Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
Diana Rigg, 1960s icon of TV, film and stage, is best known for playing Emma Peel in the Avengers and Tracy Di Vicenzo, the only woman whom James Bond married.
What is less well known about her is that she grew up in India, the daughter of a railway engineer in the final days of the British Raj. In Episode One of Empire's Children she retraces her family's journey to India to discover more about their life.
Her father was employed by Maharaja Ganga Singh on the Rajasthan railway and was to work there for more than 20 years. But the Indian independence movement was already gathering pace. British rule, which had been maintained in India for over 300 years, would soon be swept away, forcing Louis and his family to return to a changed Britain.
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Diana's father, Louis.
When he arrived in Bikaner, Louis initially shared a modest bungalow with another English bachelor.
Many of the newly arrived 'sahibs' quickly developed a reputation for condescending, high-handed treatment of their Indian staff. In contrast, one of the first things Louis did was to hire a tutor to teach him to speak Hindi. Unlike most of his fellow Englishman in India, he wouldn't be working for a white employer.
In 1920s India, 1,500 English civil servants effectively ruled over 300 million Indians. Britain in fact only ruled directly over two thirds of India, while the rest, the 'Princely States', were governed by India royalty: the Maharajas. Bikaner was one of the most powerful states in Rajasthan. Louis's boss was to be the remarkable Maharaja Ganga Singh, whose feared Camel Corps was part of the Imperial army and fought in both World Wars.
Maharaja Ganga Singh was the only non-white member of the British Imperial War Cabinet during the First World War and had been present at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In later years he was responsible for the modernisation of Rajasthan, building railways and canals to bring water to his desert state and also making education free for all his subjects.
Although Louis was working for such a powerful man, the fact that his boss was Indian, not white, set him apart from most of the other English people who were working in Bikaner. It also meant he was pretty low in the pecking order.
