Story of Rani Chennamma, Kittur queen who stood up to the British

In a highly patriarchal society, she also stands as an enduring feminist symbol, whose memory is often evoked to mobilise women to fight for their rights. Here’s her story.

Context of revolt

Chennamma was born to a Lingayat family on October 23, 1778, in Kagati, a small village in the present-day Belagavi district of Karnataka. At the age of 15, she was married off to Raja Mallasarja of Kittur.

This was a time when the British East India Company was rapidly expanding across the subcontinent, taking direct control of local chiefdoms and princely states, or installing pliant rulers. Soon, Kittur, a relatively tiny princely state, too, would come under increasing pressure from the British.

Chennamma’s problems began with the untimely death of her husband in 1816. Her young son, Shivalingarudra, ascended the throne as vultures circled the kingdom, looking for an opportune moment to snatch power. Then in 1924, Shivalingarudra died, leaving Kittur with a vacant throne.

Fearing that the British would seize the opportunity to take control of Kittur, Chennamma adopted Shivalingappa, the son of a distant relative, declared him as the heir to the throne, and took on responsibilities as a queen-regent. The British rejected Shivalingappa as the legitimate heir, in what would be a precursor to the subsequently introduced Doctrine of Lapse.

(The Doctrine, most associated with Governor General Dalhousie, stated that any Indian princely state under the suzerainty of the Company would be annexed and put under direct British rule if its ruler “manifestly incompetent or died without a male heir”. The Company would use this policy to take control of princely kingdoms across the subcontinent, perhaps most famously, the kingdom of Jhansi in 1853.)

The British decision put Chennamma in a bind: she would have to either let the British simply take over her kingdom, or fight a militarily superior power with little hope for victory. As things panned out, she chose the latter option.

The revolt

With Chennamma refusing to surrender to British rule, John Thackery, the British official at the nearby Dharwad, launched an attack on Kittur in October 1824. Chennamma marshalled her troops with courage and fought back.

“The official British records only state that John Thackeray was killed by the ‘rebels’ on 23 October 1824. Thackeray came out of his tent, and while moving towards the fort, he was shot, ‘receiving a ball in his groin’,” historian Queeny Pradhan wrote in her book, Ranis and the Raj (2022).

The local versions of the story are perhaps even more fascinating. “In the local version, John Thackeray was shot dead in an open area in front of the fort by Amatur Balappa, Rani Chennamma’s trusted bodyguard…Thackeray fell from his horse, and his body was cut to pieces. The popular version in circulation in Kittur is that his beheaded body was dragged to Dharwad and left there,” Pradhan wrote.

Be it as it may, there is a historical consensus that Chennamma convincingly won the first round of the battle. But this victory was short-lived. Soon, a much stronger Madras Regiment force arrived at the doors of the Kittur fort. On December 3, 1824, the British army, under Col Deacon, mounted a fateful attack.

The fort fell on the intervening night of December 3-4, and Chennamma was taken hostage. She would remain in prison till 1829, when she died of ill health.

Memory of the queen

Chennamma’s story is similar to that of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Yet in India’s nationalist historical imagination, the latter has been far more prominent. It is only with the formation of Karnataka, and the coming to the fore of several Lingayat leaders that the memory of Chennamma has been played up at a national stage.

That said, Chennamma has long been featured in folklore and lavanis (folk theatre), which project her as a guardian and a protector.

Pradhan writes: “The folk subverts the silences in the recorded histories… The songs of the janapada have immortalized not just Rani Chennamma, but also Guru Siddhappa, Sangolli Rayanna and Rani Veerawwa (associates of Chennamma).”

Today, Chennamma is invoked in a whole host of contexts, from being a symbol of Kannadiga pride or the Lingayat community, to a feminist icon, who inspires women to continue to fight for their rights.