u/Curious_Map6367

Princess Sophia was born in Belgravia in 1876, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. By her twenties she had a grace-and-favour apartment at Faraday House on the Hampton Court estate, and she lived the part: Parisian couture, championship dogs, society parties, the right address.

A 1907 trip to Punjab shattered that life. She saw colonial rule at ground level, encountered Indian nationalist circles, and returned fundamentally changed. Within two years she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. In November 1910 she marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on Black Friday, when police met around 300 women with six hours of beatings and assaults outside Parliament. She joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League under the slogan No Vote, No Tax. When bailiffs came for her diamond ring, she let them take it.

The State was stuck. Arresting her risked a diplomatic incident. Lord Crewe warned that evicting Queen Victoria’s goddaughter from Hampton Court would be optically intolerable for George V. So she carried on. She gave the WSPU’s largest single donation in 1914, nursed wounded Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion during the war, and on Pankhurst’s death in 1928 took over the Suffragette Fellowship as president.

Asked by Who’s Who to list her interests, she wrote one phrase: the advancement of women.

She died on 22 August 1948. By her own instruction she was cremated according to Sikh rites and her ashes returned to India

Princess Sophia was born in Belgravia in 1876, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. By her twenties she had a grace-and-favour apartment at Faraday House on the Hampton Court estate, and she lived the part: Parisian couture, championship dogs, society parties, the right address.

A 1907 trip to Punjab shattered that life. She saw colonial rule at ground level, encountered Indian nationalist circles, and returned fundamentally changed. Within two years she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. In November 1910 she marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on Black Friday, when police met around 300 women with six hours of beatings and assaults outside Parliament. She joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League under the slogan No Vote, No Tax. When bailiffs came for her diamond ring, she let them take it.

The State was stuck. Arresting her risked a diplomatic incident. Lord Crewe warned that evicting Queen Victoria’s goddaughter from Hampton Court would be optically intolerable for George V. So she carried on. She gave the WSPU’s largest single donation in 1914, nursed wounded Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion during the war, and on Pankhurst’s death in 1928 took over the Suffragette Fellowship as president.

Asked by Who’s Who to list her interests, she wrote one phrase: the advancement of women.

She died on 22 August 1948. By her own instruction she was cremated according to Sikh rites and her ashes returned to India

Princess Sophia was born in Belgravia in 1876, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. By her twenties she had a grace-and-favour apartment at Faraday House on the Hampton Court estate, and she lived the part: Parisian couture, championship dogs, society parties, the right address.

A 1907 trip to Punjab shattered that life. She saw colonial rule at ground level, encountered Indian nationalist circles, and returned fundamentally changed. Within two years she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. In November 1910 she marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on Black Friday, when police met around 300 women with six hours of beatings and assaults outside Parliament. She joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League under the slogan No Vote, No Tax. When bailiffs came for her diamond ring, she let them take it.

The State was stuck. Arresting her risked a diplomatic incident. Lord Crewe warned that evicting Queen Victoria’s goddaughter from Hampton Court would be optically intolerable for George V. So she carried on. She gave the WSPU’s largest single donation in 1914, nursed wounded Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion during the war, and on Pankhurst’s death in 1928 took over the Suffragette Fellowship as president.

Asked by Who’s Who to list her interests, she wrote one phrase: the advancement of women.

She died on 22 August 1948. By her own instruction she was cremated according to Sikh rites and her ashes returned to India.

Princess Sophia was born in Belgravia in 1876, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. By her twenties she had a grace-and-favour apartment at Faraday House on the Hampton Court estate, and she lived the part: Parisian couture, championship dogs, society parties, the right address.

A 1907 trip to Punjab shattered that life. She saw colonial rule at ground level, encountered Indian nationalist circles, and returned fundamentally changed. Within two years she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. In November 1910 she marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on Black Friday, when police met around 300 women with six hours of beatings and assaults outside Parliament. She joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League under the slogan No Vote, No Tax. When bailiffs came for her diamond ring, she let them take it.

The State was stuck. Arresting her risked a diplomatic incident. Lord Crewe warned that evicting Queen Victoria’s goddaughter from Hampton Court would be optically intolerable for George V. So she carried on. She gave the WSPU’s largest single donation in 1914, nursed wounded Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion during the war, and on Pankhurst’s death in 1928 took over the Suffragette Fellowship as president.

Asked by Who’s Who to list her interests, she wrote one phrase: the advancement of women.

She died on 22 August 1948. By her own instruction she was cremated according to Sikh rites and her ashes returned to India.

Princess Sophia was born in Belgravia in 1876, daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and goddaughter to Queen Victoria. By her twenties she had a grace-and-favour apartment at Faraday House on the Hampton Court estate, and she lived the part: Parisian couture, championship dogs, society parties, the right address.

A 1907 trip to Punjab shattered that life. She saw colonial rule at ground level, encountered Indian nationalist circles, and returned fundamentally changed. Within two years she had joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. In November 1910 she marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst on Black Friday, when police met around 300 women with six hours of beatings and assaults outside Parliament. She joined the Women’s Tax Resistance League under the slogan No Vote, No Tax. When bailiffs came for her diamond ring, she let them take it.

The State was stuck. Arresting her risked a diplomatic incident. Lord Crewe warned that evicting Queen Victoria’s goddaughter from Hampton Court would be optically intolerable for George V. So she carried on. She gave the WSPU’s largest single donation in 1914, nursed wounded Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion during the war, and on Pankhurst’s death in 1928 took over the Suffragette Fellowship as president.

Asked by Who’s Who to list her interests, she wrote one phrase: the advancement of women.

She died on 22 August 1948. By her own instruction she was cremated according to Sikh rites and her ashes returned to India.

(Credits to Ho Ee Kid that posted this picture and writeup on the Nostalgic Singapore Facebook group that allows us to learn more about Singapore’s unique history)

“ During my treks in Brown Hill, I noticed that quite a number of Sikh Guards were standing watch on the tombs of many a notable personnel including the late Ong Sam Leong. The story of why Sikhs are preferred dates back to the good old days of Singapore.

Many of the early Sikhs from Punjab, India, came to Malaya in hope of finding work as soldiers or policemen in the British service. However, not all of them were successful. Hence to pay off the large debt incurred to come to Malaya, many of them sought alternative employment as watchmen & security guards. These traditional watchmen were known as ‘jaga’, which is Malay for a watchman or caretaker. These Sikh jagas used to stand vigil outside banks, godowns, retail shops and factories, usually after office hours and during the night, to prevent theft and damage to property. Over time., this job came to be closely associated with the Sikh community.

Due to their imposing appearances and martial reputations established from their experiences with the British military and policing, Sikhs were highly sought after by businesses and the wealthy for private security services. Over time, these Sikh watchmen became status symbols of the rich, as wealthy Chinese businessmen would hire them as personal bodyguards as well as to protect their homes and businesses. These jaga were known for their loyalty, dependability and friendliness which made them ideal guards and door-keepers at banks and hotels. So valued were their services that the Chinese were known to burn effigies of Sikh jaga as offerings to the dead. Statues of Sikh guards adorned the tombs of some rich Chinese merchants in the belief that they would continue their protective roles in the afterlife.”

(Credits to Ho Ee Kid that posted this picture and writeup on the Nostalgic Singapore Facebook group that allows us to learn more about Singapore’s unique history)

“ During my treks in Brown Hill, I noticed that quite a number of Sikh Guards were standing watch on the tombs of many a notable personnel including the late Ong Sam Leong. The story of why Sikhs are preferred dates back to the good old days of Singapore.

Many of the early Sikhs from Punjab, India, came to Malaya in hope of finding work as soldiers or policemen in the British service. However, not all of them were successful. Hence to pay off the large debt incurred to come to Malaya, many of them sought alternative employment as watchmen & security guards. These traditional watchmen were known as ‘jaga’, which is Malay for a watchman or caretaker. These Sikh jagas used to stand vigil outside banks, godowns, retail shops and factories, usually after office hours and during the night, to prevent theft and damage to property. Over time., this job came to be closely associated with the Sikh community.

Due to their imposing appearances and martial reputations established from their experiences with the British military and policing, Sikhs were highly sought after by businesses and the wealthy for private security services. Over time, these Sikh watchmen became status symbols of the rich, as wealthy Chinese businessmen would hire them as personal bodyguards as well as to protect their homes and businesses. These jaga were known for their loyalty, dependability and friendliness which made them ideal guards and door-keepers at banks and hotels. So valued were their services that the Chinese were known to burn effigies of Sikh jaga as offerings to the dead. Statues of Sikh guards adorned the tombs of some rich Chinese merchants in the belief that they would continue their protective roles in the afterlife.”

In 1849, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the British East India Company gathered itself around a ten-year-old boy named Prince Duleep Singh, the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Lion of Punjab. They had separated him from his mother Maharani Jind Kaur, imprisoned her, and brought to him a document the historians now call the Treaty of Lahore. The boy signed. By the terms of that signing the Sikh Empire ended, the throne passed into Company hands, and the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which had ridden on Ranjit Singh’s armlet through the last great Punjabi sovereignty, was carried to London.

It now sits on the Crown of the Queen Mother.

This week, Mayor Mamdani told reporters that if he got a private moment with King Charles, he would ask for the Koh-i-Noor returned.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/nyregion/kohinoor-diamond-india-history-mamdani-king-charles.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fFA.m62H.H01S6G68-OcB&smid=url-share

The caption at the bottom reads “FROM THE PEPPÉ STŪPA AT PIPRĀHWA,” referring to the stupa excavated at Piprahwa in present-day Siddharthnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, near the Nepal border. In 1898, W. C. Peppé excavated the mound and uncovered a stone coffer containing reliquary vessels, bone and ash fragments, and a large deposit of precious offerings.

These are relic offerings placed with the deposit: faceted beads, coral or carnelian-like rods, flower and star-shaped cut pieces, pearls, rock crystal elements, and other small worked ornaments. Museum descriptions identify the broader Piprahwa group as gold, semiprecious stones, rock crystal, pearls, and shell, dated roughly to ca. 240 to 200 BCE. The Met described one exhibited set as about 320 tiny objects arranged in framed ensembles.

Visually, the frame shows:

1. the outer border dominated by small faceted crystal or stone pieces,
2. upper rows with red cylindrical beads or cut segments,
3. middle rows with floral rosettes, discs, and larger clear crystal pieces,
4. lower rows with pearls and darker red beads,
5. all mounted on black velvet to maximize contrast.

https://discover.familytreedna.com/y-dna/R-Y35105/globetrekker

Musical guest Diljit Dosanjh performs "Morni" for The Tonight Show

A discussion on the history of the interactions between horses and humans in South Asia through three millennia and an introduction to the forthcoming book by Pratyay Nath and Ranabir Chakravarti (eds), The Coveted Mount: The Horse in South Asian History (Cambridge University Press).

The word Khanda has its origins in the Sanskrit khaḍga (खड्ग) or khaṅga, from a root khaṇḍ meaning "to break, divide, cut, destroy".

The older word for a bladed weapon, asi, is used in the Rigveda in reference to either an early form of the sword or to a sacrificial knife or dagger to be used in war.

The story that “Hindus made their eldest son Sikh” out of devotion or interfaith harmony is the polished version. The unvarnished one is colonial accounting. Veena Talwar Oldenburg, in Dowry Murder, documents that the British after 1857 organised their army by religiously segregated regiments drawn from designated “martial races,” which shut Hindu Khatris out of military service even though Khatris had served in Ranjit Singh’s forces a generation earlier. The squeeze tightened in 1900 when the Punjab Land Alienation Act classified Khatris as a “non-agricultural” tribe and forbade them from acquiring further land. A community that had been landholders, scribes, traders, and soldiers was now legally cut out of two of those vocations at once.

The escape route was confessional. W.H. McLeod, in Who is a Sikh, notes that for the British, “martial Sikhs” meant Khalsa Sikhs specifically, and any man inducted into the Indian Army as a Sikh was required to maintain the external insignia of the Khalsa. So the colonial state had inadvertently created a regulatory arbitrage. A turban and unshorn hair on one son in the household unlocked land-holding rights, military pensions, and access to the regimental economy that Hindu Khatri identity foreclosed. The Khalsa was the loophole. What gets retold today as evidence of seamless Hindu-Sikh kinship was, for many families, a cold-eyed adaptation to British caste-engineering rules.

Even Khatri sources concede this when they are being honest. The eSamskriti account of the practice preserves the family memory directly, recording that a forefather “wanted to avail of the economic benefits offered by the British to the followers of Khalsa and had decided to become a Sikh.” That is not the language of dharmic syncretism. It is the language of a household ledger. Reading the practice as devotion when it was substantially arbitrage is what lets the Khatri-Sikh boundary continue to be narrated as porous and accommodating, when in fact the porosity was engineered by colonial land law and the British military pension book.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Sources cited:

1.	Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime (Oxford University Press, 2002) — on post-1857 martial-races regimental policy and the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900 reclassifying Khatris as a “non-agricultural” tribe.

2.	W.H. McLeod, Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989) — on the British equation of “martial Sikh” with Khalsa Sikh, and the army induction requirement to maintain Khalsa external insignia.

3.	Sanjeev Nayyar, “Why was the first son made a Sikh,” eSamskriti (July 2004, edited April 2017) — family-memory account preserving the explicit motive of availing economic benefits offered by the British to Khalsa followers. URL: [esamskriti.com/e/History/Indian-History/Why-was-the-first-son-made-a-Sikh-1.aspx​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​](http://esamskriti.com/e/History/Indian-History/Why-was-the-first-son-made-a-Sikh-1.aspx​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​)

Yogācāra is one of the two great philosophical streams of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the other being Madhyamaka. Its central claim is that the world as we experience it is mind-constructed, and that consciousness itself, in its many layers, is the ground from which any serious investigation of suffering must begin. Most practitioners here have encountered the school in some form, whether through Tibetan teachings on the eight consciousnesses, through East Asian schools descended from later Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, or through any commentary that takes the ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, as its working concept.

The school’s classical form was built by two brothers born in Panjab. Asaṅga and Vasubandhu were born in Punjab and educated in Kashmir. The earliest detailed source for their lives is Xuanzang, the seventh-century Chinese pilgrim who travelled through the region himself and recorded Vasubandhu’s birthplace as Gandhāra. The philosophical literature the brothers produced over the following decades still anchors Mahāyāna Buddhism across Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.