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to their opponents they don’t have breasts. It’s a tribute to the woman wrestler who was never defeated.

Lakshmibai
T HE P RINCESS W HO L ED A R EBELLION ( WITH H ER S ON S TRAPPED TO H ER B ACK )
    1834–J UNE 17, 1858
J HANSI , NORTH -C ENTRAL I NDIA
    R ani Lakshmibai of Jhansi died in the heat of battle with the reins of her horse in her teeth and a sword in each hand. Or maybe she was turning to cut down the soldier who’d just shot her in the back. Or maybe she was only wounded and survived long enough to distribute her jewelry to her men and have them build her funeral pyre. Accounts vary. However death came, Lakshmibai did die and in death becamea legend, a symbol of India’s struggle against colonial oppression.
    But the truth is, she didn’t set out to be a rebel. She was the young widow of a maharaja in the state of Jhansi when the Indians rebelled against the British East India Company in 1857, and her intent was to hold on until the British regained control. But when the British labeled her a sympathizer at best and a rebellious whore at worst, Rani Lakshmibai decided to show them just how rebellious she could be.
B ECOMING R ANI
    Before she was Rani Lakshmibai (
rani
means “princess” or “queen” in Hindi), she was just Bithur Manu, a little Brahmin girl who’d lost her mother when she was very small. Growing up in the luxurious court of the deposed chief minister of the defunct Maratha Empire, Manu played only with boys, and so she did the things they did. She learned to read and write and was taught to ride horses and elephants, use a sword, and fly a kite. She was said to be exceptionally brave. Once, when a rampaging elephant was loose in her city, Manu leapt onto its trunk and calmed the beast before it could do any more damage. It’s unclear how much of this tomboy tale is true—the elephant probably is not—but little Manu was destined for greatness.
    In 1842, she was married to a childless widower, the much older maharaja of a city-state in north-central India that had sworn allegiance to the British East India Company (EIC). Traditional sources claim that she was only 8 years old at the time, not an uncommon marrying age for Indian royalty in the nineteenth century. The union gave her a new name, Lakshmibai, put an end to her carefree childhood, and tied her to Jhansi, a hot, dry place where the wicked dust storms were called “the devil’s breath.”
    By the time Lakshmibai was 14, her marriage was consummated; by 17, she was pregnant. But the birth of her son and the maharaja’s heir brought only short-lived happiness—the boy died at just 3 months old, followed soon after by her devastated husband.
    So in November 1853, Rani Lakshmibai was a teenaged widow. A
vulnerable
widow, the British probably thought. Just before his death, the old maharaja had tried to keep the EIC from seizing Jhansi lands by adoptinga 5-year-old boy and naming him as heir; administration of the state would be vested in Lakshmibai until the child came of age. But Lord Dalhousie, governor general of the EIC, refused to recognize either Lakshmibai or the boy as rightful rulers. In early 1854, the EIC annexed Jhansi, claiming it would be better for the inhabitants if they were under direct company rule. Rani Lakshmibai was given a life pension and allowed to remain in the palace. She demanded the governor general reconsider, writing letters pointing out various aspects of British and Indian law that upheld her claim. Dalhousie refused, and Jhansi was swallowed up by the EIC.
O N THE O FFENSE
    British presence in India would have been ludicrous if not for the money the country brought in and the pretensions of empire it afforded. The EIC had ruled since around 1773 through a combination of outright landownership, mostly acquired through wars and annexation, and by using existing royal families as puppet administrators. But India was hot and full of diseases to which the colonials were unaccustomed. Local