Tag Archives: Noor Inayat Khan – Britain’s World War II Spy

Meet Noor Inayat Khan, the Indian-origin British spy who may soon be on coins in UK

Baroda, MADHYA PRADESH / Paris, FRANCE / London, UNITED KINGDOM :

If the proposal is passed, it will be the first time that non-white people will be featured on British coins or notes.

Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, Noor’s family moved to London and then to Paris during the First World War. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

British media reported this week that Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is considering a proposal to feature historical figures from the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community of the country on a set of coins titled ‘Service to the Nation’.

If the proposal is passed, it will be the first time that non-white people will be featured on British coins or notes. The plan has been submitted to the Royal Mint, which is to come up with proposals and designs.

Zehra Zaidi of the advocacy campaign ‘Banknotes of Colour’, along with a group of historians and MPs, had written to the Chancellor proposing some historical figures. Among them were the Indian-origin British spy Noor Inayat Khan, as well as Khudadad Khan, the first soldier of the British Indian Army to receive the Victoria Cross. Khudadad Khan, who belonged to the Chakwal district of Punjab in present-day Pakistan, died in 1971.

The continuing Black Lives Matter protests in the United States , triggered by the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May, which have put a spotlight on the lack of BAME representation in the UK, and have compelled authorities to take appropriate steps.

Who was Noor Inayat Khan?

Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, her family moved to London and then to Paris during the First World War. Although Noor started working as a children’s writer in Paris, she escaped to England after the fall of France (when it was invaded by Germany) during the Second World War.

In November 1940, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, an arm of the UK’s Royal Air Force to train as a wireless operator. She then did a stint at the secret intelligence organisation set up by Winston Churchill called Special Operations Executive (SOE).

A bust of Noor Inayat Khan in Gordon Square, London. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

She became the first radio operator to be sent to Paris to work for SOE’s Prosper resistance network under the codename Madeleine. She was just 29 then, and had signed up for a job in which people were not expected to be alive for longer than six weeks.

Even as many members of the network were being arrested by the Nazi secret police Gestapo, Noor chose to stay put — and spent the summer moving from one place to another, sending messages back to London, until she was arrested in 1943.

She was executed at the Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany near Munich. Noor was awarded the highest honour in the UK, the George Cross, in 1949, and the French Croix de Guerre with the silver star posthumously.

What was Noor’s connection to India?

She was connected to India through her father Inayat Khan. He was founder of the Sufi Order of the West, which is now known as the Inayati Order. He had migrated to the West as n Hindustani classical musician, and then moved to teaching Sufism.

Inayat Khan was born in Baroda. His maternal grandfather was the noted musician Ustad Maula Bakhsh Khan, who founded the music academy Gyanshala, which now serves as the Faculty of Performing Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University. Maula Bakhsh’s wife, Qasim Bibi, was a granddaughter of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

Inayat returned to India in 1926 and chose the site of his burial at the Nizamuddin Dargah complex in New Delhi. The Inayat Khan dargah still stands in a corner of the complex.

Besides being a GC, what other honours has Noor received?

In 2014, Britain’s Royal Mail had issued a postage stamp in honour of Noor as part of a set of 10 stamps in the ‘Remarkable Lives’ series. In 2012, a memorial with a bust of Noor was unveiled in London by Princess Anne. Shrabani Basu, author of ‘Spy Princess, The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’, and Chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust, had campaigned for the memorial.

In February 2019, Noor’s London home at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, the house that she left for her final mission, was honoured with a blue plaque. She was the first Indian-origin woman to be awarded the plaque.

How has Noor been represented in popular culture?

Various documentaries on women agents and the SOE have featured her story, such as Netflix’s ‘Churchill’s Secret Agents: The New Recruits’. In 2018, a play titled ‘Agent Madeleine’ premiered at the Ottawa Fringe Festival.

In 2012, Indian producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to the biography by Basu. In the film ‘Liberté: A Call to Spy’, an American historical drama, actor Radhike Apte played the role of Noor. The film had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year.

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Explained / by Surbhi Gupta / New Delhi / July 29th, 2020

Noor Inayat Khan commemorated: Stunning true story of British spy princess

Mysore , KARNATAKA / Moscow, RUSSIA /Paris, FRANCE /  London , United KINGDOM :

A LIFE of a British spy princess who was the first woman radio operator to be sent into Nazi-occupied France has been commemorated to mark International Women’s Day.

Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Noor Inayat Khan is the most highly decorated Muslim woman in British Military history and was only aged 30 when she was executed in Dachau Concentration Camp in September 1944 after being captured by the Gestapo in Paris the previous year. Like 20,000 others who have no known grave she is remembered at the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial. Now her life and legacy has been brought to a new audience in a digital exhibition Noor Inayat-Khan: A Woman of Conspicuous Courage created by Commonwealth War Graves Foundation and the girl guides.

It tells how the unlikely spy came to die for her country and the courage she showed under torture while visitors will be able to put their code breaking skills to the test and discover the technical skills a wireless operator needed behind enemy lines.

Jasmine Theti, 15, of Girlguiding Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, said: “We must never forget her and the sacrifice she made.

“I loved learning the Morse Code it was good fun.

“Although I wouldn’t have liked sending messages in a cold Parisian park whilst looking over my shoulder all the time. Noor was an inspiration.”

Noor was born on New Year’s Day 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother and was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore.

The family moved to London then Paris where she was educated and worked as a children’s author.

After the fall of France, she and her brother escaped to England and in November 1940 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force becoming a radio operator at RAF Abingdon.

But the fluent French speaker soon came to the attention of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and in late 1942 was recruited.

Noor Inayat Khan with her mother

Noor Inayat Khan, left, with her mother (Image: Shrabani Basu/ PA Wire)

However they were unsure whether she would make a good agent, worried she was too honest and kind-hearted and couldn’t blend into a crowd.

She proved them wrong when she joined the Paris resistance in July 1943 just as the Gestapo were closing in.

While members were rounded up she evaded capture and ended up as the only SOE radio operator for the whole Paris region.

But two days before she was due to be replaced in October she was betrayed and arrested.

Remarkably she twice managed to escape from the Parisian prison before being sent to Germany the following month where she was kept in chains and in solitary confinement for 10 months.

Resisting repeated torture she and three other women SOE agents were finally taken to Dachau and shot on September 13, 1944.

For her courage she was posthumously awarded Britain’s highest civilian bravery medal The George’s Cross in 1949.

Julian Evans of the CWGC which looks after the Runnymede memorial added: “Noor’s story is an inspirational one and we believed it important, as the custodians of the memorial on which her name is inscribed, to help give it greater prominence.

“We hope that the exhibition will encourage more people to visit the Air Forces Memorial to explore the story of Noor and the 20,000 other members of the Commonwealth Air Forces who are commemorated here.”

source: http://www.express.co.uk / Express / Home> News> UK / by Tony Whitefield / March 08th, 2020

World War II spy first Indian-origin woman to get Blue Plaque in UK

London, UNITED KINGDOM :

The Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage honours notable people who lived or worked in particular buildings across London.

A Blue Plaque about Walworth-born comedian and actor Charlie Chaplin is seen near East Street Market in south London on September 1, 2017. (Photo | PTI)
A Blue Plaque about Walworth-born comedian and actor Charlie Chaplin is seen near East Street Market in south London on September 1, 2017. (Photo | PTI)

London :

Britain’s World War II spy Noor Inayat Khan was on Monday confirmed as the first Indian-origin woman to be honoured with a Blue Plaque at her former London home.

The Blue Plaque scheme run by English Heritage honours notable people who lived or worked in particular buildings across London.

Khan’s plaque is set to go up at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, where she lived as a secret agent during the war. Khan, the daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan, was an agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II and was captured and killed by the Nazis in 1944 at just 30 years of age.

“It is from this house that she left on her final and fatal mission. Noor gave her life in the fight against fascism and her message of peace and tolerance of all religions is even more relevant today,” said Shrabani Basu, Chair of the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust (NIKMT).

“The blue plaque will be a wonderful addition to the area that has a special association with Noor. It will be the first Blue Plaque for a woman of Indian-origin in Britain and is a real honour,” said Basu, who has been campaigning for the plaque since 2006 as the author of ‘Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan’.

Taviton Street is close to Gordon Square, which the NIKMT chose for the installation of a memorial bust in 2012 of the spy, a descendant of the 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan.

The Blue Plaque at her home is expected to be installed following building approval within the next few years.

“The Blue Plaques Panel have agreed that Noor Inayat Khan should be commemorated with a plaque. Once a nomination has been approved, it can take a further two or three years for a plaque to be unveiled,” an English Heritage spokesperson said.

“Noor Inayat Khan has deserved recognition for years. A hero who joined Britain’s effort to fight tyranny,” said Tom Tugendhat, Chair of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Born in September 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, Khan was raised in both Paris and Britain.

As a Sufi, she believed in non-violence and also supported the Indian Independence movement but she felt compelled to join the British war effort against fascism. She went on to become the first female radio operator to be infiltrated into occupied France, where she was tortured and killed at Dachau concentration camp.

The SOE was an underground force established in Britain in 1940 by war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”.

It recruited men and women to launch guerilla war against Adolf Hitler’s forces.

Historial records show that despite being repeatedly tortured and interrogated, Khan revealed nothing and was executed by a German SS officer and her last word was recorded as “Liberte” or freedom.

She was later awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian decoration in the UK, in recognition of her bravery.

In recent months, Khan was also a frontrunner of a campaign for an ethnic minority personality to be honoured as the face of a redesigned GBP 50 note until the Bank of England announced that the note would feature a scientific figure.

Major Indian figures to be honoured with Blue Plaques in London include Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and B R Ambedkar, who spent time in the city during the Indian national movement against Britain’s colonial rule.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> World / by PTI / February 25th, 2019