Lakshmi Bai was born on 19 November 1828 in the holy town of Varanasi into a Marathi Brahmin family. She was named Manikarnika and was nicknamed Manu. Her father was Moropant Tambe and her mother Bhagirathi Sapre (Bhagirathi Bai).
Her parents came from Maharashtra. Her mother died when she was four. Her father worked for a court Peshwa of Bithoor district who brought up Manikarnika like his own daughter. The Peshwa called her “Chhabili”, which means “playful”. She was educated at home and was more independent in her childhood than others of her age; her studies included shooting, horsemanship, and fencing.
Manikarnika was married to the Maharaja of Jhansi, Raja Gangadhar Rao Newalkar, in May and was afterwards called Lakshmi bai (or Laxmi bai) in honour of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She gave birth to a boy, later named Damodar Rao, in 1851, who died after four months. The Maharaja adopted a child called Anand Rao, the son of Gangadhar Rao’s cousin, who was renamed Damodar Rao, on the day before the Maharaja died.
The adoption was in the presence of the British political officer who was given a letter from the Maharaja instructing that the child be treated with respect and that the government of Jhansi should be given to his widow for her lifetime. After the death of the Maharaja in November 1853, because Damodar Rao was adopted, the British East India Company, under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, applied the Doctrine of Lapse, rejecting Damodar Rao’s claim to the throne and annexing the state to its territories. In March 1854, Lakshmi bai was given Rs. 60,000 and an annual pension of Rs.5000[citation needed] and ordered to leave the palace and the fort.
Rani Lakshmi bai has been known to the British most commonly as “the Rani of Jhansi”; in Hindi she is often known as “Jhansi ki Rani”.