Rani lakshmi bai real photo

Who was Rani Lakshmibai, the heroic queen depicted in the 2019 hit Bollywood period drama film Manikarnika? Here, Jaishree Misra explores the true story of the queen of Jhansi – who lost her life when she was barely 30 – and reveals how she became a folk hero when she took on the British East India Company in 1858 Eleven years into her marriage, Lakshmibai was widowed and, following a series of events over which she had little control, ended up raising an army in order to fight the mighty British forces when they laid siege to her kingdom. Just a few weeks later, Lakshmibai led her army into an unequal battle against the British, losing her life when she was barely 30. Pen portraits of this young woman astride a horse, her young son strapped to her back as she brandishes a sword, are a common sight in Indian primary school history books, and Lakshmibai's story served as a source of inspiration for nationalist writers when India's freedom movement started many years later. But her name is one now little known in Britain, despite the fact that her fate was dictated at almost every stage by the British government of the time. • Queen Victoria’s Indians Bad company When Lakshmibai’s husband died in 1853, India’s Governor-General, James Ramsay, the Marquess of Dalhousie, announced that Jhansi was to be annexed to British India under the ‘doctrine of lapse’, a policy by which the East India Company rejected adopted Hindu heirs as legitimate rulers. Jhansi would therefore pass in...