A king in exile

Filmmaker Chris Durlacher tells us about a new documentary tracing the life of Maharajah Duleep Singh

The Stolen Maharajah: Britain’s Indian Royal

TV BBC Four Scheduled for August The life of Duleep Singh (1838–93) is a story of empire, power and, poignantly, a boy king far from home growing up to realise he’s lost touch with his roots. “It’s a universal tale about how an imbalance of power always corrupts human relationships,” says Chris Durlacher, director and producer of a new documentary about Singh.

To understand this view, it helps to know that Singh lived out most of his life in exile in Britain. This followed his being deposed in the wake of the second Anglo-Sikh war (1848– 49) and assigned a British official as a guardian.

“What’s interesting about how Duleep Singh was, frankly, manipulated and controlled by the British empire, is how subtly this was done,” says Durlacher. “People didn’t bully him, didn’t threaten him, they were just incredibly nice to him – but the first thing all manipulative people know is how to be nice.”

In England, where Singh was brought in 1854, this meant being befriended by Queen Victoria, receiving an allowance and living the life of a country gentleman. While Durlacher cautions against seeing this as “some great scheme” when it was more a case of “British imperial officials reacting to events”, Singh was turned into “a sort of poster child for the empire”.

But as the documentary discovers, this arrangement didn’t end well. While Singh had money showered on him, it wasn’t enough to enable him to live as a king, which was what Victoria encouraged. Arguments over his finances were a presage to a more profound rebellion that in turn led to a reaction from the British.

“The control became blatant,” says Durlacher. “They said, ‘You can’t go back to India.’ That made him more angry and more rebellious and that in turn made them more strict. So they got into this situation that was inevitably going to end awfully.”

The Stolen Maharajah is part of the Big British Asian Summer season across the BBC. Look out also for A Passage to

Britain (BBC Two), a three-part series that takes passenger lists as a starting point for exploring the lives of those who came to the UK from the Indian subcontinent between the 1930s and 1960.

“What’s interesting is how subtly he was manipulated and controlled by the British” Duleep Singh, the last maharajah of the Sikh empire, is the subject of a new documentary