What do you think?
Rate this book
The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India
Rani Lakshmi Bai is an iconic figure of the nationalist movement in India. Her fight against the imperialist power has a significant place in the cultural and feminist history of South Asia. She is considered not only a heroine, and a great warrior, but also a protector of her people in Jhansi. Her pictures on horseback, with her son tied to her back and a sword in one hand, represent her as an embodiment of feminine power or Shakti. This book uses fictional, cinematic and popular representations of the Rani to analyze the convergence of colonial and postcolonial literary, historical, sexual and cultural imperatives in the figure of this legendary woman.
This book also extends the discussion to what constitutes the gendered subaltern historical archive. By analyzing a range of literary and cinematic texts produced between 1857 and 2007, it tries to understand the various agendas that are at stake in the use of the Rani as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative. There is also an attempt to compare representations of the Rani in both these contexts.
Endorsements
The author brilliantly reveals how the rule of colonial and postcolonial difference forecloses the possibility of archival or historical ‘settling’ of the figure of the Indian woman. This is an essential reading for anyone interested in the ‘woman question’, one that resonates in both historical and contemporary debates of representation and politics.
— Inderpal Grewal, Yale University
Singh provides a compelling genealogy of production under colonial conditions that works its way through an impressive array of archives and genres from the aesthetic experiments of both British and Indian cultural producers, to the more recuperative cultural efforts of postcolonial feminists and/or historians.
— Anjali Arondekar, University of California, Santa Cruz
It is one of the first works in the arena of South Asian Studies to provide a feminist account of a rebellion against empire; a theme totally unique and much needed in explicating India’s complex relationship to Britain. Moreover, the author’s intellectual gambit of bypassing numerous routine, historico-political accounts that are regurgitated to bolster colonial and/or postcolonial theses is noteworthy.
— Gita Rajan, Fairfield University
It is a rebellious book, in its own way. Eschewing the ‘historical’ Rani of Jhansi, in favor of the Rani of literature, fable, folk history, film, and rumor, Singh undertakes an extraordinary engagement with this pivotal figure of the politics and aesthetics of the ‘colonial encounter.’ The book takes as central motifs the sexual configurations of ‘India’ through the metaphor of the Rani.
—Christian Lee Novetzke, University of Washington
This book also extends the discussion to what constitutes the gendered subaltern historical archive. By analyzing a range of literary and cinematic texts produced between 1857 and 2007, it tries to understand the various agendas that are at stake in the use of the Rani as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative. There is also an attempt to compare representations of the Rani in both these contexts.
Endorsements
The author brilliantly reveals how the rule of colonial and postcolonial difference forecloses the possibility of archival or historical ‘settling’ of the figure of the Indian woman. This is an essential reading for anyone interested in the ‘woman question’, one that resonates in both historical and contemporary debates of representation and politics.
— Inderpal Grewal, Yale University
Singh provides a compelling genealogy of production under colonial conditions that works its way through an impressive array of archives and genres from the aesthetic experiments of both British and Indian cultural producers, to the more recuperative cultural efforts of postcolonial feminists and/or historians.
— Anjali Arondekar, University of California, Santa Cruz
It is one of the first works in the arena of South Asian Studies to provide a feminist account of a rebellion against empire; a theme totally unique and much needed in explicating India’s complex relationship to Britain. Moreover, the author’s intellectual gambit of bypassing numerous routine, historico-political accounts that are regurgitated to bolster colonial and/or postcolonial theses is noteworthy.
— Gita Rajan, Fairfield University
It is a rebellious book, in its own way. Eschewing the ‘historical’ Rani of Jhansi, in favor of the Rani of literature, fable, folk history, film, and rumor, Singh undertakes an extraordinary engagement with this pivotal figure of the politics and aesthetics of the ‘colonial encounter.’ The book takes as central motifs the sexual configurations of ‘India’ through the metaphor of the Rani.
—Christian Lee Novetzke, University of Washington
202 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
12 people are currently reading
377 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 30, 2015
A great account of the Rani of Jhansi, in which the woman as many women are portrayed as numerous functions but none individual. For the British she was not only foe but a sexual conquest and yet always defeated. For Indians she was a mother figure for the nation and a goddess. All of which even into the 21st century most women have to ascribe to. Whether it's "domestic goddess" in household work, "diva" for the music or acting profession or any similar. As well that many women are seen as maternal, mothering and indeed quite a few women boast that their greatest accomplishment is child rearing over any other consideration. Other books termed "coming of age" (in the heterosexual sense)will have the male protagonist highlight his sexual encounters with some female or females depending on the author. In films from the 1920s onwards to modern times have a "wonderful" family man meet a crisis and come to grips, literally and figuratively, with a "mysterious woman" who turns his so called blissful life upside down. Meaning there will be much sexually charged situations where the "poor" man finds himself tempted, succumbs and eventually in most cases frees himself from this "seductress" and reunites with his very understanding wife and family. Mind you in the case of Rani Jhansi none of this will happen for the India patriots as she is a mother...and well for a lot of people mothers simply don't do that. She is too busy being in love with motherhood and sacrifices for her children, or in the Rani's case children here being India as a whole. What unites both cultures is that the Rani died. Altho' some folk tales have it that she is not dead and will come back, as in the case with many patriotic tales in other countries, the return. As it is the Rani dies, leaves nothing behind of herself, merely speculation. She has an honorable death, as is fitting with a queen, whether foe or hero. As an actual person she wouldn't be able to live up to either ideals. But just who is she? As with women in history she is: someone's daughter, some fellow's sister, somebody's wife and a mother to so and so. Which means there is some guy behind the decisions a woman makes. Save her father's legacy perhaps or her husband's reputation maybe? Could she not have stood up herself and said "Right this is what I'm doing!"? How can we tell? She only became rani because of her marriage and only took notice of because the son (adopted or otherwise) was too young to do it himself. A woman in any kind of title is a dangerous woman. There are many questions from critics of can she do it because of whom she is seen to be? She is betrayed by her body for monthly bleeding, by the heavy weight on her chest of breasts and the bitter divisions of her attention. If she is married which comes first? The people she governs over (whether queen or politician), her husband and children (if she has any and if not people will want to know why not!!!) but certainly herself must come a distant third or somewhere very far down the line. If she tries to bring herself forward then she is unsuitable for her job. She is either egotistical (which is a huge no-no for women as they are very self sacrificing as they embody from birth mothering instincts) or she has some other kind of mental imbalance brought on by wildly fluctuating hormones (to make you think of 19th century hysteria sufferers). Again though who was the rani? She was by dint of immortal words to a page all of these things and more than likely none of these things as most women are. Not only does she hold many facets of character she also had more than one name. Born Manikarnika and became Lakshmi Bai or (Lakshmibai)she was in one wife, mother, queen and leader and seen to be seductress, prostitute, harlot and the embodiment of evil for men. She was all of these things and none of these things, she was a woman. However, what does it mean to be a woman? Can it be easily assessed by the sexual organs you are born with and then fitted into the role of your relationship status of daughter, sister, lover/prostitute, wife, mother and grandmother? We have found human nature is not that straight forward, whether or not we all accept it or not, but the outside and sometimes inside sexual organs you are given at birth doesn't make the man or woman. The highly provocative term "real men" no longer subscribes, entirely, to men that are heterosexual, or rather seen and made to feel heterosexual. But some people still require "labels" as it makes for easier understanding of the world. That limits understanding and limits self. According to the author of this book Mahasweta Devi has her a rebel only ( I say according as I haven't read Ms. Devi's book). Rebel to lead an army and rebel in the term of feminist, however, Harleen Singh points out that leaves the Rani asexual. Well there isn't anything wrong with a woman focusing entirely on the greater need than her own personal need. As with most prominent figures in history we shall never know the real person behind the lore, not even if she had left something in her own hand, as Oscar Wilde said "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." This applies to women to or rather what is perceived as men and women.
It is a very interesting book and is highly recommended.
It is a very interesting book and is highly recommended.
June 17, 2021
Book: The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India
Author: Harleen Singh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (9 June 2014)
Language: English
Hardcover: 199 pages
Item Weight: 470 g
Dimensions: 15.75 x 2.03 x 23.62 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 894/-
She was born to a pitiable Brahmin priest in the employ of Peshwa Baji Rao II. She grew up in the palace of the Peshwa, a deposed affluent ruler, a womanizer, and a speculator. Her early years were spent in a compassionate environment and at the age of about thirteen or fourteen years she was married to the Raja of Jhansi — prosperous and spirited, older to her by almost thirty years and with bizarre habits.
She gave birth to a son who regrettably died within three months of his birth. The Raja adopted a son but after his bereavement the British annexed the kingdom robbing her political rights, and humiliated her. The instant she got the opportunity, she valiantly fought the British and bravely accepted death.
At every momentous turn she demonstrated her muscle, her gallantry and acumen. When one looks at her life one sees a beautiful and strong personality, blemish-free and of majestic character— sagacious when it came to her people and astute in dealing with her enemies.
It was due to these qualities that she became the Rani of Jhansi—not just in name but representing bravery and sterling qualities.
This is one of the superior books on Lakshmibai you would ever read.
Among other things, as the blurb suggests this book extends the dialogue to what constitutes the gendered subaltern historical archive. By analyzing assorted literary and cinematic texts produced between 1857 and 2007, it seeks to realize the diverse agendas that are at issue in the use of the Rani as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative. There is also an attempt to contrast depictions of the Rani in both these milieus.
Indian women, largely fell under the few available colonial rubrics: the domestic ayah (nanny), the sati (the burning widow), the tawaif (the courtesan) and the purdahnashin rani (the indolent and protected royal woman). The oppression of Indian women remained the dominant and connecting theme as the dynamic reform movements undertaken by colonial administrators brought to the fore ‘[T]he woman question’ in the popular colonial imagination.
The different debates concerning sati, widow remarriage and female education acquired centrestage in Britain and India, with active participation from colonial and Indian administrators, intellectuals, missionaries and social workers.
A multifaceted narrative of complicity and control surfaced in response to the status of the native woman in colonial politics. Constantly in need of rescue, yet symbolising an ever-present threat to colonial domesticity and therefore to the propagation of the Empire, the Indian woman’s presence demanded a legislative, social, cultural and racial containment in the imperial project.
As to how Rani Lakshmibai challenged the existing stereotypes, is what this book shows.
Barring the introduction, the book has been divided into four chapters:
*Enslaving Masculinity: Rape Scripts and the Erotics of Power
*India’s Aryan Queen: Colonial Ambivalence and Race in the Mutiny
*Coherent Pasts in Hindi Literature and Film
*Unmaking the Nationalist Archive: Gender and Dalit Historiography
In popular novels and newspapers, the uprising of 1857 was most sensationally depicted as a set of atrocities committed by Indian men against British women and thus classified as the pathology of a degenerate masculinity. In this ‘rape script’, popularised by the nineteenth century British colonial novel, an English woman is besieged by rapacious Indian men and then rescued by the White colonial male in the eventual victory of British manliness.
In Chapter II ‘Enslaving Masculinity: Rape Scripts and the Erotics of Power’, the author considers four novels that create a different rape script: 1) Gillean’s The Rane: A Legend of the Indian Mutiny (1887), 2) Hume Nesbit’s The Queen’s Desire (1893), 3) Philip Cox’s play The Rani of Jhansi (1933) and 4) George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman in the Great Game (1975) represent the Rani in sexually coercive tropes, in effect ‘raping’ the White British male.
Colonial edifices of Indian masculinity – effeminate and heterosexual Bengali versus markedly masculine but homosexual Punjabi and Pathan – are contrasted with sexualized symbols of the colonised woman. The multiplicities of gender relations further obscure this equation and the author argues that the Rani’s sexual pursuit of British manhood, a portrayal parallel to her military prowess, is posited as her final compliance to colonial virility. In order to demonstrate the varying agendas of colonial gender formations, the author places the eroticisation of power within these texts at the intersection of an inertly feminine Indian masculinity, a sexually aggressive Indian femininity and the final dominion of British manhood over both.
Chapter III ‘India’s Aryan Queen: Colonial Ambivalence and Race in the Mutiny’, engages with the materialization of Aryanism in Europe and its effects on colonial policies in India. To contain the threat of organised political resistance, the British maximised the separations between India’s diverse regional groups and ethnicities by organising subdivisions such as ‘martial and non-martial’, or ‘Aryan and non-Aryan’. Alexander Rogers’ novel in verse, The Rani of Jhansi, or The Widowed Queen (1895), Michael White’s novel Lachmi Bai of Jhansi, The Jeanne D’Arc of India (1901) and Flow Red the Ganges, a novel written by Norman Partington and published in 1972, offer apparently benign readings of Rani Lakshmi Bai as an Aryan model of heroic womanhood comparable to Joan of Arc.
By casting the Rani as an Aryan, these narratives redirect attention from her national and regional alliances to include her within a larger European hagiography in which race is determined as much by gallantry and leadership as by religion, language and skin colour. Rogers’ novel, focused on her interaction with representatives of the East India Company, presents the Rani as a heroic figure surrounded by incompetent Indian men, while Partington’s more recent invocation offers an unexpected enmeshing of British and Indian femininity.
This astonishing literary ‘Aryanisation’ of the Rani exemplifies the unbalanced context of 19th century racial politics. The negations of Victorian illustrations, from lascivious seductress to worthy foe, construct a particular framework of ambivalence for the rebel woman. However, nationalist or Indian representations are not entirely without paradox or incongruity. Chapter IV ‘Coherent Pasts in Hindi Literature and Film’ analyses this particular celebration of the Rani as a patriotic figure.
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s iconic poem ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ (1930) is arguably the most recognizable textual reference for Rani Lakshmi Bai and the author of this book analyses it, alongside a national geography presented in Rabindranath Tagore’s song and now India’s national anthem, ‘Jan Gan Man’ (1911).
A nationally celebrated novel by Hindi literature’s primary historical novelist Vrindavanlal Varma, ‘Jhansi Ki Rani’ (1946), published at the cusp of India’s independence, is complicated by the incongruous concepts of Indian womanhood to which nationalism must stick so as to present the Rani’s fight as a textbook pledge to the national cause. The novel’s canonisation within the patronage of India’s ‘national’ and ‘secular’ literature shows the role, Hindi literature plays in the historical corroboration and re-enactment of the colonial past.
The author uses the first Indian film made in technicolour, Sohrab Modi’s ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ (1953), to investigate how cinematic illustration interferes in the hesitant association between convention and modernity and as a result reframes the historical ‘real’ in ‘reel’.
Chapter V ‘Unmaking the Nationalist Archive: Gender and Dalit Historiography’ focuses on a biography, ‘The Queen of Jhansi’, published in 1956. Engaging compound literary and biographical paradigms, this text by Mahasweta Devi engages with colonialist and nationalist archives to craft the Rani’s story as a narrative of the people.
Using memory and folklore as authoritative documentation, Mahasweta powers a review of the constitutive parts of history, biography, femininity, citizenship and nation. She supplements the frame of colonial relations with a network of patriarchy, caste, religion and linguistic boundaries and resists recasting the gendered subject as a supplicant to male, upper-caste historiography. Instead, by aligning the Rani with Dalit communities and by intertwining their participation in 1857, Mahasweta forces a paradigmatic dislocation redefining the biographical form and unsettling the historical record – thus reworking the concept of the text, the expected characterisation of its reader and raising questions about the shared heritage of the postcolonial nation.
An individual is born with two vitals: a) destiny and b) one’s inherent nature. If the two are not harmonizing, the individual has to face lifelong challenges. But, what if the destiny of an individual is not sympathetic? What if he is highly self-respecting with lofty ideals in life? Should he accept his destiny without resistance or should he shape it through self-effort? The choice will decide the crucial character of the person. To comprehend a person’s character and draw the links between his character and the life he led is a daunting task.
One wants freedom to live life the way one wishes to. At the same time, one’s aspirations and ambitions are decided by one’s inherent nature. Destiny is complete in itself and predetermined; we are not privy to its working.
What is the relationship between destiny and inherent nature? When one begins to investigate the two, one finds that our entire life is spent addressing the inevitable conflicts that emerge in trying to solve this mystery.
Can anyone shape his destiny in keeping with his nature? In this effort, at times there is success, at times failure, and at times marginal success. The success or otherwise is based on the comparative strength of destiny and effort. Failure does not make any effort trivial nor does it lessen the weight of the person, which is determined by the manner in which destiny was addressed. If the effort of the person is brilliant then even if one has to bow to destiny, the person is successful.
When one looks at the life of the Rani of Jhansi, her inherent nature, and her efforts, one finds that the mystery of the relationship between them deepens.
When one tries to disentangle it, one is preoccupied by her righteous, perceptive personality, her nobility and elegance.
It is by these strictures that Rani Laxmibai appears triumphant. She did not accept her destiny lying down, she engaged herself in beating her hardships and tried to achieve what she deserved and desired, in conclusion dying a death deserving of a valiant warrior.
Get a hold of this book and read it. It has been an honour for me to have reviewed it on the day of her bereavemet, the 17th of June.
Author: Harleen Singh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (9 June 2014)
Language: English
Hardcover: 199 pages
Item Weight: 470 g
Dimensions: 15.75 x 2.03 x 23.62 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 894/-
She was born to a pitiable Brahmin priest in the employ of Peshwa Baji Rao II. She grew up in the palace of the Peshwa, a deposed affluent ruler, a womanizer, and a speculator. Her early years were spent in a compassionate environment and at the age of about thirteen or fourteen years she was married to the Raja of Jhansi — prosperous and spirited, older to her by almost thirty years and with bizarre habits.
She gave birth to a son who regrettably died within three months of his birth. The Raja adopted a son but after his bereavement the British annexed the kingdom robbing her political rights, and humiliated her. The instant she got the opportunity, she valiantly fought the British and bravely accepted death.
At every momentous turn she demonstrated her muscle, her gallantry and acumen. When one looks at her life one sees a beautiful and strong personality, blemish-free and of majestic character— sagacious when it came to her people and astute in dealing with her enemies.
It was due to these qualities that she became the Rani of Jhansi—not just in name but representing bravery and sterling qualities.
This is one of the superior books on Lakshmibai you would ever read.
Among other things, as the blurb suggests this book extends the dialogue to what constitutes the gendered subaltern historical archive. By analyzing assorted literary and cinematic texts produced between 1857 and 2007, it seeks to realize the diverse agendas that are at issue in the use of the Rani as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative. There is also an attempt to contrast depictions of the Rani in both these milieus.
Indian women, largely fell under the few available colonial rubrics: the domestic ayah (nanny), the sati (the burning widow), the tawaif (the courtesan) and the purdahnashin rani (the indolent and protected royal woman). The oppression of Indian women remained the dominant and connecting theme as the dynamic reform movements undertaken by colonial administrators brought to the fore ‘[T]he woman question’ in the popular colonial imagination.
The different debates concerning sati, widow remarriage and female education acquired centrestage in Britain and India, with active participation from colonial and Indian administrators, intellectuals, missionaries and social workers.
A multifaceted narrative of complicity and control surfaced in response to the status of the native woman in colonial politics. Constantly in need of rescue, yet symbolising an ever-present threat to colonial domesticity and therefore to the propagation of the Empire, the Indian woman’s presence demanded a legislative, social, cultural and racial containment in the imperial project.
As to how Rani Lakshmibai challenged the existing stereotypes, is what this book shows.
Barring the introduction, the book has been divided into four chapters:
*Enslaving Masculinity: Rape Scripts and the Erotics of Power
*India’s Aryan Queen: Colonial Ambivalence and Race in the Mutiny
*Coherent Pasts in Hindi Literature and Film
*Unmaking the Nationalist Archive: Gender and Dalit Historiography
In popular novels and newspapers, the uprising of 1857 was most sensationally depicted as a set of atrocities committed by Indian men against British women and thus classified as the pathology of a degenerate masculinity. In this ‘rape script’, popularised by the nineteenth century British colonial novel, an English woman is besieged by rapacious Indian men and then rescued by the White colonial male in the eventual victory of British manliness.
In Chapter II ‘Enslaving Masculinity: Rape Scripts and the Erotics of Power’, the author considers four novels that create a different rape script: 1) Gillean’s The Rane: A Legend of the Indian Mutiny (1887), 2) Hume Nesbit’s The Queen’s Desire (1893), 3) Philip Cox’s play The Rani of Jhansi (1933) and 4) George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman in the Great Game (1975) represent the Rani in sexually coercive tropes, in effect ‘raping’ the White British male.
Colonial edifices of Indian masculinity – effeminate and heterosexual Bengali versus markedly masculine but homosexual Punjabi and Pathan – are contrasted with sexualized symbols of the colonised woman. The multiplicities of gender relations further obscure this equation and the author argues that the Rani’s sexual pursuit of British manhood, a portrayal parallel to her military prowess, is posited as her final compliance to colonial virility. In order to demonstrate the varying agendas of colonial gender formations, the author places the eroticisation of power within these texts at the intersection of an inertly feminine Indian masculinity, a sexually aggressive Indian femininity and the final dominion of British manhood over both.
Chapter III ‘India’s Aryan Queen: Colonial Ambivalence and Race in the Mutiny’, engages with the materialization of Aryanism in Europe and its effects on colonial policies in India. To contain the threat of organised political resistance, the British maximised the separations between India’s diverse regional groups and ethnicities by organising subdivisions such as ‘martial and non-martial’, or ‘Aryan and non-Aryan’. Alexander Rogers’ novel in verse, The Rani of Jhansi, or The Widowed Queen (1895), Michael White’s novel Lachmi Bai of Jhansi, The Jeanne D’Arc of India (1901) and Flow Red the Ganges, a novel written by Norman Partington and published in 1972, offer apparently benign readings of Rani Lakshmi Bai as an Aryan model of heroic womanhood comparable to Joan of Arc.
By casting the Rani as an Aryan, these narratives redirect attention from her national and regional alliances to include her within a larger European hagiography in which race is determined as much by gallantry and leadership as by religion, language and skin colour. Rogers’ novel, focused on her interaction with representatives of the East India Company, presents the Rani as a heroic figure surrounded by incompetent Indian men, while Partington’s more recent invocation offers an unexpected enmeshing of British and Indian femininity.
This astonishing literary ‘Aryanisation’ of the Rani exemplifies the unbalanced context of 19th century racial politics. The negations of Victorian illustrations, from lascivious seductress to worthy foe, construct a particular framework of ambivalence for the rebel woman. However, nationalist or Indian representations are not entirely without paradox or incongruity. Chapter IV ‘Coherent Pasts in Hindi Literature and Film’ analyses this particular celebration of the Rani as a patriotic figure.
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s iconic poem ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ (1930) is arguably the most recognizable textual reference for Rani Lakshmi Bai and the author of this book analyses it, alongside a national geography presented in Rabindranath Tagore’s song and now India’s national anthem, ‘Jan Gan Man’ (1911).
A nationally celebrated novel by Hindi literature’s primary historical novelist Vrindavanlal Varma, ‘Jhansi Ki Rani’ (1946), published at the cusp of India’s independence, is complicated by the incongruous concepts of Indian womanhood to which nationalism must stick so as to present the Rani’s fight as a textbook pledge to the national cause. The novel’s canonisation within the patronage of India’s ‘national’ and ‘secular’ literature shows the role, Hindi literature plays in the historical corroboration and re-enactment of the colonial past.
The author uses the first Indian film made in technicolour, Sohrab Modi’s ‘Jhansi ki Rani’ (1953), to investigate how cinematic illustration interferes in the hesitant association between convention and modernity and as a result reframes the historical ‘real’ in ‘reel’.
Chapter V ‘Unmaking the Nationalist Archive: Gender and Dalit Historiography’ focuses on a biography, ‘The Queen of Jhansi’, published in 1956. Engaging compound literary and biographical paradigms, this text by Mahasweta Devi engages with colonialist and nationalist archives to craft the Rani’s story as a narrative of the people.
Using memory and folklore as authoritative documentation, Mahasweta powers a review of the constitutive parts of history, biography, femininity, citizenship and nation. She supplements the frame of colonial relations with a network of patriarchy, caste, religion and linguistic boundaries and resists recasting the gendered subject as a supplicant to male, upper-caste historiography. Instead, by aligning the Rani with Dalit communities and by intertwining their participation in 1857, Mahasweta forces a paradigmatic dislocation redefining the biographical form and unsettling the historical record – thus reworking the concept of the text, the expected characterisation of its reader and raising questions about the shared heritage of the postcolonial nation.
An individual is born with two vitals: a) destiny and b) one’s inherent nature. If the two are not harmonizing, the individual has to face lifelong challenges. But, what if the destiny of an individual is not sympathetic? What if he is highly self-respecting with lofty ideals in life? Should he accept his destiny without resistance or should he shape it through self-effort? The choice will decide the crucial character of the person. To comprehend a person’s character and draw the links between his character and the life he led is a daunting task.
One wants freedom to live life the way one wishes to. At the same time, one’s aspirations and ambitions are decided by one’s inherent nature. Destiny is complete in itself and predetermined; we are not privy to its working.
What is the relationship between destiny and inherent nature? When one begins to investigate the two, one finds that our entire life is spent addressing the inevitable conflicts that emerge in trying to solve this mystery.
Can anyone shape his destiny in keeping with his nature? In this effort, at times there is success, at times failure, and at times marginal success. The success or otherwise is based on the comparative strength of destiny and effort. Failure does not make any effort trivial nor does it lessen the weight of the person, which is determined by the manner in which destiny was addressed. If the effort of the person is brilliant then even if one has to bow to destiny, the person is successful.
When one looks at the life of the Rani of Jhansi, her inherent nature, and her efforts, one finds that the mystery of the relationship between them deepens.
When one tries to disentangle it, one is preoccupied by her righteous, perceptive personality, her nobility and elegance.
It is by these strictures that Rani Laxmibai appears triumphant. She did not accept her destiny lying down, she engaged herself in beating her hardships and tried to achieve what she deserved and desired, in conclusion dying a death deserving of a valiant warrior.
Get a hold of this book and read it. It has been an honour for me to have reviewed it on the day of her bereavemet, the 17th of June.
July 13, 2015
What is the essence of being a woman? I believe that "being a mother" is simply an understatement. There is more to a woman than bearing offspring. This book empowers women from all walks of life. Frankly it reminds me of Spivak's theories of the gendered subaltern. The patriarchal culture of Indian and of their British colonists are not enough to subvert the Rani. She is a strong and independent woman capable of breaking stereotypes. She is what we should strive to become. I'm quite impressed. This was a really great read. Please take the time to read this!
November 22, 2022
Really comprehensive and covered a wide range of different interpretations!
May 13, 2015
I very much enjoyed reading Harleen Singh's book of the Rani of Jhansi. I was very interested in the Rani's depiction by the British, not that I expected anything different from them, and how she is perceived in India. I have always wanted to read more about the Rani and hope to read other books about her in future. I also hope that Harleen Singh will also write more in future as I very much enjoyed her style of writing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews