Since books are meant to be judged by their covers, The Women Who Ruled India: Leaders. Warriors. Icons. by Archana Garodia Gupta immediately shot into my list of favourites, thanks to Sukruti Anah Staneley’s stunning design. This is a book that evokes hushed awe and reverence. Besides, the premise of the book is stunning to say the least.
As the title and the back blurb reveals, this is a collection of the life stories of women who have ruled in the Indian subcontinent down the ages. Women rulers—it is a simple and yet so powerful a concept whose time has come and which stands to inspire millions of women at a difficult time of systemic misogyny. Women stand to reclaim the rightful place in history via these tales of empowerment in ancient or medieval times that legitimise our own aspirations. I loved the concept!
A word of warning though, history is not really for dilettantes. It requires a deep love of the subject, exhaustive research and a large community of go-to experts to guide one’s learning to write with any degree of authenticity. And most importantly, the retelling of history requires the skill and the imagination of a fiction writer to bring the prose alive.
In an effort to retain a scholarly flavour the writing here tends towards the dryness of textbooks—the reason why most of us have never learnt to love history in school. There is much to relate about the past, much material to choose from and it is somewhat of a reduction when all is bypassed for a dispirited recitation of dates and rulers, dynasties and exhaustive lists of kingdoms circa the same century. What these pages hold is faint history and biography in a collection of facts barely stitched together to form a brief chapter.
That said, historical research in India is tougher than a similar enterprise in the West where much documentation and research remains accessible. Here facts have to be pieced together through lore, unreliable sources and contradictions. Even so, most of the writings on these female historical figures seem based on scant material.
What perhaps seems at complete odds with the intellectual quest of this project is how every queen is elaborated upon against the backdrop of maleness: the illustrious father, husband or son and tracing immediately the male successor as if her reign was an aberration.
The triumph of this book is in the selection of interesting women from history, an arc that includes names we shall never forget as well as a few we know too little of: Didda, Razia Sultan, Rani Karnavati, Ahalyabai Holkar, Begum Samru and Kittur Rani Chenamma. As an introduction to female historical figures, the book addresses a significant lacuna in our knowledge of the past. This is a perfect gift for the young of either gender as a first look at what our history books have habitually glossed over. The addition of factoids from each era adds to the book’s readability factor.
The Women Who
Ruled India
By: Archana Garodia Gupta
Publisher: Hachette
Pages: 328
Price: `499