Around 80 years ago, the first Indian-Muslim woman British spy, Noor Inayat Khan, codenamed Madeleine, was parachuted into Nazi-occupied France.
Paris, the capital of France, was infested with scary German snipers and ruthless Gestapo spies, then. Noor’s job was to help the resistance in France and send messages back to Britain.
Although she was a children’s author and possessed a Sufi lineage, Noor didn’t want to remain inactive.
According to historians, her familial ties to Tipu Sultan, an Indian monarch from the 18th century, may have been the catalyst behind her decision to enlist in the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in November 1940 and join the fight against the Germans.
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Tipu Sultan, commonly referred to as the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, was the Indian Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India.
Noor was born on 1 January 1914 in Moscow to Hazrat Inayat Khan, an Indian musician and Sufi preacher, and Ora Ray Baker, an American. Hazrat’s maternal grandfather was the noted musician Ustad Maula Bakhsh Khan, whose wife, Qasim Bibi, was the granddaughter of Tipu Sultan.
Noor’s family was advised to leave Russia within months, as it was becoming dangerous after the Russian Revolution in which the Communists came to power.
Noor and her family went to Paris, and then to London after the outbreak of World War I.
Back to France
In 1920, Noor and her family moved back to France. Unfortunately, Noor’s father died in 1927. Her mother retreated into grief, and at just 13 years old, Noor had to take responsibility for her family.
Noor went to university to study child psychology and the harp and piano at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. She was a keen writer. Stories she wrote for children were printed in the Sunday edition of Le Figaro newspaper and broadcast on Radio Paris. She published the book Twenty Jataka Tales in 1939 and was part of a team that was working on the creation of a newspaper for children.
When World War II approached Paris in June 1940, Noor and her brother Vilayat escaped to England to join the war effort.
Efficient Operator
Noor joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, where she got trained as a wireless operator. She learned Morse code, becoming an “efficient operator” which helped her to join Special Operations Executive (SOE).
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Landing in Paris, she became the radio operator for the ‘Prosper’ resistance network in Paris.
According to archives read by this reporter, her mission was to work as a wireless operator for a locally recruited organizer, who is established in the region of Le Mans.
Her operation was titled Nurse, her Christian name in the field was MADELEINE, and her name on papers was Jeanne Marie RENIER.
The approach mentioned in communication to Noor goes like this.
APPROACH
You will go into the field by Lysander with another agent to a point
5 ¼ km. S. of Tieroe
3 ¼ “ W.N.W of Villeveque
On arrival, you will be taken to Paris, where the Chief of your Reception Committee will give you instructions for contacting your organizer, Cinema.
In case of any accident occurring, you will contact Henri GARRY at 40 rue Erlanger, Paris 16e (8th-floor opposite lift door). Telephone:
AUTeil 62.35)
before 10 a.m.
VAUgiras 86.55)
The password which must be used is “Je viens de la part do votre ami Antoine pour des nouvelles au sujet de la Societe en Batiment”, to which the reply is “L’affaire est en cours.”
You must use great discretion in contacting him.
French betrayal
Reports say that within 10 days of her arrival, all the British spies in Noor’s network had been arrested, and she was asked to return, but she refused.
She spent the summer in hiding, moving from place to place with her equipment.
Such a routine of changing her appearance and address would keep her out of trouble for only four months, as she continued with her mission to transmit messages.
Tragically for Noor, the Nazis had by now a description of “Madeleine” and would continue to relentlessly pursue her.
Eventually, London contacted her and asked her to return as it was too dangerous to stay on, but Noor refused, realising that she was the last radio link left between London and Paris.
By mid-August, she was the only British agent in Paris. Single-handedly, she now started doing the work of six radio operators.
However, in 1943 October, Noor was betrayed by a Frenchwoman and arrested by the Gestapo.
Kept in chains, solitary confinement
In November 1943, she was sent to Pforzheim prison in Germany, where she was kept in chains and solitary confinement.
Despite repeated torture by the Germans, she never gave up any secret information.
Whilst she would see out her time in the prison, in September 1944 her fate and that of three of her female compatriots was sealed.
On 11th September 1944, they were sent from the prison base in Germany to the Dachau concentration camp.
Two days later, after Noor endured yet more relentless torture, she and her resistance comrades were shot. She was only 30 then.
She was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star in 1946, a French military award, and the George Cross, the second highest award in the UK, in 1949. And a blue plaque commemorates her at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, where she stayed from 1942-43.
In films
In September 2012, producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to the biography Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu.
Noor’s story was featured in the 2019 film ‘A Call to Spy’, written by Sarah Megan Thomas and directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher. Noor is played by Indian actress Radhika Apte.
Noor is the central character in the 2021 live-action short film Liberté, written, produced and starring Sam Naz.
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