A choreographer's daughter, chosen by chance, remembered by history

On February 14, 1992, Princess Diana arrived at Lalapet Government High School in Hyderabad as part of her royal tour of India with Prince Charles. Then Diana noticed a four-year-old girl.

The child was Avanti Reddy, dressed in traditional Lambadi attire after performing a Lambadi dance. She was the daughter of dance teacher Japamala Rani, who had been involved in choreographing the performance for the royal visit.

According to Avanti’s later recollection, Diana spotted her sitting on the ground, picked her up and carried her back towards the stage before settling her on her knee. Diana asked the little girl her name, her school and her class. Avanti had a cold, and she later recalled that Diana used her own handkerchief to wipe the child’s nose.

Avanti later remembered Diana telling her, “I don’t have a daughter, so today you are my daughter.” She also recalled Diana saying that she did not want to leave her. They were an affectionate description of a fleeting encounter, remembered decades later by the little girl who was at its centre. Photographs from the Hyderabad visit captured Diana holding Avanti on her lap. The image became one of the most enduring memories of the princess’s Indian tour. For Diana, it was one moment during a tightly scheduled international visit. For Avanti, it became a defining childhood memory.

There is an important distinction, however, between what can be seen in photographs and what was later recalled by Avanti. The photographs document Diana holding the child; details such as their conversation, Avanti’s cold and the handkerchief come primarily from Avanti’s later recollections. That distinction matters because the story has been retold many times, sometimes with increasingly dramatic descriptions.

Reports say that Avanti and the princess’s side continued communicating through letters. Diana also sent Avanti a signed photograph, which Avanti kept framed. The two were reportedly expected to meet again several years later. Avanti was travelling with her dance group in Europe, and a meeting with Diana in Britain had been planned. But in August 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris before that reunion could take place.

It became one of the few tangible reminders of a relationship that might otherwise have existed only in childhood memory.

Avanti’s own life continued far beyond that brief encounter. She grew up in a family connected to dance through her mother, Japamala Rani, and continued pursuing dance herself. Later reports have described Avanti as a trained dancer and teacher. Her story therefore has a connection to Diana, but it is not defined entirely by Diana. Avanti was not a royal figure, a celebrity or someone deliberately placed in Diana’s path for a private meeting. She was a four-year-old schoolgirl who happened to be among the children performing for a visiting princess.

The popularity of the story has occasionally produced a misleading headline: “Princess Diana’s Indian daughter.”

Avanti Reddy was not Princess Diana’s biological or legally adopted daughter. Diana had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, and the relationship with Avanti was an emotional connection formed during a brief meeting in Hyderabad.

The phrase “my daughter” came from Diana’s reported words to Avanti and should be understood in that context.

In 2013, research involving DNA samples from relatives of Princess Diana was reported as identifying a maternal line connection to Eliza Kewark, a woman who lived in India in the late 18th and early 19th century.

Kewark was associated with Theodore Forbes, a Scottish merchant connected to the East India Company who worked in western India. Researchers traced a maternal line from Kewark through subsequent generations to Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd. The mitochondrial DNA associated with that line was also found among Diana’s descendants.

The precise ancestry of Eliza Kewark has been described differently in reporting. Some accounts have identified her as Armenian or of Armenian background, while the DNA research suggested South Asian ancestry in the maternal line. The available historical record about her is limited, so it is more accurate to describe this as a documented genetic and genealogical connection to a woman who lived in India than to reduce the story to a simplistic claim that Diana was “Indian.”

Prince William and Prince Harry inherited mitochondrial DNA through their mother, although mitochondrial DNA itself follows a maternal line and is not passed from fathers to their children. This ancestral connection, discovered through genealogical and genetic research more than two decades after Diana’s Hyderabad visit, has nothing to do with Avanti Reddy. Royal history is usually recorded through ceremonies, marriages, political events and official photographs. Diana’s meeting with Avanti belongs to a different kind of history.

Avanti was never Diana’s daughter in the literal sense. But during that 1992 visit to Hyderabad, Diana noticed a four-year-old dancer, held her on her lap and told her, “Today you are my daughter.”

The photograph preserved that fleeting encounter, and decades later, it remains one of the most memorable images from Diana’s visit to India.

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