What Makes A Rebel?

I will be the first to admit that I do not know a lot about the history of India.  My experiences with the country, in history and in fiction have been brief.  When I was young, I read a book about Jahanara, the daughter of the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife, Mumtaz Mahal (They are buried in the Taj Mahal).  When I was reading about Mary Curzon, Vicereine of India in the early 1900's, my research was more focused on what Lady Curzon did for the women and children of India, not as much on the history of the people.  When I read Daughter of Empire, which I wrote about just last week, I was exposed to the passing of power from the British Empire to the India and newly created Pakistani people.  Colonial India has a fascinating, if brutal and bloody, history, and I imagine the history of the country is just as interesting.  I look forward to reading more about it!

I say all of this because of the newest book I've read.  Rebel Queen is a book by an author I've read and written about before--Michelle Moran.  I like Ms. Moran's writing because she manages to create real life heroines that a reader can connect to, despite the differences in culture or time period.  This time, her heroine is Rani Lakshmi of Jhansi, although her narrator is one of the Rani's female bodyguards, Sita.  This is an interesting writing technique that Moran used in Nefertiti, where the heroine and the narrator are not the same character.  It creates an interesting tension in the book, because the narrator does not always agree with the protagonist and vice versa.

Sita is the eldest daughter of a carpenter in a small village.  She lives with her grandmother, who is not a likable character, her father, her younger sister, Anu, and their widowed maid, Avani.  Sita's mother dies in childbirth.  Daughters are not really wanted in Indian culture, it seems, as their dowry can beggar their parents.  Sita's grandmother tries to sell Sita into prostitution at a temple, but Sita's father refuses.  Instead, he and their neighbor train Sita to become a Durgavasi, a companion to the Rani* who are not only trained to keep the queen company but to protect her with their lives if necessary.  There are only ten at one time.  The training makes Sita unmarriageable, so when she faces the trials to become a Durgavasi and succeeds, there's a bit of a collective sigh of relief.  Once in the city, Sita is thrust into a world that she doesn't necessarily understand.  In her village, women are kept in purdah, or isolation.  In Jhansi, purdah is not followed. 

The first months of Sita's time with the Rani are fairly peaceful.  The Rani is pregnant, and the eventual birth of a son is a celebrated event.  However, all is not peaceful in Jhansi.  Some Indians fight with the British East India company.  They are a mix of Hindu and Muslims, but are being given leather hats made from cow leather and the cartridges for their guns are greased with pig and cow fat.  These are offensive to the Hindu's, to whom cows are sacred, and the Muslims, to whom anything pig is sacrilege.  These tensions are building as the Rani's son and then her husband die.  We later learn that they were poisoned with hemlock by another of the Rani's Durgavasi.  The tensions between the Indians and the British eventually cause a rebellion.  The Rani attempts to calm the tensions diplomatically, but is eventually unable to.  Battles ensue, atrocities occur, and many innocent and not so innocent people are killed.

Rani Lakshmi is one of the people who dies (spoiler alert from history) and with her death, all of India comes under British imperial control.  Eighty nine years later, Lord Mountbatten, then Viceroy of India, signs the papers that make India a sovereign country once more. 

I've been eyeing this book for a while because I liked Ms. Moran's Egyptian Royals series so much, but I never really found the motivation to read it.  Then I was in Barnes and Noble the other day, and I found it on sale, so I thought what they hay!  I picked it up, then had some free time before I needed to be at work so I started reading.  I wasn't so sure for the first few chapters that I'd like the book, but once I got into it, I was hooked.  I was fascinated by this period of history that I didn't know about.  I knew that when the British decided to add a country to their Empire, they weren't particularly--polite--about it.  Often times, they were very underhanded and sneaky until you didn't even realize what was going on.  The way that the Rani was aware of what was going on but not really able to do anything about it was great.  It was the epitome of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.  She was also forced into decisions and actions based on the decisions and actions of those around her, Indian and English alike.  It begs the question--what makes a rebel?  Is it a conscious decision, or is it simply a label applied afterwards?  Interestingly, rebel is used when that side loses.  Otherwise, someone is a revolutionary.  There's something to think about!

I definitely recommend this book to anyone.  It's not a girly story, it has far too much action for that, but it isn't all action.  It has the same sort of poetry that I associate with some classics, where the language creates a poetry of it's own.  And you never know--it might spark an interest in history and culture that you didn't have before.  After all, Moran notes that she did not need to embellish the history of Rani Lakshmi and her Durgavasi, but rather separate what actually happened from the legends that have sprung up around them.

*Rani is the Indian word for Queen.  A King is called a Maharaja