History's Youngest Heroes: Rani Lakshmi Bai: The Warrior Queen

History's Heroes

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 704 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When her kingdom is threatened, a 22-year-old Indian woman takes on the British Empire on horseback, with a sword in each hand.

Nicola Coughlan shines a light on extraordinary young people from across history. Join her for 12 stories of rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth.

A BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Producer: Suniti Somaiya Edit Producer: Melvin Rickarby Assistant Producer: Lorna Reader Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Alex von Tunzelmann Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Did you know that you can listen to many of your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds?
0:07.0	Like, you're dead to me, where you can hear the latest episode 28 days earlier.
0:11.6	So catch it before it becomes history.
0:14.6	Good things come to those who don't wait.
0:16.4	Listen to your favourite podcasts first on BBC Sounds.
0:21.7	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:26.9	Gangadar Rao, the Raja, or king of Jansi, lay in his bedchamber.
0:32.9	He was gravely ill.
0:35.7	Around him, priests recited prayers. A servant was sent to fetch water from the Holy River Ganges.
0:43.2	His young wife, Lakshmi Bai, waited in an adjacent room. As a woman and also as a young queen,
0:50.6	she would have been kept out of these kinds of proceedings.
0:56.2	It was November 1853.
1:03.2	For days, Lakshmi Bai had watched important people hurry in and out of her husband's room.
1:08.2	She hugged her young adopted son and thought back to her wedding day.
1:12.6	When she married, she had been a child herself. Now, palace life was all she knew.
1:15.6	But with the Raj's life and the balance, Lakshmi Bai could lose everything.
1:21.6	Her title of Rani or queen, her throne, even her son. The noise from the next room became louder.
1:33.9	Verses and prayers and mantras that help release a soul from earth, they are also trying to
1:41.0	bless the young adopted son as the next king of Jansi.
1:45.9	As the Raja drew his last breaths, the kingdom itself was under threat from the British East India Company.
1:53.0	Rani Lakshmi Bai knew the company could take Jansi from her.
1:59.6	At the age of just 22, she was about to fight the battle of her life.
	...

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