Rani Shri Amrit Kaur Sahiba of Mandi was born in 1904,[1] the only daughter of Jagatjit Singh Sahib Bahadur and his fourth wife, Rani Kanari Sahiba. Jagatjit reigned as maharaja between 1890 and 1947 in Kapurthala, northern Punjab.

Amrit received her education at a progressive girls' boarding school in Eastbourne, England, where she played tennis, led a five-piece jazz band and acted in plays. She was then sent to Paris. Amrit was given away in marriage in 1923 to the Raja of Mandi Joginder Sen Bahadur.[2] The couple toured Europe soon after their wedding, and were received in London by King George V and Queen Mary. After five months, they returned to Mandi, India, and the couple had a son and a daughter, Tikka Yashodan Singh (born 1923) and Princess Nirvana Devi (born 1929).[3] In an interview by the New York Herald Tribune in 1927, Amrit expressed determination to fight for the poorest and most marginalised women.[4] When her husband took a second wife, Amrit left India and her children for Paris in 1933 and never returned.[1]

Kaur spent some time in the United States before returning to Paris just as World War II broke out.[5] She was arrested on 8 December 1940 by the Gestapo in occupied Paris "on the accusation of having sold her jewelry to help Jews leave" France and imprisoned in the internment camp Besançon.[4] Amrit's father wrote to the British Foreign Office and to Marshal Pétain, asking for help in obtaining her release. The Germans offered to exchange Amrit for one of their spies imprisoned in India, but a British official decided that her repatriation was "not of sufficient political importance" to justify such a deal.[4] Kaur died in London in 1948.[1] The first female Indian cabinet minister, Amrit Kaur, was her father's cousin.

In 2022, an Italian journalist for the Corriere della Sera, Livia Manera Sambuy, wrote a biography, Il segreto di Amrit Kaur, that was published in English as In Search of Amrit Kaur in 2023.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Akemi Johnson (12 March 2023). "The Life of an Indian Princess, Cloaked in Mystery". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  2. ↑ "Rani of Mandi, 1924". The Lafayette Negative Archive. 24 June 1924. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  3. ↑ Ray Steward. "Rani Amrit Kaur Sahib of Mandi with her two children". in.pinterest.com. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 Tunku Varadarajan (17 March 2023). "In Search of Amrit Kaur Review: Portrait of a Doomed Princess". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  5. ↑ Butool Jamal (9 March 2023). "The Indian Princess Who Was Captured by the Germans During World War II". The Wire. India. Retrieved 26 March 2023.
  6. ↑ Manera Sambuy, Livia (2023). In Search of Amrit Kaur: A Lost Princess and Her Vanished World. Translated by Todd Portnowitz. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374715724. Originally Il segreto di Amrit Kaur (in Italian). Feltrinelli. 2022. ISBN 9788807035128.
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