A Hyderabad school, February 1992
In February 1992, Diana, Princess of Wales, toured India with Prince Charles. The trip is best remembered for the photograph of her sitting alone before the Taj Mahal, a picture widely read as a sign of a marriage in trouble. Away from the Taj, though, there was a quieter and warmer moment in Hyderabad.
At Lalapet Government High School, a four-year-old named Avanti Reddy performed a traditional Lambadi tribal dance for the visiting princess, in costume with her face painted and her feet bare. Avanti's mother, Japamala Rani, was a dance teacher who had choreographed the royal visit.
According to Avanti's later account to the Daily Mail, she was sitting on the ground when Diana picked her up and carried her back to the stage. Diana sat her on her knee and asked her name, her school and her class. Avanti had a cold, so Diana wiped her nose with her own handkerchief. Diana kept the child with her for the rest of the visit and, as she was leaving, said she did not want to go. Avanti recalls her saying, "I don't have a daughter, so today you are my daughter". A Getty photograph of a girl in dance costume on the princess's lap, taken by Jayne Fincher, became one of the best-known images from the tour.
What it was, and what it wasn't
This was not a literal claim of daughterhood. Diana had two sons and no daughter, and the remark reads as an emotional response to a child who had charmed her, in a way that suited her reputation for warmth toward children. The words are also known only through Avanti's recollection, as relayed by the press, so they should be treated as a reported memory rather than a documented quotation.
The connection did not end that day. The two kept in touch by letter, and Avanti still has a framed, signed photograph Diana sent her. Her uncle arranged for her to visit Diana, but the plan ended with Diana's death in Paris in 1997. When the story was widely reported in 2018, Avanti was 28 and working as a dance and primary school teacher. She would be in her late thirties now.
A separate story: Diana's Indian ancestry
The second story has nothing to do with Avanti. In June 2013, the genetic ancestry company British DNA, working with the University of Edinburgh, announced that Diana had a small amount of Indian ancestry.
The trail leads to Eliza Kewark, who lived in Surat, a port north of Bombay, in the early 1800s and was housekeeper to a Scottish East India Company merchant, Theodore Forbes. She had long been described as Armenian. Her daughter Katherine, born in 1812, is the ancestor from whom Diana descends through an unbroken line of mothers and daughters.
That unbroken maternal line is what made the test possible. Researchers analysed mitochondrial DNA, which passes from mother to child, taken from living descendants of Eliza. They found it belongs to a rare haplogroup called R30b, previously reported in only 14 people, 13 of them Indian and one Nepalese. Autosomal markers in two of Diana's maternal cousins also suggested a small South Asian share, about 0.3% and 0.8%.
The conclusion was that Eliza's father may well have been Armenian, but her mother was probably Indian, so Eliza was at least half Indian. One careful point on counting generations: Eliza was Prince William's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, which makes her Diana's great-great-great-great-grandmother, one "great" fewer.
The finding also needs some caveats. Prince William and Prince Harry inherited the mitochondrial DNA, but sons do not pass it to their children, so William's own children would not carry that specific line. The overall share of Indian DNA is tiny. And the testing was carried out by a commercial company whose scientific director led the study, which is worth knowing when reading the headlines.
Two stories, one country
Both stories involve Diana and India, but they sit on different footings. The Avanti Reddy encounter is a human-interest anecdote resting on one person's memory and a famous photograph. The Kewark finding is a genetic result, with its limits, about a woman who lived two centuries ago. Neither depends on the other, and keeping them apart gives a clearer picture of each.
References:
- "The Indian girl who Diana called 'my daughter'." The Daily Star (Bangladesh), citing Mail Online. https://www.thedailystar.net
- "Princess Diana in India: A Look Back." ABC News, photo by Jayne Fincher/Getty Images. https://abcnews.go.com
- Peña, Roxana. "La 'hija' hindú de la princesa Diana reapareció a sus 28 años." Metro Puerto Rico, 19 July 2018. https://www.metro.pr
- "Princess Diana's Taj Mahal: The Iconic Photo & Untold Story." (background on the 1992 tour; secondary source). https://covidrefund.smyrooms.com
- "Prince William is part Indian, according to DNA tests." UPI, 14 June 2013. https://www.upi.com
- "Princess Diana's Hidden Ancestral Secret Revealed." ABC News Radio, 2013. https://www.eastidahonews.com
- "DNA link to Prince William's Indian ancestry." Channel 4 News, 14 June 2013. https://www.channel4.com
- "Prince William inherited Indian DNA from Princess Diana." ITV News, 14 June 2013. https://www.itv.com
- Grierson, Andrew. "Why royal DNA is front page again." History Matters, University of Sheffield, 14 June 2013. https://historymatters.sites.sheffield.ac.uk