ਮਹਾਰਾਣੀ ਜਿੰਦ ਕੌਰਮਹਾਰਾਣੀ ਜਿੰਦ ਕੌਰ

Jind Kaur was born around 1817 in Chachar, also written Chichrianwali, in Gujranwala, the daughter of Manna Singh Aulakh, overseer of the royal kennels at the Lahore court. It was a humble posting, and the family drew little notice at the Darbar until, as the Sikh Encyclopedia records, Manna Singh spoke to Maharaja Ranjit Singh of his daughter's beauty and virtues. Popularly she would be known simply as Rani Jindan.

From the royal kennels to the palace

Maharaja Ranjit Singh married her in 1835, sending his arrow and sword to the village in the traditional ceremony. She was his youngest wife. On 6 September 1838 she gave birth to her only child, Duleep Singh. After Ranjit Singh's death in 1839 the court fell into a cycle of assassinations and intrigue, and mother and son lived in relative obscurity under the care of Raja Dhian Singh at Jammu, far from the centre of power.

Regent at twenty-six

On 16 September 1843, after Maharaja Sher Singh was assassinated, the army proclaimed the five-year-old Duleep Singh sovereign, and Jind Kaur became regent of the Sikh Empire. She moved fast and openly: she cast off her veil, held court in public, reviewed the troops and addressed them, and reconstituted the Supreme Council of the Khalsa. To the army panchayats, the regimental committees that now held real power, she put the question directly: who is the real sovereign, Duleep Singh or Hira Singh? If the former, then the Khalsa should ensure he was not a king with an empty title. The soldiers answered by treating her as Mai Sahib, mother of the Khalsa commonwealth. Her brother Jawahar Singh became wazir, and she set about the regency's problems: feudal chiefs demanding their jagirs back and taxes reduced, soldiers demanding higher pay, and state revenues that no longer covered the cost of the army and the court.

The court's violence reached her own family. Jawahar Singh was killed by the army panchayats on 21 September 1845, in front of his sister, after he was blamed for the secret killing of Kanvar Pashaura Singh, a rival claimant to the throne. The Maharani's grief was public and unrestrained, and still she governed on.

War with the British and the loss of power

In December 1845 the First Anglo-Sikh War began. The Sikhs lost, blaming the treachery of their own commanders, and the Treaty of Lahore of March 1846 left Duleep Singh on the throne with Jind Kaur as regent but under a growing British shadow. In December 1846 the British replaced her with a Council of Regency controlled by their Resident, and settled a pension of 150,000 rupees on her. The empire still had a Maharaja, but its regent had been pushed aside, and everyone in Lahore understood why: she remained the one figure around whom resistance could gather.

Why did the British fear her so much?

British officials called her the rallying point of rebellion, and in British writing she was labelled the Messalina of the Punjab, a hostile tag that her own people never used. The facts behind the fear were simpler. She had commanded the loyalty of the Khalsa army, she kept pressing her son's rights, and she refused to behave like a pensioned widow. In August 1847, after the young Maharaja, at her instigation, refused to invest Tej Singh as Raja of Sialkot, the Resident Henry Lawrence had her imprisoned in the Samman Tower of Lahore Fort, then moved to the fortress at Sheikhupura, and her pension was cut to 48,000 rupees. The hardest blow was separation: her nine-year-old son was taken from her care, and she would not see him again for thirteen and a half years.

Escape to Nepal

In 1848 the British exiled her from Punjab altogether, first to Banaras and then to Chunar Fort, and her jewellery was confiscated. In April 1849 she escaped from Chunar disguised as a servant, travelled some 800 kilometres to Kathmandu, and asked for sanctuary in Nepal. Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana gave her asylum, a residence at Thapathali and an allowance, mainly out of respect for the memory of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, though the British Residency kept a close watch on her through the eleven years she lived there, believing she was still intriguing for a Sikh revival.

Reunion in Calcutta and death in London

By 1860 the British judged her changed, half-blind and no longer a threat, and on 16 January 1861 she was allowed to meet Duleep Singh at Spence's Hotel in Calcutta. Sikh regiments returning from the war in China crowded around the hotel in loyalty, and the Governor-General, Lord Canning, asked Duleep Singh to leave for England with his mother by the next boat. In London she received back the jewellery that had been kept at Benares, and sat for the portrait by George Richmond that shows her wearing the emerald and pearl necklace. She spent her last two years reminding her son of his Sikh heritage and of the empire that had once been his. She died at Kensington on 1 August 1863, was temporarily buried at Kensal Green, cremated at Nashik in 1864, and her ashes were finally carried to Ranjit Singh's samadh at Lahore by her granddaughter, Princess Bamba Sofia Jindan Duleep Singh.