You know, when I told you in the last couple of episodes that the children were constantly under surveillance and you have reports that are being sent to Queen Victoria about how they're getting along because Queen Victor stepped into the vacuum left by mother and father. And you've got Victor, imperious, will become a terrible, incurable gambler. Freddy, obstinate Catherine, secretive Princess Bamber, described as having the worst temper in the nursery, noted from the age of three. And, you know, you can understand that as well, Willie. Cause, you know, the father spends so many months away from his family, when he comes home, he ignores his wife, barely plays with his children, but he does. What she does take from him are the stories about India, about the golden temple, about the Lahore fort, about their grandmother Jindan and their grandfather, Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab. And you know, the sisters receive these in very different ways. Bamba takes them straight into her heart. They are her birthright. Whereas Catherine, you know, her mind is in the land of the Grimm fairy tales. And with Lina doesn't really care so much about them.

[William Dalrymple]

But it's specifically the fact that he's been dispossessed, isn't it? That really irritates and obsesses Bamba. And not without reason.

[Anita Anand]

No.

[William Dalrymple]

He's lost the richest kingdom in India and all the jewels and all the land and all the. Everything, you know, and they are now living in grace and favor mansions, Father absent. And no wonder that this is something that she regrets and thinks back on.

[Anita Anand]

It is an unvirtuous circle because she hates the British. And she's the one who decides to refer to Queen Victoria as. As Mrs. Fagin, as her father did, the receiver of stolen goods, always irked by what was taken from the family. And, you know, that sort of disdain is returned and some by Queen Victoria Queen Victoria really doesn't like Bamber. She is difficult. Catherine is weird. They are not her goddaughters, they're not her problem. But she kind of looks after them as, you know, light handedly because of Sophia, the one that she really does care for. And Bamba feels this, you know, who is there to love Bamba apart from her sisters? She is the least favored in the family, but all she has are her sisters. She loves them dearly. They are proper sort of, you know, fingers on a fist together they can do anything, but they are against the world. That is her psychology. So you need to understand that straight away.

[William Dalrymple]

Now, in the last episode we saw Catherine and Bamba go to Oxford, but Bamba doesn't prosper there at all, does she? Doesn't bother, can't be asked to do the exams and leaves without a degree of any sort.

[Anita Anand]

Any accolade at all? No, no. And she's kind of sort of dismissed as being something of an idiot, you know. You know, Catherine managed to get her degree, although you couldn't get a degree. She passed her exams. Bamba, I'm afraid to say, did not prosper is what was, was reported. But this is not to suggest, and I will give you evidence, that this woman was stupid. She wasn't. On the contrary, she was really intelligent. She just did not want to do what she was told.

[William Dalrymple]

And is there a feeling that she's straining against establishment even at Oxford? Is that, I mean, is it that she doesn't like these English dons and just wants to tell them to piss off?

[Anita Anand]

She doesn't like to be told what

[William Dalrymple]

to do, full stop.

[Anita Anand]

That's it, you know, she probably. And again, this is Willi's supposition because we don't have it in her words. But you see it in the photographs, right? You see the scowl.

[William Dalrymple]

She has a very imperious scowl. Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

In the photo. She never smiles. In any of these photographs from Somerville, she's annoyed. And I think what it was is that, you know, people were trying to treat her like a puppet, you know, and she wanted to cut the strings. She, as the granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, wanted to decide what she did, she wanted to decide what her future was. And at the turn of the century, she does something genuinely, genuinely surprising. She announces that she wants to be a doctor. Now that's what I mean about somebody who's unintelligent wanting that. Those things don't marry up at all. So I think you've got a very keen mind who just, you know, didn't want to do it, I don't want to do the things I don't want to do. But when it's her own idea, when she can leave England and do something else, that is what she does. So in 1899, this is 1900s. Remarkable that a woman wants to be a doctor, that she has that kind of, of ambition and she wants to

[William Dalrymple]

go to America to study there.

[Anita Anand]

Well, ideally she wants to go to India, but the British will never let her go there. You know, Catherine and Sophia understand that, you know, having a Duleep Singh on the loose in India is everybody's nightmare here in London because you become a focus point for all of the malcontents in Punjab. Right. So they don't want her there.

[William Dalrymple]

And throughout the whole of British Indian history, deposed royals are moved around to keep them away. And that's. And so you have Bahadashah Zafa, the Mughal emperor we saw in our Mutiny series, sent off to Burma, the king of Burma, sent off to India, anywhere but where they should be and where they can stir up resentment against the Raj. So, yup, she's got a point.

[Anita Anand]

She can't go to India. The only place, the only option really is America. In the English speaking world, it is the only place where a woman can realistically get a medical degree.

[William Dalrymple]

Could she not do it in England or just doesn't want to do it there?

[Anita Anand]

There are no medical degrees. Look, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson broke through in 1865 getting a medical license, but she had to get it through the back door of the Society of Apothecaries and then the society changes its rules. It is really very, very difficult and she doesn't want to stay here anyway. So on the 30th of January 1900, Bamber Books passage on a ship called the Konig Albert, a German ocean liner bound for the Far east, seems to be wanting to travel to San Francisco via Japan in 1900. But you know, we know about her arrival in America because the American press love a royal. They loved a royal then and they love a royal now.

[William Dalrymple]

They do, as we've seen lately.

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Exactly.

[Anita Anand]

So you know, they're willing to love her. There are reporters waiting at the pier for the Koenigalbert to dock and they are waiting to be charmed by the Indian princess from the Far East. Exotic. What they get is something quite different.

[William Dalrymple]

She's not playing, she is not giving

[Anita Anand]

her, she's not bloody playing at all. This is what they write. A dark, timid looking woman of small stature who was the object of much attention on the pier was Princess Bamba Duleep Singh. She had a large assortment of baggage beside two fine dogs. One a Great Dane named Leon, the other a beautiful cream colour Russian wolfhound, the name of which she refused to dive after. And then when they ask her, they report that she just screams at them, leave the dogs alone. And don't you put anything in the paper about them either. So she's not playing at all like, she just hates it.

[William Dalrymple]

Interestingly, the whole dog thing is again a continuity because Jinden's, their grandmother's father, had been the kennel.

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Keeper.

[Anita Anand]

Kennelkeeper's daughter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Echoes of the past.

[William Dalrymple]

And we know that Sophia does these Pomeranians, but she has more. My kind of dog. I love the idea of a big Russian wolfhound. Enormous beasts.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean, Sapphira also. She goes from Pomeranian to Borzois if you like a big dog. She's into the Borzois as well. And she wins the Crofts with them as well. But look, Bamber, for a brief moment, is magnificent. In Chicago, she's living on West Adams Street. She is going to the Women's Medical College every day. One of the few non white women in American medicine in 1901. Fewer than a thousand medical students in the entire country. But you know what? It is hard.

[William Dalrymple]

An extraordinary story in itself, this.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

Even without all the other stuff, it's just amazing.

[Anita Anand]

I'm so, so glad you think so. Delight.

[William Dalrymple]

You should write a book in it. Okay. Now anyone that's been to Chicago knows that it is effing cold in winter. The winds blow off the lake, notorious Chicago freezing winds. And it gets to, well, 14, 15 below zero in winter. Streets unpaved, frozen mud. And she is in a sense the first South Asian woman of many today trying to qualify as a doctor in the United States.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, you can't move for tripping over Indian women doctors these days. But it wasn't real, but it was like, you know, a very rare unicorn sighting in those days. And what makes it worse, the weather was bad. And remember, she hated the weather in England as well.

[William Dalrymple]

But, and this is worse, the locals

[Anita Anand]

are unkind to her as well because, you know, she's not charmed the press, she hasn't got them on side. And her walks to the medical college are torture. Again, there are reports in the paper of how she's complained because she's pelted with lumps of snow on her way to the college and sort of, she sort of shouts at the press and

[William Dalrymple]

it's a rough place, Chicago, at this point, isn't it? This is the. I mean, presumably Al Capone's already in business at this point. It's not a safe or easy place to be living.

[Anita Anand]

I think Al Capone comes a lot later, but you get the idea it is not the nicest place for her. And the press, instead of sort of taking her side and saying, this is really outrageous treatment, can we just treat our guest a bit nicer? They just really revel in breaking into her rooms, describing what's in her knicker drawers, and also writing about her losing her rag with the locals. You know, she sort of screams at the press. You know, that when she's pelted with the snow or she's asked about the snow pelting, she goes, such things would never be permitted in England. I shall leave Chicago. I've never encountered such rude people in my life. So you can see, you know, this is. She's just full of rage and anger. Most 23 out of the 24 hours of the day. But she sticks it out for almost three years. She does.

[William Dalrymple]

But does she complete her course? Does she get a. Does she become a doctor?

[Anita Anand]

Well, God, William, she does complete her coursework. She's about to. Or she should be graduating with her medical qualification. But in the summer of 1902, the trustees of Northwestern University decide, in all their wisdom, that women, full stop, cannot be doctors.

[William Dalrymple]

After all, she's gone right through this training, and then they've sort of taken it all away.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, women cannot grasp surgery. That is a direct quote from the university. So she sails back to England in June 1902, completely defeated. You know, Catherine had her escape route through Lina. Sophia is happy to sit in Faraday House. She can't understand it, but, okay, so be it. She does not want to be there. So, you know, whatever her rage was, it's now burning with the fire of a white hot sun. She comes back, but she has an attitude problem right from the beginning. And there are reports of her just being very rude and demanding around Faraday House about where and when she should be allowed to leave, how people talk to her. She keeps complaining about life there.

[William Dalrymple]

Does her sister resent her being rude to everybody? Do they get on?

[Anita Anand]

So her sister finds her tricky, but loves her. And her sister will actually push back against Cause Bamba, when she comes back into Sophia's life, keeps telling her, you cannot trust these white people. You can't trust them. You cannot. Why are you friends with them? Why are you going to These parties. Why are you so happy that you're in their magazines? They hate us. And she. She keeps saying, no, they don't hate us, they don't hate us. Look, can't you just be a bit easier? But she's loyal to Bamber. She's never going to leave her sister's side. Like I said, these sisters have an unusually close bond. So you remember I told you about the Delhi Darbar of 1902, which radicalises Sophia?

[William Dalrymple]

You did. Now, whose idea is this to go off uninvited to the Delhi Durbar and present themselves? Is this Bamba's own idea?

[Anita Anand]

It's Bamba's idea. It's Bamba who says, I don't care if the Secretary of State not gonna let us, we're going anyway. So nobody surprised her. This is, you know, some fool plan from the really awkward sister.

[William Dalrymple]

She's her father's daughter, she's great.

[Anita Anand]

But she does, she gets so much further than he did. And when she goes to India, when she goes to Lahore, you know, standing in the Shalimar Gardens where her father played as a boy, going to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, you know, she decides she is staying here. She is going to live and die here and, you know, stuff it to anyone who doesn't want. Want her to do that.

[William Dalrymple]

And I mean with good reason, in that not only is it home, it's one of the great cities of the world, Lahore. You and I have been together in Lahore and it's one of the greatest places to live. I'd love to live in Lahore. Shanima Bagh. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Dimal, the gorgeous museum, the Jadugar, the Zamzam gun sitting on its plinth on the road. I'd move to Lahore in a flash. Anyway, she does.

[Anita Anand]

She does. So when Sophia comes back to see her, because Sophia's trying to say, why are you staying there? Why don't you just come home? Because Sophia misses her, you know, Catherine's gone off with Lina. She's all on her own. She keeps begging her to come back. And Baba keeps saying, not on your nelly, I'm not going anywhere. If you want to see me, come and see me. But then, more alarmingly, she writes to Sophia, who doesn't want to go to Lahore, doesn't have that connection with Lahore yet. She writes and says, I think the British are trying to kill me. I'm really ill and I think they're trying to poison me. And that's what Sophia does, go and visit her and sort of Tries to put her back on her feet and try to understand.

[William Dalrymple]

And presumably there's no truth in this, is there?

[Anita Anand]

Well, no, I don't think there is, but Bamber definitely thought there was. And Sophia, who turns up thinking that Bamber is nuts, then starts to believe actually there is a conspiracy against her sister. People are being cruel to her every day. It is not beyond a stretch of imagination that she's being followed because Sophia sees that they're being followed and surveilled. But poisoning? I don't think so. I don't think so. And I don't think Sophia thought so as well.

[William Dalrymple]

But what's her status? Because as we saw, her father was actually physically taken off the ship at Aiden. They haven't done this to her. They've let her land. They may be following her, they may be being rude to her, but they haven't actually sort of. I mean, is she allowed to just arrive and settle there by the Raj authorities?

[Anita Anand]

They let her. They let her be because they figure by this time, you know, there's not. What's the worst that can happen?

[William Dalrymple]

Everyone's forgotten about them.

[Anita Anand]

Everyone's forgotten about them. But what they don't realize is everyone hasn't forgotten about them. And particularly the nationalists haven't forgotten. So people like Gopal Krishna Gukhale, who is the teacher of Gandhi, the reason Gandhi comes back to India, he comes to pay his respects.

[William Dalrymple]

Hugely important figure in the Indian National Congress in the turn of the century,

[Anita Anand]

Lala Lajpat Rai, who's this fire brand, who is the very genesis of this idea of Swadeshi that, you know, we will make our stuff, we will sell our stuff and we will keep the profits. We own Self Reliance is what Indians need and deplores the depredations going on, the colonial depredations in the country. So she starts mixing with those people and it's through her that Sophia meets these radicals, as they would have been called in those days, and becomes politicized. There is one gorgeous moment, and I'll just tell you very briefly, but you like a feisty woman. And I. I think we did cover this in our episode with Ram Gur when we talked about Gandhi and some of the women in his circle. Sophia comes back after a ride and she comes back to the home that Bamba has set up in Lahore, the Palms, very near Shalimar Gardens.

[William Dalrymple]

Next to the Shalimar Gardens, which is exactly where I would settle the Palms.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. So there she is. Bamba's not at home, she's at some mystery meeting. Cause Bamba does keep disappearing off from mystery meetings while Sophia is there. And she sees this woman waiting patiently on the veranda. And she's obviously blown away because she writes about it in her diary. But she writes with such care that it took a long time for me to unravel who she was. Because I thought, why has she made such an impression? You know, this woman who is referred to as a nice Bengali woman and is referred to only by a very innocuous name, which then I sort of traced back and is actually linked to Saraladevi Chaudharani, who is a firebrand revolutionary

[William Dalrymple]

that's a match for Bamba. These two will get on.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. A very dangerous woman is what they call her. Like, you know, to the point where. And again, go back and listen to our Gandhi episodes, my friends. She runs training camps for Indians to learn how to do battle with the British. And she does these sort of meditation. Meditations where people come and sit and they have to chant the name of revolutionaries, including. Although, you know, he wasn't a revolutionary, the grandfather of Bamba, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Maharaja of the Punjab. So, you know, Sarala Devi is a huge figure in the resistance movement of the day. And from a really interesting lineage as well.

[William Dalrymple]

Niece of Tagore.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. The Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. Absolutely. So, you know, she's from a very posh family. Anyways, so you get the idea who Bamba is running with. There is an interesting thing that Bamber does that none of the other sisters do. Really, really strange. She gets married, and she gets married to a man. Well, the way she announces it to her family really is really very weird. In 1915, so it's the middle of the First World War, she sends a telegram to her family, and in it she writes, I should now be addressed as Princess Bamba Sutherland because she's married a Scotsman. Well, Australian by birth, but a Scotsman. Okay, so tell us a little bit about Colonel David Waters Sutherland.

[William Dalrymple]

So, yeah, this is Lieutenant Colonel David Waters Sutherland. Australian by birth, Scottish by ethnicity. Born in Victoria, 1871. Son of a gold miner, interestingly. And he's come up through the Indian Medical Service. He is the honorable surgeon to the Viceroy of India. But what is extraordinary is that this isn't some sort of handsome Punjabi chap that you might. Might be expected to marry some revolutionary. He is white, establishment, absolutely straightforward. Raj, central casting. What's she doing with it? Benita, how has this happened?

[Anita Anand]

So I. So Bamba has always said throughout her life that she's only attracted to Indian men and Indian people. She also tries to arrange the marriage of Sophia on one of her visits. It's hilarious the way Sophia talks about these completely inappropriate Indian men that Baba keeps throwing at her. She has disdain of English speaking white people. But then she suddenly marries this Australian colonial doctor, 20 years older than her as well. And the reason is twofold. It's money and it's legitimacy to stay in Lahore. So there is a proviso.

[William Dalrymple]

But rich Punjabis around in Lahore, she could have done that.

[Anita Anand]

Well, she can't get to her own money, so her always, her grudge was that, you know, they were given a pittance and there's a mountain of money that rightfully belongs to her family. And when her father dies, there is a provision that is made by the British government that the girls will get a certain amount of money, a stipend, but if two of them marry, they will get a dowry. Okay, so it's about £10,000 worth of dowry. They only do this for Catherine and Bamba. And I was trying to understand why they were a huge amount of money for Catherine and Bamber. And I sort of think it's because they thought they would never marry because they were so difficult and so useless. But Sophia might marry someone quite useful and so she didn't need it, so they felt free to put it in. Bamber was always trying to get her hands on the money, but she had to get married to have it.

[William Dalrymple]

And do we know what kind of marriage this was? Was there any closeness in this couple? Do they like each other? What's the.

[Anita Anand]

Well, so again, I mean, they liked each other, but whether it was a real marriage, I've heard it suggested and by other historians who toil in, that this was a marriage of convenience that, you know, he was away so much, there are no children, you know, he's busy, she's busy.

[William Dalrymple]

Is he terribly good looking or do we have any pictures of him?

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, he's fine, he's okay. I have high standards, as you know.

[William Dalrymple]

You most certainly do. Your very splendid looking husband can take a bow at this point.

[Anita Anand]

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. But you know, the thing is that also being married to him, to the surgeon of the Viceroy of India, gives her some kind of protection to stay. So she does get married. He's also Australian. He's not English or Scottish. He's Australian in her eyes. So this marriage does take place. How loving it is. Well, they don't spend much time in the same hemisphere in their married life. So you decide. Anyway, let's take a break and then we'll find out what happens to the woman who is now Princess Bamba Sutherland who is refusing to leave India.

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[William Dalrymple]

Welcome back to Empire. Now what's intriguing me Anita, is is there any correspondence from this woman? She just made this marriage that none of us can understand to a kind of random Australian doctor which seems totally out of character. Do we have any illumination of her thoughts from letters or diaries or anything?

[Anita Anand]

The saddest thing in the world is that the conservator of letters was Sophia and she kept every letter that her family sent to her. They to My terrible horror. Didn't keep any of her letters, or they were destroyed or they are lost. And the sisters, their letters, whatever they owned, scattered to the wind. So, again, these are things that may come out in people's attics. I know the letter about Sophia finding Catherine dead on the floor was found in an attic in Thetford. And a very nice man who I met there said, I've got this letter you might be interested in just a little bit, you know, so these things

[William Dalrymple]

may crop up if anyone is listening, has access to the diaries of Princess Bamba.

[Anita Anand]

We both want to read them very, very much indeed. But also, I mean, I sort of think it wouldn't be safe for her to keep a diary because she was being surveilled and knew it.

[William Dalrymple]

Tell us what happens next. 1926.

[Anita Anand]

Let me take you back to 1924. First of all, because this is 61 years after Jindan's death, Bamba personally arranges for her grandmother's ashes to be transferred from Narsik, which is where the British allowed it to be, to Lahore, where her grandmother wanted to be. And she and Sophia's visiting at the time, go to Narsik, they collect them together. They go to a ghat on the Godwari river where the ashes are scattered and they say prayers with a Sikh priest in attendance. So you can just see, you know, that attachment to her family is so strong.

[William Dalrymple]

Has she converted back to Sikhism? Is she showing any interest in Sikh religion?

[Anita Anand]

I'm really glad you've raised that, actually. There are two things that happen these days with these girls who people are really keen and for good reason to own. They are always described as Sikh princesses. They were each one of them Christian. They were born baptized and remained Christian and had Christian burials and funerals, and

[William Dalrymple]

there's no records of them converting or nothing. Feeding the Guru Granth Sahib at home,

[Anita Anand]

there was, I think they were aware of it. They talked about being aware of it, but they wouldn't have described themselves as Sikhs. And you can see that from their funeral arrangements.

[William Dalrymple]

That's interesting. Isn't that interesting?

[Anita Anand]

Also, they're always described as being Sikh princesses. They were mixed heritage and everyone sort of deletes that from their mind.

[William Dalrymple]

The German bit, the Ethiopian bit.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, exactly right. Do you know, the other thing that I should is that 1926, you see the difference within two years of who she thinks is her real family and people who are family, but she doesn't accept them. So do you remember I told you about her father having an affair With Ada Weatherell from the knocking shop.

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[William Dalrymple]

And we do remember. Absolutely.

[Anita Anand]

Well, you know, there are two children who are born to that relationship. And we're gonna do a fourth episode on that. Cause it's a miserable and dark story. What Bamba does to those girls is wicked. She's a great character. People are complicated. I won't tell that story now. I will tell it in our fourth episode. But let's sort of skip forward to 1939. Her husband dies in Scotland while she's in Lahore. She's 70.

[William Dalrymple]

Has she seen him for much time or have they been separated?

[Anita Anand]

They're just living parallel lives, you know. They're just living parallel lives, Willy, which is, you know, sort of answers your question. Were they happily married? I think they were fine. I think they were okay. But it was a marriage to an end.

[William Dalrymple]

She was clearly a handful. Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Oh, shall I tell you a thing? So when I was researching Sophia, the book, I talked to a woman who had been a maid at Faraday House, and she said all the servants detested Bamber. They loved. Sophia, detested Bamba. Because in her words, this is a very elderly woman who was in her 80s who is talking to me. She was a class A. Her word. Bitch. That's what she said. She said class A, A bitch. They would hide her clothes. They would sort of fold things up and put them in the wrong places just to hear her scream because she was so awful. But look, she is what she is. Her husband. Husband dies thousands of miles away in 1939 in Scotland. She's in Lahore.

[William Dalrymple]

Second World War is about to break out.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, she's trapped, okay? She can't leave. She's stuck there. And then in 1942, she learns that Catherine has died and has been found by Sophia. She can't go to the funeral. Funeral. So she's grieving from a distance. And then in 1947, another great catastrophe. The partition of India. And Lahore, the jewel of the north, her family's ancestral city, which was mixed, you know, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. It ends up on the Pakistan side. Now, you and I know how many people decided to leave for being the wrong religion. Okay?

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. 1.5 million people are killed in this terrific upheaval. Whole populations are on the move backwards and forwards. There's violence, there is rape, there is bloodshed. There are moments of extraordinary heroism and kindness from people's shelter, people who are fleeing mobs and so on at great personal cost. But it is not somewhere you want to be. And Bamba's caught in the middle of it.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. And, you know, unnoticeably Sikh name, Duleep Singh is her name and people know who her grandfather was. But she stays put and she stays put and is kind of looked after by a Muslim man who's like her factotum, secretary, guide. So Birji stays with Bamba. That's a beautiful symmetry. And the only reason she's not killed in the riots, as far as we know, is that Birji, who is one of the most respected Muslims in the city, vouchers for her. And also, I guess in a way she's also protected the not marriage. Marriage with Sutherland is also a protection because he can say, or she can say that she is Mrs. Sutherland, a British doctor's widow rather than Princess Bamba Duleep Singh if she needs to. It's a useful identity to have in that period of time. Even though the world is falling apart, she refuses to acknowledge really that anything has changed. You know, this is still, still her home. This is still where she belongs. Another tragedy of her story is that despite being the oldest sister, she's the last to die. She sees her younger sisters, her baby sisters, die before her. So Sophia dies in August 1948. We know that Catherine died even earlier. Now, this is really interesting. So some people say she refuses to fly back to England. It wasn't, it wasn't that she refused to fly her sister's ashes out to India either. She travels by sea and overland because she said her sister was always frightened of flying. She says, I didn't want to take her on a plane because she didn't like to fly.

[William Dalrymple]

Although her sister's dead at this point.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I know, but did you see the closeness of the sisters?

[William Dalrymple]

That said, you know, the flight would have been something unusual at this period and the boat would have been the normal way to go.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, but she actually comments on it, though. Really? She says, you know, my sister didn't like flying, that's why I'm not taking her by air.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

And so Sophia had asked in her will for her ashes to be returned to India. And Bamba, an 80 year old woman, it is left to her to take them and she scatters them somewhere secret in Lahore. We don't know.

[William Dalrymple]

There is, I mean, obviously the gut where Ranjit Singh was cremated, which would have been the obvious place to have taken that.

[Anita Anand]

You'd have thought it's a sensible guess, but we don't know for sure. She lives another eight years alone, pretty much only with Pirigi and her company.

[William Dalrymple]

The Only Sikh left in Lahore after the eth cleansing of Partition.

[Anita Anand]

And it's a tragic picture because her sight is failing, her health is failing. She's constantly writing letters of complaint that she can't get a seat on the bus from model town into the city. She still calls herself, to the very end, the Queen of the Punjab, the last true sovereign of the Sikhs. But, you know, to everybody around her in this new country, Pakistan, that is springing up around her, she's an anachronism. She's a weird thing.

[William Dalrymple]

I interviewed someone who's very like that, who was the last descendant of the Mughals. And this woman whose ancestors had lived in the Red Fort, Princess Begum Sultan, lived in a tiny little house in the old city and worked in the ICCR library, stamping books as people took them out. And she wasn't going to leave her city because it was her city. Yeah, and this is. I'm sure Bam was thinking the same. She's going to be the last Sikh in the hall. She's not going to go just because the governments happen to have changed. This is her. This is the home of Ranjit Singh, of Duleep Singh. She's gonna die there.

[Anita Anand]

How lonely she was because, you know, a lot of her friends would be dead or would have crossed the border. You know, that's just a fact. I mean, in her last years, she gets really very dark, and she's sort of mulling over all of her anger. She's a woman who's lived all her life in rage, but you have to see how others have dealt with it. And, you know, I think Sophia, then fighting for other people, that's really noble. They all went through the same thing. Catherine discovering peace with Lena, that's also lovely. And she has a life, you know, she has joy. There's a joy in their lives that does not exist for Bamba. And when she's sort of in her twilight, she starts putting out the story that the reason the entire Duleep Singh line dies with her, none of the children of Duleep Singh have any children. None of them do with her generation. They're wiped out. That family disappears off the face of the planet. Sophia doesn't have children. Catherine doesn't have children. Victor doesn't have children. Freddy doesn't have children. Bamba doesn't have children. One of the things that Bamba starts putting around is that when they were in England, even when they were children at Elvedon being looked after by nannies, people were putting mystery powders in their Food to make them sterile. Now, look, you can treat that the way that Sophia treated the story of she's being poisoned. You know, she thought she was being poisoned. Whatever it is, she died bitter, angry and actually quite alone.

[William Dalrymple]

There was a thing, wasn't there, of putting bromide into the tea or something

[Anita Anand]

in World War I to soldiers getting randy.

[William Dalrymple]

So it's not impossible.

[Anita Anand]

Yep. But who knows?

[William Dalrymple]

But she's a crazier woman. You interpret it as that, is it?

[Anita Anand]

My feeling, spending so much time with them is that this is an articulation of anger, rage and trying to make sense of it all. And the fact that it ends with you, how awful is that? That it's all over. That however great you thought your family were all over, all gone.

[William Dalrymple]

So 1957, now Pakistan is already beginning to go wrong. And she's now 87 pg is her last link with the outside world. She's now in a Sikh free city after the ethnic cleansing of partition. There are no Sikhs at her funeral.

[Anita Anand]

No.

[William Dalrymple]

The funeral is arranged, oddly enough, by the Deputy High Commissioner of the British High Commission, which is a sort of terrible irony.

[Anita Anand]

She would have hated it.

[William Dalrymple]

Still has a British passport.

[Anita Anand]

I can't imagine what she would have thought of that. Yes, exactly Right. So she's buried in Lahore's Christian cemetery on Jail Road. Buried under a Christian cross in a Pakistani cemetery. As Willi says, no, seek to say the final prayers. We should say she died of a heart attack. There's a Persian couplet on her tombstone and it was translated very helpfully by the dawn newspaper, Pakistani newspaper. And it goes like this. If you open this grave, you will just not know who is rich and who is poor. Which is a line from Saadi. A great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The difference between royalty and civility vanishes when the bones are dug up. Isn't that lovely and sad and awful.

[William Dalrymple]

Very Sufi thought.

[Anita Anand]

And her entire collection of Sikh era paintings, her watercolors, her miniatures, her manuscripts, her personal possessions, they all go to Piergi.

[William Dalrymple]

And there's now a museum where they presumably are on a shop.

[Anita Anand]

They're inside. Yeah. The Lahore Fort. And you can see the Bamba Museum. I've seen it twice now and see all the. Of course, the Bamba Museum.

[William Dalrymple]

I've been there.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, yes, absolutely.

[William Dalrymple]

I hadn't made that collection. Right, right, of course, yes.

[Anita Anand]

So, you know, her house is demolished, long gone. The roses that she planted in Ghoulsar, they're all gone. You know, everything, almost every sign of her has gone, but. So I'm really glad that we've done this about her because she's really wondering, worth knowing. And that story encapsulates so much of the period. I think it's, it's rather wonderful. Next time, though, we're going to talk about things that are rather unlovely about Bamber's history. Two princesses who we've mentioned lightly a few times in this series, Princess Pauline and Princess Irene, I mean very much names of the street. The mother was Ada Wetherill, the chambermaid born out of wedlock in a Moscow boarding house and a Paris apartment rejected by Queen Victoria, frozen out by three famous sisters, although one of them, Sophia, will relent and will be very kind eventually. One dies alone in an unmarked grave in the south of France during the war. The other walks into the sea off Monte Carlo. 26 years of age she is when she does it, and she leaves a letter behind her saying, I am homeless. Empire Club members can hear that really tragic story right now. But for now at least, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.

[William Dalrymple]

And goodbye from me, William Durimple.

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