6. British Legal Chicanery Planted the Seeds of Revolt
In her early years, Lakshmi Bai was taught and became proficient in martial arts such as swordsmanship, shooting, and horseback riding. When she came of age, she was married to the maharaja, or princely ruler, of Jhansi. The couple did not have children, but her husband adopted a child as his heir. Upon her husband’s death, the British resorted to legal chicanery in order to seize Jhansi. They refused to recognize the adopted child as heir to the princely state and rested their decision on what was known as The Doctrine of Lapse.
The doctrine, which the British had invented out of nothing, boiled down to an East India Company policy to annex Indian rulers’ lands if they were “manifestly incompetent or died without a male heir“. What constituted manifest competence, or whether a male heir was legally acceptable or not, was up to the British to decide. Unsurprisingly, they often decided in ways that suited them best. When she was informed that the foreign Raj sought to seize her adopted child’s inheritance, Lakshmi Bai vowed “I shall not surrender my Jhansi!” That became her war cry in the subsequent revolt against the British.
