Lakshmi Bai was probably born in about 1830: estimates vary between 1827 and 1835, with the British authorities tending to go for the earlier and the Indians for the later figure.7 Her original name was Manukarnika – one of the many names of the holy river Ganges – and she was brought up in the wing of a palace in Benares on the south bank of the great river itself. This was because her father, Moropant Tambe, a brahmin official, acted as chief political adviser to the brother of the last Peshwa of Bithur, whose court had come to rest in Benares after his deposition.
A web of legends surrounds the childhood of little ‘Manu’. Her horoscope is said to have indicated an important marriage. It is also scarcely surprising to find that many of these legends feature her one way or another as a tomboy. Here once again are the familiar stories of the future Warrior Queen wrestling with boys and disdaining the company of girls (except to insist on always playing the role of leader among them). A favourite if probably apocryphal tale has ‘Manu’ demanding a seat on the howdah of an elephant when playing with the adopted son of the Peshwa, Dhondu Pant, later known as Nana Sahib (he was surely too old to have acted as her playmate in childhood, despite the dramatic destiny which would one day link their names). The little girl was rebuked for her presumption: ‘You were not born to ride on an elephant.’ At which the future Rani shouted at the future Nana Sahib: ‘I’ll show you! For your one elephant, I will have ten. Remember my words.’
On a more elevated level, Lakshmi Bai’s convenient birth in the very ‘lap of Mother Ganges’ meant that her birth could later be imbued with a religious significance: here was the pure incarnation of the sacred river, come to save India by destroying the heathen British. On this level, she was said to have been an assiduous attender at the Temple of Vishweshwar with her parents. Future places of pilgrimage were being provided, her pride in the Hindu religion underlined. A typical story, told of the Rani at the height of her triumph, had her encountering a brahmin by a well and, in spite of her thirst, refusing to let him pull up the clay pot for her: ‘You are a learned brahmin and it does not befit you to do this. I will do it myself.’ Concerning the Hindu religion, she informed the brahmin: ‘for this I have sacrificed all attachment for wealth, life, everything’.8
For all the curtailed freedoms – both sexual and social – of the female in the Hindu religion, as laid down by its brahmin lawgivers, little ‘Manu’, she who had boldly demanded a seat upon the elephant, came from a culture where powerful intelligent women were not unknown.9 Some of these belonged to history: there were folk memories of well-educated Hindu princesses and intrepid women at the Indian courts in the past who had ridden armed with the men. After her death, the Rani would indeed be described to Queen Victoria by Lady Canning, her former lady-in-waiting, now wife of the Governor-General of India, as having kept up the tradition of the Mahratta women for being both ‘brave and clever’ (although this particular Mahratta woman had been ‘wicked’ as well).10
Even within the confines of the Hindu religion itself, there were sundry menacing goddesses, whose mythical behaviour hinted at a very different female nature from that of the gentle and unselfish Sita. This was the heroine of the Ramayana epic who, having been abducted forcibly, was repudiated by her husband, only to prove her continuing love for him (and her virtue) by immolating herself in fire.11 The goddess Durga, for example, wife of Siva, although seen as basically benevolent and maternal and endowed with a serenely beautiful face, also displayed a remarkable capacity for aggression, with the help of her ten arms, each bearing a different weapon, and her eight accompanying demonesses. (It was to Durga, riding on her tiger, that Mrs Gandhi in her turn would sometimes be picturesquely compared.) As for another version of Siva’s wife, the much-venerated goddess Kali, the black one: here was the force of destruction represented in its most terrifying form: four arms ending in bloodstained hands, fang-like teeth and protruding blood-dripping tongue.
Where the powers of women were concerned, the unconscious influence of Hindu mythology was underlined by public Indian example. Moreover, roughly contemporary with the Rani herself were two remarkable Indian Muslim female rulers. One of these, the Begum of Bhopal, was described to Queen Victoria by Lady Canning in 1861 as ‘A really clever upright character’: she looked after the affairs of her country herself and ruled it admirably. ‘No one disputes her power or her justice.’ When the Order of the Star of India was founded, the Begum of Bhopal was one of the twenty-five ‘Knights’ appointed to it.
Hazrat Mahal, the Begum of Oudh, on the other hand, was also formidably clever – but not morally upright. John Low of the East India Company called her ‘one of those tigress women, more virile than their husbands, who when finding themselves in a position to gratify their lust for power, have played a considerable part in oriental history’. Yet the courageous part played by the Begum as Queen Regent, in the defence of Lucknow against British attack, could not be denied. The Times correspondent, W. H. Russell, referred to her as ‘Penthesilea’, an Amazonion image confirmed by the female sepoys who guarded the entrance to the Begum’s harem, wearing military jackets and white duck trousers, with muskets and bayonets, cross-belts and cartridge boxes. Russell reflected: ‘it appears from the energetic characters of these Ranees and Begums that they acquire in their zenanas and harems a considerable amount of actual mental power …’12
After her enthronement, the Begum of Oudh was received by Queen Victoria in England. It was a development greeted with angry cynicism by Ernest Jones, the Chartist poet and leader (whose father, in contrast or perhaps in explanation, had been a royal equerry). Despite the Begum’s notorious ‘peccadilloes’, once she had been dethroned, he exclaimed, moral scruples had been thrown out of the window in face of her rank: ‘and the dusky royalty hobnobs with the pallid’.13 One might look at it from another angle and see in Queen Victoria’s persistent welcome to various Indian royalties her attractive lack of racism, in the sense that so many British people of the time practised it.
There is yet another possible angle. The career of Hazrat Mahal, long-reigning Queen Cartimandua to the Rani’s more dramatic Boadicea, reminds one how differently matters might have gone for Lakshmi Bai … Given her energy, courage and determination, given that female rule was not of its nature inimical at this point to the British, how might she not have fared under another set of stars – another horoscope? As it was, Manukarnika, who took on her marriage the name of Lakshmi, the lovely goddess of fortune and prosperity, would one day be transformed further into powerful Durga riding upon her tiger – and even, maybe, bloodstained Kali herself.
One legend concerns Lakshmi Bai’s actual wedding day. When the priest – according to tradition – tied the ends of her various gowns together, the bride shocked those present with her boldness. ‘Make the knot very firm,’ she said. But whatever the state of the knot, the new Rani did not succeed in presenting Gangadhar Rao with an heir, although a baby boy was said to have died at the age of three months. Then in 1853 Gangadhar Rao fell seriously ill. In the absence of an existing heir, one was adopted. Damodar Rao, as he became known, was five years old: a descendant of Gangadhar’s grandfather and thus a member of the royal family.
The ruler now proceeded to dictate his will and have it read aloud to Major Ellis, the British Political Agent in Jhansi: ‘Should I not survive, I trust that in consideration of the fidelity I have evinced towards the British government, favour may be shown to this child and that my widow during her lifetime may be considered the Regent of the State (Malika) and mother of this child, and that she may not be molested in any way.’ Major Ellis replied that he would do everything possible to bring this about. The substance of this will was then repeated in a letter to Major Malcolm, the Political Agent for Gwalior and the Bundelkhand, in which Gangadhar Rao referred once more to that treaty which had guaranteed the throne of Jhansi to Ramachandra Rao ‘and his heirs and successors’.14
Gangadhar Rao died on 21 November 1853. Not long afterwards the Governor
-General of India, the Marquess of Dalhousie, announced that under the policy of ‘lapse’, Jhansi was to be annexed by the British government. That is, since Gangadhar Rao had left no heir or successor – adoption did not count – the state of Jhansi reverted by treaty to the East India Company (no longer an independent corporation but largely under governmental control).
The only possible defence of Dalhousie’s ‘policy of lapse’, in this instance, is that of expediency, if defence it be. Certainly expediency had long been the watchword of the East India Company when the possibility of annexation arose; to that extent it could be argued that Dalhousie was only implementing a policy which others had conceived.15 But if Dalhousie’s policy had its roots in the past, it was also to cast its black shadow upon the future.
Dalhousie had already annexed Satara in 1848, the year of his arrival in India, on the same grounds of ‘lapse’ (once again there was the question of an adopted heir). This move too had aroused deep resentment – and also bewilderment. The resentment was due to the unfair prohibition of a practice – adoption – allowed by Hindu law. The bewilderment sprang from the known religious significance of adoption in the Hindu religion. The sacrifices of a son were an essential duty, if the father was not to be condemned to punishment – the hell called Put – after death. But an adopted son could perform these vital sacrifices equally with a natural one.
Colonel, later Major-General Sir John Low, who had been Political Agent at Gwalior and Lucknow, reported in his memoirs this general anguish which followed the annexation of Satara. ‘What crime did the late Rajah commit that his country should be seized by the Company?’ was the one question which every Indian put to him.16 Similarly in Jhansi in 1853 little Damodar Rao was unarguably the late ruler’s ‘son’ in Hindu law; as such he was surely his ‘successor’ under the terms of the earlier treaty. To regard him otherwise was ‘so ungenerous, and being so ungenerous, so unwise’. These were the terms which would be used by the distinguished British military historian Sir John Kaye (who worked for the East India Company and later the India Office) in his History of the Sepoy War in India 1857–1858, published in 1880.17 Significantly, Dalhousie’s wiser successor Lord Canning – derisively nicknamed ‘Clemency’ at the time, a name he has since borne with honour in the roll of history – explicitly stressed the Indian rulers’ right of adoption at his healing durbar of 1859.18
Meanwhile in 1856, the year of his own departure from India, Dalhousie would go further and annex the much larger state of Oudh: as early as 1848 he had described it as being ‘on the highroad to be taken under our management’. On this occasion, the pretext was not the lack of heirs to the Nawab – there was an heir – but the Nawab’s numerous transgressions against his subjects. It was a rather more sympathetic excuse. Nevertheless an Indian ruler had once again been removed. A leading Indian historian of the events of 1857 has judged Dalhousie’s policy of annexation as one of the main contributory facts to the rebellion and ‘perhaps the decisive one’.19
We return to Lakshmi Bai, she who had expected to rule Jhansi during the boyhood of Damodar Rao and was now consigned to the unenviable fate of a childless Hindu widow. Was she perhaps inadequate to the task of the regency, at least in the view of the British? But only a week after Gangadhar Rao’s death, the Political Agent Major Malcolm wrote that his widow, ‘in whose hands he has expressed a wish that the government should be placed during her lifetime, is a woman highly respected and esteemed, and I believe fully capable of doing justice to such a charge’. Other witnesses confirm that the Rani comported herself as ‘a brave-minded woman had to do in her position’, being in herself ‘quite capable of discussing her affairs with a Committee or a government’.20
Moreover her behaviour was perfectly discreet: she kept purdah where the British were concerned, although not at home (later she would indeed encourage women to take part in the defence of Jhansi). Her life was disciplined in the extreme: she would rise at 3 a.m., supervise work in the political and military offices, and then at her court listen to religious readings. One is reminded indeed of the application and austerity of another female ruler called from a secluded life to greatness: Isabella of Spain.
All this time, the Rani was hoping – even perhaps expecting – that the terms of Gangadhar Rao’s will would be allowed to prevail. Two petitions appealing against Dalhousie’s decision were sent, in late 1853 and early 1854, the Rani herself being credited with composing them.21 Attention was drawn to the position of the adopted son in the Hindu religion, his ability to make sacrifices on behalf of his late father, equal to that of a natural son. In the second petition, the difference between ‘heirs’ and ‘successors’ in the original treaty was argued; for if Damodar Rao was not one, he was certainly the other. It was significant of the justice of the Rani’s case that Major Ellis, the Political Agent at Jhansi, himself endorsed her petition. Unfortunately – or possibly due to malevolence – this vital letter was not forwarded to Dalhousie. For Major Malcolm, who did not choose to forward it, now believed the petition should be refused. Dalhousie’s decision was dated 27 February 1854. Adoption, he considered, was valid only in the case of sovereign princes, and he held firmly to Jhansi’s dependent status (an argument which has since been convincingly demolished by Indian writers).
When the document was read to the Rani on 15 March 1854, she cried out loudly: ‘Mera Jhansi Nabin Denge.’ (I will not give up my Jhansi.) Then she shut herself away, refusing food or water. But if the Rani despaired, it was only a temporary state. With remarkable pertinacity, she continued to argue her cause, employing a British counsel, John Lang, who advised her to appeal to London. It was not until 1854 that the appeal too was turned down. At Malcolm’s suggestion, the Rani was granted a pension of five thousand rupees monthly from the Treasury at Jhansi; the palace and the state jewels and funds which her husband had willed to her were also to be handed over. Even at this point, the British administration managed to arouse further resentment: with what Sir John Kaye described as ‘extraordinary meanness’, it was now laid down that the Rani should pay her husband’s debts before receiving her emoluments.22
So the Rani, with no other choice before her, fell back for the next three years into private life. Dalhousie left India. He once told a correspondent in England – whom he termed his ‘safety valve’ – of his feelings about the great subcontinent he ruled: ‘I don’t deny that I detest the country and many of the people in it. I don’t proclaim it; but I don’t doubt that my face does not conceal it from those I have to do with.’ It was not likely that such a man – one who would come out of his dying coma in order to learn the score in the Eton and Harrow cricket match – would spare much thought for the feelings or resolves of an obscure Hindu widow.23
Jhansi itself, like its Rani, was judged unimportant for the future. Its prosperity inevitably declined with the disappearance of the princely court. Another brisk British judgement from the centre was the discontinuance of the state revenues paid to the Temple of Lakshmi, just outside the city; although once again Major Ellis, the man on the spot, had suggested that the practice should be maintained. As to the garrison of such an important place, a few hundred soldiers were surely all that were necessary nowadays. A safe farewell could be bidden to the thousands of troops who had once added to the lustre of Jhansi’s princely ruler – could it not?
*
In 1855, the year before Lord Canning arrived in India to replace Dalhousie, he gave a speech in London to the Court of Directors of the East India Company. It contained this remarkably prophetic passage: ‘We must not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a cloud may arise, at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but which growing bigger and bigger, may at last threaten to overwhelm us with ruin.’24 By the summer of 1857, that cloud had indeed arisen.
The causes of the Indian Rebellion – or Mutiny – are not the subject of the present work; suffice it to say that on the Indian side, the case of the Rani of Jhansi, the mixture of injustice, ins
ensitivity and indifference displayed by the British administration towards entrenched Indian customs and interests, might perhaps stand as a microcosm of the whole. On the British side, the case of Jhansi itself, the unexpected uprising of supposedly loyal troops, coupled with the treacherous slaughter of British women and children (as well as soldiers and officials) might equally stand for what was most dreadful in India wherever the Mutiny occurred.
Canning’s words were prophetic. They had not however prepared him for the event itself. In April 1857 Lady Canning was happily telling Queen Victoria of the ‘ridiculous stories’ being circulated that the Governor-General had signed a bond saying that he would make all the Indians into Christians within three years. She added that there was ‘an odd mysterious thing going on, still unexplained’, by which she referred to the circulation of some native chupatties or biscuits from district to district (a strange episode whose precise relevance to the events of 1857 – were the chupatties coded signals? – has never been totally explained). Only five months later Queen Victoria would write in her turn to the King of the Belgians, ‘we are in sad anxiety about India, which engrosses all our attention’; although even now, characteristically, she spared a thought for the feelings of her protégé, the dispossessed Indian Prince Duleep Singh, who had been virtually raised with her own sons: ‘What can it be for him to hear his fellow countrymen called fiends and monsters?’25
In keeping with its reputation for pro-British tranquillity, Jhansi was not in the forefront of the rebellion. As late as 18 May, following the first weeks of disruption elsewhere, Captain Skene, the Political and Administrative Officer of Jhansi, was able to write, ‘I do not think there is any cause for alarm about this neighbourhood.’26 It was not until 4 June that some of the garrison at Jhansi (drawn from the Twelfth Bengal Native Infantry and the Fourteenth Irregular Cavalry and commanded by a Captain Gordon) actually mutinied. Under a rebel sergeant, Gurbash Singh, they invaded the Star Fort; in the battle to seize it, they killed all the British officers they found there except a Lieutenant Taylor, who, despite being badly wounded, managed to escape to the City Fort. This was the place appointed by Captain Skene for some British and Eurasians in Jhansi – some sixty people all told, over half of them women and children – to take refuge.