Queen Victoria Had a Punjabi Goddaughter. This Is Her Family’s Story at Kensington Palace

Queen Victoria was Empress of India. She was also godmother to the children of the man whose kingdom she helped destroy. Victoria called him “your affectionate friend.” But as Polly Putnam tells me, it was a strange relationship between conqueror and conquered. Polly is the Collections Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the historian behind Netflix’s Bridgerton , and the curator of The Last Princesses of Punjab — her 31st exhibition, and the hardest one she has ever done. She did not want to tell this story from above. She wanted South Asian voices in the room. In this episode, we cover why Sophia sold suffragette newspapers outside Hampton Court, why Bamba had snowballs thrown at her on the way to medical school, why Catherine told a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, “I’ll be that person,” why Duleep Singh died with a Bible at his bedside despite taking Sikh initiation, and the revelation that almost everything in this family’s London history happened in Kensington, including the birth of the women’s suffrage movement itself.

You can listen to Queen Victoria Had a Punjabi Goddaughter. This Is Her Family’s Story at Kensington Palace online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Queen Victoria Had a Punjabi Goddaughter. This Is Her Family’s Story at Kensington Palace is an episode from The ਸੋਚ (Sōch) Podcast by Ramblings of a Sikh.

This episode is 00:19:40 long.

This episode was published on May 1, 2026.

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