Maharaja Duleep Singh

Maharaja Duleep Singh (1838 to 1893) was the youngest son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Maharani Jind Kaur, and the last sovereign of the Sikh state of the Punjab. He was proclaimed Maharaja on 18 September 1843, aged five, after the murder of Maharaja Sher Singh, with his mother as Regent. He lost the throne to the British before he was eleven, grew up in exile in England, and spent his last years trying to win back what he had lost.

Key moments

• 16 December 1846: the Treaty of Bharovāl made the Punjab a virtual British protectorate. The Regent was pensioned off, the British took guardianship of the young Maharaja, and a British Resident was to control the administration.
• 29 March 1849: after the second Anglo-Sikh war the Punjab was annexed. Duleep Singh was made to give up the Koh-i-Noor and step down. In December 1849 he was sent to Fatehgarh under the care of Dr John Login.
• 8 March 1853: he was baptised a Christian at Fatehgarh. He sailed for England in April 1854, and Queen Victoria received him favourably.
• January 1861: he met his mother in Calcutta after thirteen years apart. She died in England on 1 August 1863. She had wished to be cremated in the Punjab, which he was not allowed to enter.
• 1864: he married Bamba Muller in Alexandria on 7 June, and acquired the Elveden estate in Suffolk. They had six children.
• 1886: he left England on 31 March to settle in Delhi but was stopped at Aden. He resigned his allowance, renounced allegiance to the British Crown, and received Sikh baptism at Aden on 25 May 1886.
• 1887: he went to Russia and asked Tsar Alexander III for military and financial support against the British. None came.
• 22 October 1893: he died in Paris. His son Prince Victor took his body to Elveden, where he was buried beside members of his family.

Remembered for: being the child king under whom the Sikh state ended, and the loss of the Koh-i-Noor. His return to Sikhi at Aden in 1886 and his appeals for help abroad made him a symbol of the Sikh claim to the Punjab's throne.