Her father was Maharaja Sir Duleep Singh, who had lost his Sikh Empire to the Punjab Province of British India and was subsequently exiled to England.

[9][10] In the aftermath of the Second Anglo-Sikh War, her father had been forced, at age 11, to abdicate his kingdom to the East India Company and give the Koh-i-Noor diamond to Lord Dalhousie.

[17] In later life, he reconverted to Sikhism[5] and espoused the independence movement in India as he became more aware of the way in which the politics of the British Empire had resulted in the loss of his own kingdom.

[15][5] In 1886, when Sophia was ten, her father attempted to return to India with his family against the wishes of the British government; they were turned back in Aden by arrest warrants.

[6] Sophia, with her fashionable address, wore Parisian dresses, bred championship dogs, pursued photography and cycling, and attended parties.

[15] She inherited substantial wealth from her father at his death in 1893, and in 1898 Queen Victoria, her godmother, granted her a grace and favour apartment in Faraday House, Hampton Court.

During the visit, all the while shadowed by British agents, she encountered Indian independence activists such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lala Lajpat Rai and expressed sympathy for their cause.

[15] Bamba Duleep Singh, Sophia's oldest sister, married Dr  Lt Colonel David Waters Sutherland, principal of King Edward's Medical College in Lahore.

[19] She also contributed towards fundraising efforts, such as self-denial weeks, where supporters would deprive themselves of luxuries and give the money saved to their chosen organisation.

"[16] Although as a British subject Singh's primary interest was women's rights in England, she and her fellow suffragettes also promoted similar activities in the colonies.

[25] On 22 May 1911 Singh was fined £3 by the Spelthorne Petty Sessions Court for illegally keeping a coach, a helper, and five dogs and for using a roll of arms.

Singh tried to fall in front of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith's car while holding a poster reading, "Give women the vote!"

[6] During World War I, Singh initially supported the Indian soldiers and Lascars working in the British fleets[16] and joined a 10,000-woman protest march against the prohibition of a volunteer female force.

She volunteered as a British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, serving at an auxiliary military hospital in Isleworth from October 1915 to January 1917.

[6][28] After the 1918 enactment of the Representation of the People Act, allowing women over age 30 to vote, Singh joined the Suffragette Fellowship and remained a member until her death.

[15] In 1930, Sophia was president of the Committee tasked with providing flower decorations at the unveiling of the Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst Memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens.

[15][16] She espoused causes of equality and justice far removed from her royal background, and played a significant role at a crucial point in the history of England and India.

[33][34][35] Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in April 2018.

[39] In 2022, Historic Royal Palaces commissioned Scary Little Girls theatre company to develop a play on Sophia Duleep Singh to tour London schools.

The play, Fire: A Princess' Guide to Burning Issues, subsequently toured schools in West Yorkshire in July 2023 and Birmingham in November 2023.

[citation needed] In January 2023, English Heritage announced that a blue plaque would be unveiled later that year on a house in Richmond, near Hampton Court Palace which Queen Victoria granted to Singh and her sisters in 1896.