Maharajah
Duleep Singh
1838-1893
The first years of Duleep Singhs life were
played out against the rich background of the court
and the lavish palaces and gardens of Lahore. He enjoyed
falconry and had the best horses and elephants to
ride. He received a royal education with two tutors,
one for Persian and one for Gurmukhi. He was taught
to shoot guns and bows and trained in command. The
love of his mother surrounded him. It must have seemed
a kind of heaven for the boy, but the brutalities
of politics soon invaded.
Following the defeat of the Khalsa Army in 1846,
Duleep Singhs kingdom was reduced to half its
size and a British resident installed in Lahore. Despite
the apparent generosity of the peace treaty, in reality
the British began to dismantle the Sikh State.
Duleep Singh. Copyright: Norfolk Library and Information
Service
As the second Anglo Sikh war concluded, the British
entered Lahore and removed Duleep Singh into exile
to a town called Fatehghar. He left behind his throne,
his palaces, much of his personal fortune and his
country, never to return. Fatehghar, an admired centre
of Christian missionary activity in Northern India,
was where Duleep Singh became a Christian.
Duleep Singh's grave at Elveden church
Copyright: Norfolk Library and Information Service
A year later Duleep Singh set sail for England, he
quickly gained a royal audience and was an immediate
success with Queen Victoria. She commissioned the
best portrait painter of the day, Franz Xavier Winterhalter,
to paint Duleep Singh during one of his numerous stays
at Buckingham Palace.
The Maharajah lived in Scotland throughout his teens
and into his twenties. Naturally, the young man quickly
became the centre of attention there, the locals referring
to him as "The Black Prince of Perthshire".
His reputation grew with the lavishness of the receptions,
shoots and entertainments he held which became
ever more popular as the years passed.
In 1860, the Maharajah returned to India to rescue
his mother her from political exile in Nepal. This
visit was particularly unsettling for the young man
who had not expected the enthusiastic welcome from
ex-courtiers and Sikh soldiers whilst enduring the
curtailment of the British Government. Mother and
son returned to London. For the next four years they
were a regular sight in the society scene, then in
1863 she suddenly died. She had, however, made him
remember the past.
Once again, the Maharajah returned to India, this
time to cremate his mother. He did not return home
alone, he chose as his wife a part Ethiopian, part
German, Arabic speaking girl from a Cairo mission
school; Bamba Muller.
He took her home to his newly acquired home at Elveden,
selected and purchased for him by the India Office,
and transformed the run-down estate into an efficient,
modern, game preserve and the house into a semi-oriental
palace. With halls decorated in the fashion of a shish
mahal and dominated by the huge oil paintings of Ranjit
Singh in durbar or at the Golden Temple, of his brother
Sher Singh in regal splendour and with sculptures
of past glories and cases of jewels, the whole place
was a powerful reminder of his former status.
Duleep Singh loved Elveden and rebuilt the church,
cottages and the school. His fame as a game shooter
that he gained during his days in Scotland was to
be relived in the grounds of the great Elveden Estate.
He invited the Prince of Wales to his highly successful
shoots.
Duleep Singh and Bamba had six children at Elveden,
Victor Duleep Singh, Frederick Duleep Singh, Bamba
Jindan Duleep Singh, Katherine Duleep Singh, Sophia
Alexandra and Albert Edward Duleep Singh between 1866
and 1879.
Despite his English education, royal life style amid
European glamour, the rebellious Sikh spirit, that
had tasted sovereignty, was hibernating in some remote
recess of the sub-conscious mind of Maharajah Duleep
Singh who on gaining self-awareness underwent a metamorphosis
that turned him into a rebel. In 1886 he made up his
mind to return to India and place himself as the prophesised
moral head of the Sikh people, but was arrested at
Aden from where he returned to Europe.
With his innate political acumen, he glanced over
the international horizon, established secret contacts
with the Punjab, Irish revolutionaries, and the Russian
government. Before his intended march to India, Duleep
Singh had been reinitiated into Sikhism by taking
amrit pahul.
In the proclamations issued by him, he asserted himself
to be "the lawful sovereign of the Sikh nation".
But the destiny willed it otherwise. His health broke
down and he suffered an epileptic fit in a lonely
room of the Hotel de la Tremouille in Paris. It seems,
a belated realisation that his second wife, Ada, was,
perhaps, a planted spy for monitoring his intentions
and activities caused a mental shock that hastened
his "dark and mournful end" on October 22,
1893.