‘The Last Queen’: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel resurrects the history of Jindan Kaur of Punjab
Fiction is the medium of a saga of a woman that history has not given enough importance to. Jindan Kaur | By George Richmond / Public Domain
When Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni had announced the title of her latest novel on her Facebook page and asked fans to guess who the titular queen could be, the answers had ranged from Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi and Rani Chennamma of Karnataka to the Tuluva queen Abbakka Chowta of Ullal (present day Mangaluru), and even a vague “anyone from the family of Bahadur Shah Zafar”. So the Indian-American author’s decision to bring story of Rani Jindan Kaur of Punjab to the world as the heroine of her latest novel,
Maharani Jindan Kaur - a kennel keeper’s daughter and commoner, who became the youngest and
last queen of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Defying tradition, she stepped outside the palace, cast aside her veil, and fought hard to keep the British from annexing Punjab. A fiercely protective mother, she became regent when her son, Dalip, was barely six-years-old.
The Last Queen, published by HarperCollins,
also brings Maharani Jindan to life – a queen not well-known in history because the British vilified her as a “prostitute, seductress, and the Messalina of Punjab”.
Her love story with the king, her relationships with other queens, her fierce loyalty to the Khalsa, her vulnerabilities in love – the author portrays Maharani Jindan Kaur like no other – making her an inspiration for all generations.