Have you ever driven past the Rao Tula Ram flyover in Delhi, cursed the traffic, and thought nothing more of it? That is reflective of an inherent problem: we preserve names and abandon stories. The Battle of Narnaul, by Kulpreet Yadav and Madhur Rao, is an act of recovery. It tells the story of Rao Tula Ram, king of Rewari, and does so with remarkable power.
The authors bring complementary strengths to the table. Yadav, a former Indian Coast Guard commandant who has previously written about the battles of Rezang La and Haji Pir, brings military precision to the narrative. Troop movements, logistical constraints, and tactical decisions are rendered with clarity rather than jargon. Rao, a historian deeply rooted in the cultures of Ahirwal and Rajasthan, provides the intimacy and local texture that lift the book from dry campaign history.
Tula Ram did not treat his throne as a privilege, but as a responsibility. Rewari was no insignificant place. It was a thriving trade centre, dealing in iron, cereal, pulses, brassware and salt from the Sambhar lake. It was also famous for its glass bangles. It had industry, commerce, and a culture worth protecting. The king understood the value of what he governed, and more important, he understood the threat of losing it. He saw the East India Company’s systematic destruction of India, not just through taxation and military oppression, but also through a calculated dismantling of the country’s culture and identity. It was this outrage that transformed a regional king into a revolutionary.
From the beginning, he despised the foreigners. He watched as the East India Company’s interference dismantled the panchayati system; matters once settled by village elders and community heads were now being overridden by foreign laws. “They drain our wealth, delay justice, and embolden criminals,” he said. As early as the 1850s, he began quietly preparing his forces and building alliances for resistance.
When the flames of 1857 torched the subcontinent, Tula Ram did not wait and watch. He raised a force of 5,000 men, set up a weapons workshop in the fort of Rampura, sent funds and supplies to Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in Delhi, and when the time came, led one of the fiercest battles of the uprising at Nasibpur, near Narnaul, on November 16, 1857. His first charge against Colonel John Grant Gerrard’s British column was so ferocious that the enemy forces scattered before him.
The book does not limit itself to Tula Ram alone. It introduces a vivid cast of characters on both sides, like John Nicholson, a Company official whose ruthlessness made him formidable. Surviving an Afghan prison and enduring the brutal murder of his brother made him hungry for revenge. He killed a young cook for accidentally crossing his path, beating him to death without remorse. Against this, the book shows the quiet dignity of some sepoys who simply saluted their officers and released themselves from Company service rather than commit violence, a detail that poignantly humanises the revolt.
What makes the story especially compelling, however, is not just what it says, but how it says it. Yadav and Rao made an inspired choice: to write history as a living, breathing narrative. The book pulls the reader into the heat of the battlefield, into the corridors of alliances and betrayals, into the quiet anguish of a king who refused to bow. The research is extensive, with the authors drawing from British military dispatches, intelligence records and historical archives, without the facts ever overwhelming the storytelling.
Shedding his royal identity and disguising himself as a merchant named Gosain, Tula Ram carried his war beyond India’s borders, to Persia, Afghanistan and even the Russian empire, seeking a global coalition against British rule. He died in Kabul in 1863, at the age of 38, without ever seeing his homeland again. History gave him a road. This book gives him back his story.
THE BATTLE OF NARNAUL
By Kulpreet Yadav and Madhur Rao
Published by Penguin
Price Rs499; pages 304