The project will explore the history of first Indian suffragette, the Princess Sophia Duleep Singh’s life from birth to her death in 1948. Princess Sofia Duleep Singh. This project will introduce, in Redbridge, the history of struggles of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh to get woman’s right to vote with a very intriguing element of Indian women who played a vital role to achieve this goal. Her ancestors belonged to Lahore, now in Pakistan. It marks women’s suffrage centenary in 2018.  In this project we will visit research sites i.e Museums, Heritage Centres.  We will conduct interviews of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian women.  We will publish a small booklet with our research and have a small exhbition displaying our findings.

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We will explore the history of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh through:

•             Fifteen - twenty oral histories of women living in Redbridge from South Asia

•             Research in the local archive at Redbridge Heritage Centre and British Library for the period from 1876 – 1948.

Our Oral history will look at how women from Pakistan in Redbridge have or have not exerted their voting rights, the life history of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, urban and rural women’s attitude to voting.

Our interviews will look into struggles of women of Pakistan who cannot cast votes as their men folk don’t allow them to vote comparing with the Suffragettes' movement and the reasons why men folk were against the rights of women to vote in Britain.

This project will share our heritage with South Asian communities and general public thus raising an awareness of Princes Sophia Duleep Singh, who would play a part in giving incentive and courage to Redbridge women to become more vocal and becoming more active in local area/community.

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IF YOU ARE INTERESTED TO TAKE PART PLEASE DROP AN E-MAIL