Abida Sultaan: India's 'rebel' Muslim princess who shot tigers and drove a Rolls-Royce

Abida Sultaan defied stereotypes around women in general and Muslim women in particular.

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She wore her hair short, shot tigers and was an ace polo player. She flew planes and drove herself around in a Rolls-Royce from the age of nine.

Born in 1913 into a family of brave 'begums' (a Muslim woman of high rank) who ruled the northern princely state of Bhopal in British India for over a century, Abida continued their legacy of defying stereotypes around women in general and Muslim women in particular.

She refused to be in purdah - a practice followed by Muslim, and some Hindu women, of wearing clothes that conceal them and secluding themselves from men - and became heir to the throne at the age of 15.

Abida ran her father's cabinet for more than a decade, rubbed shoulders with India's prominent freedom fighters and would eventually come to have a ringside view of the hate and violence the country disintegrated into after it was partitioned in 1947 to create Pakistan.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn017r4zw3wo

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