Please share or like thanks) Women in the forefront for India’s Freedom Struggle It is commonly held that the arrival of the British created new opportunities for women and greatly increased their rights. What is conveniently forgotten is that women in Britain did not even get the vote until 1918, and full equality in areas such as pay, housing, employment, finance and public life took many painstaking years to achieve until well into the twentieth century. Their great feat was said to have been the abolition of sati: self-immolation of widow on funeral pyre of her deceased husband. In fact in the ninth century it was condemned by Medhātithi’, commentator on the Manusmirti. In the seventh century Harshavardhana’s court poet Bana condemned it both as suicide and as a pointless and futile act. Bhakti movements such as the Alvars in the eighth century and the Virashaivas in the twelfth also condemned the practice. The Maratha peshwas also made some moves against the rite. So India’s women did not welcome the British colonialists as liberators as our anti-Hindu secularists would have us believe. As with all such imperialists the motivation and aim was plunder and conquest. Unsurprisingly this elicited often heroic resistance in which India’s women took an active part. Resistance in Punjab Bibi Rajindar Kaur, or Rajindan, was a Sikh princess and first cousin of Raja Amar Singh of Patiala In 1778 the latter was her defeated by Hari Singh of Sialba. It was Bibi Rajinder Kaur who led 3,000 soldiers to rescue him. She also defended the city of Patiala against Maratha attacks. Bibi Sahib Kaur was a princess of the same state who became its prime minister in 1793 and also led armies in battle against the British, being one of the few Indian women to win battles against them. In 1802 the holy city of Amritsar was itself defended from the armies of Maharaja Ranjit Singh by Mai Sukhlan, widow of Sardar Gulab Singh Bhangi of the Dhillon Jats who ruled the region. Ranjit Singh had married Mehtab, the daughter of Sada Kaur and Gurbaksh Singh Kanhaiya. Sada Kaur played an important role in uniting different Sikh forces under the command of Ranjit Singh to drive out the Afghan invader Shah Zaman. She also became a close advisor of Ranjit Singh and guided him in becoming the most powerful Sikh ruler and led her forces to take Lahore in 1799. Maharaja Ranjit Singh himself employed the Zenana Corps a detachment of one hundred and fifty warriors, the prettiest girls from Kashmir, Iran and the Punjab, magnificently dressed, armed with bows and arrows and mounted on horseback. By now the British were taking over India. Resistance to their imperial might came from many quarters. Yet how many people are aware that encroaching British rule was challenged by women on the battlefield? Begum Samru was of Kashmiri descent and a nautch girl courtesan who married Walter Reinhardt Sombre, a mercenary soldier from Luxembourg. The Begum, though only of short stature, wore a turban and rode on horseback as she led her troops to battle. So invincible did she seem that the superstitious spread the word that she was a witch who could destroy her enemies just by throwing her cloak towards them. On the death of Reinhardt she succeeded to lead the principality he had carved out; Sardhana near Meerut. She has been India’s only Roman Catholic head of a princely state and commanded an army of both European and Indian troops. The British East India Company even considered her a threat to its territorial ambitions in India. Her palatial building still stands in Chandni Chowk, New Delhi and is now owned by the State Bank of India.read full article at hinduhumanrights.info/defaming-the-hindu-sacred-feminine-part-2/
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 09:45:55 +0000
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