India's Rani Of Jhansi Regiment

This is a riveting and meticulously researched account of the Indian National Army’s Rani of Jhansi regiment, the first in recorded military history that comprised only women.

It is not often that a forgotten and glorious chapter of a country’s history is resurrected and presented to its people and the rest of the world, and that too by a foreigner. This is what India now sees with the publication of a riveting and meticulously researched account of the INA’s Rani Jhansi Regiment (RJR) authored by Danish historian Vera Hildebrand.

As the author says, this unit was the first in recorded military history that comprised only women. Admittedly, the Soviet Union’s Red Air Force in World War II had a few squadrons of women pilots, but the support staff included men. In any case, these squadrons were not formally designated as “women’s regiments”. The RJR’s status as the world’s only all-women ground forces fighting contingent remains uncontested.

Read more here at Swarajya Magazine Online and at the Hindustan Times
Read an excerpt here at Kitaab