Two queens and a rebellion

A Begum and a Rani: Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in 1857

Author: Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 256

Price: Rs 699

This masterly history of India’s great war of 1857 contrarily described as a war of independence and a mutiny is, despite its dealing with only a facet of that war, probably the best work on the subject thus far published. With its repeated reference to public participation in events and continuing public reactions in recounting the course of this war as espoused by two of its foremost leaders, notably in its concluding, and longest chapter “Afterlife”, Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s is a consummate subaltern history merging seamlessly with mainstream. This is also an abiding tribute to India’s womanhood. “But the embrace of a popular uprising”, the author sums up in his conclusion “that thrust upon them leadership roles made them fulfil the dream-and dare one add for women of the future too-of what a woman ought to be and ought to do”.

The narrative is replete with the Indianness of both protagonists. What else can one make of a public notice (ishtihar) such as that issued to the people of Lucknow in March 1858 in the name of Hazrat Mahal, which, according to Dr Mukherjee,  suggested “a style of leadership and the aims and aspirations of the uprising”,  appealing that they “ought to put these accursed English to death by firing guns, carbines and pistols from the terraces, shooting arrows and pelting them with stones, bricks, earthen vessels, ladles, old shoes and all other things which may come into their hands”

But this is above all a work of history seeking to reconstruct a vital event in the birth of the Indian nation, rationalising facts drawn from sources created by what Dr Mukherjee describes as an Indian past appropriated by the British rulers, with a paucity of accounts from the Indian side. This colonial smugness brought with it, particularly in Bengal, which was most exposed to it, a reaction that tended on hagiography, in the words of Ranajit Guha, “from servility…towards an assertion of independence”. But from the archives that the British had created or allowed to survive, Dr Mukherjee has, pleading that his “craft is perpetually haunted by the spectre of empiricism”, created an incisive narrative addressing the origins of the uprising, for that is what it was, and specifically of two main characters, examined the course of the war in Awadh and in Jhansi, situating Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in each.

Both accomplished in their training, one a tawaif, personification of a rich cultural heritage and the other a Brahman trained in martial arts, they both mobilised the people they served. And indeed, it is the people, their reactions and impulses that are the theme of this work and give it a stature in my view unmatched by any other history of that time. “Resistance to tyranny,” the author reminds his readers, “is always a collective act.” Sadly, the propensity to identify resistance with individuals, he says, tends to overlook “other equally vital and vibrant aspects of resistance to tyrants”.

The book opens with the observation, “In 1857, the resistance of common people made leaders of obscure royals.” Lakshmibai was queen of “the small principality called Jhansi”, once subehdari of the Peshwa, annexed by the British in 1853, never an independent state. Hazrat Mahal was discarded wife of the ruler of the kingdom of Awadh, which he ruled from Lucknow, “one of the areas where economic growth was noticeable within the overall decline of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century.”

The outbreak of a mutiny in Meerut on May 10, 1857 triggered by a firing parade, a “ceremony” of punishment ordered by an unthinking British colonel on April 24 on sepoys protesting what they saw as a defilement of their religion, far from either Lucknow or Jhansi, but close to the seat of the last Mughal, was to become a defining moment of India’s history. That Mughal king, with utmost reluctance, gave the mutineers legitimacy. But as Dr Mukherjee argues decisively, with empirical evidence, this was followed not by random outbreaks across the Indo-Gangetic plain, as many historians have made out, but by an uprising that followed a clear pattern in support of the erstwhile empire. Meerut was closely followed by Aligarh, then Etawah, Mainpuri and Etah, reaching Lucknow on May 30, then south to Kanpur and onwards to Jhansi in Bundelkhand and northeast to Gonda and Bahraich and the borders of Nepal. The sequence of events indicate a plan of action, which for reasons mentioned, has not thus far come to light. Nevertheless, the British, who had touted the idea of Wajid Ali Shah, King of Avadh being an incompetent, “had not quite reckoned with the fact that he was a popular king much loved by his subjects”.  According to a contemporary account “there was no street or market or house which did not wail out the cry of agony in separation of Jan-i-Alam.” In a folksong of the time, “Noble and peasant all wept together”.

In Awadh, the vast majority of both noble and peasant is Hindu. I refer to it here because Dr Mukherjee’s book, despite no direct reference, even more incisively than in his earlier Awadh in Revolt 1857-1858 A Study in Popular Resistance (Permanent Black, Delhi 1984) makes short shrift of the myth of hostility amongst Indians because of Babri Masjid/Ramjanmabhoomi. The British Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, published in 1877–78, under the heading “The Janamasthan and other Temples” refers to “the great rupture between the Hindus and Muhammadans” of 1855. Place this against the celebration of the rout of the British at Chinhat on June 30 1857, their first military encounter with the rebels, with groups of rebels spilling onto the streets of Lucknow chanting “Bom Mahadeo". Birjis Qadr, Wajid Ali Shah’s 12 year old son was hailed as Nawab representing the Mughal Emperor to cries of  “you are Kanhaiya (Krishna).” The sentiment, and indeed the dignity of the Talukdars who fought under the leadership of Hazrat Mahal is effectively summarised in the communication to a Capt. Barrow by Hanwant Singh, who had given shelter to Barrow in the uprising, “Sahib, your countrymen came into this country and drove out our king…. I submitted. Suddenly misfortune fell upon you. The people of the land rose against you. You came to me whom you had despoiled. I have saved you. But now-now I march at the head of my retainers to Lakhnao to try and drive you out of the country” (emphasis added). Dr Mukherjee cites folk songs on the defence of Jhansi in which chief gunner Ghulam Ghaus Khan, sings to his friend Khudadad Kahn, guarding the main gate both killed in the defence of Jhansi fort: “For our queen I shall lay down my life/I shall hack the Firanghi with my sword”.

And so Dr Mukherjee summarises Hazrat Mahal’s position in history with the words, “a rebellion of the people made her a leader and she became the leader of the people”. Lakshmibai, on the other hand, was a pensioner of the British faced with a people joining in rebellion with the mutinous sepoys by early June 1857, who moreover after massacring the British in Jhansi -- for which the British never forgave the Rani, although she had no part in it – proclaimed: “The people are God’s, the country is the Padishah’s and the two religions govern,” followed with her proclamation ”Raj is Lachmee Bai’s”. “Her activities” says the author, “were more rooted in arms and located in the actual battlefield”.

“Lakshmibai,” says the author in his concluding sentence,” is not only remembered, but also commemorated and celebrated. Hazrat Mahal hovers on the margins of remembrance”: Why that is so is an issue discussed extensively. Yet, Dr Mukherjee has succeeded in placing the two women in their rightful position in India’s history, whose example in leading a rebellion of “sepoys, peasants, artisans, common people” and the message of whose times carry lessons for India in the present, often described as India under challenge.

The reviewer is ex-IAS and former asst lecturer (History) St Stephens' College