Begum Hazrat Mahal

After her husband was exiled to Calcutta and the Indian Rebellion broke out, she made her son, Prince Birjis Qadr, the Wali (ruler) of Awadh, with herself as regent during his minority. However, she was forced to abandon this role after a short reign. By way of Hallaur, she finally found asylum in Nepal, where she died in 1879. Her role in the rebellion has given her a heroine status in the post-colonial history of India.

Biography

Early life

Begum Hazrat Mahal's name was Mohammadi Khanum, and she was born in 1820 at Faizabad, the former capital of Oudh State. She was sold by her parents and became a tawaif by profession. She entered the royal harem as a Khawasin after having been sold to royal agents, where she was promoted to a pari.

She became a Begum after being accepted as a royal concubine of the King of Awadh, the last Tajdaar-e-Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah and became his junior wife. The title 'Hazrat Mahal' was bestowed on her after the birth of their son, Birjis Qadr. In 1856, the British annexed Awadh, and Wajid Ali Shah was exiled to Calcutta. Begum Hazrat Mahal remained in Lucknow with her son and soon took charge of the affairs of the rebel state of Awadh as it entered armed struggle with the British East India Company.

Indian Rebellion of 1857

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Begum Hazrat Mahal's band of supporters including Raja Hanumant Singh, rebelled against the British. The revolutionary forces under the leadership of Raja Jailal Singh seized control of Lucknow, and the Begum took power as the guardian of her young son, Prince Birjis Qadr, whom she had declared as the ruler (Wali) of Awadh. As regent, she automatically came to have a leadership role in the rebellion against the British.

One of the principal complaints of Begum Hazrat Mahal was that the East India Company had casually demolished temples and mosques just to make way for roads. In a proclamation issued during the final days of the revolt, she mocked the British claim to allow freedom of worship:

To eat pigs and drink wine, to bite greased cartridges and to mix pig's fat with sweetmeats, to destroy Hindu and Mussalman temples and mosques on the pretense of making roads, to build churches, to send clergymen into the streets to preach the Christian religion, to institute English schools, and pay people a monthly stipend for learning the English sciences, while the places of worship of Hindus and Mussalmans are to this day entirely neglected; with all this, how can people believe that religion will not be interfered with?

Hazrat Mahal worked in association with Nana Saheb, but later joined the Maulavi of Faizabad in the attack on Shahjahanpur. When the forces under the command of the British re-captured Lucknow and most of Oudh, she was forced to retreat.

Later life

Ultimately, she had to retreat to Nepal, where she was initially refused asylum by the Rana prime minister Jung Bahadur, but was later allowed to stay.

She died there in 1879 and was buried in a nameless grave in the grounds of Kathmandu's Jama Masjid.

After her death, on the occasion of the jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887), the British Government pardoned Birjis Qadr and he was allowed to return home.