Introduction

"Love has a will and a will has a way;
        so there is much hope for us.
May the iron bonds of love keep our hearts always together
        and I am sure that our bodies shall unite sooner or later." 1

These words were written by Ora Ray Baker, a white American woman, to her Indian lover, Inayat Khan, in one of more than fifty letters she sent to him in the early years of the 1910s. Ora Ray, a delicate-looking beauty in her early twenties, made the decision to leave the United States and pursue a marriage with Inayat in Europe soon after writing this letter.

What followed was a journey Ora made as secretly as possible, starting with the discreet purchase of a ticket for a passage from Philadelphia to Europe, a transaction made in New York. On the 28th of February 1913, Ora took control of her life when boarding the ship bound for Europe, obscuring her appearance as much as possible by donning a black suit and hiding all her hair underneath a hat.

Once she had arrived on the ship, Ora kept to her cabin as much as possible to avoid being detected or recognized. But why all the secrecy? Ora specifically told Inayat in the last letter before her departure from America to be "well guarded" as she did not want to "endanger" his life. Indeed, Ora was warning him of her half-brother Pierre Bernard, a supposed expert on Sanskrit and yoga, who had threatened to kill Inayat the minute he found out about the romantic relationship between Inayat and Ora.

Despite Pierre’s threat, Ora wedded Inayat in England, beginning a marriage that lasted fourteen years until Inayat’s death in 1927. Over the course of the marriage, they had four children, spearheaded a movement that brought an Eastern religion to the West, and maintained the romance of their initial courtship through love letters and poetry.

Family accounts tend to present Inayat and Ora’s lives as a fairytale romance, and Inayat Khan’s life has been romanticized by the Sufi movement. At first glance, the story comes off as flowery and perhaps even legendary. But as you read the story of their romance, you will discover many other factors which greatly affected the lives of these two historical figures and their love story: hard work and domestic labor provided by Ora and other women, the harsh reality of race playing an important part in determining one’s life and circumstances in early 20th century America, the ever present shadow of Orientalism, and the fact that societal class division was a significant component in Ora and Inayat meeting, and in the success of their movement. Discovering these factors hidden behind the fairytale makes Ora’s and Inayat’s stories even more compelling, showing how their unique love story prospered despite the widely prevailing attitudes in the West in the 1910s and 1920s.

Note: This love story originated as Fareen Tasfia Ali's Thesis for the Master of Arts in Asian American Studies degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, 2023 and has been adapted with her permission for use on this web site.