Autobiography of a Queer Desi Heiress

Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh is a woman of a complex cultural heritage - known among historians as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria, the daughter of the last Sikh Emperor of India, a closeted queer desi heiress and India's very own 'Schindler'. Her story is fascinating as it gives us an inside look into the lives of Indian nobles during the tumultuous years before India achieved freedom.

A portrait of Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh

Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh was a woman who lived an eventful life, enduring the tumultuous era of both India’s freedom struggle and World War II. Her life story has resurfaced in recent years, given the rising trend of the representation of underrepresented personalities throughout history. The following paragraphs entail the fascinating tale of a queer Indian heiress who deserves more recognition.

Catherine Singh inherited a complicated cultural heritage through her parentage. Her father, Duleep Singh has a convoluted memoir himself. He spent more than a decade in de facto exile, during which he had an arranged marriage with Bamba Müller, who was of German and Abysissian origins. Bamba resided in a Christian missionary in Cairo. When offered his hand in marriage, she made the opportunistic move to marry him and better her life, due to which her life has been dubbed a ‘Cinderella’ story by historians.

After moving to London, Catherine and her siblings were placed under the care of Arthur Oliphant and his wife. It was then she was introduced to Fräulein Lina Schäfer, a German teacher and governess from Kassel, a woman who was fated to spend the rest of her life with Catherine. Lina was 12 years older than Catherine and their relationship blossomed, as they became each other's friends and confidantes. In her pubescent years, she received instruction to better herself as a woman and learnt the languages of French and German and displayed proficiency in singing, singing and playing the violin. She was presented as a debutante at Buckingham Palace at the age of 24 and even went on to become a suffragette.

In 1903, after taking a tour of India, she then decided to settle down and have a peaceful life. In 1904, Lina Schafer and Catherine visited each other in the Black Forest at Kassel and Dresden and in 1908, Catherine moved to Kassel and lived with her former governess, Lina Schäfer. Their residence was in the villa colony of Mulangstraße. Lina and Catherine were not explicitly mentioned as being in a romantic relationship, but Sophia Singh described their bond as ‘intimate’. They lived a happy, domestic life for several years, even through World War I. Lina Schäfer would state mischievously, "We are two little mice and live in a small house." Catherine enjoyed gardening, but found cooking to be beneath her dignity. So, the unlikely pair would often dine for lunch at a guesthouse in

Their lives changed dramatically after the rise of Hitler’s regime in Germany. Catherine received harsh disapproval from the Nazis in her locality due to her brown skin and her sexuality. She defiantly lived with her lover in Kassel, even with the eminent threat of facing torture and execution at the hands of the Gestapo. Catherine, along with Linda, also helped several Jewish families to evacuate Nazi Germany, which earned her the moniker of being India’s ‘Schindler’.

Catherine and Lina Schäfer

She decided to discontinue her efforts in aiding the Jews after the death of Lina on August 26, 1938, and on the advice of her neighbour and accountant Dr Fritz Ratig. She sold everything she owned in Germany and fled via Switzerland to England. She did make a last attempt to evacuate a few Jews. A most notable example of her efforts would be on Kristallnacht or ‘The Night of Broken Glass’, during the month of November 1938. She helped Wilhelm Hornstein and his family plan an escapade out of Germany to her estate, Coalhatch House, in Penn, Buckinghamshire, along with several other German- Jewish Refugees over the course of the next few years. A few hectic years later, in 1942, Catherine passed away due to heart failure. As a last of showcasing her everlasting affection for Lina, she wrote in a codicil in her will that she wished a quarter of her ashes to be "buried as near as possible to the coffin of my friend Fräulein Lina Schäfer at the Principal Cemetery at Kassel in Germany" and the other half would be scattered in the Ganges River.

Catherine and Lina’s tale is bereft of many facts due to the nature of the times in which they lived and also because Catherine was a private person.  Despite her qualifications and education, Catherine's life and the treatment that was meted out to her were dichotomous. She was a member of England’s high society, a descendent of the powerful Sikh Empire and the goddaughter of the Queen of England and yet, in all these contexts, she was ostracised or treated as less than. These circumstances, along with the multitude of losses she suffered throughout her life, gave her the ability to recognise the empathetic value of the situation of the Jews stranded in Germany. She used her pain to fuel her humanitarian deeds, which is a lesson we can all learn from.