Spy Princess

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A new book to be released on March 1st (in the U.S.) will detail the life of Noor Inayat Khan, a spy of South Asian heritage (her father was Pakistani) that worked for the Allies during WWII:

The life and times of Noor Inayat Khan – a descendant of Tipu Sultan and the only Asian secret agent to work for the Allied forces during World War II – have been captured in a fascinating new book to be launched on March 1.

The book, titled “Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan” (Sutton), is authored by journalist Shrabani Basu, the London-based correspondent for the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group.

Based on extensive research and interviews with Noor’s relatives, descendants and friends, the book presents a graphic account of her life till Sep 13, 1944, when she was shot dead by German forces at Dachau. She was 30.

Born in Moscow, Noor was raised in the Sufi style of Islam and joined Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war. She was one of three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross and was also honoured with the Croix de Guerre. [Link]

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p>I had once mentioned Khan in a previous post. Comments following the post seemed to indicate an interest in her story. For those of you that enjoy fiction more than non-fiction, author Shauna Singh Baldwin has previously written a novel inspired by Khan’s life called The Tiger Claw:

From the author of What the Body Remembers, an extraordinary story of love and espionage, cultural tension and displacement, inspired by the life of Noor Inayat Khan (code name “Madeleine”), who worked against the Occupation after the Nazi invasion of France.

When Noor Khan’s father, a teacher of mystical Sufism, dies, Noor is forced to bow, along with her mother, sister and brother, to her uncle’s religious literalism and ideas on feminine propriety. While at the Sorbonne, Noor falls in love with Armand, a Jewish musician. Though her uncle forbids her to see him, they continue meeting in secret.

When the Germans invade in 1940, Armand persuades Noor to leave him for her own safety. She flees with her family to England, but volunteers to serve in a special intelligence agency. She is trained as a radio operator for the group that, in Churchill’s words, will “set Europe ablaze” with acts of sabotage. [Link]

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p> Additionally, a 2001 film titled Charlotte Gray featured a title character who was a composite of women like Khan:

CATE BLANCHETT plays the title role of Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman who is unexpectedly drawn into a special operation with the French Resistance when her lover, a British pilot, is shot down over France.

An interesting section of the film’s website has pictures of newspaper clippings about Khan’s exploits.

19 thoughts on “Spy Princess”

  1. Much as I respect what she did, wow, this was breathtakingly bone-headed:

    It was an ordinary school copy book and in it she kept a record of all the messages she had sent and received since arriving in France, in code and in plain text. This was a stunning breach of the most elementary security precautions and it appears to have been the result of a misunderstanding on her part of the phrase in her operational orders instructing her to ‘be extremely careful with the filing of your messages.’

  2. her father was Pakistani

    uh, not to be pedantic, but how does that work, since pakistan came into existence 3 years after her death? of course, saying her father was indian would confuse modern readers who are sloppy and quick about it…so perhaps a compromise would be note her father’s ethnicity (eg, punjabi) or state that he was south asian? 🙂

  3. Not to be picky, but I am curious to know as to how you termed her dad as a “Pakistani”, when infact this woman lived prior to WWII 🙂 Pakistan didnt even exist at that time.

    On a jocular note, if you say that India as such was part of UK, I wont validate that point. 🙂 Your turn.

    cheers -Prasad

  5. if you say that India as such was part of UK

    india was never part of the ‘united kingdom.’ the united kingdom referred only to the british isles, while great britain refers to the main island (excluding ireland, now operationally northern ireland), and in part refers to the union of scotland and england into one kingdom in the early 18th century. during world war ii india was a dominion in the british empire, the queen was also the empress of india. indians were citizens of the british empire, but they were indians.

    these nitpicks are kind of stupid, but they do forestall confusion later on. i mean, i know many west bengalis who be irritated if i told them that their grandparents, who lived in what is now bangladesh, were ‘bangladeshi.’

  7. razib: You are correct. I was only being TIC when I said that.

    Parikshit: TGIF; so no flames please 🙂 I wanna know how you were ‘called’ in middle school…

  10. Lol Prasad … If you are referring to my name, I have been here just 2 years but having a 4 syallable name with unfortunate devnagiri to english transliteration does leave me at a disadvantage :D. Have had people shortening it to Parik, Rik, Riky .. rolls eyes

  11. uh, not to be pedantic, but how does that work, since pakistan came into existence 3 years after her death?

    Good point. Whichever website I found it on was obviously incorrect. I didn’t bother to think through it. Maybe they meant what is now Pakistan??

  12. Umm, Tipu Sultan was Sultan of Mysore which is in South India, so even by this standard, his descendants are from what is today, India. And “South Asian subcontinent” is the height of silly political correctness.

  13. The great-great-grand-daughter of the legendary Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler who died in the struggle to stem the British conquest of Southern India. Her father was a leader of the Sufi mystic community. Her mother was an American related to Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Inayat Khan, Noor’s father, took his family to pre-revolutionary Russia, where they were taken up by members of the Imperial Court and where a daughter was born in the Kremlin on New Year’s Day, 1914. She was given the name Noor, meaning ‘light of womanhood’, and would be known by her father’s name, the patronymic Inayat, and the title Khan, an honorific denoting aristocratic birth. [Link]

    Hope that settles it.

  15. “Noor, meaning ‘light of womanhood” ??? SAsian is wrong on that More women are named noor but its neutral masculine or feminie, eg Koh-e-noor, Noor-istan. its etymology comes from light, Its usage is to imply illuminatation/bright.

  16. The United Kingdom is political term and is an abbreviation of ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. The British Isles is a geographical term, referencing a land mass (Britain & Ireland).

  18. Just for historical accuracy – Noor’s father – Inayat Khan – was born in Baroda and received his musical training there. He traveled to Delhi and to Hyderabad (Deccan) in search of his spiritual master. He found Muhammad Abu Hashim Madani in Hyderabad and after three years was sent to the west to spread the message of Sufism.

  19. herein hangs a tale…. I was planing to write a post on Sarah Water’s book “The Night Watch”, and in the process of doing that I got side-tracked into doing some ancillary research into a the wartime spy career of a woman called Eileen Nearne. Nearne was found dead in her council flat, and just as se was about to be given a pauper’s burial it was discovered that she had been a spy and a war hero – just like Noor Inayat Khan! The comments made by her handlers about Eileen are just about identical to those made about Inayat Khan. I would like to have learned the name of the SOE s.o.b who wrote those comments, and expose him for the despicable misogynist he was.