An exhibition at Kensington Palace explores Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a British Indian aristocrat who campaigned for women’s suffrage and criticised British rule in India. Photographs, belongings, letters and documents are on display until 8 November.
Singh took part in the 1910 Black Friday demonstration in London, where women faced violence, and wrote to then Home Secretary Winston Churchill. Historian Dr Mishka Sinha said Singh wrote across the 1911 census form: “if women do not count, they refuse to be counted.” She also refused to pay taxes through the Women’s Tax Resistance League; she was taken to court and some of her belongings were seized and sold.
English Heritage says Singh had moved from loyalty to “overt criticism of British rule in India” by 1907. The exhibition also examines five women who influenced her: her godmother Queen Victoria, her mother Bamba Müller, sisters Catherine and Bamba, and grandmother Jind Kaur.
