.ltIndian Queen

The Times Literary Supplement,
13 April 1967:book review

SIR JOHN SMYTH: The Rebellious Rani

Sir John Smyth's reputation for elucidating military matters which in less skilful hands would prove dull or even boring is well deserved; this lively and interesting book will be read with pleasure by many who may well be attracted by the author rather than the subject. In relating the details of the campaign in central India which finally quenched the last embers of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-58, the author has been able to bring into dramatic contrast the Indian Queen and the British General, each serving as a kind of embodiment of the opposing forces. They had two things in common; both the Rani of Jhansi and Sir Hugh Ross believed passionately in the justice of the causes for which they fought; both were endowed with military genius - the word is not too strong. The factor that finally tipped the scale against the Rani was that she was a woman; the prejudice against her sex hampered her at every turn. Not even her masterly grasp of the strategy and tactics needed to contain - or possibly to defeat - the equally brilliant Sir Hugh Ross, labouring as he was under fearful handicaps of climatic conditions and paucity of forces, sufficed to ensure that her advice was followed and her plans executed by the officers and men on her own side. Her death in battle was the only thing that saved her from the humiliation of final defeat.

One difficulty of writing about the Rani of Jhansi - and Sir John Smyth's predecessors have found themselves as much hampered as he is - is that so little is known about her. We do not know with any certainty the details of her family or of her upbringing; we do not know her age at the time when she played so great a part in the drama of history; we do not know what - if any - responsibility rests upon her for the massacre of helpless men, women and children, numbering respectively thirty, sixteen and twenty, European and Eurasian, who lay at her mercy on June 7, 1857. We know only that she was a Maratha princess with all the force of character associated with the women of her race, who conceived the idea that the British were treating her with injustice so flagrant that it imposed upon her the obligation of resistance to the death. The author has done his best with the material available to him; under his pen the Rani emerges as a human figure, and not either as a cruel fiend or as a disinterested patriot. Even so, she remains largely unknowable.

Although the campaign itself and the engagements which enabled Sir Hugh Ross to bring it to a triumphant conclusion are related in masterly fashion, it is perhaps a pity that more care has not been taken to explain exactly what the grievance was which drove the Rani to desperation. The cancellation of the adoption executed without formal permission by the Rani's deceased husband turned on the fact that Jhansi State was quite a recent creation, subordinated to the Peshwa, and later to the British. It had no real roots in history, and little title to permanence. Somewhat naturally, the Rani could never grasp the point, and considered herself the victim of unwarrantable oppression.

.lcThe Rani of Jhansi died defending Swalior from the British during the 1857 Indian Mutiny. In the Second World War the Indian National Party included a women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, led by a woman doctor from Singapore, Laxmi Swaminathan.
.llWar and Peace: In the forces
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