Rani of Jhansi
The Rani of Jhansi, also known as Rani Lakshmibai, was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The queen consort of the princely state of Jhansi from 1843 to 1853, she assumed its leadership after the outbreak of the conflict and fought several battles against the British. Her life and deeds are celebrated in modern India and she remains a potent symbol of Indian nationalism.
Born into a Marathi family in Varanasi, Manikarnika Tambe was married to the raja of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao, at a young age, taking the name Rani Lakshmibai. The couple had one son but he died young, and so when Gangadhar Rao was on his deathbed in 1853, he adopted Damodar Rao, a young relative, to be his successor. The British East India Company, which by then had subjugated much of India, including Jhansi, refused to recognise this succession and annexed Jhansi under the Doctrine of Lapse, ignoring the Rani's vigorous protests to the Governor-General Lord Dalhousie.
In May 1857, the Indian troops stationed at Jhansi mutinied and massacred most of the British in the town; the Rani's complicity and participation in these events was and remains contested. She took over the rulership of Jhansi and recruited an army to see off incursions from neighbouring states. Although her relations with the British were initially neutral, they decided to treat her as an enemy: Major General Hugh Rose attacked and captured Jhansi in March and April 1858. The Rani escaped the siege on horseback and joined other rebel leaders at Kalpi, where Rose defeated them on 22 May. The rebels fled to Gwalior Fort, where they made their last stand; the Rani died there in battle.
After the rebellion, the Rani's name and actions became closely associated with nationalist movements in India. Her legend, influenced by Hindu mythology, became hugely influential because of its universal applicability. She was regarded as a great heroine by the Indian independence movement and remains revered in modern India, although Dalit communities tend to view her negatively. Rani Lakshmibai has been extensively depicted in artwork, cinema, and literature, most notably in the 1930 poem "Jhansi Ki Rani" and Vrindavan Lal Verma's 1946 novel Jhansi Ki Rani Lakshmibai.
Biography
Little is known for certain about the Rani's life before 1857, because there was then no need to record details about an as-yet ordinary young girl. As a result, every biography of her life relies on a mixture of factual evidence and legendary tales, especially when concerning her childhood and adolescence.Early life and marriage
Moropant Tambe was a Karhada Brahmin who served the Maratha noble Chimaji, whose brother Baji Rao II had been deposed as Maratha peshwa in 1817. In the city of Varanasi, he and his wife Bhagirathi had a daughter, whom they named Manikarnika, an epithet of the River Ganges; in childhood she was known by the diminutive Manu. Her birth year is disputed: British sources tended towards the year 1827, whereas Indian sources generally preferred the year 1835. The historians Tapti Roy and Rudrangshu Mukherjee have argued that the latter account is implausible because of chronological irregularities; they place Manikarnika's birth between 1828 and 1830.Manikarnika's mother Bhagirathi died when she was four, a year after the death of her father's employer Chimaji. Moropant moved to the court of Baji Rao at Bithur, who gave him a job and who became fond of Manikarnika. According to uncorroborated popular legend, her childhood playmates in Bithur included Nana Sahib and Tatya Tope, who would similarly become prominent in 1857. These stories say that Manikarnika, deprived of a feminine influence by her mother's death, was allowed to play and learn with her male playmates: she was literate, skilled in horseriding, and—extremely unusually for a girl, if true—was given lessons in fencing, swordplay, and even firearms.
It is presumed that Baji Rao brought Manikarnika to the attention of Gangadhar Rao, the old raja of Jhansi who had no children and greatly desired an heir. The ambitious Moropant accepted the unexpectedly prestigious marriage offer, and the couple wed, according to Indian sources, in May 1842. If the traditional Indian chronology is correct, Manakarnika would have been seven years old, and the marriage would not have been consummated until she was fourteen. Accorded the name Lakshmi, after the Hindu goddess, she was thereafter known as the Rani Lakshmibai. Both Indian and British sources portray Gangadhar Rao as an apolitical figure uninterested in rulership—thus increasing the scope for depicting the Rani's leadership abilities—but while British sources characterise him as debauched and imbecilic, Indian sources interpret these traits as evidence of his cultured nature. According to popular legend, he turned a blind eye to Rani Lakshmibai's equipping and training of an armed all-female regiment, but if it existed, it was probably formed after Gangadhar Rao's death.
In 1851, Lakshmibai gave birth to a son amid much rejoicing, but he died at a few months old to the great grief of his parents. Gangadhar Rao's health deteriorated over the following two years. As was customary, he adopted a young boy on his deathbed—in this case, a five-year-old relative named Anand Rao, who was renamed Damodar Rao—before dying on 21 November 1853. Two days before his death, Gangadhar Rao wrote a letter to East India Company officials, pleading with them to recognise Damodar Rao as the new ruler and the Rani Lakshmibai as his regent.
Widowhood and annexation
By the mid-nineteenth century, the armies of the British East India Company, a merchant corporation-turned political entity, had subjugated much of the Indian subcontinent; Jhansi itself had been ceded to the Company in 1817. By 1853, the Company administration, led by Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, had for several years enforced a "doctrine of lapse", wherein Indian states whose Hindu rulers died without a natural heir were annexed by Britain. This policy was quickly enforced on Jhansi after Gangadhar Rao's death, to the Rani's dismay. She wrote a letter to the Company protesting against the annexation on 16 February 1854. Dalhousie issued a lengthy minute in response eleven days later. He characterised Gangadhar Rao's rule as one of decline and mismanagement, asserted that Jhansi and its people would benefit from direct British rule, and argued that since the British had conquered the Marathas, Jhansi's former overlords, the Company was now the "paramount power" with the authority to decide the succession.Lakshmibai fought the decision through diplomatic channels. She initiated conversations with Major Ellis, a sympathetic local Company official, and engaged John Lang, an Australian lawyer, to represent her. She wrote multiple appeals to Dalhousie, outlining previous British treaties with Jhansi in 1803, 1817, and 1842 which recognised the rajas of Jhansi as legitimate rulers. She also cited specific terminology and Hindu shastra tradition to argue that Damodar Rao should be entitled to the throne. Dalhousie bluntly rejected these appeals without refuting the arguments contained within, but still the Rani persisted: her final appeals concluded that the annexation constituted a "gross violation... of treaties" and that Jhansi was reduced to "subjection, dishonour, and poverty".
None of these appeals came to fruition, and Jhansi lapsed to the Company in May 1854. Granted a lifetime pension of five thousand rupees per month by the new Company superintendent of Jhansi, Captain Alexander Skene, Lakshmibai was required to vacate the fort but allowed to keep the two-storey palace; she was also granted immunity to British courts. The Company however deemed her liable for 36,000 rupees of debt Gangadhar Rao had incurred. Through her lawyer, the Rani argued that these debts were the responsibility of the state and thus had been assumed by the British during the annexation. The issue was never resolved. Other disagreements included the 1854 lifting of the ban on cattle slaughter in Jhansi, the British occupation of a temple outside the town, and of course the continued foreign rule.
Later songs and poems retell Lakshmibai's defiant mantra, "I will never give up my Jhansi!", which she is traditionally said to have cried during this period. She continued to train her all-female regiment, if it existed, and paraded them on horseback through the town. Roy has argued that her quiet displays of religious virtue, in scrupulously visiting her temple twice-weekly and devoutly respecting tradition, allowed her more unconventional habits to become generally accepted even by conservative Hindu priests. She may have proposed that she return to Varanasi; the Company, worrying that the negative economic and social effects on Jhansi would be too great, declined.
Outbreak of rebellion
On 10 May 1857, native sepoy troops stationed in Meerut mutinied against their British officers, sparking the Indian Rebellion. The nascent rebellion swiftly grew as towns and troops across northern India, including Delhi, joined in. Nana Sahib organised massacres of the British at Kanpur, while similar events occurred in Lucknow; news of these killings had not reached Jhansi by the end of May. The garrison, commanded by Skene, consisted of native troops of the 12th Native Infantry and the 14th Irregular Cavalry, and oversaw a strategic position at the junction of four major roads: northwest to Agra and Delhi, northeast to Kanpur and Lucknow, east to Allahabad, and south across the Deccan Plateau.Skene was not initially alarmed, and allowed the Rani to raise a bodyguard for her own protection. However, on 5 June, a company of infantry took control of the ammunition store, and shot their British commanding officer when he attempted to reassert control the next day. The remaining sixty British men, women, and children took refuge in the main fort, where they were besieged. According to a servant of a British captain, the Rani sent a letter claiming that the sepoys, accusing her of protecting the British, had surrounded her palace and demanded she provide assistance. The sepoys subsequently threatened to set fire to her palace and even to kill her if she refused to support them; she provided a thousand men and two previously-buried heavy guns. Her position was severely compromised because many of her own guards had joined the rebels.
On 8 June, the British surrendered and asked for safe passage; after an unknown person acquiesced, they were led to the Jokhan Bagh garden, where nearly all of them were killed. The Rani's involvement in this massacre is a subject of debate. S. Thornton, a tax collector in Samthar State, wrote that the Rani had instigated the revolt, while two somewhat questionable eyewitness accounts reported that she executed three British messengers and gave the rest false promise of safe passage. Other contemporary reports claimed the Rani was innocent, while the official report by F.W. Pinkney came to no clear conclusion.
Lakshmibai herself claimed, in two mid-June letters to Major Erskine, commissioner of the Saugor division, that she had been at the mercy of the mutineers and could not help the besieged British. She wished damnation upon the mutineers, asserted that she was governing only while Company rule was absent, and asked for government assistance to combat prevalent disorder. Erskine believed her account, but his superiors in Fort William were less trusting. Even if the Rani was not involved with the mutiny, its outcome had spectacularly coincided with her prior aims, and items belonging to the massacred were later found in her palace. Roy has also drawn attention to the active participation of her father Moropant Tambe in the events, drawing suspicion to the knowledge and complicity of his daughter.
For a short period, the rebels were in control of Jhansi. Threatening to offer Jhansi to Sadasheo Rao, a cousin of Gangadhar Rao, they demanded 125,000 rupees from the Rani as a ransom for her position, but she negotiated the price down to 15,000 rupees. They took the money and left for Delhi on the evening of 11 June. Shortly after their departure, the Rani officially proclaimed that she had assumed rulership of Jhansi.
Through correspondence, Erskine authorised the Rani to rule until the British returned. In this capacity, she collected taxes, repaired the fort, and distributed donations to the poor. Jawahar Singh, one of her generals, defeated Sadasheo Rao, who twice tried to claim Jhansi for himself. Jhansi also saw off the nearby kingdoms of Orchha and Datia, whose leaders judged that the British would turn a blind eye if they divided Jhansi between them. Invading on 10 August, they besieged Jhansi from early September to late October, when they were driven off by the raja of Banpur's troops. These battles led the Rani to focus on re-establishing military authority, and so she ordered the recruitment of troops and the manufacturing of cannon and other weapons.