Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Rani Lakshmi Bai Of Jhansi: A Study In Indian Patriotic Memory, Elise Wixtrom

Phi Alpha Theta Conference at Taylor University

Since the national Indian Independence movement of the 1940s, the Sepoy Mutiny has been ubiquitous as a romantic nationalist symbol. Among those immortalized by the Sepoy Mutiny is Rani Lakshmi Bai of of Jhansi, queen of the city of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. Her holding, passed on by her late husband, was threatened by British rule under ascendancy laws.1 Due to her tenuous position, Lakshmi Bai eventually joined the Indian rebels, becoming a recognizable heroine in folk tales and British imagination alike. Her image, formed by the Indian Independence movement of the 1940s, has many fictional iterations. Most, if not …