Begum Samru's enchanting life story, from courtesan to Catholic queen of Sardhana

Begum Samru was the only Catholic ruler in Hindustan long before the British strengthened their grip She ruled Sardhana, her jaagir in present-day Meerut, from the late 18th to the early 19th century Before she became Begum Samru, she was called Farzana, and had been sold as a sex slave by her mother, a Chauri bazaar tawaifWhen she was 14, Farzana was picked up from a brothel by a German mercenary soldier named Walter Balthazar ReinhardtFarzana became Reinhardt’s consort and the lucky mascot of his growing armyAfter Reinhardt’s death, she took over his estate in Sardhana, as well as his army and became a formidable military rulerShe was Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II’s favourite and had saved his life three timesShe was almost killed by her own troops for marrying a French soldier whom everyone despisedShe converted to Catholicism and built one of the most beautiful churches in North India, among other monumentsEp 1: Begum Samru’s enchanting life story, from courtesan to Catholic queen of SardhanaIn this dramatized podcast series, we bring to you the tumultuous and enchanting life story of Meerut’s Begum Samru --- from her early years as a consort to a formidable German Catholic mercenary, to her rise as a ruthless military commander, an astute diplomat and a benevolent monarch to her subjects in the jaagir of Sardhana. Yes, she was indeed a queen. Born in the 1750s, she was the only known Catholic ruler in Hindustan well before the British East India Company took over the country’s reigns from a dithering, dying Mughal Empire. Wo gardi ka waqt tha…those were troubled times…Mughal emperor Shah Alam the second had inherited a Delhi that was a picture of plunder and ruin. Afghan rulers Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali had already weakened the empire with repeated attacks… In these dangerous times, Farzana and her mother Zeldah were living off the streets, barely making ends meet. Courtesan Khanum jaan’s picking them up from the bylanes of Chauri Bazaar was like an act of providence.Eminent British historian John Keay describes her childhood as one mired by extreme poverty and exploitation. He says Farzana was the daughter of a naach woman, a dancer who had been taken into his house by a man called Latafat Khan. They lived north of Delhi, in Punjab. Latafat Khan died when Farzana was about six years old and her mother was then without any support. Latafat’s other wives inherited whatever he had and Farzana and her mother were set loose and she went back to where she had originally come from, to Delhi’s Chauri Bazaar where she had been a courtesan. “Farzana, the future Begum Samru was brought up as a kind of child of the street. And when her mother was having hard times --- which she did, she had very little income, she just got whatever she was paid for dancing --- she sold her daughter as a kind of a sex slave at the age of about ten or twelve to one of these houses of ill repute, brothels. That’s where Farzana spent her youth until in the 1760s, she was purchased by a mercenary commander, a military leader called Walter Reinhardt. And that’s when her serious career really began,” shares John. John specialises in India’s popular histories, especially on its exploration by Europeans. His first wife, the late historian Julia Keay, had written an exhaustive biography titled Farzana: The tempestuous life and times of Begum Sumru. John and Julia had done quite a lot of the book’s research together, travelling around the sites made famous by the begum. Julia passed away after the book’s first draft was done.How a forty-something mercenary met the Lolita of his lifeIt was in the 1760s that German mercenary Walter Balthazar Reinhardt pushed into old Delhi with blood on his hands. He had slaughtered around 200 British soldiers held hostage, under the Nawab of Bengal Mir Quasim’s orders, in what came to be called the Patna Massacre, which earned him the notorious epithet, the Butcher of Patna. He was looking for refuge in Delhi, and an escape from British retribution…. Reinhardt was by then in his mid-forties, a much-married man with a son. He and his troop of around 2,000 mercenary soldiers were then an auxiliary force for Jat Maharaja Jawahar Singh, who had stormed Delhi to take on the Mughal empire. The Chauri Bazaar kothas were the only source of solace for all the war-worn foreign mercenaries who were thousands of miles away from home, including Reinhardt. And Farzana was a nymphet, about 14 years old then, freshly trained in the charms of the trade…The tawaifs of the time were tutored in thumris, ghazals and the classical dance form of Kathak to entertain and endear their patrons. Almost all of these dancing girls were plucked out of penury as mere children, and taught the art of seduction well before they even knew what that meant. Farzana was a slip of a girl, only about four foot eight inches tall. But she had large eyes, an enticing smile and ready wit on her lips --- all of this enough to attract any man. John Keay says Reinhardt may have been rewarded with Farzana as part of a larger settlement between the Mughals and the Jats, when the Jats beat a hasty retreat after their forces depleted in Delhi. There are various versions of how they ended up together. John Lall, another of Begum Samru’s biographers, wrote that she was purchased by Reinhardt from the kotha for a handful of gold mohurs. Some say he fell in love with her, some say she won his heart. But this love was far from one-sided, despite Rienhardt’s reputation as a boorish, saturnine character who owed allegiance to nobody.Except Farzana, off course. John shares what drew him to his little Lolita, “He was obviously besotted by her, but she also had extraordinary characteristics. She was apparently fearless. She was very, very small, she was a great entertainer, a great raconteur. She endeared herself, not only to Reinhardt, the commander of this mercenary army, but also to his officers. Purely on the strength of her own extraordinary character, she managed to inveigle her way into an important role within one of the major mercenary armies fighting around Delhi in the 1760s and Seventies.”Farzana became the mascot of Reinhardt’s army of mercenaries and learnt the art of war and strategizing along the way. No one’s really sure if they ever got married, but historians suggest that they didn’t. Marriage would have put her in purdah, as was the custom during that time. But she merrily went on all of Reinhardt’s military adventures, a little gypsy girl riding a pony and sleeping under the stars with the soldiers, unabashed…untamed…By the time she was twenty, Farzana had become indispensable to Reinhardt and his men. Julia Key writes in her book, “That a teenage girl with no military experience might have influenced tactics on the battlefield seems doubtful, but her energy and her eagerness to learn acted as a tonic to the ageing mercenary and had a remarkable effect on the morale of his notoriously insubordinate troops.”Indeed, Farzana took mental note of every little detail. Unknown to herself and to Reinhardt, she was being apprenticed for a bigger military role, that of the commander of Reinhardt’s army, once he was gone… How Farzana became Begum Samru, and how she lost her companion Reinhardt had adopted the name Somers during the summer of 1756 to cover his tracks as a French serviceman while looking to enlist himself with the British East India Company in Calcutta. But, within three weeks, he had changed tack to re-enlist with the French at Chandannagar. By the time the French battalion were pounded by the British in the run up to the Battle of Plassey in 1757, Reinhardt had again switched sides to fight for Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah. We know how the nawab was murdered during that war. Reinhardt was out of a job again. So, he went back to Chandannagar, changing his name to Sombre this time. But for Indians, he would be known as Samru from then on. And once Farzana became his companion, she would be known as Samru ki Begum. Reinhardt and his begum had been quite content in Agra under the patronage of the Jats till the beginning of the 1770s. After the Jats were defeated by Shah Alam II’s commander-in-chief Mirza Najaf Khan during the Battle of Barsana in 1773, Reinhardt and his army promptly switched sides again to offer their services to the Mughal Emperor. So, around a decade after leaving Delhi with Reinhardt, Farzana was back at the Mughal seat of power. This time, not as a tawaif, but as the companion of a formidable military general who was much valued by the emperor himself. From the slums of Chauri Bazaar, she had now gained access right into the Red Fort. Julia Keay writes that Delhi had been her playground and prison for nine years; not for another nine years would she see it again, and then from a curtained cortege as an acknowledged ‘begum’ of beauty and consequence. Fairy tales come no better…Reinhardt was given the jaagir of Sardhana, an 800 square miles area of fertile land near modern-day Meerut, a mere 30 miles from Farzana’s birthplace, Kutana. She obligingly took over the estate’s administration. Shah Alam II even offered Reinhardt the governorship of Agra, now recaptured from the Jats. They set up home there again and ruled the Mughal city for a good winter.But Farzana’s story was not all fairy tale of rags to riches. Reinhardt took to his bed in 1778 and his subsequent death rattled her idyllic world. She barely had time to grieve as she was thrown back into a life of uncertainty. Her identity as Samru ki Begum was slipping away…Sardhana was slipping away… Reinhardt’s army was slipping away….She had to steel herself and consolidate her position. By then, she had become a favourite with emperor Shah Alam II, and used that influence to her advantage, wresting ownership of Reinhardt’s jaagir, his army and his social stature from a philandering step-son named Louis Balthazar, who was Reinhardt’s only heir.Thus began her independent career spanning more than five decades as a shrewd diplomat, a ruthless military commander and a revered queen of Sardhana. Thus began the life and times of Begum Samru…In the next episode, we trace the Begum’s conversion to Christianity and her rise as a formidable military commander-in-chief.Anchor: Pallavi Bharti, Jasleen Bhalla, Surjan Singh, and Sanyam SharmaAudio production: Anil Chauhan 108033496Ep 2: Begum Samru: The Mughal emperor’s beloved ‘daughter’This is the second part of the dramatized podcast series on the tumultuous and enchanting life story of Meerut’s Begum Samru.The begum got baptized into the Catholic order in 1781, a good three years after her companion and military commander Walter Reinhardt’s death, and just a few days after his body was entombed in keeping with Catholic rituals at Agra’s Catholic cemetery.The Agra Catholic mission had closed down in 1773. So, when Reinhardt died in 1778, there had been no priest to bury him in accordance with his faith. He had been laid to rest in the garden of his Agra home.But when the Agra mission re-established itself three years later, Begum Samru took no time to approach Father Gregorio for a proper burial of her partner, mentor, guardian --- the man who made her queen. Reinhardt’s onion-domed tomb still stands as a spectacle in the Agra cemetery today. Why did Begum Samru become a Catholic?There have been several theories as to why Begum Samru chose to convert to Catholicism after Reinhardt’s death, and not before. Several questions have done the rounds.With the British forces inching closer and closer to Delhi, did she feel a conversion will keep her political options open? Well, not quite. She never really did sing to British tunes. Even when the East India Company finally took over Delhi in the beginning of the nineteenth century, she ensured that Sardhana and its begum were left alone, threatening to collude with the dreaded Sikhs if the British tried to take her territory.Did she think a Catholic military commander would be more acceptable to Reinhardt’s troops, a motley bunch of unruly Europeans and Indians loathe to take commands from a woman?Reinhardt’s army of men, now known as the Sardhana Brigade, had always been an extended family for her ever since Farzana’s carefree days as a child-woman accompanying Reinhardt and his troops for numerous battles. The men had seen her grow up; they were all too familiar with her sharp tongue. And she knew their darkest secrets. She was the brigade’s mascot, its good-luck charm. The men knew she had their best interests in mind and accepted her leadership in a heartbeat. And Begun Samru hadn’t even turned Catholic then. Did she embrace Christianity to dodge the societal shackles a lone Muslim woman would be subject to during those times? Now that could be a plausible reason. She was by now a princess in her own right and needed to negotiate with the Mughal court to keep her position. A woman performing a man’s role, that too, a Muslim woman, came with its own set of shackles from which she wanted to break free. Begum Samru was too independent a woman to be brow-beated into submission. And Catholicism was her ticket to freedom.Historian John Keay feels Father Gregorio, the lone priest in the Agra mission, had his own part to play in persuading Begum Samru to convert, soon after Reinhardt’s proper burial. “Obviously there were good reasons to why she might have wanted to do so. But it may be that --- after having spent so much of her time with Catholic officers and with Reinhardt, a Catholic himself --- she was actually attracted by the idea of conversion, regardless of what the theology was. She was a loose kind of Catholic. But she did forge a, a useful relationship with the Vatican. When she became a Catholic, she adopted the name of Joanna, and we thought this was really Jeanne d’Arc, that she was actually adopting and identifying with the great French Warrior. She had herself christened as Joanna, but she never really used her name very much. All those who knew her, knew her as Begum Samru rather than Joanna,” he says.At that time, the Vatican had actually sent a papal envoy to Sardhana to advise her on how to conduct herself as a Catholic ruler and also to encourage her in the construction of a spectacular church in Sardhana, which she built. “She took some pride in her Christianity, but she certainly wouldn’t have been considered a very Orthodox Catholic. I think probably the political reasons for becoming a Christian were what would’ve appealed most strongly to her,” John surmises. How the begum took the reins of the unruly Sardhana BrigadeReinhardt’s death had forced Begum Samru to grow up overnight. She had a growing estate to govern and a rather unruly army to command. Julia Keay calls the mercenaries drunken scoundrels in her book titled Farzana: The tempestuous life and times of Begum Sumru, and says they needed a leader who inspired fear and awe, not just a beguiling princess.She had managed to wrest ownership of Reinhardt’s army by using her personal charms on the troops acting commander Colonel Pauli. But in order to keep the army on a short leash, she needed to rule with an iron hand. She took Colonel Pauli as a lover, but didn’t let him become her master.One instance of her ruthlessness has been recounted by an old Persian merchant whose mother had been a member of the Begum’s household in Agra. The merchant recalled how two slave girls had set fire to one of her houses in order to elope with those guarding the place.The house had quite a bit of the begum’s valuables, apart from the wives and children of a few of her officers. The fire had resulted in massive loss of property. So, a lesson had to be taught.The girls were rounded up from the bazaars and brought before Begum Samru’s tent. Their crime was proved in no time, and they were flogged till unconscious. Just as her subjects gathered around thought justice was meted out, the begum had a pit dug outside her tent.The unconscious girls were dumped into the pit and buried alive…This act suitably stunned her soldiers as well, who had perhaps been under the notion that a young, good-looking woman would be most pliant as a military commander. She didn’t have to worry about their obedience, or obeisance after that.Begum Samru, Mughal emperor Shah Alam II’s human shieldThe begum and her brigade’s primary responsibility was to defend Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II’s territory and honour. And till the time the emperor was alive, she tried her best to do that. John Keay elaborates:“She never had any kind of sexual relationship with the Mughal emperor, but he certainly looked on her as a kind of surrogate daughter. He called her his daughter sometimes. So, she used what charms and what attributes she had to maximum effect. At one point, the Mughal emperor was captured by a Rohilla Afghan chief, held prisoner at the Red Fort in Delhi, humiliated and in the end, blinded by him. At that time, it would’ve suited Farzana Begum Samru’s cause if she had actually deserted the emperor, as there was nothing much she could do for him. But she remained totally faithful to him all along.”Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir had first entered the Red Fort with devious designs after the emperor’s Maratha commander-in-chief, Mahadji Scindia, had marched out with a bulk of the imperial army towards the desert lands of the Rajputs. Scindia was to confront the Rajput kings of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur for refusing to pay their monetary tributes to Shah Alam II.The diabolical Qadir used this window of opportunity to claim the commander-in-chief’s position for himself. And the jittery emperor was forced to entertain him in his court, while shooting off urgent messages seeking aid from all quarters, including Begum Samru. None but the begum answered his call for help.Within two days, two thousand sepoys and fifty mounted European officers had assembled at the fort’s gate, armed to the teeth. The begum herself was at the helm, suitably armed. Qadir’s army was inaccessible, camped on the other side of the Jamuna river. So, he was in no position to contest the strength of the Sardhana Brigade.He offered to parley with the begum, trying to entice her with the assurance of an equal share of the spoils, and even proposed marriage. The begum fumed in anger at his overtures, and her troops took position inside the Red Fort. She made it clear once and for all --- she was here to protect the emperor, and she would die doing so, if needed. Qadir slunk back to his camp across the river. Soon after, his cannonades were deftly countered by Begum Samru’s artillery till more troops came to the emperor’s aid. Ghulam Qadir beat a hasty retreat. He would wait two odd years before striking at the heart of Mughal India again, this time, gouging its eyes out. Begum Samru and her formidable army is said to have saved the Mughal Emperor’s life three times, which earned her several titles from the Mughal court, the most notable of them being Zeb-un-nissa, which meant she was a jewel among women.And by the time she received this imperial favour, she had by her side a towering young Irishman named George Thomas. “The most famous of all her lovers, I suppose, was that man, George Thomas,” says John Keay, adding, “Thomas was Irish. First of all, he was a giant to a man. They must have made an extraordinary couple together. Farzana never grew to more than 4 foot 8 inches. Thomas was a giant with a great red beard and tremendous appetite for life and drink and war, a kind of legendary figure. At one point of time, he was clearly her lover. I don’t think they ever got married. But they certainly spent quite a lot of time together campaigning in Rajasthan and outside Delhi. Eventually they fell out and parted company. And Thomas then went on to have quite a distinguished career as a mercenary in his own right.”John mentions that throughout her career as a military ruler, Begum Samru had a string of lovers and liaisons. It was par for the course in those days, and any ambitious woman in her situation would have probably done the same thing. She ensured that her lovers stayed loyal, but she didn’t let herself be too swayed by them.Well, except for one almost fatal mistake, when she decided to get married to a French officer whom her entire army loathed. It was George Thomas who had saved her from her army’s wrath then, despite their differences. George proved to be the only person after Rienhardt who had really loved her.This was the second part of a podcast series on Begum Samru, the Catholic queen of Sardhana. In the next episode, we talk about how unlucky marriage proved to be for the begum, and how she reinvented herself as a benevolent ruler and builder of one of the most magnificent churches in Northern India, which later became a minor basilica. The church music used in the podcast has been composed by Noel Malekar.Voices: Pallavi Bharti, Jasleen Bhalla, Sanyam Sharma, and Vasundhra BoseAudio production: Anil Chauhan 108033797Ep 3: Begum Samru: Benevolent ruler and builder of the only basilica in IndiaThis is the third and final part of a dramatized podcast series on the tumultuous and enchanting life story of Meerut’s Begum Samru, the only known Catholic ruler in India.The sun scorched down upon the spreadeagled commander-in-chief of the Sardhana Brigade as her mutinous troops inflicted unimaginable atrocities upon her dead French husband, Pierre Antoine Levassoult, right in front of her eyes. All of this, on the orders of her first lover Walter Reinhardt’s son, Louis Balthazar, from whom she had taken away Sardhana and its soldiers after his father’s death.This was the first and only time her troops had mutinied against the begum, because she had married a man who was loathed by each and every one of her soldiers for his unsufferable ways.An Irish knight in shining armour comes to rescue his damsel in distressThe begum had been tied to the gun carriage and left to die, with express instructions not to be given food or water, or any succor to her wound. But she still had a fair bit of fight left in her… this wasn’t the end yet. Thanks to a faithful maid, who risked her life to bring the begum food and water in the dead of night, Begum Samru was able to call for help.The begum’s biographer Julia Keay describes her plight in Farzana: The tempestuous life and times of Begum Sumru. She writes:Her situation looked desperate; her career was in ruins, her life in the balance. Yet she was never one to despair. She had escaped the brothels of Chauri Bazaar, weathered Reinhardt’s death, kept the brigade together, rescued the emperor and propped up his tottering empire. She was not going to be defeated by the wretched Louis Balthazar. On the very first night of her ordeal, she had whispered instructions to her maid servant to send for George Thomas…. And the Irishman came galloping back to save his damsel in distress. George Thomas was the one man who still commanded the entire Sardhana Brigade’s attention and respect. It took him no time to oust the rogue Louis Balthazar, chastise the already repentant troops, and reinstate the queen to her throne. All without showing her his face. By the time Begum Samru had been nursed back to health, he had disappeared into the sunset, true to the spirit of a lost lover.She made a really disastrous decision to actually marry a French officer who had entered her service called Levassoult,” says historian John Keay, adding, “Levassoult was kind of a dandy really, and he was totally ostracized by all her other commanders. So, she found herself and her husband sidelined by the brigade itself. And this resulted in a dramatic, almost Italian opera-like escape when she and Levassoult are exiled by their own officers and driven away from Sardhana. They are overtaken, overpowered, and shots are fired. It transpires that Levassoult and Farzana had signed a joint suicide pact, and when Levassoult saw what he thought was the bloodstained shawl of Farzana, he assumed she had played her part in this suicide act, and had taken her own life.”Levassoult then put his revolver in his mouth and fired, killing himself and keeping his side of the bargain. But John wonders whether Farzana actually honoured the pact because she wasn’t wounded so badly that she was in any great danger. In fact, it was quite possible that Begum Samru staged the suicide to get rid of a husband who was stifling her in every way. Despite parallels being drawn to Romeo and Juliet, Begum Samru and Levassoult’s love story was one from which the begum was desperately trying to flee.For Levassoult had begun taking crucial decisions for the Sardhana Brigade on her behalf, even shooting off a letter to the British East India company in Begum Samru’s name, saying she wanted to retire and spend the rest of her days under the company’s protection.Such high-handedness had to be nipped in the bud. Besides, Levassoult’s antics were alienating her from her one true family --- the brigade. The begum was too proud to admit that this marriage was a mistake. In all probability, she had married Levassoult to spite George Thomas. George knew the begum the best, and was convinced that the suicide pact was a charade to take care of the obstacle Levassoult had become.Never to marry again, begum shifts to estate managementSuitably chastened and reinstated to Sardhana’s throne by George Thomas, Begum Samru vowed never to tread the marriage path again. Instead, she devoted her energies to reinventing herself as a benevolent ruler to her subjects in Sardhana, the builder of grand palaces and one of the most magnificent churches in Northern India, which later became a minor basilica. Amit Pathak, a historian from Meerut, says Begum Samru’s true legacy lies in the monuments she created and the way she treated her subjects. “She’s remembered for the buildings she made and, even today, the heart of Meerut is Begum Pul, which is named after a bridge she built on the Abu Nala,” shares Amit, saying “Her memory is still alive in the descendants of the villagers who had known her. I know of her benevolence through a village close to Sardhana whose Jat residents even today state that when they came down to Meerut from Sonipat, it was the begum who gave them land to establish their houses and start farming.”Amit speaks of her benevolence being known in wider tracks throughout the lands that she ruled. When it came to revenue collection, she always made sure the amount of revenue collected from the farmers depended on the rainfall during that year. The drier the year, the revenue collected would be lesser. And when there would be a bounty, the revenue collected would increase accordingly. She never put a burden on the people, never forced her ideas, her ideologies, and her power on the people whom she ruled.Historian John Keay calls Begum Samru an extremely progressive ruler who devoted a major part of her time to improving the lot of her subjects, her tenants, her peasant farmers. Sardhana became like a showpiece for the British to admire when they arrived lock, stock and barrel to Delhi in the early 1800s.From a warrior princess, Begum Samru turned into a queen of diplomacy, gliding with equal ease between the Mughal courts and the British power circles. She was a novelty of sorts for keeping mixed company. She kept to her veil while parlaying with the Mughals, but embraced the European ways while she kept British company.Amit explains, “Begum Samru was not just smart in court or in politics. But she understood the social intricacies of her time and played all galleries perfectly, including, sometimes, one gallery against the other to her advantage.”Begum Samru’s jaagir was always in bounty. She introduced various crops, which hadn’t been grown in Sardhana before. It was a model piece of estate management. Even now, when it’s been broken down into individually owned and farmed plots, it’s still impressively productive, compared to a lot of the adjoining areas, says John.Apart from her ever-growing brigade that numbered more than 6,000, she took care of their families, arranging for comfortable pensions for her retired soldiers and their kin, and also provided for all those residing in Sardhana. So, a total of 20,000 people now counted as her subjects. After the death of George Thomas in 1802, she took his family under her wing. His children were educated and well looked after and two of George’s sons even joined the Sardhana Brigade.The Basilica of Our lady of Graces, Begum Samru’s most prized projectDuring this relatively less volatile phase of her life, Begum Samru took to architecture. The St Mary’s Church in Sardhana is the most spectacular among her achievements and was built on the insistence of Father Gregorio, who had baptized her. She spent nearly Rs 4 lakh during that time for its construction. It is said to be the largest church in North India. In December 1960, the church was accorded the status of a minor basilica.John Keay shares, “She built two palaces, both of which still exist and are neoclassical, with loads of pillars and porticos, very fine buildings. And then, outshining both these palaces is this enormous church. It was actually consecrated as a basilica by Pope John the 23rd. I think it’s probably the only basilica in India. The church was commissioned and paid for entirely by Farzana herself. She employed an Italian architect. It was modelled partly on St Martin-in-the-fields in London. But it’s got all kinds of oriental flourishes. It has the features of a conventional Gothic London Church with its steeples, but it also has a lot of Mughal elements with cupolas and domes. It is an amazing construction.”The exteriors of the church are painted entirely in white and gold, with a very impressive, massive pillared entrance and long walkways. John says it has quite the feeling and staging of a Taj Mahal. But inside, it’s almost overwhelmingly Catholic, with side altars, the main altar, and wonderful sculptured scenes of the begum and all her courtiers. Even today, it’s a place of great pilgrimage.The St Mary’s Church, also known as the Basilica of Our Lady of Graces, was completed in 1822 and is 200 years old now.Both of Begum Samru’s palaces in Sardhana are spacious and impressive. One has become a school now and the other is a seminary for priests. In Delhi, too, she had her own palace right beside the Red Fort, on land gifted to her by emperor Akbar Shah after the death of his father Shah Alam the second. Now known as the Bhagirathi Palace, it houses a commercial market of electronic goods.Begum Samru lived till a ripe old age and was in her late Eighties when she died on January 27, 1836. Her tomb lies within the St Mary’s Church. Since she didn’t have a natural heir, the begum adopted her deceased companion Walter Reinhardt’s great grandson and Louis Balthazar’s grandson, David Ochterlony Dyce as her heir. But soon after her death, all her property got attached to the British East India Company.“What always amazes me about Farzana’s career today is that why has no one ever made a film about her? She is such an amazing character. I think probably Bollywood would be the best place for it,” John signs off.This was the third and final part of a podcast series on Begum Samru, the Catholic queen of Sardhana. Sandeep Rai contributed to this podcast. Do stay tuned to Times Special presentations for more such inspiring stories from the pages of history. Voices: Pallavi Bharti, Vasundhra Bose, and Abhishek SharmaAudio production: Anil Chauhan