Britain’s World War II spy, Noor Inayat Khan, on Friday became the first Indian-origin woman to be honoured with a memorial Blue Plaque at her former family home in central London. The Blue Plaque scheme, run by the English Heritage charity, honours notable people and organisations connected with particular buildings across London. Khan’s plaque has gone up at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, where she lived before she left for Nazi-occupied France in 1943 as an undercover radio operator for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). Noor, the daughter of Indian Sufi saint Hazrat Inayat Khan and a descendant of the 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan, went on to be killed at Dachau concentration camp in 1944, having revealed nothing to her captors, not even her real name.
This film comes to India at an appropriate time. Radhika Apte is playing a British spy in her forthcoming Hollywood film on World War II, Liberte: A Call to Spy. The film, helmed by Emmy award-winner Lydia Dean Pilcher, had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival in June. The film saw Radhika portray Noor Inayat Khan, the real-life British hero renowned for her service in the Special Operations Executive. She has now opened up about the role, describing it as a “pacifist fighting in the war.”
