Photo by Salman Rafique on Pexels
Despite colonial marginalisation, the Duleep Singh daughters — particularly Bamba, who pursued medicine in America and returned to Lahore — actively resisted their erasure and sought to honour their father's legacy on their own terms.
The British annexation of Punjab and the dispossession of Maharaja Duleep Singh set in motion generations of suffering, exile, and trauma for his descendants, from his lonely death in Paris to his daughters' battles with poverty, illness, and rejection.
Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh ruler of the Punjab, died alone in Paris in 1893 at the age of 55, leaving behind children who inherited both his dispossession and his defiance toward the British Crown
[1]
Empire: World History
373. The First British Indians: The Sisters Rejected By Queen Victoria (Ep 4)
— Anita Anand
"Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh were the daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and his second wife Ada Wetherall, a working-class woman Queen V…"
04:11
. His daughters — Bamba, Pauline, and Irene — each carried the trauma of exile and imperial rejection into their own turbulent lives, with Bamba openly echoing her father's contempt by calling Queen Victoria "Mrs. Fagan, receiver of stolen goods"
[2]
Empire: World History
371. The First British Indians: Last Sikh In Lahore (Ep 3)
— Anita Arundhati
"Princess Bamba refused to accept what the British did to her father's kingdom. She followed his lead in calling Queen Victoria 'Mrs. Fagan …"
08:00
. The family's story illuminates the brutal contradictions of the British Empire, which accepted brown skin only when adorned with a tiara, yet condemned the Duleep Singhs to poverty, institutionalisation, and obscurity
[1]
Empire: World History
373. The First British Indians: The Sisters Rejected By Queen Victoria (Ep 4)
— Anita Anand
"Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh were the daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and his second wife Ada Wetherall, a working-class woman Queen V…"
04:11
.
Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh were the daughters of Maharaja Duleep Singh and his second wife Ada Wetherall, a working-class woman Queen Victoria despised. Their working-class names alone — Beryl, Irene — told the whole story: these girls were never going to be admitted to court.
Princess Bamba refused to accept what the British did to her father's kingdom. She followed his lead in calling Queen Victoria 'Mrs. Fagan — receiver of stolen goods,' and that fury burned in her for the rest of her life.
The Sikh Empire at its height stretched from the Punjab to the borders of China, commanded ex-Napoleonic generals, and was the one Indian kingdom the British dared not attack. Its fall through internal succession chaos after Ranjit Singh's death set in motion a family tragedy that would shape three generations.
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