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Princess Sophia Alexandra Duleep Singh (8 August 1876 – 22 August 1948)〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Princess Sophia Duleep Singh – Timeline )〕 was a prominent suffragette in the United Kingdom. Her father was Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, known as the "Lion of the Punjab", who abdicated his kingdom of Punjab to the British Raj due to political manoeuvring by Governor-General Dalhousie in India and was exiled to England where he converted to Christianity. Sophia's mother was Maharani Bamba Müller. Her godmother was Queen Victoria. She was a firebrand feminist who lived in Hampton Court at the apartment in Faraday House, granted to her by Queen Victoria as a grace and favour. She had four sisters (including two step sisters) and four brothers.〔 She fashioned herself as an Edwardian lady, though of brown skin.〔 In 1895, Sophia (who later in life became a suffragette) and her sisters Princess Bamba and Princess Catherine, were introduced as aristocratic "debutantes" into Buckingham Palace, all three dressed in regal finery.〔〔 Secret documents revealed her identity as a firebrand "harridan law breaker" for her diaries revealed that she maintained contacts with the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement like Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Sarala Devi and Lala Lajpat Rai.〔 In the early part of the twentieth century she was one of the leading South Asian women who pioneered the cause of women's rights in Britain. She is best remembered for her leading role in the Women's Tax Resistance League, but she also participated in other women's suffrage groups including the Women's Social and Political Union.〔 ==Early life== Sophia Duleep Singh was the third daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh (the last king of the Sikh Empire) and his first wife Bamba Müller.〔 Bamba was the daughter of a German merchant banker with the company Todd Müller and Co., by his mistress of Abyssinian descent called Sofia.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Maharani Bamba Duleep Singh )〕 The Maharaja and Bamba had 10 children out of whom six survived.〔 Sophia thus combined Indian, European and African ancestry with an upbringing among the British aristocracy. Her father Duleep Singh, became famous for abdicating his kingdom to the British (at the age of 11) and also surrendering the famous Kohinoor diamond to Queen Victoria. He was exiled from India by the British at the age of fifteen, moved to England where Queen Victoria treated him very kindly and provided for his upkeep.〔〔 But his handsome stature and regal bearing made him the platonic lover of Queen Victoria.〔 Once in London, Duleep Singh converted to Christianity,〔 but in later life reconverted to Sikh religion,〔 when he realised that he had lost a large empire by deceit he decided to espouse the cause of the freedom movement in India.〔 Sophia fell sick with typhoid at the age of 10. Her mother, who was attending to her bedside, contacted the disease, went into a coma and died on 17 September 1887. Her father remarried to Ada Wetherill (who was a chambermaid〔), whom he had known earlier, on 31 May 1889.〔 They had two daughters.〔 Sophia's brothers included Frederick Duleep Singh, while among her two blood sisters was the suffragette Catherine Duleep Singh and Bamba Duleep Singh.〔 Sophia inherited substantial private wealth from her father upon his death in 1893, and in 1898 her godmother, Queen Victoria, granted Sophia a grace and favour apartment in Faraday House, Hampton Court.〔 Victoria was very fond of Duleep Singh and his family, particularly Sophia who was her god-daughter, and fully supported her and her two sisters to become royal socialites. Sophia wore most fashionable dresses from Paris, took to breeding of champion dogs, photography, cycling, attended fancy parties, and was the favourite Indian princess, with a fashionable address. She was a chain smoker of 600 cigarettes a month; the cigarettes were made from Turkish tobacco. She even became a poster girl for cycling driving her "Columbia Model 41 Ladies Safety Bicycle".〔〔 At the age of ten, with her father's tribulations in London and his fortunes disappearing in meeting his wayward life, Sophia made an effort to move to India along with her father and her co-born sisters, only to be turned back from Aden under an arrest warrant.〔〔 Her troubles started then and continued as her father disowned her,〔 but the magnanimity of Victoria provided her with a roof to live under in 1896, a triple-storied building known as the Faraday House, and an allowance of £200 for its maintenance.〔 Sophia behaved as if she was "Queen of the Punjab". She did not reside there initially but stayed at the Manor House, Old Buckenham in Suffolk, close to her brother Prince Frederick.〔 Her father died a lonely death in a rundown hotel in Paris due to ill health〔 on 22 October 1895 at the age of 55.〔 Seemingly affected by grief, she gave an impression of a silent girl which made the British government slacken their vigil on her, which turned out to be a misjudgment. She made a secret trip to India along with her sister Princess Bamba, to attend the Delhi Durbar where she was insulted. This made her realise the worthlessness of popularity in the media and among the public, and she returned to England to venture on something new.〔 During her trip to India in 1907 she visited Amritsar and Lahore and met her relatives.〔 Her visit to India was a turning point in her life as she came face to face with reality of poverty and the fact of what her family had lost by surrendering to the British government.〔 While in India, she gave a "purdah-party" at Shalimar Bagh in Lahore, the city where her father had been interned as a boy, although during her visit she was shadowed by British agents. During this visit, she also came across the Indian freedom fighters like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai who were agitating for self-rule, and she sympathised with their cause.〔〔 Lala Lajpat Rai was her hero and his unjustified imprisonment on "charges of sedition" by the British turned Sophia against the British Empire.〔 In 1909, her brother bought a house named 'Thatched Cottage' in Blo Norton, for his sisters to live, apart from buying the palatial Blo Norton Hall in South Norfolk for his own living.〔 In the same year, Sophia attended a farewell party hosted at Westminster Palace Hotel for Mahatma Gandhi.〔 Sophia's eldest sister Bamba Duleep Singh was married to Dr. Colonel Sutherland, who was principal at King Edward's Medical College, Lahore and had settled there. They had no children.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sophia Duleep Singh」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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