An image of an old ‘The United States of India’ edition featuring Rani Lakshmi Bai photo on its cover page is being shared on social media claiming that the Congress party had not discovered this American magazine edition about Rani Lakshmi Bai for 88 years (from 1926 to 2014) but taught the entire Mughals history to the public. This edition described Rani Lakshmi Bai as the ‘Heroine of the War of Independence of 1857’. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: The Congress party failed to discover the May 1926 edition of ‘The United States of India’ featuring Rani Lakshmi Bai on its cover.
Fact: The archived digital version of this ‘The United States of India’ edition featuring Rani Lakshmi Bai on its cover was re-published by the South Asia American Digital Archive (SAADA) in November 2011. This news edition was not available on the internet before 2011. The lessons about the 1857 war of Independence and Rani Lakshmi Bai are part of the Indian school syllabus curriculum for a longtime. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When we searched to check the details of this newspaper edition using keywords, we found this ‘The United States of India’ newspaper edition cover titled “RANI LAKSHMI BAI: Heroine of the War of Independence of 1857” on the South Asia American Digital Archive (SAADA) website. SAADA published the archived version of this newspaper edition on 29 November 2011. According to the information provided on the website, this ‘The United States of India’ edition with Rani Lakshmi Bai photo on its cover page was published in May 1926.
Along with Rani Lakshmi Bai’s photo, this news edition shared a short blurb describing Lakshmi Bai’s role in the 1857 war of independence. This blurb draws a comparison between British propagandists’ treatment of U.S. and Indian history. Before November 2011, this newspaper edition was not available on the internet. SAADA had also published a few other archived editions of the ‘The United States of India’ on their website.
The history lessons about the 1857 war of Independence and Rani Lakshmi Bai are included in the Indian school syllabus curriculum for a long time.
To sum it up, SAADA published the digital version of the May 1926 edition of ‘The United States of India’ featuring Rani Lakshmi Bai on its cover page in 2011.
