“Noor Inayat Khan was not what one would expect of a British spy. She was a princess, having been born into royalty in India; a Muslim, whose father was a Sufi preacher; a writer, mainly of short stories; and a musician, who played the harp and the piano.
But she was exactly what Britain’s military intelligence needed in 1943. Khan, whose name was in the news in Britain recently as a proposed new face of the £50 note, was 25 when war was declared in 1939. She and her family went to England to volunteer for the war effort, and in 1940 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and trained to become a radio operator.
Able to speak French, she was quickly chosen to go to Paris to join the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization set up to support resistance to the Germans from behind enemy lines through espionage and sabotage. Khan was the first female radio operator to be sent by Britain into occupied France, according to her biographer, Shrabani Basu.
Noor Inayat Khan was born on January 1st,1914 to an American mother and an Indian father descending from the 18th century Sultan of Mysore. Her family moved from Moscow to London and later to Paris.
Noor played music and wrote children’s stories. The Second World War put an end to those peaceful occupations. She fled to London after the capitulation of France in 1940. Noor first joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in November 1940 and trained to be a radio operator. She then became part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) at the end of 1942 and was dropped in France in June 1943. Doubts regarding her suitability were raised, but she was chosen because she spoke French fluently.
Noor’s codename was “Madeleine”. She began to work as a radio operator for the “Prosper” resistance network, providing contact with the SOE in London. Several members of the network were arrested, but Noor kept doing her job. She moved from place to place, avoiding capture until she was betrayed in October. Noor fought the French officer who had come to arrest her. She put such a resistance, biting, drawing blood, that he was unable to subdue her physically and had to draw his gun.
Noor was thus made prisoner by the Gestapo. She made an escape attempt through the bathroom window, but was caught. Noor endured and didn’t reveal anything to her captors. She was later transferred to the Dachau Concentration Camp where she was tortured and executed. Her was last word was “Liberté” or “Freedom” in French.
Noor was posthumously awarded the George Cross for her bravery.
for the ones who identify with the oceans and whose roots have known many lands -
stretched beside those of sweet cane, cut by laborers’ hands.
i draw brown girls all the time, but am overdue for a piece on my own history ().
during the 19th & early 20th century, over 1 million indians were brought from their homelands to various european (primarily british) colonies as replacement laborers for recently emancipated african enslaved peoples.
these included various nations in south america, the caribbean, africa & asia, such as guyana , trinidad & tobago , suriname , jamaica , grenada , st. lucia , st. kitts , st. vincent, fiji , mauritius , sri lanka , malaysia , kenya & south africa . here, indentures worked on plantations for the colonizing countries who owned them for a certain length of time.
in some instances, the indentureship system was wholly consensual, but far too often it involved coercion, misinformation & kidnapping. many entered into contracts unaware of the terms they were agreeing to & the freedoms they were signing away.
i’ve linked a playlist of podcast episodes for anyone interested in learning more. some topics touched on include:
- the pieces of south asian tradition that persisted, what was lost, & the amazing hybrid cultures that came to be - the origins of the word “coolie” & why most believe those outside the culture shouldn’t use it - how colonizers pit indian & black communities against each other & resulting anti-blackness in the indo-caribbean community - other lasting effects of colonization (alcoholism, weakened economies, gender-based violence, etc.) - the (sometimes tense) relations between descendants of indian indenture & individuals more directly from south asia
of course these tiny lists are not exhaustive, nor do they cover the entirety of this corner of the south asian diaspora. maybe, though, it’s enough to encourage a deeper look into our often overlooked history.
thank you to @mjenai.art for the title & inspiration, and to @haani_beee, who identifies with the oceans <3
in “the gilded wolves” by @roshanichokshi, laila is made to don the cover of a nautch dancer as part of a job. she’s a skilled bharatanatyam dancer & performs stunningly, but is still bothered by the cultural inaccuracies of the outfit she must wear: the fact that her hair is left unbound, the way her midriff & chest are exposed, her hands lacking henna, etc. so grew the need to draw her in traditional attire.
from the state of tamil nadu, bnat is one of the oldest indian classical dances. like many of these dances, it has strong ties to religion (i.e. the depiction of hindu epics) but can convey more secular themes as well. alta or henna on the hands & feet emphasize movement. bold makeup accentuates expressions, particularly the 9 navarasa: love/shringara, laughter/hasya, sadness/karuna, anger/roudra, courage/veera, fear/bhaayanaka, disgust/bheebhatsya, surprise/adbhutha) & peace/shaantha. mudras (gestures) are used to illustrate many ideas; for example, there are symbols for bird, water, breeze, etc.
bharatanatyam is actually a fairly new term; among other names, the dance was once known as sadir. first a temple tradition, it was practiced by devadasi women “married” to lives of religious worship & service, as well as the arts. with the arrival of colonial rule, many traditional dances were outright banned & temples destroyed. dancers went from to being among the most respected to being sexualized & deemed prostitutes by british occupiers. the profession of nautch dancers arose for the entertainment of colonizers & the mughal elite. slowly, it became so that even the term “devadasi” was offensive & to be considered one was damning. attempting to separate the dance from the stigma attached to the devadasi community, rukmini devi arundale is credited with refining bnat in a way that was considered suitable for the upper class & a larger global audience.
though intertwined with politics & casteism, bnat is still a beautiful, revered art form practiced widely in south asia & the diaspora.
laila belongs to roshani chokshi pleasedo not repost or remove description dofind me on instagram!
