Ranis and the Raj

Title: Ranis and the Raj – The Pen and the Sword

Author: Queeny Pradhan

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2022 (First)

ISBN: 9780670091034

Pages: 336

 

The British Empire established its roots in India in the form of a trading company. Exploiting the unsettled state of polity after the Mughal empire went dysfunctional in the eighteenth century, the British first established their hegemony in the South. Through the battles of Plassey and Buxar, the company then obtained the right to collect taxes in Bengal and Orissa from the Mughals. Over the years, it defeated the Marathas and ate into the body politic of the Mughals. The company incorporated smaller states under its rule by force or treaties whose wording meant quite another thing when a dispute arose. Some ruling families opposed this dynastic liquidation. Quite contrary to the meaning of patriarchy defined by modern liberals, we find an astonishing multitude of queens who handled real political power and took on the British either diplomatically or militarily – by pen or sword. This book examines six such queens – Rani Chennamma of Kittur, Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, Rani Jindan of Lahore, Begum Zeenat Mahal of Delhi, Rani Guleri of Sirmur and Queen Menchi of Sikkim. All had to negotiate with the British Raj, either the company or the crown, or both. The British records portray the queens as scheming, manipulative and untrustworthy, but the author claims that an attempt to understand the queens in the historical context of their times shall be made beyond the binaries of imperialist and nationalist perspectives and to see them as women of their times spanning two different worlds articulating their identity and asserting their agency. Queeny Pradhan is a professor of history at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi and an alumna of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

 

Pradhan does not elaborate on the entire biography of the queens from birth to death, but stays happy with microhistories when these women filled the stage of political significance. While they fought the British, reforming the restraining social structures were never their intention. The English always harked on the civilized – uncivilized dichotomy between them and the colonized. Indians were portrayed as barbaric savages wriggling in a doomed landscape unilluminated by evangelization. In such a scenario, they did not find it proper or even necessary to extend the principles of international law to native principalities. Such consensus on sovereignty was not applicable to Indian rulers. The final outcome of the actions of these six queens differs widely. One was killed in battle, one was imprisoned, two were exiled and the other two retained their privileges even after their encounter with the British. Pradhan suggests a convincing logic behind this discrepancy. Those who openly defied the English Raj and led to killing of Englishmen were never forgiven. This happened in Kittur in 1825, in the revolt of 1857 and even in the execution of Bhagat Singh for killing an English officer. The imperial narrative on Lakshmi Bai admires her fighting spirit but reduce it to the fanatic zeal of an intemperate oriental woman. They implicate her in the Jokhum Bagh massacre in which surrendered and unarmed English men, women and children were massacred by the rebels. But this claim is unfounded.

 

As is typical of the Left-Islamist narratives, Pradhan also tries her best to drive a wedge through the fault lines of Indian society in order to keep the people always divided and separated along caste and regional lines. It should be kept in mind that she is a product of JNU! To achieve her malicious objective, she makes an irrelevant comparison between Rani Chennamma and Rani Lakshmi Bai and wonders why the latter captured the nationalist imagination on a larger scale. This, in fact, is not true. Both the maharanis are highly revered and respected in the nationalist narrative. Even if her contention is accepted for argument’s sake, the reason is not hard to decipher. Lakshmi Bai died in the battlefield fighting for her country while Chennamma had to surrender and died in captivity five years later, unknown to all. But this does not belittle her contribution as she also had to lay down her life for her convictions. But the reason given by the author is obnoxious and simply venomous. Pradhan states that it was because of Lakshmi Bai were a Brahmin and Chennamma belonged to the Lingayat sect (p.35). Lakshmi Bai’s stature as a nationalist icon irritates the author to no end. She then belittles the Rani of Jhansi and accuses her of having made ‘a tightrope walk by holding the rebels in check and colluded with the British in the early stages of rebellion’. When the rioting began, she asked the British to send in troops. She assisted British officers by providing ammunition. She negotiated with them afterwards to avoid a confrontation and as the last straw, the queen is accused of fighting to perpetrate the ‘old patriarchal order’. Pradhan is especially harsh on Lakshmi Bai and Chennamma while the other four are treated with at least a modicum of respect. The real purpose of the book might be to dull the sheen of these two bright stars of the nationalist history.

 

What upsets the author the most is the adulatory portrayal of these martyrs as warrior queens. She makes a redundant observation that one cannot read the story in the framework of Indians against the English as such a consciousness did not exist then. Ranis Chennamma and Lakshmi Bai were only fighting to continue the existence of their princely states and the right to decide on the successor. This is true in the literal sense. There was definitely no ‘socialist, secular republic’ of India in existence then. Even though Pradhan asks us not to see the conflict as between Indians and the English but as between Kittur royals and British and also Jhansi royals against the British, the English viewed the fight exactly as one between the white British and black Indians which explains the uniformity of their response. What is unfortunate is that there are scholars even 150 years later, trying to nitpick on the few factors that divide India rather than the thousands which unite it. She then criticizes two recent historical movies based on these queens and stoops so low as to accuse these commercial ventures as containing historical inaccuracies! Stung by the queen’s laurels in the film ‘Manikarnika’, she claims that the queen had an unhappy domestic life contrary to what is exhibited in the movie. Similarly, a 2012 movie ‘Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna’ eulogizing the military chief of Rani Chennamma is also said to be contain errors.

 

This book enumerates the castes of the leading personalities. Lakshmi Bai was a Brahmin, Chennamma was Lingayat, Sangolli Rayanna was Kuruba and remarks on the domination of the upper castes. By the author’s logic, the lower castes should have been treated as untouchables and studiously kept out of the palaces and aristocratic dwellings. But what she describes contradict these oversimplifications. A Dalit woman named Jhalkari Bai who had closely resembled Lakshmi Bai was disguised as the queen and sacrificed her life so that the real queen could escape unnoticed. Doesn’t it mean that Dalits were allowed entry in the queen’s palace? Such examples abound in Indian history. The Holkar dynasty of Indore rose from a herding caste. Kalhana mentions in Rajatarangini that king Chakravarman of Kashmir (r. 923-933) married an untouchable Domba woman. The author also finds a similarity that united Indian and British societies. The patriarchal bent of the British further reinforced the patriarchy of traditional Hindu society. The word ‘patriarchy’ is used so many times in this book.

 

Whatever be her preoccupations with patriarchy or caste dominance, Queeny Pradhan is all praise when the Mughal queen Zeenat Mahal is mentioned. It is interesting to compare one of her passages about Lakshmi Bai on her marriage. She claims that Lakshmi Bai was ‘hemmed in by patriarchy. From being Manu Bai, her marriage into the royal family of Jhansi, she was only following the prevailing norms of society marrying a man twice her age, becoming his second wife and trying to adjust to a traditional household and husband with his eccentricities’ (p.102). But on Zeenat Mahal she says that the ‘Begum married Bahadur Shah Zafar when she was 19 and he 64. But it was a marriage of honour’ (p.166). Note the irony here. Lakshmi Bai married a man twice her age (This too is clever arithmetic in fact, she was 14 and he was only 28), became his second wife and was ‘hemmed in by patriarchy’ while Zeenat Mahal married an man more than thrice her age and old enough to be her grandfather, became his fourth wife, but it was ‘a marriage of honour’! This intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency plainly exposes the Left-Islamist agenda behind this book. From this distortion of facts, the author then moves to its outright suppression. In the chapter on Rani Jindan, she states that ‘the Mughal-Sikh history is complex. The Mughal prince Khusrau was closely associated with Guru Arjan Dev in his revolt against his father, Jahangir’ (p.120). So simple and benign! But the truth is a little more complex than this. Jahangir asked the venerable Guru to convert to Islam. He refused and was tortured inhumanely and executed at Lahore. His grandson Aurangzeb beheaded Guru Tegh Bahadur. Such is the ‘complex’ nature of Mughal-Sikh relationship! There is no use hiding it or beating around the bush.

 

As the author suggests, even though these brave women exhibited the force of their character, they did not try to restrain or reform the morals of the time. Rani Jindan was behind purdah when she plotted against the British. She used this handicap to good advantage by escaping from her place of detention as the British did not know how she looked like. Even though politically minded observations like ‘cross-class collaboration’ ‘change in mode of production from feudal to capitalist’ and ‘never ending quest of profit for capitalism’ crops up occasionally, the text is readable without a primer to Marxism kept handy. There is a 60-page introduction that summarizes all that the book has to offer and this includes 147 footnotes. Many referenced scholars are mentioned by name also, giving the narrative an academic flavour. Altogether, the author has not been able to provide a concise, consolidated and sequential narrative of what she wanted to say. The occurrences taken from different books are sometimes included separately without collating them into a harmonious whole. The depth of research is quite superficial and haphazard. The only purpose of this book seems to take a shot at cracking the nationalist discourse elevating Ranis Chennamma and Lakshmi Bai to mythical valour. However, the author’s criticism of the British is sharp and genuine.

 

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star