Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan

Shrabani Basu, M.R.D Foot

• Publisher: Roli Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9789351940784
• eBook ISBN:
  9789351940784
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

On 13 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France, was shot at Dachau. The descendant of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, Noor was born in Moscow and raised in the Sufi style of Islam. From this unlikely background, she became the only Asian secret agent in Europe in World War II, was one of three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Shrabani Basu's new book tells the full story of this extraordinarily heroic woman. Noor was brought up in France and Britain and joined the Red Cross when World War II broke out. In Britain, Noor trained as a wireless operator before being recruited by the SOE. Such was the urgent demand for radio operators that she was sent to France before her training was completed. Working under the code name of Madeleine, she joined a group that sabotaged communication lines. But disaster struck quickly and, within days, her circuit collapsed and her colleagues were arrested. Though instructed by her controller, the famous Maurice Buckmaster, to return home, she refused to abandon her post as she was the last radio operator left in Paris. For a time, she successfully dodged the Gestapo, but by late 1943 her luck had run out. She was betrayed, arrested and imprisoned at Avenue Foch. Undaunted, she made two dramatic escape attempts, but was recaptured and sent to Germany. Here she was interrogated and tortured and finally sent to Dachau, where she was shot. The Germans had learned nothing from her - not even her real name.

Notes

1: Babuli

1 Elisabeth Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan: A Biography, p. 5; Musharraf Moulamia Khan, Pages in the Life of a Sufi, p. 22; and family sources.

2 Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 59.

3 Begum Inayat Khan, ‘Woman’s Seclusion in the East’, The Sufi, September 1915.

4 Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 86.

5 Will Van Beek, Hazrat Inayat Khan: Master of Life, Modern Sufi Mystic,1983.

6 Ibid.

7 SpasskayaYeYu, Memoirs of Spasskaya – chapter on ‘Hindus of Moscow’ (unpublished manuscript).

8 Sergey Moskalev, of the Emperor Society of Adherents of Natural Science, Anthropology and Ethnography, Moscow University, to author, May 2004.

9 Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 93.

10 Moulamia Khan, Pages in the Life, p.123.

11 Vilayat to author, June 2003, Suresnes.

12 13 April 1919, when Gen. Dyer ordered his soldiers to open fire on a group of peaceful demonstrators in an enclosed area in Amritsar in Punjab, killing nearly 2,000 people including women and children. Many jumped into the well in the enclosed compound in complete panic. The troops did not stop till the last bullet had been fired.

13 Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 112.

2: Fazal Manzil

1 Jean Overton Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, p. 38.

2 Elisabeth Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan: A Biography, p. 157.

3 Vilayat to author, Suresnes, June 2003.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Noor’s letter to a friend from Switzerland, quoted in Overton Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, p. 67.

8 Hidayat to author, letter, June 2004.

9 Vilayat to author, Suresnes, June 2003.

10 David Harper (Claire’s son) to author, letter, November 2003.

11 Mahmood Khan, Noor’s cousin, to author, telephone conversation from Suresnes, June 2004.

12 Maula Baksh’s sons-in-law lived with him after their marriages, which made the family very large. This is why Inayat Khan’s father stayed in the family house in Baroda after marrying Maula Baksh’s daughter. The sole male heir of Maula Baksh was Ali Khan and it was to his son, Alladutt Khan, that Inayat wanted to marry Noor.

13 Vilayat to author, Suresnes, June 2003.

14 Ibid.

15 Keesing, Hazrat Inayat Khan, p. 176.

16 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

17 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

18 Ibid.

19 Noor’s Personal File, HS9/836/5, National Archives, Kew. Handwritten notes by Noor about her background.

20 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

21 Noor herself would be referred to as a‘modern Joan of Arc who had refused to be subjugated and preferred death to slavery’ by the Mayor of Suresnes, Monsieur Pontillon, on 17 July 1967 at the unveiling of a plaque in her honour at Fazal Manzil.

22 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

23 David Harper to author, October 2003.

24 Ibid.

25 The family could not remember his first name.

26 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

27 Vilayat to author, June 2003

28 Overton Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, p 52.

29 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

30 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

31 Noor’s Personal File, HS9/836/5, National Archives, Kew.

32 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

33 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

34 Noor’s veena is now kept in the Sufi headquarters in the Hague along with other memorabilia.

35 Mahmood to author, June 2004.

36 Hidayat to author, May 2004.

37 Article by Alexis Danan in Le Franc- tireur, 17 February 1957, read out at a function in Suresnes to unveil a plaque in Noor’s honour.

38 Overton Fuller, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, p. 84.

39 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

40 Ibid.

3: Flight and Fight

1 Ian Ousby, Occupation, pp. 43–4.

2 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

3 Jean Overton Fuller to author, June 2004,Wymington, Northamptonshire.

4 Vilayat to author, June 2003.

5 Noor’s service record, Personnel Management Agency, Royal Air Force, Innsworth.

6 Beryl E. Escott, Mission Improbable, p.61.

7 Ibid.

8 Jean Ov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Book
• Book Name
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Map
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Babuli
• Fazal Manzil
• Flight and Fight
• Setting Europe Ablaze
• Codes and Cover Stories
• Leaving England
• Joining the Circuit
• The Fall of Prosper
• Poste Madeleine
• Prisoner of the Gestapo
• Aftermath
• I: Circuits linked to Prosper
• II: Agents and Resistance members who worked with Noor and the Prosper Circuit
• III: Chronology
• IV: Indians awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross 1939–1945
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Backcover