Hidden Women: The Ruling Women of the Rana Dynasty

Greta Rana

Description

Hidden Women are women about whom we know nothing, or very little, so they are shades or shadows in the life of Jung Bahadur Rana who founded the Rana dynasty that ruled Nepal for 104 years. Nothing is written about the women in his life except that against his wishes they committed sati when he was cremated. Strong and independent women, they had influence on him, enjoyed a prominent place in his life, and ironically the one he admired most tried to kill him. It is a novel look at his story, worn out by many Nepali writers, as it is the first time being told through the eyes of the women in his life.
Thoroughly researched, Greta Rana builds together a feasible picture of how women lived and thought, hoped and died in a restrictive feudal society.

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Greta Rana
• Patriarchy
• Biography
• Rana dynasty
• Jang Bahadur
• Royalty
• Royal family
• Nepal
• Non-fiction
• Manorialism
• History of Asia
• Feminism
• Oppression
• Autobiography
• Independence
• HIStory
• Sati

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940463
• Langue: English

Extrait

Greta Rana MBE (awarded Order of the British Empire in 2005) is an author and poet born in Yorkshire, UK. She has been living in Nepal for over forty years. She first ventured into literary fiction in the 1970s after two short genre novels, ‘Nothing Greener’ and ‘Distant hills’ and a popular cliff-hanger written for a weekly newspaper titled ‘Against the Winds of Tomorrow.’ Her work in mountain areas was to provide the themes for her novels as she observed a country left behind and finding transition difficult against the ethnic and cultural divides and the suffering caused by the desperation of poverty in one of the harshest terrains on earth: her insights have also been sharpened by periods living in Laos and Afghanistan and work in and visits to Pakistan’s Northern Areas.

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Greta Rana



© Greta Rana, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Characters and significant events in this book are not fictitious; but personalities, interactions and thoughts, and words are figments of the author’s imagination.
First published in 2012 IndiaInk An imprint of Roli Books Pvt Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 4068 2000 Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail]; Website: rolibooks.com
Also at Bangalore, Chennai, Jaipur, Kolkata, & Mumbai
Cover design: Sanchita Jain Production: Shaji Sahadevan Layout design: Sanjeev Mathpal
ISBN: 978-81-86939-62-8

Contents
Pattharghatta
The Wet Nurse
Kathmandu
Settling In
1817: Jung Bahadur Arrives
The Unthinkable Begins
Interlude in Lahore
The Passing
Hodgson
More than a Pawn
The New Chief Minister
The Hideaway
Chamber of Blood
Gagan’s Curse
The Kot
Power
Hiranya Garbha Kumari
Jung’s Durbar
Taking to the Forest – 1877
Jagat Jung’s Hubris
Through Fire for Him
Epilogue
Sources

1
Pattharghatta
K adam Magar shivered feebly but perceptibly. Age had deprived her of warmth. She should have felt warm enough here in the jungle, but somehow, the grief of losing even the one whom she feared as much as loved made her body cold: her mind was cold too. Her grandson coughed, ‘Grandmother, would you go to the river?’
‘The last one I went to the river for was your father, nearly twenty years ago. He was killed by that one, through his greed – wanted to show he was up to it. Now it’s his turn. Now that should convince them he’s not up to everything.’
‘Grandmother, shush.’ Kadam’s grandson Dev appealed to her, looking around and peering into the trees as if the shadows of the jungle camp hid ghouls that were about to accost them.
‘You want me to be quiet? What do you think they can do to me? But they will do their worst yet, believe me.’
‘Do what grandmother?’
‘Stupid oaf, you’re just like your father. Don’t you understand? It’s not he, the one you all adore so blindly, who can do anything to you now. It’s them, the others. We’ll not be safe afterwards.’
‘We can go back to the village.’
‘What, to your uncle? He’ll like that, having all your brats landing on him. He hates us because he believes he was the one who lost out – no benefit he said, no benefit to me that my mother was Jung Bahadur’s wet nurse. Well, what did he know about his father and that bitch, my mother-in-law? Spoiled he was by all your grandfather’s wives – the barren ones with the one daughter between ’em.’
She fell silent. Her grandson waited. He didn’t know how old she was. Older than anyone he’d ever met. She had been thirteen or fourteen when she came to be the maharajah’s wet nurse, carrying his father, her second born, all the way from Dhulikhel. There was no choice. She had to keep feeding him so that she could feed Jung.
Dev knew her distaste for his father’s elder brother, the one she’d left behind in Dhulikhel. He begrudged them the glamour of Kathmandu, but truly he’d profited – the whole family had profited from his grandmother’s enslavement as a wet nurse. Jung, the corpse that lay by the river now, waiting for cremation, would go nowhere without her as a child – and as a man he needed her attention frequently.
Strange when you considered all the women he’d had. His numerous wives and that strange enigmatic woman, the wife (or widow?) of the Nana sahib: the man who had hidden in Nepal for many years as a saddhu. Perhaps even now the Nana sahib hid in Jung’s mountain estates? Who was to know? They said Jung had wooed the Begum of Oudh – but who knew? Hadn’t he given shelter to Ranjit Singh’s widow when she escaped from a British prison? Jung had braved the displeasure of the British and welcomed her. He’d refused to give her up until she wanted to go, until it was safe for her to go.
‘It’s against our Hindu custom,’ he’d said.
But had she been more than a religious duty for him? Who knew? Perhaps his grandmother knew and wouldn’t say?
The old lady looked as if she was sleeping, but the grandson knew better. The closed, rheumy eyes were thinking. She was a tough old bird and had lived through all the poison and intrigue of the royal Nepali court. She rambled on a bit – said daft things – but when it came to a crisis, she knew best what to do.
The Maharajah hadn’t been well for days, but had insisted on coming here to this swampy spot in the Terai to hunt. He’d not been himself through most of the month: dysentery, fever, sweat – so many demons attacked him at once. His wives had wanted to send for a witch-doctor when the vaidya’s medicine hadn’t worked. It had enraged him. One of those great rages that everyone dreaded- the rage that turned him into a manic devil, although for many years he’d killed only game – not people. In the night his body writhed like that of a madman until he eventually lost consciousness. Dev had been with him – he was his body man – a privilege he enjoyed because he was the wet nurse’s grandson.
Dev was one of the inner circle – hamro manche – our person, as Jung referred to his trusted few.
Dev had anxiously asked him time and again, ‘Shall I ask grandma to make you some medicine?’
‘No, I forbade her to practice when I outlawed witchcraft. I’ll not use her now,’ Jung said.
Jung had died in the chill of a February night. Dev had prepared the corpse and handed everything over to the Brahmins. There was little he could do now. He’d been occupied with the living being, not the lifeless shell. After what seemed like many hours Jung’s youngest brother, Dhir Shumshere, had arrived and taken control – bringing with him the older few of his many sons.
Dev feared the feisty Shumsheres – they had the look of wolves, predators. Once they had put in an appearance, he had sought his grandmother’s counsel.
The old lady stirred now.
‘We’ll wait awhile,’ she droned, ‘but meanwhile have your wife pack what we need and get the kids ready. Tell her we must move in the night when they’re all asleep after the cremation – and quietly. She must impress that on the kids. We may or may not need to go. I’ll be able to tell you that shortly.’
‘We’ll go to Dhulikhel?’
‘So you think Dhulikhel’s far enough away from Kathmandu, do you, you great lummox? No, we’ll go south.’
‘South? But what do we have in India?’
‘Just do as you’re told,’ the grandmother snapped, ‘and do it quietly. Get me something to ride. If that one’s old enough to die, why should I be young enough to walk?’
Dev knew better than to argue. He had no idea where the old lady meant them to go, but he never doubted her wisdom. He wondered what the old lady was waiting to see. An omen, like the white tiger Jung claimed