Britain's Maharajah

This month, Sikhs worldwide

celebrate the Holy Festival of Vaisakhi.

THEY CHANT

Vaisakhi is the most important celebrated festival for the Sikhs.

On Vaisakhi, we have a procession, Nagar Kirtan is what we call it.

Vaisakhi is a time for Sikhs to celebrate the birth

of the Sikh nation, and the establishment

of the Sikh code of conduct the Khalsa

by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699.

There's usually a big hall with the Guru Granth in it

and you can go and listen to Kirtan,

which is prayers and Paath, which is prayers too.

For Sikhs, Vaisakhi is a reminder of the importance

of holding on to identity and heritage.

And this is the little known story of a figure

central to Sikh history - the last Maharajah of the Sikh nation -

whose own faith and identity were tested to the limit.

His name - Maharajah Duleep Singh.

He symbolises the past but he also represents an iconic figure

within the community's history today.

Born a Royal Prince of the Punjab in the age of Queen Victoria

he lost the Empire he was destined to inherit

and was exiled to Britain as a teenager.

Duleep Singh really trod the ground for us in many ways

because he came here, he was very isolated, cut off from his family,

cut off from his culture and cut off from his religion.

Favoured by Queen Victoria, he converted to Christianity

and lived the life of an English gentleman.

He'd exchanged his turban now for a top hat and that, you know, that was his new life.

But, gradually, he rediscovered his Sikh heritage

and was baptised back into the Sikh faith.

He is, for many British Sikhs, celebrating Vaisakhi,

a key figure in Anglo-Sikh history and continues to hold

a fascination for those who've delved into his story.

Just the drama of the story really grabbed me

and I couldn't believe that not much has been written about it.

I spent a lot of time doing a lot of research,

and working on a screenplay, you know, about his life.

I began looking in old bookshops

and old antique fairs to find a piece of history, anything belonging

to the Duleep Singh family - something which I could keep myself.

I was lucky enough as a journalist to find the story of a lifetime,

which was his story.

Dressed in his turban and jewels, this shadowy image

is the young Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last ruler of the Sikh Empire.

He's just ten years old, captured by an amateur photographer

in Lahore in 1848.

Now part of Pakistan, Lahore was then the royal seat of power

in an independent Punjab.

Duleep's father was the charismatic Ranjit Singh,

known as the Lion of the Punjab.

And his mother, Rani Jindan, the last of Ranjit's many wives,

renowned for her ambition and beauty.

Ranjit Singh was one of the most glittering, exotic rulers

the Indian subcontinent has ever seen.

An extraordinary man, who proceeded to build, in the space of 20 years,

a great empire, which stretched from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas.

Duleep Singh would have grown up in a very rich environment.

He would have been told the story of Vaisakhi,

of the creation of the brotherhood.

He and his family and the court were the direct descendants

to some extent of the proud tradition of the Sikh rule.

But Duleep Singh never got the chance to make his own mark

in history as a great Sikh ruler.

With his mother holding the reins of power as Regent,

after his father died, he stayed on the throne for just six years.

By the time he was 11, his kingdom had been absorbed

into British India. His future uncertain.

What place is there for a little prince of the overthrown kingdom?

He is a danger to the new rulers, as it were,

and yet they are not going to behave like say Richard III

and strangle him in the tower, they are going to do something subtle.

The deposed boy prince was separated from his mother,

and taken to Fatehgarh on the banks of the Ganges.

It was 140 miles from Lahore

and famous for its Christian missionary work.

He's taken away to a very European establishment

which was really made for the wives and children

of the British officers serving in India.

He's no countrymen around him -

nothing to do with his Sikh religion.

There's no Sikh priest, there's no Guru Granth with him.

He was placed in the care of a British couple, Dr John Login,

a surgeon in the Bengal Army, and his wife, Lady Lena Login.

We would recognise them as the kind of Margo and Jerry of British India -

suburban figures - who are kindly.

And he loves them really and I think he...

And they love him in return. But then they are political appointees.

And every step that's made with this child becoming a man

has to be referred to higher authority.

He's a teenager, he's young and open to manipulation

and influence and he's introduced to the Christian religion

and taught the Bible.

So, this is the original Bible,

which was placed in the hands of the Maharajah in 1850

at Fatehgarh Park, and what's lovely about this particular copy

is it's highlighted and he's underlined

particular prayers which interest him.

On 8th March 1853, Duleep was baptised into the Christian faith,

the first Indian Prince to convert.

To emphasise his commitment,

Duleep broke one of the sacred vows of Sikhism.

His hair was cut and he presented it, braided,

to his British guardians.

In Sikh tradition, if you cut your hair you are seen more or less

as an outcast, and it's a very emotional act.

Uncut hair was one of the five articles of faith

ordered by Guru Gobind Singh

when he created the Sikh brotherhood of the Khalsa.

For Sikhs, it's seen as a symbol of respect

for the perfection of God's creation.

I personally remember having my hair cut at the age of eight

and, at the time, I didn't think too much of it

because most migrant children were having their hair cut

as they were going to enter school.

But, later in life, you begin to think what happened to you.

You know, if you had a choice - a real choice - to exercise free will

and to be able to keep your hair, would you have done so?

I think, in retrospect, I probably would have.

Having moved away from his Sikh faith, Duleep, aged just 15,

left his Sikh homeland as an exile.

Just a few days after the celebration of Vaisakhi,

on 19th April 1854, he boarded a ship for Britain

and disembarked into an alien environment.

Duleep Singh really trod the ground for us in many ways

because, you know, he came here, he was very isolated -

cut off from his family - cut off from his culture -

cut off from his religion.

And so, to try and sort of work out who you are and what you are,

what your role is in life, what your place is in life,

when you're completely cut off like that,

I think is a very hard thing to do.

Probably, you know, the older generation

would just identify with this sense of displacement.

Everybody wasn't a Maharajah, obviously, nobody was.

But you could have come from a farm in Punjab

and then come here and worked in a factory

and the displacement that causes - the identity problems.

Today, Sikhs in Britain are established

and Vaisakhi is an opportunity to reaffirm their identity.

One of the reasons I like going to the Sikh temple

is because I like being among people like myself.

I like, culturally, what that does for me.

I like the way it reinforces who we are to my children.

Now if you were to say to me, I don't have any way

of listening to my Punjabi music any more or, you know,

watch Indian films or, you know, go to a Sikh temple.

If I was not allowed to do any of those things, you know,

I would begin to feel very, very isolated.

Duleep was a very isolated young man

trying to work out where he fitted in.

Treated as an exotic outsider, his royal status opened the doors

to high society.

Within weeks of his arrival he was introduced to Queen Victoria.

He really fits the bill.

He is turned a Christian, he is gentle, he is polite,

he is good looking and she takes to him immediately.

He is holidaying in Osborne with the family,

he is sitting next to Queen Victoria whenever there is a banquet.

This is wonderful.

Imagine the wealth and the excitement of being rich

and leisured in Victorian England

where at the very top is a class who just have fun.

And fun is castles and hunting and shooting, and that's what he does.

And such were the attractions of this opulent lifestyle that

Duleep's memories of his Sikh upbringing faded.

Over the next eight years he rented properties in Scotland,

the Cotswolds and Whitby.

Whilst living in Whitby,

he left his mark on the local landscape.

Priya Kal Atwal is a volunteer with the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail,

a charitable organisation which works to keep Duleep Singh's story alive

in celebration of a shared Anglo-Sikh history.

Right here is the road that Duleep Singh built to

travel down from his castle, Mulgrave,

the Mulgrave Estate, down to Whitby to make life easier for himself.

There's a toll house - that's also a cool thing.

Just that there's something left behind him, that was made by him,

and it's still here today.

There's a family living in there.

So, guys, do you have any idea who this is?

-No.

-No.

Do you have any idea who built your house?

-No.

-No.

-It was him.

-Oh, was it?

-Yeah. He was an Indian prince.

A Maharajah, and he lived in Mulgrave Castle

not far from here, for four years,

and he built this road to make it easier for him to get into Whitby.

And your house, he made, so that mostly people going along that road

would pay a little fine

that would be used to maintain the road

and keep it all in nice order. So that was why he made this house.

-Oh, cool.

-Not bad, eh?

-Yeah!

In private, Duleep had taken to his aristocratic lifestyle.

But in public, he was expected to present himself as an Indian prince.

The Maharajah becomes the ideal party accessory.

He is the exotic figure to lighten up every high society Victorian party.

Even guests and hosts go out of their way to make a curry

for the Maharajah to please him.

And he is seen as head of the Indian princes of India.

Caught between two identities -

gentleman-about-town and deposed Sikh Maharajah -

Duleep was happy to accept his lot.

And that might have been the end of the story

but for a meeting in 1861.

By the age of 22,

Duleep had been separated from his mother for 13 years.

During that time, Rani Jindan had been imprisoned by the British but

escaped and continued to plot for the return of her son's birthright.

Duleep now asked if he could meet her.

The British no longer considered the frail and nearly blind Jindan a threat.

And so, Duleep set sail for a reunion in a Calcutta hotel.

The story goes that when she touched his head, to give him blessings,

she felt his shorn hair and cried, that he had given up his identity.

She wanted him to get back to his Sikh faith and his Sikh roots.

Mother and son moved into Mulgrave Castle in Whitby

and Jindan began to open Duleep's mind to his heritage and to Sikh values.

She reminded him of his past, and his former identity,

not only the riches that he once had as the ruler of the Punjab,

but also his Sikh identity and spirit that went with it.

And Sikhs have this concept that is important to us,

it's the idea of Chardi Kala

that is like always having positive spirits,

always thinking the best that will happen, and never giving up.

And she kept that tenacity and spirit with her.

It was obvious that she deeply believed in that religious aspect of her life

and that for Vaisakhi is an important part

of what Sikhs have to remember.

Vaisakhi is about upholding of the Sikh identity.

That was the legacy that his mother gave back to him,

to restore him back to that faith,

and ignite that fire under him to get back what he had lost.

But in 1863, tragedy struck.

Just two years after their emotional reunion, Rani Jindan died.

Duleep was 24 years old.

Duleep continued his British lifestyle.

He also married Bamba Muller,

a Christian he had met in Cairo on his travels

and she joined him in his newly purchased sprawling estate

in Elveden, Suffolk.

Here, the seeds that his mother had sown began to show,

a reconnection with his long-neglected Sikh roots.

On the outside it looks like an English stately home,

but on the inside he had the whole thing made as an Indian,

princely, you know, palace,

and so there are the most gorgeous marble carvings and floors and walls and archways.

In these sumptuous new surroundings, reminiscent of his childhood,

he had time to reflect on his mother's version

of how he lost his Empire.

He spent hours in the British Library

poring over accounts of events he was too young to remember.

I had an interesting experience.

I got the book out of the British library -

History of the Punjab.

And there it was, published in 1846.

And it was full of marks in green ink.

Exclamation marks, and splutterings,

and, my goodness me.

So I gave it back to the librarian and said, "I didn't write this,"

you know, "I didn't put this ink in.

"It must have been the previous borrower."

And it was his. It was him.

He had been writing in it.

Duleep meticulously collated his findings into bound volumes,

which he sent with personal notes to members of the government.

This particular copy

is actually the proof copy

which he's asking Lord Walsingham to look at,

and also to check for any mistakes,

and he says that, "I'm going to place this book before the Queen."

And it's signed, Duleep Singh.

Inspired by his mother,

the methods Duleep used in pursuit of justice

echoed the teaching of the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh,

who had taught the importance of an exhaustive approach of appeal.

If we look at the experience of the Sikh community in Britain since 1945

it's very instructive.

The campaigns, for example, over the right to wear the turban,

to wear daggers, and to be represented -

they are all very systematic, methodical, persistent.

They represent the Sikh way of campaigning.

Duleep Singh was a very sophisticated campaigner.

He systematically approached media outlets, political representatives,

to advance his case.

And by modern standards he was very much into political campaigning

and knew which levers to pull.

Up to this point, Duleep had campaigned alone

but now he enlisted the help of his Sikh family and supporters in India.

It set alarm bells ringing in government circles.

The idea of them travelling by train from Liverpool Street station

followed by Metropolitan Police Special Branch

who are noting down their movements -

"Sinister men in turbans seen at Thetford station" -

and all this information is flowing, as the Maharajah, if you like,

is shaking the bars of his gilded cage,

the idea of being locked up in Elveden.

It's a parody of what he once had, you know.

"It's a parody, I want my kingdom, I don't want this."

Alongside his political campaigning, Duleep showed a growing interest

in being reinitiated into the Sikh faith.

The Maharajah is visited by his cousin Thakur Singh Sandhandwalia.

With him comes Pratap Singh, a high priest of the golden temple

of Amritsar, who had written one of the copies of the Guru Granth Sahib

at the Golden Temple

and every day Pratap begins to read the Guru Granth Sahib to the Maharajah.

He beings to teach him Punjabi

and starts showing him the way to pray, according to the Sikh religion.

So this is the Punjabi learning manual designed by

and handwritten by Sirdar Gani Pratap Singh.

As we can see it shows you the different sounds of each letter

and over here we see a Sikh prayer,

which is written by Gani Pratap Singh

and he's translated it in English for Maharajah Duleep Singh.

RECITES PUNJABI

Duleep was beginning to mould his Sikh identity.

But he also had an eye on the future, on the next generation.

The 1881 census lists Duleep's growing family -

three daughters and three sons.

When you look at the photographs of his children,

when they are young they have unshorn hair,

which is often braided, so in that sense one sees that there is a desire

to maintain some element of the heritage.

I think that is a very important marker of identity,

of the need to continue with the tradition.

Duleep's growing religious and political convictions

had begun with the powerful voice of his mother 20 years before.

Everything since then had been about getting to this pivotal

moment in his life.

He is middle-aged, mid-life. He decides to go to India.

He will go to India. He will go back to the Punjab.

Duleep wrote to Queen Victoria.

"I did not wish that you, My Sovereign,

"should hear from any other source but myself of the possibility

"of my re-embracing the faith of my ancestors."

Duleep abandoned Elveden Hall, sold its contents,

and at the end of March 1886 set sail for India

to reclaim his sovereignty and to be baptised back into the Sikh faith.

Duleep Singh's journey had two goals. One political and one personal.

Politically, he had turned his back on Britain

in search of support for his claim on the Punjab.

Whilst personally, he planned on arrival in India

to be baptised back into the Sikh religion of his birth.

The British government did not want him to get to India, at all.

And when the ship docked at Aden, which was the halfway point,

the Maharajah was arrested by the British Resident at Aden

and told he could not proceed to India

and if he did very harsh steps would be taken against him.

And he is put under house arrest.

He's not told it's house arrest, but he's not allowed to go out.

He's put in this villa in Aden.

And it's...boiling hot,

and nothing is happening and this is like...cruel and unusual punishment.

And he paces up and down, like a bird in a cage.

It was while under house arrest that Duleep became a Sikh,

in a baptism ceremony performed on the morning of 25th May, 1886.

Many Sikhs choose to take Amrit during the Vaisakhi Festival

as a commitment to worship one God,

to read the Guru Granth Sahib

and to serve others.

Duleep Singh's reconversion to Sikhism in Aden

is not just simply a strategic act,

it is signifying that I have come back into the fold

and this is my tradition and this is where I belong.

And that would have represented a very emotional and poignant moment for him.

It was very easy to place the Bible in a young child's hand

and get him to adopt a foreign religion.

And the fact he did a full circle and came back to Sikhism -

especially in his circumstances,

living in a foreign land - it needs praise.

Because he did re-adopt the Sikh religion.

Whilst his personal journey of rediscovery had been fulfilled,

Duleep's political ambitions remained elusive.

Prevented from travelling to the Punjab by the British authorities,

he travelled instead to Europe to plan his future.

Two months after his Amrit ceremony,

he wrote a letter to a boyhood friend -

its light-hearted tone at odds with its darker message.

"I style myself Lawful Monarch of the Sikh Nation.

"Doesn't that sound grand, my boy?

"The only thing I have settled on doing, as I am a Sikh now,

"is to fight the administration of India to the last

"and create all the mischief I can in India.

"Fancy our meeting on the battlefield!

"But I promise you, should it ever come to pass, the first shot..."

But the first shot was never fired.

And Duleep's life was coming to a close.

He spent the final seven years of his life talking with dissident,

anti-British groups from Russia and Ireland.

But his involvement in complex intrigues and plots

ultimately came to nothing.

At 52, his obsessive quest had cost him his marriage and his health.

He was such a broken man. A lonely figure.

A man who was born to rule the Punjab, the Maharajah of the Punjab,

and here he is, a destitute figure.

He died in a Paris hotel room of a stroke with a childhood toy -

a hawk's bell which he had round the neck of one of his birds of prey as a child,

he used to have it on his wrist as a kind of memento of what had gone -

in his hand.

He is playing with it, and that's the end of it.

He is now a Sikh and, by his religious rights,

he must be burned.

Cremated.

But the British ambassador in Paris smuggles his body out of the city,

and he's buried as a Christian in Elveden Church.

He could not even in death be allowed to be a Sikh.

In 1999, the Prince of Wales unveiled a bronze statue of the Maharajah

close to Elveden Hall, Duleep's old home.

It's a mark of his importance in Anglo-Sikh history

as the Punjab's last Maharajah,

and Britain's first Sikh settler.

And for young Sikhs, celebrating Vaisakhi,

who may never have been to the Punjab,

his story is a way of understanding and celebrating their Sikh heritage.

It would be quite strange, because I'm 11 years old

and he was only one year older than me,

and that would be quite terrifying being deported from your home country.

He might have felt out of place,

because he was with lots of other people but none were like him.

One of the victories, shall we say,

of the otherwise tragic life of Maharajah Duleep Singh

is the fact that we are sitting here talking about him now,

the fact that he means something to us.

The fact that we are not forgetting him, forgetting his struggles.

And the fact that we acknowledge what he did,

in terms of laying a kind of foundation for us as British Asians.

But at the same time, I think it's a good warning

of what can happen if you deny who you are

or if you are not able to enjoy those different sides of yourselves.

So the fact that Duleep Singh is revered today

and remembered by people all over the world but particularly in Britain,

at this time of Vaisakhi, I think that's something worth celebrating.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd