Meet Manikarnika aka Lakshmi Bai:
wife, mother, leader of a major rebellion against the British at the age of 22.
You know, normal young woman in her twenties stuff.
I am starting with Lakshmi Bai
because she is the woman who inspired me to write this blog. I first
encountered her earlier this month while reading John Keay’s India: A History. As preparation for
teaching AP World History for the first time, I am reading up on the histories
of regions I know little about – such as South Asia. (Also, I’m working on a
fantasy series that takes place within a pseudo-Indian setting…but more on that
some other time.)
If you – like me – don’t know much
about Indian history, I will say this: before reading Keay’s book, I thought
that the British had some serious Game of
Thrones moments in their history. Now, I think that Indian history could
teach George R.R. Martin a thing or two.
If you remember anything about
Indian history (besides Gandhi) it’s probably the Great Rebellion of 1857,
commonly called the “Sepoy Mutiny” in Western Parlance. The naming of this
event is difficult and politically fraught. While Westerners typically describe
the events as a “mutiny,” some Indian narratives refer to it as the “First War
of Independence” or “National Uprising.” I am using the more neutral term
“Great Rebellion.”
The typical Western telling of the
rebellion goes like this: rumors spread among sepoys (native soldiers hired by
the British) in Bengal that the new rifle cartridges being issued (which had to
be bitten open before being loaded down the front of the barrel) were greased
with both cow and pig fat. The Hindu sepoys found this offensive because of the
Hindu reverence for cows, and Muslim sepoys found it offensive because like
Jews, Muslims view pigs as unclean and unfit for human consumption. The Bengal
sepoys mutinied, but the mutiny was suppressed by February of 1857 and the
offending cartridges removed. In this version, the mutiny is a parable about
British insensitivity to the religious sensibilities of their subject peoples –
possibly suggesting that the sepoys were petty and superstitious – but that the
rebellion was easily squashed and the British magnanimously accommodated the
sepoys by finding other methods to grease the rifle cartridges.
But there is so much more to the
rebellion than that.
It is true that the uprising among
the Bengal sepoys was suppressed fairly quickly, but the grievance regarding
the rifle cartridges was just one on a long list – it wasn’t about the cartridges any more than the
American Revolution was about tea. News
of the mutiny in Bengal spread, sparking similar actions against British rule
in other parts of India.
At the time of the rebellion, the
British government did not directly administer India. Instead, parts of India
were ruled by the soon-to-be-defunct British East India Company (Notorious
BEIC), and other parts were ruled by native princes of various sorts who
collaborated with the British in one way or another. The sepoys were not
soldiers for the British government – they were soldiers for the company. The
rebellion was not a monolithic, united effort of native Indians against British
oppressors, but rather an assortment of anti-British groups, versus an assortment of British collaborators and of course, the British themselves.
Isn’t this fun?
Here is where Lakshmi Bai comes in.
Like many people of royal personage, Lakshmi Bai was not her given name, but
rather the name she adopted after becoming Rani (Queen) of Jhansi by marrying
the Raja (King) Gangadhar Rao in 1842, when she was between 12 and 14 years
old. (Sources disagree about her age.) Jhansi was one of the many “princely
states” in India that had signed treaties with the BEIC. During the course of
her marriage, Lakshmi Bai gave birth to one son, who died as an infant. To
address his lack of an heir, Gangadhar Rao adopted the son of one of his
cousins, named Lakshmi Bai as regent, and promptly died in 1853.
The company, however, did not
recognize the authority of Lakshmi Bai or her son and invoked the “Doctrine of
Lapse” – a policy where the company annexed those princely states that did not
have a suitable male heir. Lakshmi Bai’s son, being adopted, didn’t count. The
BEIC offered the Rani a pension and ordered her to leave her palace.
At this point, the story of Lakshmi
Bai becomes much more complicated and since I have already rambled on long
enough, you will have to tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of
Lakshmi Bai and the Great Rebellion.
Sources: India: A History, by John Keay
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