The Other Rani of Jhansi

Jhalkari Bai of the Durga Dal, Jhansi 1858: the story Bundelkhand carried and the paper never recorded

Bundelkhand has held for generations that a soldier of the Jhansi women's unit, Jhalkari Bai, put on the Rani's clothes when the fort fell on 3 April 1858 and drew the British away so Lakshmibai could ride for Kalpi. No British despatch or court record names her; the story reaches writing only in Vrindavan Lal Verma's 1946 novel Jhansi ki Rani and in Bundelkhandi song. This lesson tells the story and marks exactly where the documented ends and the remembered begins.

The Fort Falls on 3 April

It is the night of 3 April 1858, in Jhansi. The fort on the rock has held for nearly two weeks. Hugh Rose's Central India Field Force has been shelling it since 21 March, and that morning the storming parties got over the wall. The town below is burning. The smell of it reaches the fort. Gun crews who have served their pieces for thirteen days are out of powder.

Somewhere inside that fort, the Rani of Jhansi, Lakshmibai, has to decide whether to die there or get out. She got out. On the night of 4 April she rode through the British lines with a small party and reached Kalpi. She fought on for two more months. She was killed near Gwalior on 17 or 18 June 1858. That much is in the British despatches, in Kaye and Malleson, and in every history since.

Here is what the despatches do not say. They do not explain how a queen whose face and horse were known to the whole camp rode out of an encircled fort and was not stopped.

Bundelkhand has an answer. The answer is a woman named Jhalkari Bai.

What the Tradition Says

In the telling that Bundelkhand has carried for generations, Jhalkari Bai was a village woman from Bhojla, near Jhansi, of the Koli community. She married Puran, a soldier in the Jhansi army, and through him joined the Durga Dal, the women's wing that Lakshmibai had raised and trained. She looked, the tradition says, remarkably like the Rani.

On the night the fort fell, she put on the Rani's clothes and took the Rani's place. She rode out toward the British lines. Lakshmibai slipped away in the other direction. The British, in this telling, believed for some hours that they had captured the Rani of Jhansi. By the time they understood, the real Rani was far down the Kalpi road.