RANI LAKSHMIBAI OF JHANSI

This young queen was the epitome of courage, dignity and patriotism the like of which has only seldom been seen in the annals of history. Barely in her early twenties, she refused to capitulate before the British and defied their diktat of surrendering her sovereignty over Jhansi. In the battle that ensued and soon escalated into the First War of India's Independence, Rani Lakshmibai exemplified what later on our emasculate leaders including the grandsire failed to emulate, and in alliance with other rebel leaders of the revolution brought the British East India Company to its knees, thus setting up a golden precedent for future generations to follow. After initial successes the Rani was foiled in battle but fought gallantly on before falling to a heroic death. Thus ended the life of the defiant heroine of India's struggle for independence, a woman who evoked the rare tearful response in Swami Vivekananda who at the very mention of her name would be carried off into a heightened state of worshipful reverence for the Rani who he adored as a veritable goddess.

We in independent India are yet to awake, though, to the splendour of the soul that the Rani was and chart our national course in the direction of her luminous career. We have forgotten and failed the Rani, for we are and remain a debilitated race chewing the cud of our Mahatma's pseudo-nonviolence and partial practice of truth in the name of nationalism of a devious order where the nation's interests matter least and weakness reigns supreme in the pretentious garb of spirituality and the welfare of humanity to the exclusion of one's own national welfare. It will take stronger blood of future generations to revive the ksahtriya (martial) culture of our past before the Rani reigns supreme in national estimation and becomes the inspiration for the nation to be strong and virile which no nation on earth can fool with. Till then oblivion awaits this goddess of our revolutionary bid for freedom and she will remain conspicuous more by her absence in the public discourse than by her luminous presence which ought to be, for she is an inspiration that can veritably change public perception of our historical narrative and remould future generations to becoming valorous and regal even as their forefathers were.

My prostrations to this goddess who graced our soil and rendered it holy by her footsteps, by the blood she spilled from her pierced form and by the very breath of revolution she breathed into the valorous sons and daughters of our freedom struggle. Such a one as Rani Lakshmibai is not born every other day and we must enshrine her memory all the more so that we may never again fall into the pitfalls of history where we lose our freedom through our own weakness.