Author & Historian Archana Goradia On Leadership Lessons From Indian Women Rulers
‘THE WOMEN WHO RULED INDIA’ COMBINES TWO OF MY PASSIONS. ONE, IS HISTORY AND THE OTHER IS WOMEN EMPOWERMENT. AS A PART OF SO MANY ORGANISATIONS WHICH EMPOWER WOMEN, WE LOOK AT FEATURES AND QUALITIES; WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP THEM LEAD A BETTER POSITION IN LIFE AND GIVE THE POWER IN THEIR HANDS – THAT IS WHAT EMPOWERMENT MEANS.
I was commissioned by Hachette to write this book and when I started looking for names, the first list I made had more than a hundred women rulers. Only a few of us are aware that we have had so many women rulers and this is just a preliminary list. First, you have to see India as a continent and not as a country. You are looking at many kingdoms, not just one.
It was hard to choose 20 out of these hundred. One criterion was that the women should be direct rulers and not the power behind. This could include ruling either as a leader or when the children are small or as a crown head. The only exception I made was for Noor Jahan who, though she indirectly ruled through Jehangir, was the single-most powerful ruler ever anywhere in the world in terms of the territory she controlled and in terms of the revenue. Noor Jehan took decisions, the governorship, so many laws had her signature.
Not all women are good and not all women are bad, there is enough variation in their characteristics and lust for power and the things that they are ready to do in their lust for power, just like men. It was important not to write hagiographies, you had to show whatever they did. To make a woman somebody to look at, from whom you can learn something, they don’t have to be perfect, the same as men don’t have to be perfect to be admired for their various qualities.
Were they good rulers in comparison to the male rulers at that time? Some were better, some were worse, some were as good. For example, Ahilyabai Holkar’s Indore in the 18th century was a governed state in India at that time but you have had rulers who were not as good. One thing that was certainly common is that it was a struggle for them to get power, to edge to that state of ruling and since it was an exception, there was more of a struggle for them than [the male rulers]. All the rulers came up because of family connections; they were either the daughters, wives or daughters-in-law of somebody. We don’t have a story about a woman who started from scratch and got into an army and conquered a kingdom. Most male rulers also got their throne from inheriting it.
When I went through these stories as a management student and as someone looking at technique, I realised that there are commonalities in the lives of these women right from the 7th century AD till the 19th Century. I didn’t go into 20th Century politics, I restricted myself to rulers. When you look at the patterns and how they influence their rise to power and how it helped the certain things that they did and how they held onto power, I realised that many of these things are still applicable.
These are things we can still learn from. In India, there are many Indias, so we have an India that is modern and as liberal as anywhere in the world and then you have an India where, a historian once said, you can see the people living life of all ages of mankind. There are people living hunter-gatherer lifestyles, neolithic agricultural lifestyles, medieval lifestyles, and 20th century lifestyles. If we are working in this sphere of empowerment then
there is something to look at.
All these women, due to various reasons, had exceptional education. They had education unlike other members in the families or neighbourhood and that helped them to power and to hold on to power. Not all of them were educated. For example Qudsia Begum of Bhopal. Bhopal was ruled by four successive women rulers over a period of a hundred years and the first who came in power, Qudsia Begum, was not educated at all. But, more or less if you see, Jhansi ki Rani, was from a very poor background but her father was a tutor for the Peshwa children and since she didn’t have a mother, she’d just hang about with the other students and in the process got a prince’s education. Because she had that kind of education and she was exceptional, the King of Jhansi got married to her and then she was able to apply a lot of her thinking and education in her future.
Rudrama Devi : Rudrama Devi was the daughter of the King of Warangal in the 13th century. The king had three aughters and instead of making his nephew the ruler, he did a putrika yagya and designated her a son, from that day, and gave her a son’s education. She came on the throne, her coins and all say Rudra Dev but she got married and finally her grandson ruled after her, not her daughters. But she was a warrior queen and she had a man’s education.
Sikander Jahan: She was the second Begum of Bhopal, her mother had come to power and gave her a man’s education, a warrior’s education plus state’s craft and if you get an opportunity you should read Sultan Jahan who was the 4th begum of Bhopal, you should read her memoirs and the kind of education they went through. It is a very fascinating period.
While education is not 100 per cent necessary, an exceptional education and studying the state craft always helps in getting power and holding on to it. Secondly, they all had champions in their family, they didn’t come up on their own. Razia Sultan Ud Iltutmish, who was considered the best out of her three children, had four brothers but he wanted to give the throne to her. Ahilyabai Holkar was a poor villager’s daughter, Malhar Rao Holkar who was the king of that area saw her one day and there was something about her demeanour that pleased him. He married her off to his son. The son was not quite all there so Malhar Rao focused on educating Ahilya to run the kingdom. So, again, she got a Prince’s education. Noor Rani Chennamma, it was her husband who gave her the power, he would be fighting battles but she ran the state. Championing the women in the family, giving them opportunities, education makes all the difference as to where they reach, which is not to say that people can’t achieve without being championed but there is a huge role. It makes all the difference.
They all had experience when they came to power; before they came to power they had already been involved in power, they had already handled posts and when the moment came and there was a choice between them and somebody else, they not only had the education but they also had experience of governance. That, again, helped them to be better rulers and helped them to get the post.
If you see the history of women rulers, the minute they come to power, they are perceived as weak. So, normally, here is immediate internal rebellion and external attack by the neighbouring kingdoms because they see it as an opportunity to get power. Each ruler has experienced it. And, typically, the nobility thinks that one of them should be the ruler and not the women so they would not get the support they want from the British nobility.
They would typically look outside, create a support group of people who would not otherwise have a chance of power so that those people could be loyal to them. For example, you have Didda the Queen of Kashmir in the 10th Century, she was quite a strong queen. The British used to call her the Catherine of Kashmir comparing her with Catherine the Great of Russia because she was similarly manipulative, she made her favourites the Chief Ministers. She would raise them up and when she tired of them, she would throw them down. She ran a tight ship. Some of the people that she raised were shepherds — people who would never have a chance at power otherwise. They were totally loyal to her. If you see Rudrama Devi you would see the number of people who had land at the beginning and at the end of her reign. Studies have been done, there is 20-30% of new soldier entrants who had never got land before she inducted them. Did the women leaders look to women to create additional support groups? Some of them did, some didn’t because most of them were just trying to survive.
One exception was the Rani of Jhansi. We know that she fought the British; that is, I think, a very small part of what she did. When she got power and she didn’t get it for very long, it was a very brief time between the time she ruled and by the time she was defeated by the British. She totally overturned the way that city ran. She involved people from potter communities, she created a women’s regime. One of her best was a lady called Motibai Natakwali, her husband was fond of theatre and she was part of the troop. So, Jhansi ki Rani had that ability to take people from all sorts of backgrounds and involve them.
There is Rani Velu Nachiyar, who was the queen of a small kingdom called Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu and her kingdom was attacked and taken over by the British. Her husband was killed, she managed to escape with her daughter and cross the border to Mysore and reach Hyder Ali. So, Hyder Ali gave her refuge and he just signed a treaty with the British, he said next time if we have a war, I will help you. So, for many years she was there. She trained and created a battalion of women and she made a Dalit woman lead that battalion. So, when the second Mysore war began Hyder Ali crossed over to Tamil Nadu, she went with him and she went with her troops to her own small kingdom. There was a Dussehra celebration, they disguised themselves, got into the Sivaganga and they were losing because the British had better ammunition, then this Kuyili [the commander] drenched herself in oil, put herself on fire and ran into the ammunition dump. So, the dump exploded and they were able to regain their kingdom. All the stories that we hear about the women fighting the British normally end in defeat of the person. This is actually one person that won. Then she made a treaty and she kept it. This is an example of a woman who supported other women.
The other thing is that a lot of them, with the kind of decision making they did, used lateral thinking which was slightly different from the way men would have probably thought. For example, Ahilyabai, after her husband and father-in-law died, ruled as Regent on behalf of her only son. Then the son got ill and died. She had a daughter who
was not married. A lot of people recommended that she adopt somebody and then the person could be the ruler. But Ahilyabai said there is no reason I cannot be the crown head. I have been governing the state for the last two years, there is no reason that a woman cannot be the crown head.
There was a lot of resistance including from her old-time minister who was actually usually very supportive. So, basically, the Maratha Federation work is that they were notionally the governors of these districts and they all owed to the Peshwa. So, this minister wrote to Peshwa’s uncle as the Peshwa was a minor at that time, Raghunath Rao, and said that why don’t you come in, take back Indore as a direct rule under the Peshwa. Now Raghunath Rao came back with 50000 troops to take back Indore.
Ahilyabai did not have so many troops and in any case, they were deep south fighting a battle on the Maratha congregation. How did she handle this then? She wrote to all the other Peshwa sardars. She used to keep a very good PR relationship and regularly used to write to the others and said that this is happening. She called back her own troops but she had to hold off Raghoba until the support came. So, she got together 500 women-widows, from her kingdom and sort of taught them to sit on a horse and wave along a sword. In 2-3 days that is all that you can do, you can’t teach them to be warriors. Then those women and she sat on an elephant, put an armour and bow and arrow and everything and she came and camped on the other side of the Shipra. She sent a message to Raghunath Rao that we, the widows of Indore, have come to fight you. Meanwhile, Raghoba had started getting letters from everybody, what are you doing, Ahilyabai’s nephew Tukoji Holkar, his troops were reaching. So, finally he sent a message that I have come to condole the death of your son. She said, oh, you are most welcome. Please come to Indore, leave your army behind and then he came, he was treated as an honourable guest for a month and left and then she got the direct leadership. So, you see that this is something that I have seen with women rulers across, they do go to war but war as a last option. They first try to figure out some way to resolve the situation without actually going to war.
Another example who taught differently, I came across the name of this ruler when I had gone for a holiday, then I researched it and I found that this Rani Karnavati of Garhwal. It has been written about quite extensively by a lot of foreign travellers. Rani Karnavati was the ruler of a small kingdom called Garhwal with the capital in SriNagar, not the Kashmir one, but the one near Rishikesh. Now her neighbouring ruler told Shah Jahan that if you give me 30000 troops, we will conquer this kingdom. Shah Jahan sent his Mughal men and they, with the neighbouring Mughal king, attacked her. The fighting season in this region is very small because the snow melts around April and the rains come by July, so they just have 2-3 months. The Rani managed to delay the troops and finally they got trapped with no food, then they sent her a message for terms and she said yes, you can go I will not kill you but I will cut off the noses of all these troops. So, 30000 noses were cut off including the commanders and then they went back to Shah Jahan which literally ‘Naak katake’ they came back. Can you imagine the Mughal Emperors fury? Of course, India had nasal reconstruction so maybe most of them had proper good nasal reconstruction. However, she got the name as Naak-kati Rani and they were never able to conquer her. Aurangzeb sent troops four times, Shah Jahan gave up, but that certainly is a very good example.
Rani Abbakka was the queen of the small kingdom of Ullal near Mangalore. Rani Abbakka was not just one queen, there were at least two of them who were related and at least the main story was that in 1618, the Portuguese were blocking the sea, they were not allowing anyone to trade unless you took a pass but she wanted to trade directly with Arabia. She was the pepper producer and had a good market. So, it was always a game of hide-n-seek and one day the Portuguese burnt her ship which was returning with a lot of wealth. So, she decided to take revenge and in the night she and her lot of fishermen, she didn’t even have that much of an army, it was a small kingdom. They sneaked into the base where
the Portuguese base was with fire arrows and mashaals made of coconuts and they burnt the fleet. This is just a few years after the armada, Portuguese was under Spain, so this was an equivalent of the armada using just fire arrows and since this Portuguese fleet had been pulling everybody, she became famous all over the Indian Ocean.
So, as I said, though they did war, they were typically deal makers. Here I would like to talk about Chand Bibi, I think a lot of us have heard about her and that she fought Akbar but that was something which was right at the end of her life. Before that she had been the Regent of Bijapur because she had been married to the King of Bijapur and then his nephew became the king. She was the Regent for 5-7 years and this is about the same time Queen Elizabeth was ruling India. Now if you compare, Chand Bibi ruled a greater population and the population had a higher per capita income. So, she actually controlled and ruled a kingdom larger than Queen Elizabeth I. Now she was a person who was very good at resolving conflict, if you see her rule in Bijapur and later she went to her parental kingdom of Ahmednagar and that story if you see how she was resolving and managing and the Deccan Sultanate were continuously warring against each other. So, you have to be amazingly skilled and even the attack by Akbar’s forces in 1595 was finally resolved by getting a treaty. You can say Akbar almost more or less did not lose any battle, it was never that he set out to conquer something and he lost, this is the exception, they managed to have a treaty without the surrender.
Another interesting person was Begum Samru, she was a dancing girl in Chawri Bazar in the 1700s. An Austrian soldier called Reinhardt Sombre came and picked her up and later married her. He used to have a troop of 4000 mercenaries with 100 European officers and they would be there for hire, to the Mughals or whoever wanted to hire them. So, they managed to get a little Jagir of Sardhana in Meerut. When Sombre died she became the head of that little kingdom. So, she actually had a mercenary troop and she used to command 100 European officers. She was about 4’10’’ but she was extremely successful. She was so successful that people used to think she was a witch. So, I have actually been to Sardhana, she was a Christian. There is a very nice cathedral, still operational. She invited Italian architects. They built this cathedral; they built her a villa and they built her a villa in Delhi opposite the Red Fort which is now Bhagirath Palace. If you go and see the palace, it is Italian style and structure, she also had a statue of herself carved in Italy which came by ship to Calcutta then up the Ganga and then by bullock cart to Sardhana.
The other thing that you see is the women rulers focused on welfare as opposed to spending money and time on warfare. During the pandemic you must all have read about the countries with women leaders and how they have handled the pandemic better. Perhaps it is simply because you are not focusing on warfare or new corpus. I am giving an example of Sultan Jahan Begum. Bhopal was one of the first to get piped water, a public court. Travancore was the first to get primary education at such a wide level.
Mangammal, the Queen of Madurai in the 17th century, focussed on highway building. So, almost every town in Tamil Nadu still has a road called Mangammal Rani. Rani Durgawati was again someone who battled Akbar but she ruled for 20 years and she was known for her irrigation projects and the number of tanks she built to solve the problems in her Kingdom of Gondwana. So, these are some of the lessons.
I would like to talk about a couple of exceptions. We have Tarabai, normally we would say that people wouldn’t go out and attack but Tarabai who is from Maharashtra, who ruled after the death of her husband Rajaram till Shahu came back, for 7-8 years she led the resistance. One of her strategies to fight the Mughal troops was not defensive but she actually sent out offensive troops into Malwa and in Mughal states which were never part of Maratha and established revenue collection. She was actually a person who went into offensive troops and acquired the territory unlike the other women rulers who were for defensive warfare. To summarise, there are a few things that are common among various woman rulers and I think many of them are still true if we are looking at women empowerment today. Education, championing and to look outside is important for women who are trying to create their own support groups. It is also important to build the traditional strength of women, getting along with people.
ROTARIANS ASK
What, according to you, is the changing definition of what feminism was and what it is in our century?
I think traditionally if you are looking for rights for women, it has been a long battle for women in this century. If you see some of the people who fought in India, if you see the Brahmo movement, the Bengal renaissance, you were looking at ban Sati, widow remarriage and a very basic right and there was also struggle for women’s education. But the way women’s education was imparted to women you still had a view that what an education does to make her a sakhi, sumata, sugrihini – better housekeeper, better mother and better companion but you still did not have much concept of equality. There was this lady called Rukaiya Sakhawat Hussain [not a ruler] in Bengal at the turn of this century and she is one person who spoke at that time that women’s education and the right of women to work and all is not about so that the family is better. It is about her right to be happy and not about how it influences them. So, that itself you have moved from banning sati and fighting for property rights and the women can have the right to pursue happiness like any other person. So, now today when you are looking at feminism and women’s rights you are looking at equality but it is always step by step.
In the religious texts, we see Draupadi and Sita as such powerful women, more progressive than the time when there was sati. What happened that suddenly women were considered not-equal?
We do tend to have an impression that in ancient India there was no parda and the women were equal. I think the only time you may see some kind of equality was when we were hunter gatherers. There you would see this kind of equality but if you talk of the vedic period or puranic period, yes they probably still had more rights and autonomy in comparison to the medieval period or even 16th 17th century. But then Sita was put through Agni Pariksha. I was reading Valmiki’s Ramayana and the point when after the war is won and Ram tells Vibhishan to get Sita, he says you want to get her here in public? So, they did have a notion that women don’t come out in the middle of the army. So, Ram says, it is alright in apatkal for women to come out in public. So, that is what I learnt.
Then when the palki came, it was stopped a little distant from Ram and he told Vibhishan to ask her to walk the rest of the way. So, when she came out, all the vanars and soldiers crowded to see her as they had fought a battle for her, they had to see her and then when they were doing so, Vibhishan’s guards started to push the people and Ram said it is alright let them see and then she came up to him. He said I have now rescued you and redeemed the honour of my family, you are now free to go wherever you like. She asked, where am I wrong? She said that nothing happened
to me and even if something had happened to me my body was not in my control only my mind was in my control so, even if something had happened to me, I am not guilty. Then the Agni Pariksha was followed. This is the original Valmiki Ramayana.
Also, remember, when the jewellery is found and Ram asks Lakshman do you recognise the jewellery? He says I can only
recognise the payals and the feet jewellery because I never looked up so I would not recognise the earrings. So, we should not have those illusions that things were equal but the author had thought that Sita will say that my mind is
in my control, so, that is a very progressive thought at the time.
It is said that it is men who really need to be empowered to accept that the woman is equal and it is always they who decide that she should do this and that. Your thoughts.
I would like to say you should see the Bengal Renaissance, all these changes were led by men, fighting for widow remarriage, sati abolition and education. Even the civil war in the US and the emancipation of the slaves, it was fought by white men standing up for righteousness vs other white men. So, we see a lot of people fighting for what is right and just even though it may not benefit them. It is something which is there all over history. The status of women is changing because of contraception and higher life expectancy of women.
