 "Rani Durgawati had everything modern India should adore and be proud of: Then why was she forgotten?")
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, 27 June 2023, for several programmes, including flagging off two Vande Bharat trains, but most importantly for taking part in the concluding ceremony of the Rani Durgawati Gaurav Yatra in Shahdol. The six-day yatra was launched by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government on 22 June, with the chief minister also marking 24 June — when Rani Durgawati is believed to have died while fighting the Mughals in the mid-16th century — as a day of sacrifice.
So, who was Rani Durgawati?
One won’t be surprised if most of us shrug our shoulders — in ignorance, in disdain, or even in indifference. This despite the fact that Rani Durgawati was the ruler of “one of the two largest Hindu kingdoms in medieval India, the other being Vijayanagara”, writes author Nandini Sengupta in her just released book, Rani Durgawati: The Forgotten Life of a Warrior Queen (Penguin, Rs 499).
[caption id=“attachment_12791092” align=“alignnone” width=“374”] Rani Durgawati: The Forgotten Life of a Warrior Queen (Penguin, Rs 499)[/caption]
The ruler of one of the two largest Hindu kingdoms in medieval India, and still she has largely been forgotten… Why?
Sengupta wonders if it’s because she was a woman ruler. Or, has it something to do with “her sprawling kingdom” being “in a remote inaccessible tribal belt”? She writes, “Indian history’s male gaze is not unknown. Despite a long list of brave, powerful, capable, cunning, smart and sassy queens gracing our past, popular general knowledge skips from one ‘the great’ to another, all invariably male. The only queen who bucks this trend is Lakshmibai.”
Maybe Sengupta meant the “Hindu” woman ruler! For, there was a Razia Sultan, who had got more than her share of dues, from the mainstream historians extolling her bravery, to Bollywood making not one but three films on her, with one in 1983 being one of the most expansive flicks of the time starring the two most sought-after stars of that era.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsRazia Sultan’s hold over popular imagination was evident late last week as well when a woman journalist during the launch of a Hindi book kept calling its author “Razia Sultan”. Razia Sultan was brave, no doubt, but she had no literary accomplishments. She hardly had any administrative excellence to showcase either. All she could do in three years, six months and six days as a Delhi ruler was to survive one plot after another, to finally perish in 1240 AD.
Of course, in a Delhi-centric historiography, as pursued in independent India, when even the great Cholas were reduced to footnotes of history, and the Ahoms almost obliterated, as if they never existed, the fate of a tribal kingdom was a foregone conclusion. One, however, also wonders if the Rani being an adversary of Akbar played any role in putting her in history’s dump-yard.
Durgawati had everything that would have allured her to the women of today. She was a smart, strong woman, with a mind of her own. A “Rajput princess of impeccable lineage”, as Sengupta writes about her, Durgawati, in 1542, married a tribal Gond king of her choice, much against the will of her family members. When her husband died young in 1550 AD, leaving behind an infant heir, she “took up the reins of her kingdom, fobbed off a grudging brother-in-law, and handled her duties with competence”.
After initial hardships, there was peace for almost a decade, with the Mughals under the young Akbar preoccupied with their own troubles. This provided Durgawati time to showcase her administrative acumen. She not just built a number of lakes and tanks, but also constructed several temples, and patronised men of literature, religion, art and craft.
Given the number of lakes and tanks she constructed in her kingdom, Durgawati came to be known as “the lady of lakes (tal talab Rani), with water bodies named after not just her, but her son (Balsagar) and even her favourite elephant Sarman (Hathital). Such was the scale of her building activities that her kingdom Garha came to be known as the land of ‘bhavan tal, chausath talayian’ (52 big tanks and 64 small ponds)”.
Durgawati’s administrative brilliance was noted by his contemporaries, including those in the enemy camp: Abul Fazl and Badauni — Akbar’s famed court chroniclers — for instance, talked about the queen with great respect, if not reverence. Even later historians such as Vincent Smith, an admirer of Akbar, vehemently criticised the Mughal ruler for attacking the Gond kingdom. In Akbar: The Great Mogul, Smith writes, “Akbar’s attack on a princess of a character so noble was mere aggression, wholly unprovoked and devoid of all justification other than the lust for conquest and plunder.” The ultimate seal of legitimacy is provided by the Gond people themselves. Gond folk songs, for instance, mockingly ask Akbar to learn a few lessons of administration from Durgawati: “Tum ka raj karat ho Akbar, durgan patiya churaye (What do you know about ruling O Akbar, learn a thing or two from Durgawati).”
If Rani Durgawati rivalled Ahilyabai Holkar as the civilisational torchbearer of Hindu culture, she equalled Rani Lakshmibai in her martial exploits. In the battle of Narai Nala in 1564, for instance, she gave the much stronger Mughal troops a run for their money. The first day of the battle belonged to the Gond army. Sengupta writes, “At the end of the first day, the mood in the Mughal camp was, understandably enough, sombre.” But the Rani was well aware of the need to neutralise the Mughal guns, and she pressed her generals to launch a night attack. She didn’t want to give Mughal general Asaf Khan the time to move his cannons into the Narai valley. But her generals were reluctant. “When it was morning, what the Rani had foreseen occurred,” writes Abul Fazl in Akbarnama, “Asaf Khan came with his artillery and fortified the entrance to the pass.”
The Rani’s fate was sealed, but that didn’t dim her courage. She fought valiantly. Abul Fazl details her courage on that fateful day as he writes, “An arrow from the bow of fate struck her right temple, and she courageously drew it out and flung it from her… The point remained in the wound and would not come out.” The queen continued to fight, as “another arrow struck her neck,” continues Fazl, “That too she drew out with the hand of courage.”
On the second day, the Gond troops were routed after an intense fighting. Realising her time was up, Durgawati turned to her faithful servant, Adhar, urging him to kill her, thus saving her from the disgrace of being captured alive by the Mughals. But Adhar refused to raise a weapon on her own queen. Left with no choice, Durgawati “snatched a dagger out of the girdle of the elephant driver and stabbed herself” in the abdomen, writes Ferishta.
The feisty and remarkable Rani Durgawati breathed her last that day, more than 450 years ago, but she continues to survive in the popular consciousness of the land she once ruled. This despite the fact that mainstream Indian history conspired to forget her, consigning her as a footnote — as a mere “tribal” queen of central India who lost her kingdom to Akbar. “A casual look on Amazon throws up barely seven titles on Rani Durgawati, many of them picture books for children,” Sengupta informs. Even Noor Jahan, the influential wife of Mughal emperor Jahangir, has more titles to her name.
This brings the readers to the core of the issue: The need to decolonise and indigenise Indian history, which is still written largely from the perspective of invaders and outsiders. Nandini Sengupta’s book — by bringing out Rani Durgawati’s story from the realm of popular imagination to mainstream historiography — gives us a stark reminder to where Indian history has faltered. It poignantly tells the saga of a forgotten queen, but what it vaguely hints at is the need to dig out other such stories, long suppressed in the name of ideology, secularism, political correctness, and of course innate disdain, if not distrust, for the idea of civilisational India.
And as the ongoing Rani Durgawati Gaurav Yatra in Madhya Pradesh suggests, new India is no longer timid in exploring its past from its own indigenous, decolonised glasses. This is, however, just the beginning.
The author is Opinion Editor, Firstpost and News18_. He tweets from @Utpal_Kumar1. Views expressed are personal._ Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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