#jind kaur

[husn-e-bahar]

Chand-Tikka from the collection of Maharani Jind Kaur (The Last Queen), wife of Maharajah Ranjit Singh (Punjab)

Source: Bonhams

[women-throughout-history]

Maharani Jind Kaur

Maharani Jind Kaur, also known as Rani Jindan, was a significant figure in Sikh history, serving as the last queen of the Sikh Empire from 1843 to 1846. Born in 1817 in Gujranwala, she became the youngest wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire. After Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, Jind Kaur took on the role of regent for her son, Maharaja Duleep Singh. Jind Kaur's reign as regent was marked by political turmoil and conflict with the British East India Company. In 1845, during the First Anglo-Sikh War, she dispatched the Sikh Army to confront the British, leading to the annexation of the entire Punjab in 1849. After her son's dethronement, she faced imprisonment and exile by the British. Despite challenges, Jind Kaur escaped captivity in 1849, disguising herself as a slave girl and finding refuge in Nepal. Her efforts to resist British dominance continued through correspondence with rebels in Punjab and Jammu-Kashmir. She later reunited with her son in Calcutta in 1861, influencing him to return to Sikhism. Jind Kaur's exile took a toll on her health, and she passed away in her sleep on August 1, 1863, in Kensington, England. Denied the opportunity to be cremated in Punjab, her ashes were eventually brought back to India in 1924 and reburied in the Samadhi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore. Despite her challenging life and exile, Maharani Jind Kaur's legacy endures as a symbol of resilience and resistance against colonial rule. In 2009, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Kensal Green Dissenters Chapel, honouring her contributions to Sikh history.

Maharani Jindan Kaur Emerald and Seed Pearl Necklace

Article on the Unveiling of a memorial plaque to Maharani Jindan kaur

Unsung Heroes | History Corner | Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, Ministry of Culture, Government of India

Portrait of maharani Jind Kaur, the wife of maharaja Ranjit Singh, 1863 - George Richmond - Google Arts & Culture

Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to

[city-of-ladies]

From Mai Bhago to Jind Kaur: Remembering the Forgotten Warrior Women of Punjab

From Afghan records to the memoirs of a British general, their bravery has left an indelible mark on history!

“In 1704, the city of Anandpur Sahib (the residence of Guru Gobind Singh) was under relentless siege by the combined forces of the Mughal army and the local hill chieftains. When 40 Sikh followers from her village decided to give up and desert their Guru in adverse battle conditions, deeply distressed Mai Bhago refused to have any of it.

Instead of convincing them to change their minds, she herself suited up in battle armour and rode into the Battle of Khidrana, embarrassing the 40 men into following her example. Under her leadership, the men fought ferociously till their dying breath, forcing the enemy (who were chasing Guru Gobind Singh) to withdraw.

Later, the Guru renamed the forgiven 40 Sikh men chaali mukte (the forty liberated) and the village of Khidrana as Muktsar (the pool of liberation). As for Mai Bhago (the only survivor of the battle), she was so good on the battlefield that he fulfilled her wish to become his bodyguard. Interestingly, Mai Bhago’s weapons can still be found in Sikh museums and Punjab’s Armed Forces Preparatory Institute for Girls has been named after her.”

[moonstarschannel]

Mr. Mrs. Sandhu | Jind Kaur Talking |

[royals-and-quotes]

Powerful Female Rulers in the 19th Century (6 of 12)

Jind Kaur, Maharani of Sikh Empire 

Lived : 1817 – 1 August 1863                                                                               Reign : 1843 - 1846

Maharani Jind Kaur, also popularly known as Maharani Jindan was the youngest wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and the mother of the last Sikh Emperor, Maharaja Duleep Singh. She was renowned for her great beauty and personal charm along with her ‘characteristic strength of a man’ qualities.

Married to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Jind Kaur was Maharani of the Sikh empire -- and the first female freedom fighter in the struggle to outs the British from India. After Ranjit Singh's death, the British annexed the Punjab through bribery and battle. Rani Jinda Kaur's revolutionary speeches and writings rattled the British who imprisoned her in Punjab, Nepal, Calcutta and finally, England, where she died in 1863 at the age of 46. She is credited for sowing the seeds of India's struggle for independence.

[ehmerapunjab]

The woman who terrified the British Empire

On 1 August 1863, shortly after 6:15 in the evening, a frail and partially-blind queen who had spent much of her life raging against the British Empire, died in her bed on the top floor of a Kensington townhouse.

It was a peculiar and remarkably quiet end for a woman once the scourge of the British Raj in India. Only 15 years earlier, Jind Kaur, the Maharani of the Punjab, had encouraged the Sikh Empire to wage two disastrous wars against the British which led to the annexation of the Punjab and Jind being torn from her son when he was just nine-years-old.

Adopted by a dour colonial surgeon, that son, Duleep Singh, swiftly shed his Punjabi customs, converted to Christianity and moved to England to live the life of a respectable country squire, shooting grouse on his estate and hosting decadent parties for Britain’s Victorian elite.

The "Black Prince", as he was known in London, became firm friends with Queen Victoria, only to fall from grace after he was caught trying to persuade Russia to invade India and return his kingdom to him. His tale has been well documented.

But for the first time his mother’s remarkable life has been uncovered by a British historian, Peter Bance, who publishes his findings this week in the book Maharajah Duleep Singh – Sovereign, Squire And Rebel.

While researching a tome on the Duleep Singh family, which lived in exile on a sprawling country estate near Thetford, Norfolk, Mr Bance stumbled upon the gravestone of Jind Kaur in the catacombs of the Kensal Green Dissenters’ Chapel. Historians had assumed that the Maharani’s cremation occurred in India but here was a simple white marble tombstone in London with her name on it.

As cremation was illegal in Britain at the time it appears that the Maharani’s remains were kept in the chapel for nearly a year while Duleep arranged for her to be taken home. The astonishing relic of a person who made no secret of her dislike for the country where she eventually died lay hidden for more than a century.

Mr Bance has dug into who Jind Kaur really was, why she ended up dying in the capital of a country that was once her sworn enemy and how, as her life slipped away in a cold London townhouse, she reawakened her son’s royal heritage and inspired him to take back his lost kingdom.

"It’s an amazing find because Jind Kaur was only buried in Britain for little over year and yet someone went to the trouble of creating this very ornate gravestone for her," says Mr Bance. "The inscription is partly in English and partly in the Sikh Gurmukhi script and what makes it unusual is that very few people in Britain at the time would have been able to translate Gurmukhi, let alone carve it into marble. She is the first documented Sikh woman in Britain."

To say that Jind Kaur was a thorn in the side of the East India Company would be an understatement. She was born into humble origins, the daughter of the Royal Kennel Keeper at the Sikh court in Lahore, but she was ravishingly beautiful and soon caught the attention of the Punjab’s greatest ruler, the one-eyed Ranjit Singh.

Having kept the British at bay for decades, Ranjit’s empire began to crumble with his death in 1839. Following a series of bloody succession battles, Jind emerged as regent for Duleep who was less than a year old when his father died.

Concerned about the instability (and attracted to the kingdom’s fabulous wealth) Britain began preparing to take the Punjab, goading the Sikh armies into two wars that eventually led to the disappearance of an indigenous Asian empire that stretched from the Khyber Pass to Kashmir.

Jind was instrumental in organising the Sikh resistance, rallying her generals to return to battle and plotting rebellion once the British finally took over the Punjab in 1849.

To halt her influence on the young Duleep, the Punjab’s new colonial masters dragged the Queen away from her son and imprisoned her. The British press began a smear campaign against the Maharani, labelling her the "Messalina of the Punjab", portraying her as a licentious seductress who was too rebellious to control.

In a final act of defiance Jind Kaur escaped her jailers dressed as a slave girl and trekked 800 miles to Nepal where she was given begrudging asylum and a place in Sikh folklore as a national hero.

She was only allowed to see her son 13 years later when he returned to Kolkata for a tiger-hunting trip. Duleep asked to bring his mother from Kolkata to England. The British Government decided the last Queen of the Punjab no longer posed a threat and gave him permission.

But a number of historians now believe it was Jind Kaur’s brief reunion with her son in the country she despised that rekindled Duleep’s desire to take back his kingdom.

"In a way she had the last laugh," says Harbinder Singh, director of the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail. "When you look at the life of Duleep Singh the moment where he began to turn his back on Britain and rebel was immediately after meeting his mother. The British assumed that this frail looking woman, who was nearly blind and had lost her looks, was no longer a force to be reckoned with. But she reminded her son of who he was and where his kingdom really lay."

In the end, Duleep’s attempts to persuade the Tsar of Russia to invade India backfired spectacularly because British spies had followed his every move. Publicly humiliated, Duleep lived his final years in a Paris hotel room desperately seeking the forgiveness of Victoria.

"The whole family’s story is desperately tragic," says Mr Bance. "None of Duleep’s children gave birth to an heir and his lineage died out within a generation. But what gives me some comfort is the idea that, just before she died, this frail but formidable woman made him remember who he was."

[ehmerapunjab]

She rose to be a Heroine...

MAHARANI Jind Kaur, popularly addressed as Rani Jindan, was the youngest wife of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Wielding much authority in Punjab, she was known for her beauty as well as strength of will and art of diplomacy.

Maharani Jind Kaur

Mulk Raj Anand, a scholar of eminence, has very aptly remarked: "Rani Jindan, a woman of beauty from a modest household, whom Maharaja Ranjit Singh married late in his life, rose to be a heroine. She resisted the efforts of the British to annexe Punjab for sometime. She came out of the purdah, held durbar with the chiefs of the army, daily took counsel with the nobles, and conducted the State with uncommon commonsense, in some of the most difficult situations facing the kingdom of the Punjab."

On the death of Maharaja Sher Singh in September, 1845, Rani Jindan became Regent for her young son Dalip Singh. She decided on a policy of aggression with the motto, "Throw the snake into your enemy’s bosom." The snake was the powerful Sikh army. It was to be flung upon the British. Thus Rani Jindan planned to avenge the murder of her brother Jawahir Singh. The army entered the war with enthusiasm and fought bravely. It crossed the Sutlej on the December 8, 1845.

Unfortunately, Rani Jindan was distrusted by her men whom she trusted the most. When the treaty of Bharowal was signed in 1846, Rani Jindan was deposed as ‘Regent’ and banished to Sheikhupura near Lahore. Henry Lawrence, a treacherous British Resident at Lahore, not only imprisoned her in the Sheikhupura jail but also dethroned Maharaja Dalip Singh. He first expelled the prince to Fatehgarh fort in Uttar Pradesh, and then to London under the supervision of Dr Login.

From Sheikhupura jail, Rani Jindan was exiled to Benares and then transferred to the old red-stone fort of Chunar in the district of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. Her escape from the Chunar fort astonished the British who found a letter, written by the Rani, at the gate of the fort on April 19, 1849. She had written: "You put me in the cage and locked me up. For all your locks and your sentries, I got out by my magic... I had told you plainly not to push me too hard — but don’t think I ran away, understand well, that I escape by myself unaided... When I quitted the Fort of Chunar I threw down two papers on my gaddi and one I threw on the European charpoy, now don’t imagine, I got out like a thief".

After an arduous journey to Nepal, Prime Minister Jung Bahadur granted her asylum in spite of the objections raised by the British Resident there. She patiently bore her exile and built a Sikh shrine in Kathmandu.

Still longing to see her son, she sent messages to Dalip Singh, who ultimately came to Calcutta to meet her. Both of them sailed to England. When Lady Login came to know of the arrival of Rani Jindan, she became very curious to meet the woman who had faced the British with courage and bravery in Punjab. She expressed her feelings in the following words:

"It was, therefore, with a sense of disillusionment and compassion that, when, accompanied by my three youngest children, after being received with all honour and deference by her attendants, her women ushering me ceremoniously into the large, heavily-curtained room, I found myself in semi-darkness, confronting an aged, half-blind woman, sitting huddled on a heap of cushions on the floor. With health broken and eyesight dimmed, her beauty vanished, and an air of lassitude, it was hard to believe in her former charms of person and of conversation. Yet the moment she grew interested and excited in a subject, unexpected gleams and glimpses, through the haze of indifference, and the torpor of advancing years, revealed the shrewd and plotting brain, of her who had once been known as ‘the Messalina of the Punjab’."

Since a large number of critics raise their eyebrows over the marriage of Rani Jindan with Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was then much older in age, it would be most appropriate here to mention the circumstances in which the wedding took place. It has been confirmed from various sources, including books and the British settlement reports, that Rani Jindan was the daughter of Manna, in charge of the royal kennels of Ranjit Singh. She was endowed with extraordinary beauty and great talent. Her father was a man of much humour and fun who even took liberties with the Maharaja, often rallying him jocularly on the state of his harem, and asking him to make a queen of his little daughter.

Manna used to perch the pretty child on his shoulder, and running alongside the Maharaja’s palki, he would declare the girl was getting burdensome and heavy. At last the Maharaja was persuaded, and said: "Very well, bring her."

The real wives however, became so jealous of her that Ranjit Singh had to send her to Amritsar when 13 years old . He gave her an allowance of Rs 5,000 per month. She was under the charge of Raja Dhyan Singh. He later took her back to Lahore, treated her with great dignity, and ultimately effected the Karewa ceremony between her and Ranjit Singh.

Maharani Jind Kaur died in 1863 with a hope that the kingdom of Punjab would be restored to her son. Paying a tribute to the Maharani, Colonel Alexander Gardener, who was a close associate of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, said: "Maharani Jind Kaur was the most brave queen of Punjab who did the kingdom of Punjab proud."

By: JS Bedi (Tribune)