Film

Today marks the Anniversary of the Birth of Maharaja Duleep Singh, who was born on this day in 1838. The the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Maharaja Duleep Singh was deposed by the British and exiled to Europe, where he lived for the rest of his life, and is the subject of the documentary: ‘The Stolen Maharaja: Britain’s Indian Royal.’

Documentary about the last Maharajah of the Punjab, Duleep Singh, who was wrenched from his mother’s arms as a child in the 1840s and put into the care of an official of the British Empire. Growing up in a colonial enclave in India, the boy king abandoned his Sikh religion and signed away his ancient kingdom to the British – decisions he would come to bitterly regret. He moved as a teenager to Britain, where Queen Victoria became his godmother. The Maharajah Duleep Singh lived most of his adult life here as a supremely wealthy English country gentleman, part of the British social elite. But, in time, his relationship with Britain turned sour.

This documentary retraces the journeys of Duleep Singh and his family: from the royal palaces of the Punjab to royal palaces in Britain, to his own English country estate, Elveden in Suffolk, to bohemian Paris. The programme uses recently rediscovered letters by Singh, letters and diaries written by those whose knew him, extraordinary photographs and surviving artefacts. We interview historians to get at the motives and inner life of the Maharajah Duleep Singh as he set out to recover his Sikh heritage and turn his back on his colonial past. This is a story from the age of Empire about someone whose life was defined by those historic forces.