While it rescues Lakshmi Bai from the conjoined yokes of rebel-patriot, her true metier will only emerge when the gadar is studied as an event in its own right, not as a prologue to the glorious march of Indian nationalism.
Tapti Roy achieves a balance that is rare in studies of the Indian mutiny. She narrates the Rani’s life without either the colonial or the nationalist straitjacket. She gives us glimpses into her life that allow us to understand her choices, explain why she was negotiating with the British right until her city was besieged and how, when she fought, she fought like ‘Durga’ herself.
Born Manikarnika to an impoverished Brahmin, Lakshmi Bai grew up with Nana Saheb, the adopted son of the exiled Peshwa Baji Rao II at Bithur near Kanpur. The second wife of the Maratha ruler of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao, Lakshmi Bai was at first grateful to the English for preserving and augmenting the dynasty. Long after the rebels had occupied and lost Delhi, in February 1858, she was still sending missives to the local British representatives, seeking conciliation and demanding help. Her choice to fight was as much due to English intransigence as to the fact that the rebels, including her personal army, were smarting for a fight.
Scores of novels and plays by Victorian writers preceded Indian writing on the Rani of Jhansi. Roy does well to include novels, memoirs, plays and local memory in her search for sources of Lakshmi Bai’s life. In the process she gives insights into her leadership during those crucial three months, the role of women fighters and organisers in her army, about the attention paid to propaganda, organisation and paper work by the rebel army during its last-ditch stand at Kalpi, and her ability to infuse loyalty in such antagonistic groups as the Bundela Rajputs, Maratha Brahmins, Afghan mercenaries and rebellious purabiya soldiers.
However, contrary to Roy’s emphasis, the Rani of Jhansi was not the only woman leader or fighter in the mutiny. Does her preeminence then owe something to the fact that she was a Hindu queen, devoted and loyal to her husband and son, a renowned patron of Brahmins, a legendary worshipper of Durga and Mahadev? Is that not why this ideal Hindu woman, the paragon of virtue and bravery, gets yoked in a developing Hindu-nationalist mythology where she can be invoked in the same breath as Shivaji and Maharana Pratap? While this biography rescues Lakshmi Bai from the conjoined yokes of rebel-patriot, her true metier will only emerge when the gadar is studied as an event in its own right, not as a prologue to the glorious march of Indian nationalism. The bustle of the impending 150th anniversary notwithstanding, we still have some way to go.