History's Youngest Heroes: Rani Lakshmi Bai: The Warrior Queen

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Gangadhar Rao, the Raja, or king of Jhansi, lay in his bedchamber.

He was gravely ill.

Around him, priests recited prayers.

A servant was sent to fetch water from the holy river Ganges.

His young wife, Lakshmi Bai, waited in an adjacent room.

As a woman and also as a young queen, she would have been kept out of these kinds of proceedings.

It was November 1853.

For days, Lakshmi Bai had watched important people hurry in and out of her husband's room.

She hugged her young adopted son and thought back to her wedding day.

When she married, she had been a child herself.

Now, palace life was all she knew.

But with the Raja's life in the balance, Lakshmi Bai could lose everything.

Her title of Rani or Queen.

Her throne.

Even her son.

the noise from the next room became louder

verses and prayers and mantras that help release a soul from earth they're also trying to bless the young adopted son as the next king of jhanski

as the raja drew his last breaths the kingdom itself was under threat from the british east india company Rani Lakshmi Bai knew the company could take Jansi from her.

At the age of just 22, she was about to fight the battle of her life.

Taking on the might of the entire British Empire.

I'm Nicola Cochlan, and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's youngest heroes.

Rebellion, risk, and the radical power of youth.

Rani Lakshmi Bai, the warrior queen.

When I was a little kid, I got into a little bit of a scrap with some other students, most of them boys, and was pulled up by the school teachers and then the principal who yelled at me and said, Who do you think you are?

The Rani of Jhasi?

Fighting with boys?

And I had no idea who she was.

Today, Harleen Singh is a professor of literature, South Asian Studies, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

She grew up in Himachal Pradesh, northern India.

That principal's mention of the Rani of Jhansi sparked an interest in her.

I looked up who the Rani of Jhasi was, you know, went to the only English bookstore at that point in time in our little town and found comic books on her.

The image on the cover showed a young woman astride a white horse, brandishing a sword in the air.

As children, we were not supposed to speak up much, and then as girls, we were supposed to speak up even less.

To actually know that in our history was a woman who had taken on an entire army.

gave me a sense not only of the possibilities of the future, but also about what existed in our past.

Little was recorded of Rani Lakshmi Bhai's early life.

She was born in 1835 in the city of Benares, now Varanasi, on the banks of the river Ganges.

Her birth name was Manikernika, but she was known as Manu.

She was born to a Brahmin family in the Peshwa Baji Rao's kingdom.

The kind of Brahmin scholarly priestly class of people were the most privileged.

Dr.

Priya Atwell is a fellow in history at the University of Oxford.

Lakshmi Bai's family would have lived in fairly comfortable circumstances in a household that was given a lot of prestige within local society.

But the most important thing for her sort of life journey would have been making a good match for her in terms of marriage and ensuring that she was married into a family of equally high status, if not better.

Manu's father was a priest at the court of the Peshwa Bajiro of the Maratha Confederacy.

When she was five, her mother died and her father took her to live at the Peshwa's palace.

Suddenly, she was surrounded by dignitaries and diplomats.

Her playmates were princes.

She was the only child, and so her father brought her with him to court often since he was one of the court priests.

Here, she began a highly unusual education.

She was schooled in letters.

She was literate.

For a woman in those days to have been schooled is extraordinary.

She also had a flair for martial arts.

It was fairly common for women of royal houses to be trained in martial culture and martial arts.

It was a region that was often involved in war and conflict and women were made to feel able if it came to crunch that they wouldn't need to rely on men to defend them.

They would pick up the sword and band together and fight off an intruder or an invader themselves.

In 1841, priests from a neighboring kingdom paid a visit to Peshwa Bajiro.

Brahmins from the court of King Gangathar were at these other kingdoms looking for a suitable girl.

One of the priests asked about young Manu.

And inquired about her and said, well, she's grown up at court.

She's from the upper caste.

She's a Brahmin.

So why can't she be a suitable candidate?

Manu wasn't of royal lineage and didn't come from money.

There is some dispute over how old she was when she married.

Probably around seven.

Child marriage was a common custom at the time.

You know, it's another one of these abhorrent practices that existed not only in India but around the world.

You know, royal families throughout Europe were marrying their kids off very young.

Young children sometimes would be promised to marriage from birth.

Families coming together to bind alliances, essentially to kind of secure that child's future from a very early age

raja gangadhar had ruled the princely state of jhansi for four years you know he was older between 40 and 50 he was overweight extremely so from a combination of uh gout rich living a lot of royalty were afflicted by it He was generally thought to be an ineffective king.

Gangadhar spent his time listening to music and performing plays.

He is rarely described as a competent ruler, nor a strong ruler for that matter, but a patron of the arts, definitely the theater.

Though he had several wives, Gangadhar hadn't yet managed to father a son.

He needed new brides.

In May 1842, Jansi celebrated as Raja Gangadhar married Manu.

Women and girls often assumed a new name on marriage, and Manu took the name of the Hindu goddess of prosperity, Lakshmi.

The populace of Chasi would have been fed, gifts would have been given out, the elephants and the horses would have been decked out with all pomp and show.

Chasi would have celebrated for multiple days.

Over the next few years, Lakshmi Bai lived alone at court.

She devoted her time to study.

Gangadhar sent royal tutors to her, she read more, she learnt more.

As a teenager, Lakshmi Bai attended court with her ladies in attendance.

Veiled in position behind a screen, she watched political meetings.

In the 1850s, one topic dominated these conversations.

Relations with the East India Company.

The British East India Company had formed in 1600 to trade with the Mughal Empire.

It acquired lands in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and recruited native armies to protect them.

Over the following 200 years, as the Mughal Empire declined, the East India Company expanded in the pursuit of profit and conquest.

The East India Company was a private company, responsible only to its shareholders, yet it raised an army, fought wars, and made alliances with Indian kings.

What you have by 1850 is an India that is kind of a patchwork quilt.

There are still large pockets of the country that are at least independent in a nominal sense, that they're ruled by their native local ruler, their Maharaja, Raja, Maharani, etc.

Some of these states had treaties with the East India Company, giving them a measure of independence.

And then you had other sections of the country that had been outright taken over by the company and were directly administered by their men.

From behind her screen in court, Lakshmi Bai heard how much control the East India Company had over Jansi.

Listening to the conversations between the British and their own men, the courtiers and the king and other people, the king had full control over the social, religious, cultural life of the kingdom.

But most of the important political decisions of his kingdom were in the hands of the British.

By the time Lakshmi Bai turned 16, she had risen to high status among the Raja's wives.

and had some say in affairs of state.

She tested her authority by training women to act as her guards.

This was a success.

So she went further, organizing for women to be in the army.

There must have been something in her childhood, you know, whether it was training, whether it was growing up with the boys, that got her to the point of actually raising a woman's regiment to training women in Jhasi to be her bodyguards.

In September that year, She gave birth to a son.

Finally, the Raja of Jhansi had an heir to his throne.

Devastatingly, though, the child soon fell ill.

He only survived a few months.

We know that, because there was no coronation as a prince or anything, and he died soon after.

It was also around this time that the Raja's health began to fail.

Gangadhar now had no heir to inherit his kingdom.

So he decided to adopt an older child, the son of his cousin.

And he's five years old, and his name is Damodar Rao.

Gangadhar wrote to the East India Company, extolling the virtues of his newly adopted son.

He said, I hopefully will regain my health.

I'm not old, but should I not regain my health, please recognize this adopted son as my heir.

As Damodar Rao was still underage, The Raja asked the East India Company to recognize the authority of his young wife, Lakshmi Bai, as regent.

He asks that she be recognized not just as the mother and the grieving widow but as the ruler of this kingdom till my son comes of age he added please take care that no injustice is done to her

though she didn't know it fate had already taken a turn against lakshmi bai five years earlier at that time in 1848 a new governor general arrived in India.

He was James Brune Ramsay, the Earl of Dalhousie, a Scottish aristocrat who disembarked from a ship at Calcutta.

The position of Governor-General had been created by the British Government in an attempt to regulate the immense power of the East India Company.

While the company still ran India, the Governor-General represented the British Crown.

He had authority over foreign affairs and defence.

From the 1830s, though, the Governor-General took much broader control of Indian policy and the Earl of Dalhousie intended to use it.

He was one of the most aggressive and belligerent Governors-General that the East India Company had seen till that point.

Dalhousie believed it was his job to modernise India, according to British intellectual fashions.

He worked hard, worked his staff hard, and had little patience for the native rulers of India.

He didn't like them, he didn't understand their culture, he didn't trust them, and crucially he viewed them as civilizationally inferior to British Western civilization.

Under Dalhousie's direction, the East India Company set out to acquire new lands.

Once you took them over, you could completely modernise, anglicize and, you know, in air quotes, improve the infrastructure and the workings of their kingdom.

And he reveled in that power.

Dalhousie used the army of the East India Company to annex the Punjab, then ruled by the Sikh Empire.

The Maharaja, who was a child, was obliged to surrender control of his empire.

The fall of the Sikh Empire had shown how ruthless Dalhousie could be.

Now, in 1853, he set his sights on Jhansi.

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Raja Gangadhar died at the end of November.

Lakshmi Bhai was distraught.

It was a difficult loss for her.

You know, and a widow in Hindu royalty is not a figure who has any power.

In fact, she's sidelined from day one.

Courtiers took charge of the funeral arrangements.

As was traditional for a Hindu widow, Lakshmi Bai shaved her head.

His death also freed her.

That was a moment in which she could interject her voice and rise well above being just a widow to actually being the prime negotiator for her kingdom.

Lakshmi Bai practiced her martial arts, weightlifting, wrestling, and running before breakfast.

Still just 16 years old, she now oversaw affairs at the palace and across the kingdom.

As Governor-General of India, the Earl of Dalhousie expanded the use of a policy called the Doctrine of Lapse.

If an Indian ruler could not ensure the succession in his or her state, this allowed the East India Company to take over.

If you didn't have a biological heir and you were in some way tied in in a treaty with the company, the company had the right to become effectively the legal heir to your state, not any child that you may choose to adopt, and therefore the company could take over your entire kingdom.

By the time Raja Gangadhar died, Dalhousie had already used the doctrine of lapse to take over the states of Sitara, Jaitpur, Sumbhalpur, Bugatt, and Udaipur.

Lakshmi Bai soon received a letter from him refusing to accept Damodar Rao, her adopted son, as the legitimate heir.

First, she tried diplomacy.

She writes letters to the political agents who are local there.

She appealed to Dalhousie, writing, You don't really want to do this.

You know, we are all living rather peacefully.

Let us be.

Recognize my son.

We go on as we were.

Dalhousie was not persuaded.

He argued that the East India Company now held authority under the doctrine of lapse.

In 1854, the company annexed Jansi, taking control of all taxes and revenue.

Lakshmi Bai Bai retained a British lawyer to write on her behalf.

So that she can speak in some ways in the language of the East India Company.

The company ignored her pleas.

Their administrators took over the court and stationed a garrison in Jhansi.

Lakshmi Bai was furious.

When she is told that Jhasi is being annexed by the British, she, you know, got up and screamed, Mejhasi Nahidungi, I will not give up my Chasi.

At this time, there was little she could do.

But she was not the only Indian who was discontented with the East India Company rule.

Three years later, she would have her chance.

Sepoys were Indian soldiers serving in the East India Company's army.

In 1857, in Meerut, 300 miles north of Jhansi, Sepoys of the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry refused to use new cartridges in their rifles.

Rumours spread that the paper wrapping these new cartridges was greased with beef tallow and pork fat.

The paper had to be bitten through so that the cartridges could be used.

If this was true, it meant Hindu soldiers would consume beef and Muslim soldiers would consume pork, both of which were forbidden by their religions.

Subsequently, historians have found that the animal fat cartridges were quickly withdrawn, and none were distributed to troops.

Yet the story was powerful.

It spread quickly among sepoys across India.

In Meerut, 85 sepoys were jailed for refusing to use the cartridges.

But their fellow sepoys broke them out of prison.

The rebels looted the nearby military headquarters, as well as military and civilian quarters.

They killed Europeans and the Indians who defended them on behalf of the East India Company.

This company is not a Maharaja, it's not a nawab, it's a trading company.

All of these foreign white people whose language and whose customs and whose religion make no sense.

The rebellion spread to Delhi and began to ignite around India.

The majority of the East India Company's troops were sepoys,

more than 130,000 of them.

Some rebelled, while others continued to fight for the company.

The East India Company had fewer than 25,000 European troops.

If all those sepoys rebelled, it could not hold India.

The British Army sent 40,000 British soldiers as reinforcements.

News of the rebellion soon reached Lakshmi Bai, who was now around 22 years old.

She asked the British superintendent at Jansi for permission to gather more bodyguards.

Within days, rebels began to turn up in Jansi.

Probably hundreds of people arrived.

The superintendent ordered all Europeans to take refuge in Jansi's hilltop fort, leaving Lakshmi Bai to greet the rebels at the palace below.

She can't just turn away hundreds of rebels who have shown up at her doorstep and she houses them and they need food and shelter and all of these things.

Rani Lakshmi Bai faced a decision.

If she joined the rebels, she might force the East India Company out and win her kingdom back.

If the rebels lost, though, there was no telling what reprisals might follow.

She was a smart thinking woman who thought about what the right thing to do was for her kingdom.

Before she could decide, the rebels attacked the fort.

They carried out a massacre.

You know, 30 to 40 Europeans, British families were killed in Jhassi.

British newspapers reported this as an act of betrayal by the Rani of Jansi.

They alleged that Lakshmi Bai had promised Europeans safe passage.

She was called, you know, the Jezebel, she was called all kinds of names, and she was held responsible for the Jhassi massacre.

And in fact, the British put a bounty on her head.

Lakshmi Bai had to defend her son-in-heir, Damodar Rao.

Knowing that the British would come after her, she paid the rebels to leave Jhansi.

She ordered a foundry to be built to make cannons to defend the fort.

She took command of the army and waited.

Some rebels staged an attempted coup in Jhansi, which Lakshmi Bai defeated.

Then, two nearby princely states who were allied with the East India Company tried to invade, hoping to divide her kingdom between themselves.

Again, she defeated them.

In March 1858, British forces arrived under the command of Major General Sir Hugh Rose.

By this time, Lakshmi Bai had plenty of time to consider her decision.

And she declared that Jansi would fight for independence.

General Rose laid siege to Jansi.

Any kind of attack was seen as an attack on all of British and Europeans in the region and an attack on their racial prestige.

Retribution has to be double in order to, you know, literally strike fear into the hearts of anyone that might then try and do something like that again.

British forces bombarded Jansi.

Lakshmi Bai fled with Damodar Rao to Jansi Fort.

Jansi was under siege for many, many days.

As the British laid siege, they were stunned by the resistance that Lakshmi Bai mounted.

She was such a young woman, no one expected her to come out fighting the way she did.

Watching from the battlements, Lakshmi Bai knew she couldn't hold out forever.

She had to escape.

That night, horses were led quietly around the walls of the fort.

Some sources claim that Lakshmi Bai leapt straight from the fort onto her horse.

Others claim she was already mounted on the horse and jumped on its back from the ramparts.

She rode off into the night.

It was a spectacular escape done under cover of night, and she escaped with some trusted generals and trusted bodyguards with women who were part of her, you know, bodyguards.

Her destination was the neighboring kingdom of Gwalior.

And Gwalior was really seen to be a collaborator, someone who had thrown in their lot with the British.

If she was going to take Gwalior, Lakshmi Bai needed reinforcements.

She stopped at rebel towns to persuade them to help.

This was not something that the other rebel kings and peishwas and leaders had wanted to do.

She was the only woman amongst a whole group of male rulers and somehow she got them to agree.

She occupied the town of Kalpi until a British assault took it from her.

That May, Lakshmi Bai galloped into the steep-sided valley of Gwalior and took the kingdom without any resistance.

By June, the whole of India was ablaze with rebellion.

as British soldiers amassed near Gwalior, dressed in their red coats.

General Rose offered a reward of 20,000 rupees for Lakshmi Bai's capture.

She was so powerful, both as a political but also as a symbolic figure, that till she was vanquished, they would not be able to put out the rebellion for sure.

Gwalior was surrounded by rocky hills, and one outcrop was Gwalior Fort adorned with carvings.

Lakshmi Bai led out her 20,000 troops to face the British.

She decided to fight, even though she knew it was quite likely that her life could be on the line.

She was brave enough to take to the field and fight for what she thought was right.

Gender is not the biggest factor in this.

It's actually the fact that she was young.

Maybe it's the hot-headedness of youth that does that for her.

I don't know.

She was a small woman, leading her troops, astride a horse, sword in each hand.

She rode straight into the thick of the British army.

It is said that she fought against two or three warriors, you know, red coats.

Then a soldier landed a heavy blow on her.

She was knocked off her horse and then she fought while she was on the ground.

Her comrades dashed across the battlefield to help,

but they were too late.

Eventually, she was both shot and pierced by swords because multiple people had attacked her by this time.

The fatal blows had already been struck.

Lakshmi Bai's bodyguards carried her lifeless body from the battlefield and cremated her secretly so that she would not be defiled in death.

After three days of fighting, General Rose took Gwalior.

Really, the symbolic power of the rebellion had gone out with her death.

By November 1858, the Indian Rebellion was over, though violent retributions against the Indian rebels would continue.

The East India Company was effectively nationalised and the British Crown took over as the governing power in in India.

Some years later, Sir Hugh Rose was ennobled as Baron Strathniern of Strathniern and of Jansi.

Jansi itself was placed under British control.

Lakshmi Bai, meanwhile, passed into legend.

There are Victorian novels where she's supposed to have a harem of white men.

She's out of control, not just, you know, in terms of violence, but sexually licentious, you know, hungry for the blood of innocent British people.

somehow out of control in every which way.

While she may have been demonized in some British literature, the legacy of Lakshmi Bai was celebrated in India.

She was commemorated in art, in song, and eventually on film.

To many generations of Indians who came after her, especially those who fought for independence, the Rani of Jhansi was a hero.

When Indian nationalist leaders, leaders, the likes of Nehru Gandhi, Sebastian Drabose, they're looking for ways to mobilize not just, you know, men, but Indian women as a whole, who do they go to choose?

It's Rani Vjansi.

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