The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a massive uprising in India against the rule of the British East India Company, which operated as a self-governing authority on behalf of the British Empire. The Indian Rebellion of 1857, which ultimately failed, was underway on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the East India Company’s army in the garrison town of Meerut. With time, this rebellion erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic Plain and central India, though many incidents of revolts similarly occurred farther north and east, and many Indians fought see a free India. But when we talk about the conflicts between British and Indians, in the context of women, names like Rani Lakshmibai and Begum Hazrat Mehal instantly come to mind, due to their great contributions in the battles. However, there were numerous individuals who were forgotten somewhere in the massive pages of history. And one of them is an unnamed and unsung African woman who fought in Sikandar Bagh in Lucknow during the Revolt of 1857 and assassinated several British soldiers before she was killed.

The only proof for the existence of this African woman is in the William Forbes-Mitchell’s Book, which was published in the 1910. A story in mentioned in this book, about the revolt of 1857 and this African woman’s small contribution in the battle, and this unnamed woman is briefly talked about in Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857 to 1859, in William Forbes, Mitchell’s book. This book explains that once the battle in Sikandar Bagh in Lucknow was over, some Brtish soldiers took shade under a huge peepal tree, with several dead bodies, including those of their own, lying scattered across the ground. One British officer named Captain Dawson noted how all the bodies appeared to have been shot from above, then he requested one of men to look up at the tree and see if someone was hiding in the trees. After searching, the soldier shouted that he found someone, and he immediately fired in the woods. Forbes-Mitchell writes that a limp body fell from the tree and it was dressed in a tight-fitted red jacket and rose-coloured silk trousers. And when the jacket burst opened, it was revealed that the body was that of a woman’s. The soldier regretted his actions, and said, “If I had known it was a woman, I would have rather died a thousand deaths than have harmed her.”

The brave African woman fought to death in the freedom fight which happened in Sikandra Bagh and she also killed a few soldiers. However, her name, background, and cause behind her robust participation in the freedom fight of India, even after being an African is still unknown and her only signal is in the book by Forbes-Mitchell. However, the African communities have been resided in India for a very long time. Centuries ago, a massive number of African slaves were imported to India by Arab slave traders, sometimes in collaboration with Indian slave traders. And all this had been going on for a very long period, where men, women and children were being brought in from East African regions. Thus, some researchers and historians speculate that this brave African woman who fought in the Indian Freedom Fight either came directly from Africa or was born in India to African parents in India. At that time, the King Wajid Ali Shah was fond of African and African-Indian women, and Begum Hazrat Mahal herself was the daughter of an African slave.

King Wajid Ali Shah had a “Hubshiyan Pulton”, or the Black Platoon, and it was made up of numerous African soldiers. There were no women in this platoon, but the king used to have a female cavalry with him, and many British writers have described them as Amazons, female soldiers. There is also a “Gulabi Pulton” mentioned in the King Wajid Shah’s army, and some historians speculate that the African woman who fought in the freedom fight can be one of them. It was a quite a feminine name for a platoon, and we look properly at the look at what that African woman was wearing, a red jacket and a rose-colored silk trousers, it someone makes sense. However, the happened in 1857, posed some threat to the British rule in that region, and was contained only with the rebels’ defeat in the Gwalior on 20 June 1858. The British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder on 1 November 1858, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion. The Revolt of 1857, and the First War of Independence as well.

Initially, the person who publicly introduced the unnamed African woman was a British author, Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, and she discussed that African woman’s contribution in a session she held called Battlefield Lucknow, which was a part of the Sanatkada Lucknow Festival. Currently, Dr Rosie is working on a chapter in a book called “India’s Battles”, which is about Lucknow conflicts in 1857-58, as a part of a series by Harper Collins India. Her chapter discusses the history of African women and men in Awadh, and how their loyalties during the uprisings of 1857-58 were to determine their future treatment by the British. According to Dr Rosie, it is quite disgraceful that African men and women who came to Lucknow without their consent fought bravely alongside a foreign king against the British, but don’t have a memorial of their own in Lucknow. And there were women from minorities and oppressed classes whose contributions were largely unheard. And the small story of courage of this unnamed African woman remains mostly absent from the pages of history. And as Dr Rosie said in her session, unfortunately we don’t know about her and she is probably one of the many unsung heroes of the time.
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Reference:

• www.hindustantimes.com
• www.mslf.in
• www.msn.com