'Manikarnika', a movie based on the life of Jhansi's Rani Lakshmibai has hit the screens on Friday. Kangana Ranaut playing the lead role has brought alive the valour and the fearless aggression shown by Rani Lakshmibai against the British during 1857 Mutiny, which many regards as the first battle of Independence.
But three years before that, in 1854, Rani Lakshmibai had appointed an Aussie lawyer John Lang to write a petition to the East India Company against the annexation of Jhansi using the pretense of Doctrine of Lapse. Lang, who in India also worked as a journalist and ran a successful anti-establishment paper 'The Mofussilite' was known for taking on the mighty Britishers. According to a Rediff article, Lang also contributed to Charles Dicken's magazine 'Household Worlds' about his Indian experience.
Lang had won a high-profile case against the Company defending an Indian merchant for which the businessman was reimbursed Rs 50 lakh. That got him an audience with Rani Lakshmibai, an encounter Lang chronicled in his book Wanderings in India. In the course of the conversation, Lakshmibai said the iconic lines, " Main Jhansi nahi doongi", which showed her love for the motherland notwithstanding the grim consequences of taking on the mighty British.
The petition filed by Lang though was summarily rejected in seven days by British who at that time had already taken dim view of the lawyer. PM Modi during his November 2014 trip to Australia handed over the petition written by Lang to then PM Tony Abbott. Alongside the petition, he also gave him collage of pictures which included Lang's marriage certification from a Mussoorie church, a plaque dedicated to the journalist and picture of his grave where he was laid to rest.
Interestingly, according to the Rediff article, author Ruskin Bond was the one who managed to track Lang's grave in Mussoorie over 50 years back, which was lying in an unkempt condition. Bond later wrote a forward for Lang's book which was reprinted.
