Maharaja Duleep Singh had three daughters from his marriage with Maharani Bamba. They were photographed together at a formal presentation at court in 1892 in their stunning debutante dresses. The younger sisters, Catherine and Sophia, were also captured by the society photographer, James Lafayette in his New Bond Street studio in London.

Princess Bamba Sophia Jindan Duleep Singh was born in 1869. She was the first daughter of Duleep Singh and Maharani Bamba, who already had two sons, Prince Victor and Prince Frederick. Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh was the fourth child and was born in 1871. Her sister, Sophia Jindan Alexdrovna was born five years later. Their mother died in 1887 aged thirty-eight shortly after Sophia contracted typhoid. Following their father’s death in 1893, Sophie and Catherine lived together in a home granted by Queen Victoria, Faraday House on the fringe of Hampton Court.

Catherine visited India in 1903 and met old Sikh soldiers who had fought with her grandfather, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. During the outbreak of the First World War, she was in Germany, returning to Britain in 1937. Whilst there, she was suspected of being involved in anti-British activities which were later proved to be unfounded. She died unmarried in 1942.

Sophia was more rebellious, becoming a militant suffragette in 1911, placarding the royal palace with ‘Votes for Women’ and ‘Revolution!’ banners. She was an active member of the Women’s Social & Political Union, Women’s Tax Resistance League, and the Suffragette Fellowship. In the First World War, she organized patriotic flag days for Punjabi troops of the Indian Army and took in evacuee children at her Penn home in Buckinghamshire home. Besides women’s democracy, she took an interest in the Indian political situation, and died in 1948 shortly after the partition of Punjab.

Bamba, who had married an English gentleman Dr David Walters Sutherland in 1916, kept in her custody the collection of paintings and objects of arts, belonging to her father. She died in Lahore on March 10, 1957, without issue, and thus her death ended the line of the Sikh ruling dynasty