FATHER MAHARAJA ,OWNER OF KOHI-NOOR LOST IT TO ELIZABETH DAUGHTER BAMBA DIED OF PENURY ON 1957 MARCH 10

FATHER MAHARAJA ,OWNER OF KOHI-NOOR 

LOST IT TO ELIZABETH

DAUGHTER BAMBA DIED OF PENURY  

ON 1957 MARCH 10

Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Princess Bamba, the Maharajah's
 eldest daughter

The dazzle of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's court was a great attraction for European artists. The Russian prince and artist Alexis Soltykoff wrote, "This morning, the King gave us a state audience. What a sight! I could scarcely believe my eyes. Everything glittered with precious stones and the brightest colours arranged in harmonious combinations.

 The green garden was decorated by a huge crowd of Sikhs in yellow, red, rose, white, gold, silver, green, lilac and azure, all armed and strikingly arrayed, some of them being in coats of mail In the midst of this bevy was the King, coming to meet us, a big stoutish man of forty, covered with the most beautiful jewels in the world.

 On his right arm was the Koh-i-Nur, the finest diamond that exists














The other day we were invited to pass the evening with the King whose palace is in a fortress at the other end of the city. The King received us in the open, in the midst of his warriors, in the moonlight in a vast courtyard, surrounded by crenellated walls. There were thirty magnificent horses there, covered with precious stones and illuminated by torches and by a kind of Bengal fire which cast a blue light from the tops of the walls. 

I might mention that the Punjabis are famous for their fireworks. Seen thus the white horses, with their emerald ornaments, seemed like dream figures, while the black ones, with their ruby decorations, looked like specters from the Inferno, in the dim torchlight. The King, with the simple and unaffected air, which distinguishes him, led us along some narrow corridors, and we soon found ourselves in another court, paneled with marble and hung with beautiful carpets. In the middle was a basin full of waterfowl and fine jets of water filled the air like diamond dust. 

Around it, thousands of illuminated globes of different colours gave faint, soft light like that of dawn. As we advanced towards some splendid tents of shawls and gold brocade in the opposite comer of the court, enormous red curtains were drawn up slowly one after another by means of cords, like curtains of a theatre, by Sikh warriors armed to the teeth, and as these curtains disappeared we were more and more overwhelmed by the splendour of a new hall which was disclosed to view, the walls and ceiling of which were decorated with green, white, and red crystals framed in gold and looking like a pavement of precious stones upon an enormous ladder. 

Thither we were conducted by the King, and on entering, we saw, spread out to view on brocade covered tables the royal arms; hundreds of swords, daggers, shields, cuirasses and helmets, all very richly decorated Then the girls arrived, some thirty in all, pretty but small and delicate, in splendid costumes with their little noses so loaded with jewels and their foreheads and eyebrows so gilded that one could hardly distinguish their features. 

Their feet and hands, adorned with rings and mirrors, were very pretty though dark. The transparent veils that covered them were of gold, silver, or bright colours. Their short coats of velvet or other costly materials and their tight trousers of silk were very pleasing to the eye. 

These charming girls approached the King one by one and gave him one or two rupees. The King, who was in conversation with the ambassador, turned to them with an air of careless good humour. 

There is so much that is good natured and straightforward about him that, although his figure is awkward, he is charming and one would say that, in spite of his nervous air, he possesses plenty of pluck in danger. It seemed a curious household. The girls approached without any fear, most of them laughing, and looking about them. 

Then they sat down together on the ground between the tables. Suddenly a plaintive melody was heard, and two of them began a slow dance, while the others sat, looking like butterflies."

The Sikh kingdom of the Punjab was consolidated and expanded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh during the early years of the nineteenth century. During the same period, the British East India Company's territories had been expanded until they were adjacent to the Punjab. Ranjit Singh maintained an uneasy alliance with the East India Company, while increasing the military strength of the Sikh Khalsa Army, which also saw itself as the embodiment of the state and religion, to deter British aggression against his state and to expand Sikh territory to the north and north west, capturing territory from Afghanistan and Kashmir.

When Ranjit Singh died in 1839, the Sikh Empire began to fall into disorder. There was a succession of short-lived rulers at the central Durbar (court), and increasing tension between the Army and the Durbar. The East India Company began to build up its military strength on the borders of the Punjab. Eventually, the increasing tension goaded the Sikh Army to invade British territory, under weak and possibly treacherous leaders. The hard-fought First Anglo-Sikh War ended in defeat for the Sikh Army.

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Princess Bamba, the Maharajah's eldest daughter, was born on the 29 September 1869 in London, a year after Prince Frederick. She was baptised Bamba Sofia Jindan Duleep Singh, named after her mother and grandmothers’ respectively.

Princess Bamba enrolled at Somerville Hall School, Oxford, with her sister Princess Catherine. Whilst Catherine passed all her examinations, Princess Bamba was not so good in her studies, poor in French prose and translation, but she succeeded in grammar. At the end of the term the sisters came back from Oxford to London with Miss Schafer, which they spent by going to the local concerts and Operas

In 1915, Princess Bamba at the age of 46, married Lieutenant-Colonel David Waters Sutherland,. an Indian Army doctor, who later became the Principal at King Edwards Medical College, Lahore, from 1909 to 1921.

She frequently visited India during the days of the British Raj, but after arriving back in Britain in 1946, the country was partitioned a year later. India became Independent, which resulted in the formation of Pakistan. The Punjab suffered the greatest with the border between the two nations split right down the middle of the Punjab. Princess Bamba’s beloved Punjab and the Kingdom of her forefathers was no more in existence.

 In the following year Princess Sophia died, leaving Princess Bamba very lonesome. Her health started failing further after the death of her little sister but she kept herself going by keeping busy and moving from one of her homes to another. Hilden Hall was left to Princess Sophia, who in turn had left it to Bamba. But the Princess gave up the grace and favour home at Hampton Court[i] and began to share her time between Penn and Blo Norton.

Back in England, Princess Bamba began styling herself as the Queen of Punjab. She had her father’s rebellious side and seemed the more aggrieved one.[ii] On visiting Jarrolds, the high Street bookstore in Norwich, she demanded her driver George Davey to park outside the store, causing traffic. A Policeman requested ‘Madam, please move the car’ she replied in her stern voice ‘Do you know who you are talking to, I am the Queen of the Punjab’[iii]. 

The grumpy Queen would dress in her finery when visited by her Sikh countrymen at Blo Norton, who had started migrating toat the turn of the century. She would sit and take in all the attention she could get from them.[iv] During this period she was visited by her cousin Karl Wilhelm[v], grandson of Ludwig Muller, at Hilden Hall, by which time she was already dreaming of going back to India in order to die there.[vi] In his memoirs Karl Wilhelm referred to Bamba as ‘the true heiress of Ranjit Singh’ meaning that she was most conscious of the actually desperate situation of the whole family.

 ‘She considered the Punjab and Kashmir as the lost possession of her family and was absolutely furious when the border between Pakistan and India was drawn right across the Punjab.’ In Princess Bamba’s eyes, Pakistan or India did not exist, there was just the Punjab and its capital Lahore.


A neighbour in Lahore recalled ‘Old Princess Sutherland, the last descendant of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, complained that she could not get a seat on the bus, when all Punjab should have been hers! The old lady spent her days dreaming about her ancestral glory’[vii] On the 10 March 1957 Princess Bamba died of heart failure at the age of 89. 

She had outlived her entire family and the final chapter of a tragic story was completed and finally laid to rest. Her funeral was conducted in a Christian ceremony in Lahore. Her rites witnessed by a select few Pakistani dignitaries. But due to the sensitive relations between India and Pakistan at the time, who had just fought a war some years earlier, there were sadly no Sikhs present at Princess Bamba’s funeral.
Family of Maharaja Duleep Singh

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