Begum and A Rani: Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in 1857

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Exploring the lives of two remarkable women, who chose to enter a field which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was seen as a male domain, this book brings to light how unusual circumstances catapulted Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi into the rebellion of 1857. Both of them sacrificed their lives trying to overthrow British rule, which they considered to be alien and oppressive. Their resistance and their deaths are heroic and poignant.

In different but adjacent geographies, these two women, both married into royal houses, decided to uphold traditions of ruling and culture that their husbands had established. These traditions had been subverted by the policies of Lord Dalhousie, who had annexed both Awadh and Jhansi.

The rani and the begum never met, even though they were embroiled in the same struggle. It is the rebellion of 1857-58 that provides the context, which makes these two outstanding women feature in the same narrative. This book tells the story of two women in a rebellion.

The afterlives of the begum and the rani took on very different hues. The rani was made a nationalist icon-a woman on horseback with a raised sword, who died in battle. The begum, however, is a relatively forgotten figure who did not get her due place in the roll call of honour. Revisiting the revolt of 1857 from a unique perspective and looking at their afterlives and the myths, this book attempts to set the record straight. Looking at the revolt from a different perspective, A Begum and a Rani is an act of retrieval.

RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE is the chancellor and professor of history at Ashoka University, of which he was the founding vice chancellor. He was educated at Calcutta Boys' School and Presidency College in Kolkata, JNU in New Delhi and St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford. He was awarded a DPhil in Modern History by the University of Oxford. He taught in the Department of History, Calcutta University, and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, Manchester University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 1993 to 2014, he was the editor, Editorial Pages, of the Telegraph. He is the author of many books, which include Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives, Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance; Spectre of Violence: The Massacres in Kanpur in 1857, The Year of Blood: Essays on 1857 and Dateline 1857: Revolt Against the Raj.

In Bertolt Brecht's play The Life of Galileo, there is a significant scene towards the end. It takes place on 22 June 1633 and is set in the palace of the Florentine ambassador in Rome. Galileo has been taken away to appear before the Inquisition. On stage are his three pupils, Andrea, Federzoni and the little monk-all eagerly waiting for news and hoping that Galileo will not recant his views. Also present is Virginia, the scientist's daughter, who is praying that her father will recant and thus not be damned. The announcement will be made by ringing the bells of St Mark's. The bells begin to toll, and the voice of the crier is heard saying that Galileo has renounced his belief in a heliocentric universe and has accepted the teachings of the Holy Church. The directions in the play read: 'The stage grows dark. When it grows light again the bell is still tolling, and then stops. Virginia has gone. Galileo's pupils are still there.' Andrea says loudly, 'Unhappy the land that has no heroes!' As he says this Galileo enters, 'completely altered by his trial,' Brecht writes, 'almost to the point of being unrecognizable. He has heard Andrea's last sentence. For a moment he pauses at the door for someone to greet him. As no one does, for his pupils shrink back from him, he goes slowly and unsteadily because of his failing eyesight, to the front [of the stage] where he finds a stool and sits down. Brecht has Galileo say in response to Andrea, 'No. Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes."

Under British rule that followed military conquest, India was an unhappy land. The unhappiness of the common people was rooted in their poverty, which was a result of British exploitation. Among western-educated Indians, it stemmed from the realization that their past had been taken away from them, that British rulers had appropriated the Indian past. James Mill famously announced this act of appropriation in his book The History of British India, where he wrote, 'The subject [Indian history] forms an entire, and highly interesting, portion of the British history." The statement implied that India or Indians had no history before the arrival of the British. This effacement of the past also came with strains of disdain and condescension. Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote with supreme smugness: 'A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia';' he heaped scorn on 'History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long-and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter."

Western education brought to the new intelligentsia a new awareness of its own past. Colonial education-in institutions like Hindu/Presidency College in Calcutta or Elphinstone College in Bombay-had imparted lessons on the rational reconstruction of European history.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages