Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
Indian queens as diplomats and warriors
Academic Queeny Pradhan, who earlier authored Empire in the Hills: Simla, Darjeeling, Ootacamund and Mount Abu, 1820-1920, revisits the lives of six 19th-century queens in her latest work. The royal figures in the book — some are completely unknown while others are celebrated warrior queens — include the Rani of Sirmur, Rani Chennamma of Kittur, Maharani Jindan of Punjab, Begum Zeenat Mahal of Delhi, Maharani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi and Queen Menchi of Sikkim. All of them negotiated the British Raj, sometimes with a pen, sometimes with a sword.
The book steers away from glorifying these queens and emphasises that they were not fighting for India’s freedom but to protect their own principalities and kingdoms. The author isn’t pursuing a feminist agenda or judging the queens. No catalysts of change, they did little to alter social structures and, on the contrary, were serving the cause of patriarchy. Of course, even stating this amounts to measuring historical figures according to the standards of the contemporary world.
Interestingly, the female monarchs who resisted the British on the battlefield are now national icons, while those who took on the coloniser through diplomatic means have vanished from our collective memory. In the British records of the time, though, they are all viewed alike: scheming, manipulative, untrustworthy.
Maharani Lakshmi Bai has been immortalised and is now revered. The image of her on horseback with her son, holding a sword aloft, has been etched in the collective consciousness. Her story begins with the death of her husband and her first long battle, not with a sword but with a pen, to ensure her son’s acceptance as the successor.
Pradhan makes the important point that though the rani is a nationalist icon and her martial valour is celebrated, she rebelled against the British only when her plea to elevate her son as maharaja was denied.
Maharani Jindan, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s youngest wife, was one of the most controversial queens of the 19th century. When she gave birth to Maharaja Duleep Singh in 1838, the British made it known that they doubted the child’s paternity. They were doing their best to tarnish her reputation as they were anxious about her power over the Sikh chiefs and troops.
The other controversial queen was Begum Zeenat Mahal, the youngest wife
Ranis & The Raj; The Pen And The Sword Queeny Pradhan 336pp, ~699, Penguin of Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. In 1857, she was trusted by neither the British nor the rebels. Of the emperor’s many consorts, she was the only one who chose to share her husband’s fate and go into exile with him in Rangoon.
Pradhan views Begum Zeenat Mahal and Maharani Jindan as tragic figures who lost everything. While the former lost the land of her ancestors, the latter lost her only son, Maharaja Duleep Singh, who was snatched from her and sent to England.
Guleri, the rani of Sirmur, negotiated with the British, using her diplomatic skills to convince them to appoint her minor son as king. This was an important feat as her husband was still alive. She stepped in to protect her son’s political interests and the line of succession when it became clear that the British would not restore her husband to the throne. Sadly, her name hardly features in any official accounts.
Very little is known about Queen Menchi of Sikkim, who refused to bow to the commands of the British, who were invited to the mountain kingdom to drive out the Gurkhas. Pradhan attributes the lack of records on such queens to sexism: “It is either due to the indifference or callousness of a masculine Empire or obfuscation of the facts...” he states.
In many ways, he adds, these “vendetta queens” were dealing with two complex worldviews: the modern and the traditional.
Though the British presented themselves as the torchbearers of modernity, they were typical of their times in treating the queens with a marked patriarchal bias.
In his book, the author raises vital questions about the gendered nature of imperial records and explores why Maharani Lakshmi Bai emerged as an icon while Abbaka Chowta of Ullal, who confronted the Portuguese in the late 16th century, is a footnote in Indian history. While this subject is interesting, the text is often repetitive; there are also a few typos, which will hopefully be fixed in the next edition.