Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian-origin British secret agent executed by the Nazis, will be honoured with a “blue plaque” in the United Kingdom on Friday.
She worked as an undercover radio operator in Nazi-occupied France in 1943 and was captured and killed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944 at the age of 30.
The Bloomsbury home of Khan – 4, Taviton Street – will be marked prominently with a ‘blue plaque’ by English Heritage, a charity organisation that manages and cares for over 400 historic monuments, buildings and sites.
Blue plaque’ scheme
The ‘blue plaque’ scheme was founded in 1866 in London and commemorates the link between locations and famous people as a historical marker. The British secret agent was posthumously awarded the George Cross and French Croix de Guerre. Also, in 2012 Princess Anne unveiled her bust in Gordon Square Gardens.
The blue plaque will be unveiled on Friday by Khan’s biographer, journalist-writer Shrabani Basu, which will be webcast on Facebook at 7 pm UK time, English Heritage said.
Several Indians have been honoured through ‘blue plaques’ over the years on London houses and venues with which they were associated, including Rammohun Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and B R Ambedkar.
About Noor Inayat Khan
She was born
in Moscow in 1914 to an Indian father (a Sufi teacher) and an American mother.
Khan was educated in London and Paris and worked for the Special Operations
Executive in Paris in 1943 during the Second World War.
Khan evaded capture by the Nazis and continued to send messages to London for far longer than expected, but was betrayed, arrested and interrogated, but refused to give up secrets. She has been described as “one of the silent heroes of the Second World War”.
