Baron Sinha, of Raipur in the Presidency of Bengal, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1919 for Sir Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, who was the first Indian and only person of colour ever to be elevated to the hereditary peerage. There was controversy over the succession on his death in 1928. He ought to have been succeeded in his title by his first son, Aroon Kumar Sinha. However, Aroon Sinha had been born at a time when there was no system of registration of births and marriages in India, so he was unable to prove his claim to the title to the satisfaction of the House of Lords at that time.
In 1936, Aroon Sinha presented petition for a writ of summons to the House of Lords. The petition was referred to the Committee for Privileges on 27 June 1938, and a Commission was appointed to take evidence in Calcutta, on this birth and marriage. Ultimately, on 25 July 1939, the Committee for Privileges decided that Lord Sinha had succeeded in his claim.[1] The decision remarks that the decision was not precedent for a peer who had legally married two wives (at the same time), and that there is no British law on heirship in the case of a polygamous marriage; but in this case that difficulty did not arise - and in fact the first Lord Sinha had belonged to the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, a variety of Hinduism which required monogamy. [2]
More controversy followed in the 1950s, when Lord Sinha was refused a British passport: eventually, he was issued a passport in 1955 which described him as a British subject. On his death the title passed to his eldest son, the third baron and then to his grandson, the fourth Baron Sinha, who died without surviving male issue. The fifth baron was a younger son of the second Baron Sinha; As of 2010[update] the title is held by the latter's eldest son, the sixth Baron.
The heir presumptive is the present holder's brother the Hon. Dilip Kumar Sinha (b. 1967).