Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

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Jonathan Dimbleby hands Any Answers? baton to Anita Anand on Radio 4". BBC Media Centre. 23 May 2012 . Retrieved 11 August 2012. Basically, the entire book becomes a damning indictment of the British empire. The British took the Punjab and the Koh-I-Noor in an act of highway robbery, ruthlessly exploited the subcontinent for many decades, and massacred peaceful civilians when their grip began to slip. Although many Indians did seem to favour partition, the British policy of partition began as a calculated ploy to set their colonial subjects against each other, so that (like a certain empire still clinging to life today) they could claim that their regime was necessary to prevent internecine warfare. At home, they set on the suffragists with insane violence. En masse, the London police beat and sexually assaulted women in the streets; when the imprisoned women went on hunger strike, protesting that they ought to be categorised as political prisoners, prison wardens and doctors force-fed them, resulting in unimaginable physical and mental trauma. Although I'm discomfited by some of Pankhurst's tactics, I'd be looking for things to burn down too if one of my sisters was killed by police brutality. She was born to first-generation Punjabi immigrants to the UK. Her late father Dr Chaitenya Anand, a general practitioner, raised her with a sense of how vital it was to know who you are. “He encouraged me to examine our history,” she says. Her mother Shashi Anand, a retired teacher, “is the best storyteller, a fabulous mimic. I think my desire to tell stories comes from her.” Anand vividly paints the picture of a society girl turned revolutionary ... With deftness and sensibility, Anand tells of the extraordinary contradictions at the heart of the relationship between the Queen and this family ... Anand's skill is to bring to life a character whose name does not figure in the annals of the suffragette movement * Observer * Sometimes you hear biographers complain that all the great figures have gone ... In this book, her confident and compelling debut, the BBC journalist and presenter Anita Anand leaves that argument in shreds ... Anand has triumphantly rescued Sophia from the pampered oblivion in which a fearful Raj sought to bury her. In doing so, she traces the excruciating double binds, emotional as much as political, that tied imperial Britain to the jewel in its crown * Boyd Tonkin, Independent Book of the Week *

I also enjoyed the structure of the biography, the narrative, almost novelistic structure to this book made it really interesting to read. The book also covers the topic of Indian Independence and other defining moments of history involving Britain and the Indian subcontinent, including some causes which Sophia herself worked towards supporting. It turned out to not be very hard to dig up unusual information on Singh. “People didn’t know anything about her. Everything was new. And I was very happy to find people who were still alive who had known her,” Anand says. “Those people brought to life what I was learning in dusty files and once-classified documents in British archives. Those people made her real.” The older Sophia becomes a political radical, joining forces with the suffragettes. Here the book eschews the exoticism and becomes a more standard depiction of the movement. The author describes the violence meted out by the police, and the lengths to which the state sought to exonerate the police. In a telling passage, Anand shows how the young home secretary, a certain Winston Churchill, dismissed all attempts to investigate after two women died of their injuries. Within the women’s movement, argument raged about direct action, particularly as war with Germany neared. Duleep Singh was then raised by British people until Queen Victoria decided that he was really cute and wanted him to go to England. She lavished attention on him and considered herself to be his best friend. He was not reunited with his mother until he was an adult. One might have understood their need for positive optics after refusing to return the north Indian kingdom to its Punjabi king. The East India Company had been circling Punjab for decades, and, on the death of Sophia’s grandfather, King Ranjit, it had seized its opportunity. It posed as a friend, offering to help protect the young King Duleep from external threats, and then forced him and his mother, the formidable Jindan Kaur, into exile in Britain, separating him from everything he knew.

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From Never Have I Ever and Ms Marvel to Wedding Season, there’s been an exciting shift. The world’s first brown female superhero and stories that centre Indian characters are hugely important steps for South Asian kids the world over to feel seen and to know that the opportunities afforded their white counterparts are within their reach too. As Marian Wright Edelman said, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Even if some of these shows are for audiences that the navigation system would flag as “American”, I feel hopeful that the waves will lap the industry here too. Let’s pole-vault our way into the reality we’re hungry for: game-changing South Asian women at the fore and cue the lights up on the incredible Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Joe says: If somebody said they had time to read one more book before they died, I'd say read this. It's incredibly entertaining. It's about murder, really. But it's about murder committed by a group of highly educated, brilliant young people. We'd be walking, and she'd be telling me about the world and elections and how important they were. And then she would kneel down in front of me, looking me right in the eye and say 'I want a solemn promise from you' even though I don't think I knew what a solemn promise was at that stage. She would say 'You are never, ever not to vote. You must promise me. When you are allowed to vote you are never, ever to fail to do so. You don't realise how far we've come. Promise me.' For the next three years, Sophia made Drovna promise again and again."

Anand, Anita (2019). The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj. Simon and Schuster (UK) Scribner (US), ISBN 9781471174216. It is based on the life of Indian revolutionary Udham Singh and the Amritsar massacre of 1919. [13]Eager to tell more South Asian stories, I began screenwriting a few years ago and am working on my first series. Trying to repurpose obstacles into vaulting poles has become my new strategy, and this is exactly what the subject of my upcoming writing project, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, did 100 years ago. As the daughter of the last Maharajah of Punjab, and goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sophia’s life was nothing short of extraordinary: her actions so bold and anarchic that the press were urged to keep them under wraps lest it cause a royal scandal and tarnish the British crown. Sophia is the sort of remarkable, almost unbelievable untold true story that every writer dreams of chancing upon. A wonderful debut, written with real spirit and gusto. Anita Anand has produced a winner * William Dalrymple * The biography is well written. It is readable and engrossing. Most importantly it includes just the right level of historical detail (on the operation of the Raj, the burgeoning Indian independence movement and the Suffragette movement) alongside the biographical detail to keep the account hugely informative (the book would for example serve as an inside account of each of those areas in its own right) while not detracting from the central story. In 2022, Anand collaborated with historian William Dalrymple to create the podcast Empire, which examines the British East India Company and British involvement and influence on India. [9] The pair had previously worked together on the book Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond.

In July 2011 Anand left the Daily Politics to present a new show called Double Take on Radio 5 Live on Sunday mornings. [7] In June 2012, Anand took over from Jonathan Dimbleby as the presenter of Radio 4's Any Answers? Saturday current affairs phone-in programme between 2:00 and 2:45pm. [8] The audiobook narration by Tania Rodrigues was superb. The accent was British, utterly delightful and easy to follow. I did have trouble with the Indian names, but this never became a problem. The written book and the narration both get five stars. Anand in her latest book uncovers not just an intriguing female life, but also an important perspective on British-Indian colonial history ... Fresh and well written ... What a story, and what a successful telling of it * The Times * We learned about the Suffrage movement at school, and also some of the prominent figures that spearheaded the movement and pushed for progress for the advancement of women and their rights, specifically the right to vote. Although Sophia was involved in a number of causes during her life, I was left with the feeling that her passionate nature resulted in her being caught up in the causes of others rather than those that might have been her own choice without their influence, and that on some level she was used by them. Less emphasis was put on her work on behalf of Indian soldiers and the lascars, although these seemed to be causes that were not unique to her, but ones which she chose without undue influence.

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After his death, the British used the confusion surrounding his heirs' succession to move into the area. Most of the adult heirs died suspiciously. When it was over, the ruler of this prosperous area was an 1o year old boy, Duleep. His mother was very politically astute so the British had her exiled from the country and then forced the child-king to sign over his lands and the symbol of his rule, the Kor-i-Noor diamond.

Anand has presented the BBC Radio 4 show Midweek, and on television she has been a presenter on the Heaven and Earth Show. She has co-presented the Daily Politics on BBC Two with Andrew Neil from September 2008, with a break for maternity leave from January to September 2010. Museum of Richmond exhibition: Celebrating 800 years of St Mary Magdalene at the heart of Richmond". Richmond Local History Society. July 2019 . Retrieved 8 August 2021. Anita Anand has definitively restored to history one of the most important and charismatic figures in the suffragette movement. This thoroughly absorbing and deftly informative account instantly pulled me into the irresistible adventure and vitality of Sophia Duleep Singh's defiant and innovative existence. Anand's timely biography is a wonderful testament to Sophia's lifetime of commitment to Indian independence and the advancement of women, and to the range and courage of her achievements * Rachel Holmes, author of Eleanor Marx * Then the real story begins with Sophia's famed grandfather, who was King of the Punjab, proceeds to discuss her deposed father and mother and finally focuses on Sophia and her surviving five siblings who grew up at the estate Elveden in Suffolk. Here her father recreated a Moghul palace with gardens, leopards, monkeys and exotic birds! Queen Victoria was godmother to both Sophia and her oldest brother Victor. The fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond was in fact her family's. The first half of the book follows all of the siblings, not just Sophia, so the title is a bit deceptive. From the debris of her father’s defalcated dynasty (a Game of Thrones-esque story in itself), Sophia channelled her fury into becoming the patron saint of the underdog. She built shelters for neglected migrant workers, treated wounded Indian soldiers (more than a million of whom fought for Britain in the First World War), and battled for the advancement of women both British and Indian.

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Levin, Angela (7 August 2012). "My perfect weekend: Anita Anand, radio and TV presenter". The Daily Telegraph. London . Retrieved 16 December 2018.