I feel like I haven't been able to keep up very well on my blogging as I've been almost too busy with activities and then starting a full time job right after the summer to prevent me from having sufficient time to catch up. I hope to do another anthology of short entries on the summer activities and into September, including the events surrounding the Queen's death, in the near future, but for now, I wanted to share some photos and info from an interesting walking tour we did today, looking at the connection between Sikhs and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
If you asked me to name the spots where I know there are significant populations of Indians, I'd say Southall, possibly Tooting, Wembley, and East London, though I haven't been there yet. The last place I'd think of there being any connection with Indians is Chelsea, one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in all of London. I don't know of any authentic restaurants there, and I've never heard of their being any temples or places of worship there for Hindus or Sikhs, let alone Jains or Buddhists. There simply isn't much of an Indian population there. So when we heard about this walking tour, offered as part of the wider Chelsea History Festival, I couldn't help but be intrigued.
The tour is run by a fellow named Rav Singh, who is the founder of A Little History of the Sikhs. Through work experience, he gained a growing interest in Sikh history in Western Europe, and has gone on to publish papers on the topic and conduct extensive research. We met at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, home of the Chelsea Pensioners (a retirement home for military veterans) and from there, we walked to St Luke's & Christ Church. There is nothing about the church from the outside to suggest any connection to Sikh history, but as it turns out, there is a chapel in the church with furnishings that are pretty much all from a garrison church in Northwest Frontier Province in what is now Pakistan. When Pakistan became a country after partition, they didn't want to hold onto any of the artefacts of Sikh and British history, instead opting for a history they could write themselves. As Sikh soldiers had defended the front from Russian aggression for almost 100 years, no one wanted this history to be forgotten, so a call was put out to organisations in London to see if anyone would take the artefacts of this part of history, and St Luke's stepped up to take most of it (some of it as at St Paul's Cathedral but is not on display), and they created a chapel inside the church all outfitted with artefacts from this garrison in Northwest Frontier Province, practically replicating that chapel in the church. There is a pair of bishop's chairs, kneeling cushions for prayer, and various other paraphernalia related to these regiments. Apparently there was a crypt with some artefacts as well, but the crypt has since been removed. The church keeps up the chapel and protects all the artefacts. It is done, it seems, as an enduring gesture of good will and to keep ecumenical ties. You might notice that all the names of the dead listed are British officers; Rav says that at first, this was because the Sikh regiments under the Sikh kingdom of the time actually paid better than the British military did, so the Brits would join these at first. One interesting thing we also learned is that Charles Dickens was married in St Luke's! Rav had a photocopy of the marriage register for him with that information.
Next we went over to Sloane Avenue to see Nell Gwynn House. Nell is the statue up on the building with her name, and apparently it is the only statue of a lady of the night in London. She was apparently the favourite mistress of King Charles II, and ladies of the night were often actresses by day (it was not a prestigious job back in the day), the area was known as somewhat of an arts district. With the advent of radio and TV broadcasting, with several BBC offices located in the vicinity, many people involved in that industry lived in the area as well. This included a Maharani in India, who wanted to study acting and move to Hollywood as she had a Marilyn Monroe type face and beauty, so she studied acting in London and lived in this arts district. As she was about to leave for the US, WWII broke out, and the movie industry took a pause. This Maharani had eloped in London, and as she couldn't tell her parents, she had no way to return to India, so she stayed in London and got a role with the BBC, eventually becoming a journalist who was the first woman, let alone first Asian woman, to get a spot in the press gallery at Westminster.
We ended back at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, where we learned about some canons they have on display, all of which were Sikh-made and designed canon wagons, and one canon that was from the Sikhs as well, with info written in a language that is not modern Punjabi and not Gurmukhi, the script of the Sikh holy book. It is some other script, but I can't remember what Rav said it was. Anyway, they also had a Persian cannon as well. These were from the Anglo-Sikh wars. At Chelsea they also have a monument with the names of all the soldiers that lost their lives in the Chillianwallah battle. Apparently they couldn't put this memorial in Whitehall because only officers' names should be there, and the fact that this monument had the names of lower-ranking individuals was apparently considered inappropriate for that location. So it has remained at the Royal Chelsea Hospital. Then in the dining hall, we saw all the battles listed for that region, and I was fascinated by the changing of spellings over time. The first war in Afghanistan, the country is spelled with two f's, and Kabul is spelled Cabool. By the next instance, Afghanistan retains just one f and Cabool changes to Kabull. We were able to take a peak in the chapel while we were there, and that was quite lovely as well.
The tour guide offers other tours, and we are hoping to join one or two others as they sound very interesting as well. These are the kinds of things I like to do is gaining lesser known bits of info that few other people would know or hear about. He also shares the papers he has written relating to the tours he does, and if you can read much more extensively about Sikhs in Chelsea by reading his article if you'd like. You'll probably get details more accurate than my memory!
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