Flashman and the Mountain of Light

APPENDIX II: Jeendan and Mangla

There is no way of verifying all Flashman's recollections of Maharani Jeendan (Jindan, Chunda) and her court; one can say only that they are entirely consistent with the accounts of reputable contemporary writers. "A strange blend of the prostitute, the tigress, and Machiavelli's Prince", Henry Lawrence called her, and he was right on all three counts. Strikingly beautiful, brave, wanton, and dissipated, a brilliant and unscrupulous politician and a quite shameless exhibitionist, she would have been a darling of the modern tabloid press, who could have invented nothing more sensational than the story of her rise to power, and her exploitation of it.

She was born apparently about 1818, the daughter of Runjeet Singh's kennel-keeper, and for the lurid details of her early life we are indebted to Carmichael Smyth; he had much of his information from Gardner, who knew her well and greatly admired her, and who has left an account of his own. Jeendan's father was a sort of unlicensed jester to Runjeet, and pestered the Maharaja with his daughter, then only a child, suggesting jokingly that she would make a suitable queen. Gardner's version has Runjeet taking her into his harem, "where the little beauty used to gambol and frolic and tease … and managed to captivate him in a way that smote the real wives with jealousy." She was sent to a guardian in Amritsar when she was thirteen, and went through a series of lovers before being brought back to Lahore "to enliven the night scenes of the palace". In 1835 she went through a form of marriage with Runjeet, but continued to take other lovers, with the Maharaja's knowledge and even (according to Smyth) his encouragement—"to give a detail … of scenes acted in the presence of the old Chief himself and at his instigation, would be an outrage on common decency." Not surprisingly, when Dalip was born in 1837, there were doubts about his paternity, but Runjeet was happy to acknowledge him.

After the old Maharaja's death, little is heard of Jeendan until Dalip's accession in 1843 (he was eight, not seven, when Flashman knew him). Thereafter, as Queen Mother and co-regent with her brother, she was occupied with intrigue, pacifying the Khalsa, and what Broadfoot, agog for scandal, called her misconduct and notorious immorality. The Agent said he felt more like a parish constable outside a brothel than a government representative, compared her to Messalina, and was in no doubt that drink and debauchery had turned her mind ("What do you think … of four young fellows changed as they cease to give satisfaction passing every night with the Rani?"). no doubt he was ready to retail all the salacious gossip he ould get, with the implication that such a corrupt regime called out for British intervention, but even allowing for exaggeration there is no doubt that, as Khushwant Singh puts it, the durbar "abandoned itself to the delights of the flesh". And even before her brother's murder Jeendan and her confederates were conspiring to betray the country for their safety and profit; Jawaheer's death was what finally determined her to launch the Khalsa to destruction—"thus did the Rani … plan to avenge her-self on the murderers."

How she did it Flashman recounts fairly and in greater detail than is to be found elsewhere. It was a delicate, dangerous operation which she managed with consider-able skill, and unlike many later war criminals, she got away with it, for a time at least. After the war she continued as Regent until the end of 1846, when under a new treaty the British Resident at Lahore (Lawrence) was given full authority, and Jeendan was pensioned off. She did not take it meekly, and h ad to be removed from court—"dragged out by the hair, in her own words—and kept under guard. Suspected of conspiracy; she was deported from the Punjab—and suddenly, with discontent against the British rising, she was a national heroine, and the darling of the Khalsa again But there was to be no happy return, and when the Second Sikh War ended and Dalip had gone into English exile she followed him. She was only in her mid-forties when she died, in 1863, and her son took her ashes back to India

Mangla (or Mungela) was perhaps a more important influence on the Lahore durbar than Flashman realised. The child of white-slavers, she was born about 1815, and sold by her parents when she was ten. She worked in a brothel at Kangra and was bought by (or ran away with) a munshi, as his concubine, before setting up as a prostitute on her own account in Lahore. She prospered, and became the mistress of one Gulloo Mooskee, a personal attendant of Runjeet Singh's. He passed her on to his nephew, a lover of Jeendan's. This was in 1835, and the two young women began a partnership in intrigue which was to last for many years_ P Mangla became a member of Runjeet's harem, and played a leading role in convincing him that he was the father of Dalip Singh. In the next ten years she made herself indispensable to Jeendan as adviser and go-between, became the lover of Jawaheer Singh, and after his death obtained control of the treasury, adding to her already considerable fortune. Less beautiful than her friend an mistress, Mangla had "a pair of fine hazel eyes of which she could make a most effective use, and an easy, winning carriage and address".

(See Carmichael Smyth, Gardner, Khushwant Singh, Bruce.)

Mary, and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), who wore it at the coronation of her husband, George VI. It is now in her platinum crown in the Tower.

The last male to wear the Koh-i-Noor, little Maharaja Dalip Singh, had his share of misfortune. Deposed and exiled, he saw the great diamond again when it was shown to him by Queen Victoria on his arrival in England, and expressed pleasure that she should wear it. He was sixteen at the time, and unusually handsome, and the Queen (no doubt unaware that one of his relatives was referring to her as "Mrs Fagin") was much taken with him; unfortunately his good looks were not Jeendan's only legacy, for he became a noted libertine, to the Queen's distress, and died, "poor, portly, and promiscuous", in 1893. He is buried in the grounds of his home, Elveden Hall, Suffolk.

(See The Queen's Jewels, by Leslie Field, 1987; Weintraub.)