India’s Forgotten Queens - The Women Who Ruled Before Rani Lakshmibai
Ask an Indian to name a great queen from history and one answer appears almost immediately:
Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi.
She deserves her place.
But she was born in 1828.
India had already witnessed centuries of women governing kingdoms, commanding armies, managing treasuries, negotiating with foreign powers, constructing cities, patronising scholarship and occasionally terrifying their political opponents.
Some ruled directly.
Some ruled as regents.
Some inherited collapsing states and rebuilt them.
Some fought European colonial powers generations before the Revolt of 1857.
And some governed for decades.
Their stories reveal something important:
The politically powerful Indian woman was not invented in 1857.
She had been here all along.
1. Didda of Kashmir
The Queen Who Outsurvived Everyone
More than eight centuries before Lakshmibai, Kashmir was dominated by one of the most formidable women in Indian political history.
Didda emerged as queen-consort in the tenth century and later exercised power as regent before becoming sovereign ruler in her own right.
Her story is not particularly comfortable.
And that is exactly why she is interesting.
Didda was not simply a ceremonial queen remembered for charity or architecture. Historical accounts portray her as a ruthless political operator who survived conspiracies, removed rivals and consolidated authority in an extraordinarily unstable political environment.
She reportedly had a physical disability affecting her leg.
It did not prevent her from dominating Kashmiri politics.
Didda therefore breaks several stereotypes simultaneously:
woman,
disabled,
medieval,
and politically formidable.
She does not need to be sanitised into a saint.
She deserves to be studied as something Indian historiography allows men to be much more frequently:
a complicated ruler.
2. Rudrama Devi
When the Queen Became the King
In the thirteenth century, the Kakatiya dynasty produced one of medieval India’s most remarkable sovereigns:
Rudrama Devi.
She ruled from approximately 1262 to 1289, governing a substantial kingdom centred in the Deccan.
Her accession confronted an obvious political problem.
Kingship was overwhelmingly imagined as male.
The response was fascinating.
Some inscriptions presented Rudrama using masculine royal terminology, including forms associated with Rudradeva Maharaja.
Rather than surrendering political authority to gender expectations, the institution of kingship itself was effectively stretched around her.
Rudrama governed.
She confronted rebellions.
She maintained military power.
She administered territory.
And she demonstrated something politically radical for medieval India:
If sovereignty was supposedly masculine, a woman could simply occupy sovereignty anyway.
Her granddaughter Rudramadevi may be remembered through cinema today, but the historical ruler deserves attention beyond spectacle.
She was running a state.
3. Rani Durgavati
The Gond Queen Who Refused Submission
Born into a Chandela family and married into the Gond kingdom of Garha-Katanga, Rani Durgavati became regent after the death of her husband, Dalpat Shah.
She governed on behalf of her young son.
But “regent” should not be mistaken for “placeholder.”
Durgavati administered a substantial kingdom.
Then the Mughal Empire came.
In 1564, forces commanded by Asaf Khan advanced against her territory during the reign of Akbar.
Durgavati resisted militarily.
Facing defeat and severe injury, historical tradition records that she chose death rather than capture.
Her final battle understandably dominates popular memory.
But concentrating entirely on her death obscures her greater achievement.
She had already governed for years.
A woman’s historical importance should not begin only when she enters a battlefield.
Administration was also power.
4. Rani Chennabhairadevi
The Pepper Queen
While Mughal power expanded across northern India, another queen was operating within the commercial world of the Arabian Sea.
Rani Chennabhairadevi ruled Gerusoppa in coastal Karnataka for roughly half a century during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Her territory participated heavily in the spice economy.
Portuguese sources consequently associated her with a memorable title:
the Pepper Queen.
This was the age when Portugal was attempting to establish military and commercial dominance across important Indian Ocean trading routes.
Chennabhairadevi’s kingdom had something Europeans desperately wanted:
access to valuable commodities, particularly pepper.
Her long reign involved diplomacy, commerce, regional politics and resistance to Portuguese pressure.
Her story demonstrates that Indian women were not merely participants in palace politics.
They were participating in global economics.
The Pepper Queen belongs as much in business history as women’s history.
5. Rani Abbakka Chowta
The Queen Who Fought the Portuguese
Further down the western coast stands another extraordinary figure:
Abbakka Chowta of Ullal.
The difficulty here is that “Rani Abbakka” may refer to more than one queen within the Chowta dynasty, and later traditions sometimes combine their stories.
But the historical core is remarkable.
The rulers of Ullal resisted Portuguese attempts to dominate the coastal trade of the region during the sixteenth century.
Abbakka became the great symbol of that resistance.
Her forces fought Portuguese expeditions.
She cultivated regional alliances.
She operated within a commercially connected port society.
And she did this decades before Britain became India’s principal European colonial antagonist.
This matters because Indian colonial history can become excessively British.
Before the East India Company became dominant, Indian rulers were already negotiating and fighting with Portuguese, Dutch and French interests.
Abbakka belongs to that earlier chapter.
If Lakshmibai represents resistance to nineteenth-century British expansion, Abbakka represents resistance during an earlier wave of European maritime imperialism.
6. Chand Bibi
The Defender of Ahmadnagar
Few images from Deccan history are as striking as the tradition of Chand Bibi defending Ahmadnagar against Mughal forces.
Born into the ruling family of Ahmadnagar and married into Bijapur’s Adil Shahi dynasty, Chand Bibi moved between two major Deccan political worlds.
Eventually she became central to the defence of Ahmadnagar during Mughal expansion under Akbar.
She negotiated.
She commanded.
She attempted to preserve a state surrounded by powerful competing interests.
Her political life also demonstrates why simplistic religious narratives fail to explain Indian history.
Muslim rulers fought Muslim rulers.
Hindu rulers allied with Muslim rulers.
Dynastic interest regularly mattered more than modern communal categories.
Chand Bibi’s world was political before it was convenient.
7. Keladi Chennamma
The Queen Who Defied Aurangzeb
In the late seventeenth century, another queen emerged in Karnataka:
Keladi Chennamma.
After the death of her husband, Somashekara Nayaka, she assumed authority over the Keladi kingdom.
Her reign became particularly famous because of her connection with Rajaram, son of Shivaji.
When Rajaram was fleeing Mughal pursuit, Chennamma provided him refuge.
That placed her kingdom in opposition to the enormous imperial machinery of Aurangzeb.
This was not symbolic defiance.
Sheltering a fugitive prince pursued by one of the most powerful emperors in the world carried enormous strategic risk.
Keladi forces subsequently confronted Mughal pressure.
Yet her kingdom survived.
Chennamma’s story offers another useful historical lesson:
Courage in government is sometimes the decision to protect someone when protecting them is politically expensive.
8. Tarabai
The Woman Who Kept the Maratha War Alive
If Indian history gave Tarabai the attention she deserves, she would be one of the country’s most famous political figures.
She was the daughter-in-law of Shivaji and wife of Rajaram.
After Rajaram’s death in 1700, the Maratha position against Aurangzeb appeared extraordinarily precarious.
Tarabai assumed leadership as regent for her young son.
And then she helped continue the war.
She coordinated Maratha resistance during one of the most dangerous moments in the state’s existence.
Mughal forces possessed immense resources.
The Marathas possessed mobility, regional networks and increasingly effective methods of decentralised warfare.
Tarabai proved capable of operating within that system.
Aurangzeb died in 1707.
The Marathas survived.
And Tarabai remained a political actor for decades afterward.
She was not merely the widow of an important man.
She was one of the people who ensured that the political project associated with Shivaji survived its existential crisis.
9. Ahilyabai Holkar
What If the Great Queen Was an Administrator?
Not every great ruler needs an epic final battle.
Ahilyabai Holkar offers perhaps the clearest example.
After enormous personal losses—including the deaths of her husband, father-in-law and son—Ahilyabai eventually assumed rule over the Holkar territories in 1767.
Her capital became Maheshwar.
Her reputation rests heavily upon governance, infrastructure, religious patronage and public works.
Temples, ghats, wells, roads and rest houses across different parts of India became associated with her patronage.
She supported commercial activity and transformed Maheshwar into an important cultural and textile centre.
Her model of power therefore looks different from the warrior archetype.
There is no need to manufacture a battlefield to make her impressive.
Building functioning institutions is difficult enough.
Ahilyabai represents an alternative definition of political greatness:
Leave the place you govern more functional than you found it.
10. Begum Samru
From Nautch Girl to Ruler
Then Indian history produces someone who almost sounds fictional.
Begum Samru.
Born Farzana, she rose from relatively obscure origins into the turbulent world of eighteenth-century north Indian politics.
She eventually became ruler of Sardhana.
She commanded military forces containing European-trained troops.
She navigated Mughal politics.
She negotiated among competing regional and European powers.
She converted to Catholicism and took the name Joanna Nobilis Sombre.
Her court consequently becomes an extraordinary window into eighteenth-century India:
Indian.
Mughal.
European.
Catholic.
Mercenary.
Aristocratic.
Commercial.
Military.
All occupying the same political universe.
Begum Samru is almost impossible to fit into a neat nationalist or religious box.
Which is precisely why she should be remembered.
Real history is usually messier than mythology.
11. Kittur Chennamma
Rebellion Before 1857
Three decades before Lakshmibai fought the British, Kittur Chennamma had already confronted the East India Company.
After the death of her husband and later her son, succession became a central political issue.
Chennamma adopted Shivalingappa as heir.
The East India Company refused to accept the succession.
Conflict followed in 1824.
Kittur forces initially achieved a notable victory, and British official St John Thackeray was killed during the fighting.
The Company returned with greater force.
Chennamma was eventually captured and imprisoned, dying in captivity in 1829.
Her rebellion occurred 33 years before 1857.
If the history of resistance to Company expansion is taught as a long continuum rather than a story suddenly beginning with the “First War of Independence,” Kittur Chennamma becomes impossible to ignore.
And Then Came Lakshmibai
By the time Lakshmibai of Jhansi rode into history during the uprising of 1857–58, she was not creating the Indian warrior-queen tradition.
She was inheriting centuries of it.
Behind her stood women such as:
Didda — political survival. Rudrama Devi — sovereignty. Durgavati — resistance. Chennabhairadevi — commerce and statecraft. Abbakka — maritime resistance. Chand Bibi — military defence and diplomacy. Keladi Chennamma — strategic courage. Tarabai — wartime leadership. Ahilyabai Holkar — administration. Begum Samru — political adaptability. Kittur Chennamma — anti-Company resistance.
And then:
Lakshmibai — Jhansi, 1857, immortality.
These women were not identical.
They lived in different centuries, religions, regions and political systems.
Some were benevolent administrators.
Some were ruthless.
Some fought outsiders.
Some fought other Indian rulers.
Some inherited power.
Others had to seize political authority from circumstances that were collapsing around them.
That diversity is exactly the point.
Stop Calling Them Exceptions
Perhaps the most important correction is linguistic.
Whenever history discovers a powerful woman, she is presented as an exceptional woman.
After enough exceptions, the category stops making sense.
Across Indian history women served as sovereigns, regents, commanders, diplomats, patrons, landholders, merchants and political intermediaries.
They certainly operated within societies where political power was disproportionately male.
But patriarchy did not produce complete female political absence.
History was considerably messier.
The more interesting question therefore isn’t:
“How could a woman rule back then?”
It is:
“Given that women demonstrably did rule, why do our simplified versions of history make their rule appear so unusual?”
Build the Map
Imagine a digital map of India.
Move the timeline from 900 CE to 1857.
Queens begin appearing.
Kashmir:
Didda.
Telangana:
Rudrama Devi.
Madhya Pradesh:
Durgavati.
Coastal Karnataka:
Chennabhairadevi.
Ullal:
Abbakka.
Ahmadnagar:
Chand Bibi.
Keladi:
Chennamma.
The Maratha world:
Tarabai.
Malwa:
Ahilyabai.
Sardhana:
Begum Samru.
Kittur:
Chennamma.
Jhansi:
Lakshmibai.
Now the picture changes.
Lakshmibai no longer stands alone.
She becomes the spectacular nineteenth-century continuation of something much older.
Recover the Humans, Not New Goddesses
India has a peculiar habit when confronted with extraordinary women.
We sometimes make them sacred before making them understood.
But these queens do not need temples.
They need archives, biographies, documentaries, films, museums, translations, archaeological preservation, interactive maps, university research and school chapters.
They should be allowed the same privilege routinely granted to male rulers:
to be brilliant and mistaken,
generous and ruthless,
successful and defeated,
strategic and impulsive,
admirable in one decision and questionable in another.
In other words:
human.
Because the greatest compliment history can give these women is not pretending they were goddesses.
It is finally recognising that they were political actors who changed India.
Rani Lakshmibai deserves her statue.
But behind that statue stands an army of forgotten queens.
It is time India learned their names.
