By Ruba Hattar
Reviews about the recently released film A Call to Spy, which sheds light on an Indian princess who spied for the British during World War II and was eventually killed by Nazis, went viral.
The film A Call to Spy is out in cinemas Oct 23rd. Read this article over the weekend @thetimes It explores the stories of Virginia Hall, Vera Atkins & Noor Inayat Khan. More info in my Insta post @bimcic I will be exploring more in my Indian Women & War project. #indian pic.twitter.com/PCFbQ1kTF0
— Believe In Me CIC (@bimcic) October 26, 2020
A biopic, A Call To Spy, released on October 2, pays tribute to the work of three female British spies during the second World War, including Noor Inayat Khan, who was also a children stories writer and pacifist.
This year, Britain awarded Inayat Khan with the Blue Plaque – the first woman of Indian origin to be honoured with the title for her sacrifices as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France. She was captured by the Gestapo – the official secret police of Nazi Germany – in Paris and taken to Germany where she was executed in 1944.
Excellent movie alert... A Call to Spy. ?? A solid portrayal of the first women #spies to serve in #WWII: Vera Atkins, Virginia Hall, and Noor Inayat Khan—who I learned about while researching my first novel, Beneath the Satin Gloves.
— Britt Skrabanek (@BrittSkrabanek) October 31, 2020
Here's a review: https://t.co/23c8OTWnZd pic.twitter.com/o1txzKAGAP
Noor, who was fluent in French, was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret British organisation that sent spies to help local resistance movements in occupied Europe. In June 1943, Khan was sent to France under the code name “Madeleine”, the first woman wireless operator to be deployed to the country by the UK. After landing in the city of Le Mans, Noor travelled to Paris, where she would work with the French resistance network “Prosper”.
After seemingly being betrayed by one of her colleagues, she was captured by the Gestapo in October the same year and taken to Germany a month later.
The film showing on Netflix got the attention of feminists as it tells the stories of women heroes in WWII.
Checkout “Badass Women of the Greatest Generation," a panel with my "A Call to Spy” costars presented by @spyscape and @IFCfilms. pic.twitter.com/junso4w8WD
— Laila Robins (@laila_robins) October 23, 2020
Khan’s father Inayat was a prominent preacher of Sufism – a mystical practice of Islam.
While the recent anti-Muslim sentiments grew from France to affect the world, this movie gaining so much respect, shows that there is a recognition of the role of Muslims and immigrants in Europe after all.
“The understanding in the West is that Britain won this war on its own, that Churchill won it for them. They need to know there were 2.5 million people of the Indian subcontinent, who came forward to volunteer for this war,” said the writer Shrabani, whose another book Victoria and Abdul was made into a film.
