Princesses Bamba Sutherland (center), Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh (left) and Sophia Duleep Singh (right) in debutante dress, 1895. ©Peter Bance Collection

This is the story of a family of extraordinary women—a warrior grandmother, a mother who moved across the world, three sisters, and the Queen who was both friend and conqueror. The Princesses of Punjab—Sophia, Catherine, and Bamba Duleep Singh—were the daughters of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire. Their journey begins in India but moves – as they did – across Nepal, Britain, Egypt, Germany and Pakistan. Their lives were shaped by female family members, mother Bamba Miller, Grandmother Jind Kaur, and Godmother Queen Victoria. They lived through defining 20th-century moments. They witnessed the fall of the British Empire in India and Pakistan; campaigned for women’s right to vote; nursed soldiers during WWI; and sheltered refugees. Dr. Mishka Sinha will illustrate objects from these women’s lives as shown in Historic Royal Palaces’ exhibition The Last Princesses of Punjab: Sophia Duleep Singh and the women who shaped her (March 2026). Dr. Sinha will explain how their destinies were shaped by global politics and how each expressed womanhood, power, and royalty in different way. These women’s lives were marked by privilege, but also loss, migration, and conflicting identities.

Dr. Mishka Sinha is a cultural and intellectual historian of 18th–20th century global and imperial history. Dr. Sinha has a BA from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, received an MPhil at the University of Oxford, and her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She has taught at many UK and Europea Universities. She has held research fellowships in Berlin; at Cambridge (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship); in Florence (Max Weber); at Oxford; and in Edinburgh. Dr. Sinha has several years of experience working in museums, arts and heritage in India She was co-curator of the exhibition, Untold Lives: A Palace at Work (2024).

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Available Tuesday, April 28 – Tuesday, June 30, 2026 | Sent out April 28 by 12:00 p.m. (ET)

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