By Harihar Swarup
“I am driven into that space between Britain and India because I exist in that space” says journalist turned—historian, Anita Anand, 50
She was born to first generation Punjabi immigrants to the UK. Her late father, Dr Chantenya Anand, a general practitioner, raised her with a sense of how vital it was to know who are you. “He encouraged me to examine our history”, says her mother Shashi Anand, a retired teacher, “is best storyteller, a fabulous mimic. I think my desire to tell stories comes from her.”
An inquisitive child, Anand wanted from an early age to be a journalist. She edited her school newspaper, won prizes for her writing, then graduated in English literature from King’s college, London and found her way into television. “Initially I thought I might be a war correspondent.”
Covering the Bhuj earthquake for Zee TV in 2001, she realized this could not be. She cried as she stood on a pile of rubble, amid “photographs of children and pages of school books and a shoe.” She segued into political journalism instead, which is a close kin to history.
“Journalism and history are curious cousins because it means that the mind has to ask similar questions such as: What happened? Why did it happened? And in some cases: How can one stop this from happening again?”
These questions have yielded three books so far, and the popular ongoing podcast Empire, which Anand co-hosts with the historian William Dalrymple.
The turn to history, for Anand, began in 2009, with and an old, black-and-white photograph reprinted in a local newspaper. It showed a young Indian woman handing out copies of a newspaper called The Suffragette in London, in late 1900, campaigning for the British woman’s right to vote.
Anand was then on maternity leave for the first of two children (Hari, 12 and Ravi, 8) with husband Simon Singh. a scientist and Science writer. She became intrigued by the rare and forgotten Indian suffragette in this old photo.
“Sophia Duleep Singh — had this fascinating story, as the daughter of last Sikh ruler of Punjab — also the man who was compelled to hand over the Kohinoor to British forces. As a Punjabi myself, I felt I had to tell this story”.
It turned out to not to be very hard to dig up usual information on Singh. “People did not know anything about her. Everything was new. And I was very happy to find people who were still alive who had known her,” Anand says. “Those people brought to life what I was learning in dusty files and once—classified documents in British archives. Those people made her real”.
Anand’s debut book, Sophia: Princess, Suffragettte, Revolutionary, was released in 2015. It drew attention around the world. In February this year, the British charity, English Heritage announced that it will officially take note of Singh’s contribution, dedicating one of its iconic blue plaques to her, so that she can be remembered among England’s most iconic suffragettes. (IPA Service)
