Noor Inayat Khan was a descendant of the legendary Tipu Sultan, was a secret agent in the Second World War. She was infiltrated into France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill’s secret organization that sought to "set Europe ablaze".
Background
Ethnicity:
Noor's father was Indian and her mother was American.
Noor Inayat Khan was born on New Year's Day 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother. She was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th-century Muslim ruler of Mysore. Khan's father, Inayat Khan, was a musician and Sufi teacher. Her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum, was an American from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who met Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States. Inayat Khan moved his family first to London and then to Paris. Noor was the eldest of four children. She had two brothers, Vilayat and Hidayat, and a sister, Khair-un-Nissa.
Education
Khan graduated from the University of Paris, where she studied child psychology.
Nora's determination to fight fascism led her to join the Allied forces by volunteering for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in November 1940.
At WAAF, Noor was sent for wireless operator training and then onto bomber training school. Though she was making swift progress in the wireless operator training, Noor felt that she needed to contribute to the war efforts in an active manner, which led her to seek a transfer elsewhere within the British forces.
In 1942, Noor was recruited by the SOE (Special Operations Executive - an underground espionage and sabotage task-force set up by Britain’s then Prime Minister Winston Churchill) At that time, SOE’s F (France) section was facing a severe shortage of agents with the exact skill-set combination of fluent French and accurate wireless operator abilities. The job of an SOE-F section agent was also regarded as highly dangerous, with the risk of capture by the Gestapo within the first six weeks quite imminent. Noor Inayat Khan fitted the required bill almost perfectly and was posted to various divisions for further training, including the Air Ministry and FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry). For special training as a wireless operator in enemy territory, she was sent first to Wanborough Manor in Surrey, then to Aylesbury and finally to Beaulieu, where she trained with many other agents.
Khan was flown to occupied-France in June 1943 and became the first female radio operator to achieve this distinction. She posed as a children’s nurse and was given the code name 'Madeleine'.
But the SOE’s mission in Paris was compromised right from the beginning and within a week of Noor’s arrival, the Gestapo arrested almost all the SOE operators in Paris. Noor somehow managed to outwit and escape the Gestapo and thereafter, she was the only SOE undercover radio operator left in Paris. Her superiors in London offered to extract her, but she refused to state that she would carry out her mission by rebuilding the network on her own. Her work over the next few months was extraordinarily brave.
In a bid to evade the Gestapo, Khan was always on the move, never staying in one place for a long time. She frequently changed her looks, dyed her hair and lodged with her pre-war friends in Paris to secretly transmit messages to London from her bulky B2 radio set. By single-handedly performing the tasks of six radio operators, Khan enabled the safe delivery of crucial packages and aided in the escape of many Allied forces’ members.
The exact cause of Khan’s capture is unclear, but from post-war interrogations of Gestapo officers, it is believed that a suspected double agent, Henri Déricourt, or Renée Garry, the sister of an SOE-F network leader betrayed Khan. When the Gestapo came for her in October 1943, Khan fought tooth and nail with her captors, and six hefty men were needed to arrest her.
A few hours after her capture, Khan attempted to escape from her confinement in Paris, but her attempt was foiled. Where she had folded like a pack of cards during her SOE training interrogation sessions, Khan held her own and did not reveal a single piece of true information when grilled by the Gestapo.
Just a few weeks later, in November, Khan made a second unsuccessful attempt to escape from her Paris prison. On refusing to sign a declaration that she would not make any further attempts to escape, Khan was taken to Germany as a 'Night and Fog' (Disappearance without Trace) prisoner, to be placed in solitary confinement, beaten and fed the smallest of rations. She was kept shackled at her hands and feet for ten months. While Khan steadfastly refused to give up any information to her captors, her spirit was broken and she was often heard sobbing through the night.
On 13 September 1944, Khan along with three other fellow agents were transferred to the infamous Dachau concentration camp. While the others were executed immediately upon arrival, Khan was reportedly brutally beaten and tortured yet again, before being executed via a shot in the head. Her last recorded word was 'Liberté' (freedom).
Posthumously, Noor Khan was awarded multiple honors for her work and her bravery. In 1949, she was awarded the George Cross, the second-highest British honor for bravery, as well as the French Croix de Guerre with a silver star. Her story endured in popular culture, and in 2011, a campaign raised funds for a bronze bust of Khan in London, near her former home. Her legacy lives on as a groundbreaking heroine and as a spy who refused to abandon her post, even in the face of unprecedented demand and danger.
As a Sufi and a follower of Gandhi, Noor was a complete believer in non-violence and a staunch supporter of the Indian Independence efforts against British colonial rule.
Quotations:
"I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave... it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians."
Personality
Noor Khan was a staunch pacifist and an outspoken supporter of Indian independence, yet she gave her life working for the British secret services. She was also a successful children’s author, a musician.
During mock-Gestapo interrogation sessions at SOE, Noor would often freeze up or give away personal information. Her trainers also noted that she often left codebooks out in the open and her 'fist' (style of typing keys for Morse code) was quite heavy. In their post-training reports, the trainers mentioned that Khan was clumsy, unsuitable for physical feats and scared of weapons. Her strong spiritual beliefs led her superiors to believe that she would not be able to make quick ruthless decisions, as often required in espionage and sabotage work.
Quotes from others about the person
"I am delighted that Noor Inayat Khan is going to get a blue plaque in London. It will be the first blue plaque for a woman of Indian origin in Britain and is a real honor. Noor’s message of peace and tolerance of all religions is even more relevant today." - Basu
"Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keenness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course. She has an unstable and temperamental personality and it is very doubtful whether she is really suited to work in the field." - superior officer, Col. Frank Spooner
