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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 September 2014
In ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives’, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak offered a literary analysis of British records to demonstrate the inextricability of language from the colonial/imperial project's goal of world domination. Honing her arguments on the threat of a Himalayan queen (rani) to ‘become sati’ (i.e. immolate herself), Spivak interpreted the event as representative of the plight of subalterns and of ‘third world women’ in particular. However, a close reading of the records reveals profound discrepancies between Spivak's interpretation and conditions that existed in and around the kingdom at the time. This article contextualizes the rani's story by supplementing archival sources with folk traditions, local histories, and recent research on sati and Rajput women. It shows that the rani was actually an astute ruler, similar to her peers in the West Himalayan elite, and that her threat of suicide resulted from reasons that go beyond an alleged attempt at recovering agency from the dual oppressions of patriarchal indignity and an invasive superpower. The discourses about sati in contemporary texts are also investigated, revealing a considerable overlap in South Asian and European views of sati among Himalayan elites in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century northwest India.
1 Spivak, G. C., ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives’, Theory and History, 24:3, October 1985, pp. 247–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Spivak, G. C., ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1988, pp. 271–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 In this respect, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ is representative of the second phase of the development of the Subaltern Studies movement, in which empirical research gave way to postmodern literary criticism; see Eaton, R., ‘(Re)imag(in)ing Other2ness: A Postmortem for the Postmodern in India’, Journal of World History, 11:1, Spring 2000, pp. 57–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the consequent impoverishment of scholarly debate, exemplified in the failure to distinguish between the analytical categories of ‘colonial’ and ‘imperial’, see ibid, p. 70, fn. 44. For an overview and reproductions of key debates between proponents and opponents of the movement, consult Chaturdevi, V. (ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, Verso, London, 2000Google Scholar.
4 According to Google Scholar, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ has been cited over 9,000 times [accessed 20 July 2014]. The article was revised and combined with ‘The Rani of Sirmur’ in the third chapter of Spivak, G. C., A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 198–311Google Scholar, more on which below.
5 Spivak, ‘Rani of Sirmur’, p. 267. The term ‘Speech Act’ was introduced in Spivak, Postcolonial Reason, p. 273. For the records informing ‘The Rani of Sirmur’, see British Library, Oriental and Indian Office Collections, India Office Records (hereafter IOR), F/4/571/13997.
6 For a prominent example, see Hutchison, J. and Vogel, J.-P., History of the Punjab Hill States(hereafter HPHS), two volumes, Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1999 [1933], Vol. 1, pp. 249, 253Google Scholar.
7 The apex of Pahari miniature painting in this period, which resulted from the protected mountain courts’ patronage of plains-based artists, illustrates this trend; see Goetz, H., ‘The Coming of Muslim Culture in the Panjab Himalaya’ in Jain-Neubauer, J. and Jain, J. (eds), Rajput Art and Architecture, Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1978, pp. 156–66Google Scholar.
8 On the origins and transformations of elite culture in early modern North India, see O’Hanlon, R., ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 42:1, 1999, pp. 47–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotation from p. 71.
9 Forster, G., A Journey From Bengal to England, Through the Northern Part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia, by the Caspian Sea, two volumes, R. Faulder, London, 1798, Vol. 1, p. 202Google Scholar.
10 Gellner, D., ‘Hinduism, Tribalism, and the Position of Women: The Problem of Newar Identity’, Man, New Series, 26:1, March 1991, pp. 105–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 The British officials who first entered the Sirmauri capital further noted that ‘far from flying at the sight of strangers’, its female residents tended to ‘remain and converse, showing no other feeling than the occasional shyness natural to all uneducated women introduced to the presence of persons they never saw before’; Fraser, J. B., Journal of a Tour Through Part of the Snowy Range of the Himala Mountains and to the Sources of the Rivers Jumna and Ganges, Rupa and Co., Delhi, 2008 [1820], pp. 80–81Google Scholar.
12 The text, in the Kahluri dialect, was transcribed and introduced by Bhardvaj, Balakram in Sharma, J. (ed.), Himachal Pradesh ki Lokgathayen (Folktales of Himachal Pradesh), Himachal Academy of Arts, Cultures and Languages, Shimla, 2000, pp. 125–40Google Scholar; my thanks to Amar Nath Walia for help in its translation.
13 Anonymous, Tawarikh wa Jugraphiya Riyasat Bilaspur Kahlur (History and Geography of Bilaspur-Kahlur State (hereafter TJBK), Shimla [1934?], p. 66. A similar etymology is proposed in A. Singh and R. Varma, Bilaspur ki Kahani (The Story of Bilaspur) (hereafter BK), Bilaspur Rajya, 1940, p. 24.
14 The usurper, according to a Kangra scribe, seized Nagardevi's 11 brothers at their father's funeral, had ‘their eyes gouged, but very cruelly, and threw them into a deep and dark gorge . . . where they perished slithering in pain without water and food’; S. Dayal, A. N. Walia (trans.), Twarikh Rajgan-e-Zila Kangra (History of the Rajas of Kangra District) (hereafter TRZK), Himachal Academy of Arts, Cultures and Languages, Shimla, 2001 [1883], p. 28.
15 BK, p. 24; also TJBK, p. 66.
16 Forster, A Journey From Bengal, p. 217.
17 Ibid.
18 In a letter of 1782, Nagardevi cited the opposition's plan to assassinate her son as grounds for seeking protection with a neighbouring raja; see HPHS, Vol. 2, p. 505, fn. 1.
19 The rani's appointee was a bairagi sadhu, an unusual choice that elicited excited responses from the soldiery, which presented its mistress's relationship with the wazir as a love affair transgressing caste boundaries; see Forster, A Journey From Bengal, pp. 217–18.
20 Temple, R. C., The Legends of the Panjab, two volumes, Education Society Press, Bombay, 1884, Vol. 2, pp. 144–47Google Scholar.
21 Despite its brevity, the text conflates fact with fiction to a remarkable extent: the raja of Sirmaur is cast as the then still unborn Fateh Prakash; the Kangra raja joins forces with his enemy, the leader of Bilaspur; and both wage war on ‘Mohan Chand’ (most likely confused with the child raja of Bilaspur, Maha Chand) of Kunhiar, a miniscule polity in today's Shimla Hills; ibid.
22 In the Kangra version, the rani taunts her husband by exclaiming ‘my brother's slaves are as many as your whole army’; ibid, p. 145. The Kahluri jheṛā offers a more poetic version of the same—‘as many soldiers as you have, the same number are my father's horses, which he daily sends grazing at dawn’—that recurs in a later history from Kangra; see Sharma, Lokgathayen, p. 132, and TRZK, p. 30, respectively.
23 IOR F/4/1181/30743 (11), Fateh Prakash to William Murray, 16 February 1827, fo. 16–17.
24 The 14-year-old Jagat Prakash insisted on passing through Bilaspur to attend the marriage ceremony at Kangra. As Sirmaur and Kangra were then (circa 1777) allied against Bilaspur, the young raja effectively fought his way to matrimony and back; see Hamilton, F., An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal and of the Territories Annexed to this Dominion by the House of Gorkha, Archibald Constable and Company, Edinburgh, 1819, pp. 303–04Google Scholar.
25 On the rani's provocation of ‘disturbances throughout the raj’, see IOR F/4/571/13997, Birch to Metcalfe, 6 January 1816, fo. 77–81.
26 IOR F/4/1181/30743 (11), Fateh Prakash to William Murray, [16–22?] February 1827, fo. 17.
27 In 1840s Bashahr, for example, the raja's Garhwali wife was accused of usurping power by introducing servants from her natal state into the administration; see National Archives of India, New Delhi (hereafter NAI), Foreign Department: Political Proceedings, no. 2515, Edwards to Elliot, 23 November 1847, fo. 291–93.
28 Barnes, G. C., Report on the Settlement in the District of Kangra in the Trans-Sutlej States, 1850–52, Hope Press, Lahore, 1862 [1855], p. 83Google Scholar. This view of Rajput society in 1846 Kangra persisted into the next generation, when it was described as being in a state of ‘chaos’; see Rose, H. A., A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab & North-West Frontier Province, Government Printing, Lahore, 1914 [1883], p. 282Google Scholar.
29 Singh, M., History of Mandi State, Times Pr., Lahore, 1930, p. 87Google Scholar. By the 1860s, the Katoch elite's selectivity in marital alliances peaked to the point of requiring British intervention to relax its criteria for marriage with other Rajput families; NAI, Foreign Department, Political Consultations, no. 143, Wood to Canning, 24 December 1861, fo. 1.
30 For the reign of Karm Prakash, see Singh, R., Walia, A. N. (trans.), Sirmaur Riyasat ka Itihas (History of Sirmaur State, originally entitled Tawarikh-e-Sirmur-Riyasat) (hereafter SRI), Himachal Pradesh Academy of Arts, Languages and Cultures, Delhi, 2007 [1912], pp. 222–29.Google Scholar
31 IOR F/4/571/13997, Ochterlony to Adam, 12 June 1815, fo. 19.
32 On the war and its outcomes, see Pemble, J., The Invasion of Nepal: John Company at War, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971Google Scholar.
33 Ochterlony's failed attempt to secure a pension from Calcutta for the Sirmauri royals affords the earliest evidence of his favourable disposition towards the rani; see IOR F/4/425/10403, Ochterlony to Adam, 1 March 1813, fo. 10–13.
34 IOR F/4/571/13997, Ochterlony to Adam, 28 September 1815, fo. 54.
35 On popular opposition to the rani's rule, see ibid, Birch to Metcalfe, 10 February 1816, fo. 97–118. For Ochterlony's assistance in banishing the opposition leader from Nahan, consult IOR F/4/570/13992, Birch to Ochterlony, 12 October 1815, fo. 23–24.
36 IOR F/4/571/13997, Birch to Metcalfe, 20 January1816, fo. 87–89.
37 Ibid, Ochterlony to Birch, 27 September 1815, fo. 59. On the Sirmaur rajas’ links with Trilokpur, see SRI, pp. 182–83.
38 O’Hanlon, R., ‘Recovering the Subject. Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia’, Modern Asian Studies, 22:1, 1988, pp. 189–224Google Scholar, quotation from p. 217. For details of the rani's policies as regent, see A. Moran, ‘Permutations of Rajput Identity in the West Himalayas, c. 1790–1840’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2010, pp. 139–45.
39 IOR F/4/1483/58470, Ochterlony to Rannee of Sirmoor, 13 December 1816, fo. 13–14. Ochterlony's professed intention to restore tracts to the kingdom suffices to counter Spivak's ‘conviction’ that the kingdom's dismemberment was ‘in the cards’; Spivak, ‘Rani of Sirmur’, p. 266.
40 This despite the Company's official deed (sanad) to Nahan, which explicitly forbade the ruler to ‘think of laying claim’ to severed territories; see Aitchison, C. U. (comp.), A Collection of Treatises, Engagements and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, 4th edition, 13 volumes, Superintendent Government Printing, Calcutta, 1909, Vol. 8, p. 317Google Scholar. For the raja's referral to Ochterlony's letter in a petition to the East India Company, see IOR F/4/1483/58470, Rajah of Sirmoor to Clerk, 12 August 1832, fo. 12. For acknowledgement of this document's importance in Sirmauri historiography, consult SRI, p. 243.
41 For the zamindar's appointment, see IOR F/4/571/13998(1), Birch to Metcalfe, 3 March 1816, fo. 179; on the transfer of collection rights to Nahan, consult IOR F/4/1429/56516, Clerk to Prinsep, 10 October 1831, fo. 16; for the renewal of the refractory zamindar's allegiance, see Sirmur State Gazetteer 1934, Indus Publishing Company, Delhi, 1996 [1934], p. 18.
42 Transit duties had risen from 1,000 to 3,000 rupees per annum between 1815 and 1824, reaching 13,735 by 1847; see IOR F/4/1429/56516, Clerk to Prinsep, 10 October 1831, fo. 16–20 (for tax rates in 1815 and 1824, and notes on wood felling and timber traffic), and Aitchison, Collection, Vol. 8, p. 303 (for tax rates in 1847).
43 IOR F/4/1181/30743(11), Metcalfe to Stirling, 21 June 1827, fo. 10.
44 This information was proudly furnished by the raja himself; Davidson, C. J. C., Diary of Travels and Adventures in Upper India: from Bareilly, in Rohilcund, to Hurdwar, and Nahun, in the Himmalaya Mountains, with a Tour in Bundelcund, a Sporting Excursion in the Kingdom of Oude, and a Voyage down the Ganges, 2 volumes, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2004 [1843], Vol. 1, p. 158Google Scholar.
45 IOR F/4/1429/56516, Extract political letter to Bengal, 7 April 1824, fo. 5, citing a letter of 15 January 1820 regarding the settlement of Joobul, and IOR F/4/764, North-West Provinces: Political Department Report, 1 January 1841, fo. 1127–28.
46 The Jubbal ruler reportedly sent 1,000 of his 6–7,000 rupees in annual revenue to Nahan; Jacquemont, V., État Politique et Social de l’Inde du Nord en 1830: extraits de son Journal de Voyage, l’Académie des Sciences Coloniales et la Société de l’Histoire des Colonies Françaises, Paris, 1933, p. 307Google Scholar.
47 The painters who accompanied the Guleri Rani to Nahan upon her marriage are believed to have occupied important positions in government; Vashisht, S. (ed.), Himachal Pradesh ke Dharmik Sansthan (Religious Sites of Himachal Pradesh), Himachal Academy of Arts, Cultures and Languages, Delhi, 2004, p. 89Google Scholar. The existence of similar artist-statesmen in the region, such as Mola Ram of Garhwal, seems to support this claim; see Lal, M., Garhwal Painting, Publication Division, Ministry of Broadcasting and Information, Government of India, New Delhi, 1982 [1968]Google Scholar.
48 On painting in Sirmaur, see Archer, W. G., Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills: A Survey and History of Pahari Miniature Painting, 2 volumes, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1973, Vol. 1, pp. 413–16Google Scholar.
49 The raja's retrospective accusation that his mother had poisoned his favourite (and therefore dangerously influential) wife is further evidence of the Guleri Rani's pervasive influence; see Davidson, Diary, Vol. 1, pp. 167–68.
50 Sirmaur State Gazetteer 1934, p. 18. For details on these marriages, see SRI, pp. 250–51.
51 On barsela stones commemorating satis, see Bindra, P., ‘Memorial Stones in Himachal’ in Settar, S. and Sontheimer, G. (eds), Memorial Stones: A Study of their Origin, Significance and Variety, Institute of Indian Art History, Karnataka University, Dharwad, 1982, pp. 175–82Google Scholar.
52 In recalling the aftermath of the defeat at Chinjhiar, twentieth-century Kahluri elites emphasized the looting of deities from Bilaspur temples, especially that of the deified wife (satimata) of the kingdom's founder; see BK, p. 25. For songs lauding satis in the Shimla hills, see Sharma, Lokgathaen, pp. 168–81. On satimata worship in contemporary Rajasthan, consult Harlan, L., Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, p. 172, fn. 20Google Scholar.
53 The royal household was depleted of additional contenders at the raja's cremation, when ‘twenty-two persons of both sexes burnt themselves along with his body; of these, twelve were females, and three Ranees; one or two of his wuzzeers, and his first chobedar’; Fraser, Journal, p. 250. On the history of Bashahr in this transitory period, see A. Moran, ‘From Mountain Trade to Jungle Politics: The Transformation of Kingship in Bashahr, 1815–1914’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 44:2 (2007), pp. 151–155.
54 IOR F/4/570/13992, Ross [referencing Fraser] to Metcalfe, 6 November 1815, fo. 56–57.
55 Ibid, fo. 58–59.
56 Ibid, fo. 58–60.
57 Like other aspects of Rajput culture, today the notion of honour is central to Pahari women throughout the social spectrum; see Narayan, K., ‘“Honor is Honor, after all”: Silence and Speech in the Life Stories of Women in Kangra, North-West India’ in Arnold, D. and Blackburn, S. (eds), Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004, pp. 227–51Google Scholar.
58 IOR F/4/570/13992, Ross to Metcalfe, 1 April 1816, fo. 110–112.
59 For a nuanced analysis of these debates in Bengal, see Mani, L., Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988Google Scholar. On the history of European reactions to the rite, consult Major, A., Pious Flames: European Encounters with Sati, 1500–1830, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006Google Scholar.
60 Ibid, p. 142.
61 Punjab Government, Punjab Government Records, Vol. 1: Records of the Delhi Residency and Agency, 1807–57, Lahore, Punjab Government Press, 1911, Gerard to Kennedy, 20 November 1824, p. 319. Beyond British territory, sati persisted as before. The death of the raja of Mandi in 1826 thus saw ‘26 ladies of the harem’ join the funeral pyre; Singh, History of Mandi State, p. 93.
62 See, for example, IOR F/4/1483/58471, Kennedy to Fraser, 20 June 1832, fo. 5–7. The last sati in Sirmaur reportedly took place in 1834 (more on this below).
63 The Sirmauri-born widows of the raja of Bilaspur similarly exploited British biases at their husband's death in 1839 to secure hefty pensions from Company officials in exchange for foregoing the rite; IOR F/4/1829/75522, Clerk to Metcalfe, 13 April 1839, fo. 6–7.
64 Mani, Contentious Traditions, p. 190.
65 IOR F/4/571/13997, Birch to Metcalfe, 1 March 1816, fo. 123. For evidence of the raja's appeal to Rajput sensibilities, see ibid, Birch to Metcalfe, 20 January 1816, fo. 86.
66 Spivak notes that Birch may have not ‘read the Rani right’, suggesting she may have ‘merely want[ed] to be with her husband and leave her colonized prison palace’. This hypothesis is then dismissed on the grounds of its forming a crude ‘critical subject-predication’ on the officer's part; Spivak, ‘Rani of Sirmur’, p. 270. The meaning of this argument is, unfortunately, beyond the grasp of this author.
67 Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women, pp. 43–44.
68 Ibid, pp. 44–45.
69 Spivak, Postcolonial Reason, p. 304. On the tendency of post-colonial discourse theory to address issues of immediate concern rather than the historical questions it investigates, see Washbrook, D., ‘Orients and Occidents: Colonial Discourse Theory and the Historiography of the British Empire’ in Winks, R. (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 5: Historiography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, pp. 608–09Google Scholar.
70 Spivak, Postcolonial Reason, p. 198. This important clarification is wanting in the original article of 1985.
71 Ibid, p. 231.
72 Examples include the grouping together of the Kiarda and Dehra Duns as a single valley stretching between Nahan and the Yamuna River, instead of two distinct territories on either side of the latter (ibid, p. 210); the attribution of Birch's comments regarding the remote highlanders of Jaunsar and Bhawar to the bulk of Sirmauri society (ibid, p. 213); the identification of the refractory zamindar noted above (footnote 41) as a member of the ‘House of Sirmur’ instead of the loosely connected subordinate that he actually was (ibid, p. 231); and the dating of the rani's death to 1837 rather than 1827 (ibid, p. 244).
73 Ibid, p. 227. This was more straightforwardly put in Spivak's first and, arguably, more historically inclined version of the article, which sombrely concluded that archival production and indigenous patriarchy render it impossible to find any ‘real Rani’; Spivak, ‘Rani of Sirmur’, p. 271.
74 While Spivak has Birch in continual East India Company service from the age of 16, a contemporary acquaintance reports he was a mercenary with the Marathas before (re)joining the East India Company in 1803; see Spivak, Postcolonial Reason, p. 213, and Fraser, J. B., Military Memoir of Lieut.-Col. James Skinner, C.B., two volumes, Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1851, Vol. 1, p. 307Google Scholar, respectively.
75 Spivak, Postcolonial Reason, p. 212.
76 Ibid, p. 213. For a concise biography, see A. P. Coleman, ‘Ochterlony, Sir David, first baronet (1758–1825)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/20492>, [subscription only]. On Ochterlony's marriages with Indian women, see Dalrymple, W., White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, Flamingo, London, 2003 [2002], pp. 30–31, 382–83Google Scholar; and p. 326, fn, for Mughal influences on his architectural legacy at Lahore. For a trusted first-hand account of the elder Ochterlony as an ‘Eastern Prince’, consult Heber, R., Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825, 4th edition, three volumes, John Murray, London, 1828, Vol. 2, p. 392–93Google Scholar.
77 SRI, p. 251.
78 Ibid, pp. 251–52.
79 Major, A., Sovereignty and Social Reform in India: British Colonialism and the Campaign against Sati in India, 1830–60, Routledge, Abingdon, 2010Google Scholar.
80 Gardner, A. and Pearse, H., Soldier and Traveller: Memoirs of Alexander Gardner Colonel of Artillery in the Service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1898, pp. 249–50Google Scholar.
81 Harlan, Religion and Rajput Women, p. 189. Nowadays, Rajput women similarly tie the future sati's enhanced authority to the abandonment of seclusion, the practical measure that facilitates movement on the battlefield being interpreted as the internalization of the merit accumulated by a lifetime of veiling; ibid, pp. 190–91.
82 Harlan notes a distinction in attitude towards heroines and satimatas, the former being revered while the latter are worshipped; ibid, p. 181. This agrees with the male-centred worldview of Rajput culture, which praises warring women, but ultimately holds sati as the supreme ideal of womanhood.
83 Gardner and Pearse, Soldier and Traveller, p. 71.
84 See Kushwant Singh's introduction in Lawrence, H., Adventures of an Officer in the Service of Runjeet Singh, two volumes, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1975 [1845], Vol. 1, pp. 3–5Google Scholar.
85 The character was probably modelled on Sansar Chand's real daughter, whom Dhyan Singh attempted to marry before settling for the princess of Nurpur, the sati of Gardner's account; see HPHS, Vol. 1, pp. 193–94.
86 Lawrence, Adventures of an Officer, Vol. 2, pp. 113–14. The Rajputni's receptivity to ‘new customs’ is realistically credited to her Pahari origins, which rendered her ‘less fettered by custom and form than the people of the plains’; ibid, p. 169.
