Quote · Empire: World History
370. The First British Indians: Saving Jews In Nazi Germany (Ep 2)
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Introduction: The Extraordinary Story of Catherine Duleep Singh
At 6:09 · chapter starts 4:11
William Dalrymple opens the substantive episode by situating it as the second in a series that Anita Anand pioneered with her book on Sophia Duleep Singh, noting the accompanying London exhibition and growing public awareness of the family's extraordinary story. Where Episode 1 covered Sophia's suffragette activism, Episode 2 turns to Catherine — a woman who chose a radically different path, one that took her to a German town called Kassel in Prussia with her intimate companion, who happened to be her childhood governess. Dalrymple frames the central paradox immediately: a brown-skinned Indian princess, the sister of a British army officer, cohabiting with another woman, living in Nazi Germany. It is a premise that sounds impossible — and yet it happened.
Catherine Duleep Singh was older than her famous sister Sophia, born in 1871, educated at Somerville College Oxford, and fluent in German and French. While Sophia fought the British establishment from inside it, Catherine simply left — choosing Germany, choosing Lena, choosing a life entirely on her own terms.
Princess Catherine Duleep Singh was born in 1871 in Belgravia, the eldest of the three Duleep Singh sisters presented as debutantes before Queen Victoria.
