Inside India’s Forgotten Kingdoms: How Velu Nachiyar, Abbakka Chowta and Avantibai Lodhi Defended Their Forts and Challenged Empire Forces Long Bef...

India's history is often narrated through the familiar canon of the 1857 uprising, a moment remembered as the first large-scale resistance against British rule. But long before sepoys marched, rebel leaders

plotted, or tricolour legends were spun into classrooms, a quiet but fierce resistance was already unfolding in forgotten corners of the subcontinent. These were the years when queens—mostly bereft of the comforting advantages of formidable armies and political alliances—held their forts with great bravery. Their stories never really strayed beyond local ballads, but their legacy is strewn around temple inscriptions, Portuguese accounts, and British records that could never quite mask the sting of their defeats. Three of these outstanding women were Velu Nachiyar of Sivaganga, Abbakka Chowta of Ullal, and Avantibai Lodhi of Ramgarh—three leaders separated by regions and centuries, yet united by an unflinching refusal to bow before imperial ambition.

Velu Nachiyar: The First Queen to Wage War Against the British

Decades before the event of “1857” was conceptualized, Velu Nachiyar had announced an independent war for her own sovereignty. Born in 1730 into the royal family of Ramanathapuram, she was trained not as a ceremonial princess but as a strategist and warrior fluent in martial arts, horse riding, archery, and even fencing—a rarity for women of her time. Her marriage to Muthuvaduganatha Thevar positioned her within the Sivaganga kingdom, but British expansion soon struck its first blow. In 1772, when the British East India Company invaded Sivaganga and killed her husband, Velu Nachiyar disappeared into adjoining territories to regroup—not in retreat, but in preparation. During those years, she forged alliances with the Marudhu Brothers, honed intelligence networks, and planned a retaliation that would eventually unnerve Company officers. The most decisive moment of her resistance came when she sent Kuyili, her devoted commander, who carried out one of the earliest recorded suicide missions in India, in which she set fire to a British ammunition depot. Velu Nachiyar regained Sivaganga in 1780, making her the first queen in Indian history to defeat the East India Company. Until almost a decade later, she ruled with an iron sense of justice and unyielding devotion to self-rule—qualities for which she earned praise even in British letters. Today, the ruins of her palace and temple endowments offer faint but powerful testimony to her statecraft.

Abbakka Chowta: The Queen Who Terrified the Portuguese

Further down India's western coastline lived another queen who refused to bend, long before British control had taken shape: Rani Abbakka Chowta of Ullal. While most coastal rulers had begun signing trade concessions with the Portuguese in the 16th century, she held her ground with an obstinate loyalty to her land and people. Abbakka belonged to the Chowta dynasty of Tulu Nadu, a Jain royal family with matrilineal traditions of statecraft. Crowned when young, she forged alliances with neighboring zamorins, Muslim traders, and local Arab sailors in a multi-layered coalition that bewildered Portuguese chroniclers. Her refusal to pay tribute was more than defiance; it was a pronouncement that no foreign flag had a right to claim her harbour. Several attacks were launched by the Portuguese on Ullal, with Abbakka receiving them only to be met with ambushes, night raids, naval guerrilla tactics, and an army led directly by her, who often herself fought on horseback with a lit torch in hand. Her records mention her in their accounts with a mixture of awe and frustration as “the woman who never submitted.” She put up a resistance that lasted more than four decades, something amazing considering the prowess of the Portuguese navy. Even after being betrayed by members of her own family, Abbakka’s legend lived on in folk songs that continue to resound across coastal Karnataka.

Avantibai Lodhi: The Warrior Queen of Ramgarh

By the mid-19th century, when British annexation policies were becoming particularly rigid throughout central India, there arose a rebellion in this small estate called Ramgarh under the leadership of Rani Avantibai Lodhi. Born in 1831 in a Lodhi Rajput family, she became queen after the death of her husband, Raja Vikramaditya Singh. She refused to give up her authority when the British tried to confiscate Ramgarh on the pretext of “misgovernance.” She travelled across villages, rallying farmers, tribal communities, and local chieftains with a charisma that British officers struggled to fathom. Her appeals for resistance were not essentially political, but deep in their emotional appeal—to defend the soil that fed them and the heritage they had inherited. In 1857, she led an armed uprising against British forces in open battle. Her leadership is remembered for its fierce discipline and deep bond with ordinary villagers who stood by her even as the odds grew impossible. When she realised defeat was imminent, Avantibai chose death over capture, taking her own life to protect her honour and prevent the British from claiming symbolic victory. Her tale, though drowned out by bigger names in the year 1857, stays as a beacon of unflinching bravery during an era of falling empires.