Mīr Taqī Mīr#Mir
A figure from the books
#Mir
Mīr Taqī Mīr · 1723–1810
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Queen of the Kittur desai state in northern Karnataka; leader of the first armed revolt by an Indian ruler against the East India Company's annexation-by-refused-adoption.
“In 1829 — the very year the Company outlawed the burning of widows — a widowed queen who had beaten its army in the field died in its prison; and her Kuruba commander, a shepherd-caste peasant named Sangolli Rayanna, fought on for two more years and was hanged from a banyan tree. Karnataka has never stopped singing about either of them.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“When the Company declared her adopted heir invalid and moved to swallow her state, she said no — in writing, then in battle. On 23 October 1824 her garrison killed the British collector at her gates, thirty-three years before 1857 and a generation before the policy she fought was even named the Doctrine of Lapse.”
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