Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

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She edited her school newspaper, won prizes for her writing, then graduated in English literature from King’s College London, and found her way into television. The first part of the book reads like a short biography of Sophia's father, and subsequent parts spend so much time talking about the Indian independence and the suffragette movements that for long stretches we lose sight of Sophia altogether, and she begins to feel like a supporting character in her own biography. You join the ranks of the various revolutionaries and other assorted malcontents, while maintaining social proprieties to the very end.

There, patronised by Victoria and with a pension from the government, he was set up for the most part to live the life of an English aristocrat in Elveden, Suffolk. They were able to give testimony on what really mattered to Sophia, the advancement of women by democratic means; she told Drovna "You are never, ever not to vote". Of all her various causes, it was the suffragettes who animated her most, involving her in street protests as well as a steady baiting of the state by her refusal to pay taxes and fines, although her aristocratic status seems to have protected her from being imprisoned. It’s about human beings doing things to other human beings and I am completely compelled by this,” Anand says.She further explained that her own interest in Sophia originated in a 1913 photograph of her selling The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court (where the princess lived in a royal grace-and-favour house, much to the chagrin of the authorities as her activism increased). The British establishment provided them with enough of a living standard to keep them quiet, and their family line died with them. I'm really pleased to say she's getting a blue plaque this year at Hampton Court, where she used to live. Anita Anand ( / ˈ ɑː n ə n d/ AH-nand; [1] born 28 April 1972) is a British radio and television presenter, journalist, and author.

Ad an international flavour to your springtime book lists with these series six reading recommendations from Europe. Newspapers reported on how authorities seized and auctioned her jewels for failing to pay certain taxes. It will interest all those wishing to learn about the most important moments of Indian and British history through the story of a remarkable woman who never sought glory and has escaped historiography, although in those key moments she took an active and uncompromising part. While her sister Catherine and her partner, Lina, hid Jewish children from the Nazis and her other sister, Bamba, trained to become one of the first female doctors, Sophia was busy in London throwing herself at the prime minister’s car, smacking a “Votes for Women” poster on to his windscreen. The wealth of available sources—ranging from suffrage journal articles to suffragette leaders’ correspondence, organisational papers, writings and private documents—makes this section particularly interesting, and the author also does her best to fill in the spaces of Sophia’s inner dimension.The British, Marx wrote in his dispatches on the Indian uprising of 1857, could be as revolutionary abroad as they were conservative at home, happy to topple foreign monarchs as long as it suited their own political and commercial interests. Anand also presented Sophia, Suffragette Princess, a 30-minute television documentary programme based on the book, which aired first on BBC One in late November 2015.

I think the whole Duleep Singh family is fascinating and this book Sophia's interesting, sad life was well worth reading. When she became a nurse, ministering to Indian soldiers wounded in the trench warfare of the first world war, she did so as a loyalist of the empire. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond. Feeling trapped, he turned his attention to fashioning his British countryside home into a Moghul palace.Indeed she linked the two by urging campaigners for Indian independence to give Indian women the vote. She later became a prominent and controversial (given her links to the Royal Family and the sensitivity of the British Rule in the Raj) campaigner both for Indian rights in England (campaigning both for Lascars and later for injured WWI Sepoys) and for woman’s rights (becoming an increasingly prominent and militant Suffragette, particularly in the Women’s Tax Resistance League). My first major role on an award-winning, crowd-rousing, primetime British television show, Bodyguard, as the suicide-bomber Nadia, became a national talking point on the portrayal of South Asian women on screen. When war was declared and the WSPU ceased its activities because its leaders elected to take a patriotic line, Sophia turned to tending the wounded Indian soldiers sent to England for their convalescence.

In 1919, Sophia accompanied political activists Sarojini Naidu and Annie Besant to the India Office in London. Hundreds of women had assembled to hear Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the campaign for votes for women, speak before their protest march to Parliament. She presented the talk show The Big Debate and was political correspondent for Zee TV presenting the Raj Britannia series – 31 documentaries chronicling the political aspirations of the Asian community in the most marginal constituencies in 1997. This is a command that, in her acknowledgements, Anand herself repeats to her own neices and goddaughters). The author describes the violence meted out by the police, and the lengths to which the state sought to exonerate the police.Her family, prior to the partition, originated from a village near the Northwest Frontier Province and Afghanistan.