Even though the published literature on the revolt of 1857 is vast, the historiography on the subject remains underdeveloped. The impact of colonial historiography has been so far-reaching and pervasive that till very recently it has been difficult to formulate relevant questions for research on the subject. For instance, since there is an assumption that Panjab remained ‘loyal’ to the British, researchers have not paid much attention to the events in the province. That Panjab had been annexed less than a decade before the outbreak of the revolt after two fiercely fought wars, both of which the East India Company might have lost were it not for betrayal by a section of the military leadership of the Lahore kingdom, is conveniently forgotten. It was due to the hostility of the Panjab soldiery that the province was under military occupation when the uprising began in 1857; and the British were unable to find recruits in Panjab for the Field Force assembled to recapture Delhi so that they had to rely almost exclusively on the Princely States of eastern Panjab for troops Similarly, the role of several marginalized sections of society such as women and lower castes has not been considered worth serious scholarly consideration. Patriarchal attitudes too ensured that women remained largely invisible in colonial as well as nationalist writings. Moreover the standard textbook understanding that the revolt was essentially an upper caste affair, especially since the Bengal Army was predominantly upper caste in its social composition, has kept lower castes out of accounts of the revolt.
Kirti Narain’s study of the revolt and its aftermath devotes considerable space to women who were actively involved in the rebellion. We should bear in mind that the 1857 revolt represented the most serious challenge to British rule in the nineteenth century. It encompassed a large part of the Indian subcontinent, and almost all sections of Indian society joined this widespread anti-colonial struggle. It is not surprising that women should have been part of the struggle, though the history of their participation is only now being recovered. Some figures are well known, Lakshmi Bai and Hazrat Mahal, for instance. In her account of the martyrdom of Rani Lakshmi Bai at Gwalior, the author examines the various versions that we have of her death on the battlefield in the midst of fierce fighting. Nationalist literary writings of the early twentieth century celebrated Lakshmi Bai’s valour, heroism and martyrdom. Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s famous poem with the refrain ‘Khoob Lari Mardani woh to Jhansi wali Rani thi’ (1930), was followed by Vrindavanlal Varma’s bestselling historical novel, Jhansi ki Rani (1946). The novel was based on serious historical research, and incorporated oral traditions. Already towards the end of the nineteenth century DB Parasnis had published a historical biography of Lakshmi Bai in Marathi (1894), the Hindi version of which was one of the sources of inspiration for Varma. In other words, the story of Lakshmi Bai became central to the nationalist re-writing of the history of the revolt.