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Bid for boy king’s forgotten bust
WSN Network
 London: A
rare and almost forgotten bust of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the boy
king of Punjab who was exiled to Britain by the East India Company
in 1849, will be auctioned here. It is expected to fetch 25,000 to
35,000 pounds.
Renowned Victorian British sculptor John Gibson created the white
marble bust of the Indian Sikh hero, who made his home at Elveden,
near Thetford. According to experts, the sculpture was made in Rome
between 1859 and 1860.
The bust shows the bearded Duleep Singh wearing a pearl necklace,
kaftan tunic, and turban. It was last seen in the 1920s, according
to the online edition of Eastern Daily Press.
Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last king of the Punjab, was born in
1838. He became king at the tender age of five. At the age of 11, he
was removed from his throne.
The famous Koh-i-Noor diamond was taken away by the British East
India Company after the Anglo-Sikh wars and the Maharaja was exiled
to Britain.
Duleep Singh bought a 17,000-acre country estate at Elveden for
105,000 pounds in Norfolk, close to Thetford in 1863, where he led
an extravagant lifestyle and became a favourite of Queen Victoria.
Later, he also converted to Christianity.
After his death in Paris in 1893, the English estate was sold to
repay his debts.
Each year, hundreds of Sikhs still pay an annual pilgrimage to his
tomb and his bronze statue at Thetford where he was buried. IANS
Maharajah Duleep Singh was born on the 6th September 1838, to
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and the so-called `Messalina of the Punjab’,
Maharani Jind Kaur. The story of Duleep Singh (1838-1893) is a
tragic one of loss and of political manoeuvring by the British
Government and the British East India Company. Today Duleep is a
figure of veneration for Sikhs around the world, many of whom find
their way to his last home at Elvedon Hall in Norfolk.
Writer and specialist on Duleep Singh, Christy Campbell, (author of
The Maharajah’s Box, HarperCollins, 2000) says that at the age of
11, Maharajah Duleep Singh, ruler of the Punjab, and owner of the
famous Koh-i-Noor diamond was removed from his Kingdom by the
British East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and exiled to
Britain. A full feature article by Christy appears in the next issue
of Bonhams quarterly magazine.
In Britain Duleep led the extravagant life of an Indian prince
associating with the cream of Victorian society enjoying hunting
parties with the Prince of Wales. He became a favourite of Queen
Victoria, who described him as “extremely handsome with a graceful
and dignified manner.”
Duleep's mother, the Maharani Jindan, had been dragged screaming
from her eleven-year-old son and imprisoned in a fortress. Last wife
of the great Maharajah Ranjit Singh, she had been regent in the
boy-king's infancy. Duleep had had his long hair shorn, was given a
bible and taught Christianity. Meanwhile the Koh-i-Noor diamond,
glittering jewel in the crown of the Lahore treasury, was pocketed
by his conquerors and presented to Queen Victoria as a symbol of
dominion. In 1854 Duleep was brought to England to begin his
extraordinary journey through fashionable society. Five years later
it had led him to Rome to sit for the esteemed Royal Academician
John Gibson.
In spring 1859 the sculptor began work on the Duleep bust making
sketches and maquette studies. The subject wears a voluminous pearl
necklace and embroidered kaftan tunic in the Kashmiri taste. His
uncut hair, in the religious prescription of his Sikh patrimony, is
wound in a turban. He is also bearded.
Duleep later married Bamba Muller the daughter of a Coptic Christian
Ethiopian and a German merchant father. The Maharani Bamba bore two
sons and three daughters. A dark political conspiracy gathered.
Rebellious emissaries from the Punjab sought him out. In 1886 he
abjured his wife and family - `because they were Christian’ and
declared himself a remade Sikh. He ventured to St Petersburg, then
Moscow, posing as an Irish revolutionary offering to lead an
invasion of British India. It was a stunt cooked up by HM Foreign
Office’s intelligence department to discredit an inconveniently
warlike Russian newspaper magnate writes Christy Campbell.
He is buried, as a Christian, at Elveden church close to the Hall
which is now the home of the Guinness family. Sikh pilgrims from
around the world seek out the grave - and reflect on the fate of
their fallen king.
7 February 2007
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