Anita Delgado: An Indian princess born in Malaga

Andalusian influencers around the world

A woman ahead of her time who pushed for women’s rights including the marriage of young girls in her adopted country

Jennie Rhodes

Calle Anita Delgado can be found in the Clavero district of Malaga city. There’s also one in Fuengirola as well as several others dotted around Spain. Anita Delgado was born in Malaga on 8 February 1890 where she became a well-known flamenco dancer and singer. However, it was her marriage to the Maharajah of Kapurthala in 1908 which gave her international fame.

In India Delgado pushed for women’s rights, including opposing the marriage of very young girls and she also founded an organisation to help Indian soldiers who fought in World War I. She was considered ahead of her time in terms of her feminist views and fight for justice for women and girls.

In fact, to coincide with International Women’s Day in 2022 the Andalusian regional government’s culture and historical heritage commission approved, with unanimous support, a proposal to recognise Anita Delgado’s contribution to the fight for women’s rights.

The proposal argued that Delgado “was a woman ahead of her time”, who helped women at the beginning of the 20th century in India and was “a great pioneer and a great feminist”.

Anita met the Maharajah when he was in Madrid for the wedding of King Alfonso XIII. He is said to have fallen in love with her while watching her perform, seduced her and stayed with her throughout the wedding but left Spain after an assassination attempt on King Alfonso on 31 May 1906.

Later her friends Romero de Torres, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Pastora Imperio convinced her to meet the Maharajah in Paris, where it is said that he taught her French so that he could explain his love for her. The couple were married on 28 January 1908 in a Sikh ceremony in India, at which point Anita Delgado became Rani Prem Kaur Sahiba and the Maharaja’s fifth wife.

The couple travelled in Europe and India and Anita wrote a book about this time called Impresiones de Mis Viajes a las Indias (impressions of my travels in the Indies). She gave birth to a son, Maharajkumar Ajit Singh Sahib Bahadur. However, the couple separated after the Maharaja married his sixth wife and Delgado stayed in Paris living secretly with her secretary so that she could still receive her allowance. Anita Delgado died on 7 July 1962 in Madrid.

A film about Anita’s life titled La Princesa de Kapurthala starring Penélope Cruz was due to begin shooting in 2006. However, descendants of the Maharajah opposed the filming, arguing that Javier Moro’s novel on which it is based distorts the truth. In 2022 director Michael Radford presented plans to develop a miniseries on the life of the Princess of Kapurthala, but it hasn’t yet been made.