Rani Lakshmi Bai is an iconic figure of the nationalist movement in India. Her fight against the imperialist power has a significant place in the cultural and feminist history of South Asia. She is considered not only a heroine and a great warrior but also a protector of her people in Jhansi. Her pictures on horseback with her son tied to her back and a sword in one hand represent her as an embodiment of feminine power or Shakti. This book uses fictional cinematic and popular representations of the Rani to analyze the convergence of colonial and postcolonial literary historical sexual and cultural imperatives in the figure of this legendary woman.

This book also extends the discussion to what constitutes the gendered subaltern historical archive. By analyzing a range of literary and cinematic texts produced between 1857 and 2007 it tries to understand the various agendas that are at stake in the use of the Rani as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative. There is also an attempt to compare representations of the Rani in both these contexts.

Enslaving masculinity : rape scripts and the erotics of power -- India's Aryan queen : colonial ambivalence and race in the mutiny -- Coherent pasts in Hindi literature and film -- Unmaking the nationalist archive : Gender and Dalit historiography.

"Contributes to an understanding of the various agendas that are at stake in the use of the Rani of Jhansi as a figure of nationalist Indian history and imperial British narrative"--