History is a fickle abyss. For all the principal characters that mold our understanding of the past, there are countless others who are irrevocably shunned by the annalists of time. And yet — every once in a while — comes a story which cuts through the noise of history, when its protagonist is so audacious, her actions so piercing and her spirit so indomitable, that the narrow confines of mainstream historiography are torn to shreds.

Nangeli is one such forgotten heroine, who, up until only four years ago, had been buried so deep in the labyrinth of history that to hear her name would have surely elicited the “Nangeli, who?” remark from even the most meticulous subaltern historian on the planet. But here we are, celebrating the courage of some of the world’s most courageous, indefatigable women this month, and now this mononymous exemplar from a little known south Indian town cannot — must not — be once again consigned to the back pages of history.

To learn of the remarkable tale of Nangeli, however, we must roll back into time.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. (Angelou)

It was the last decade of the 18th century, with the British East India Company at the height of its powers in the Indian subcontinent, boasting a private army of 2,60,000 troops — more than twice the size of the army that had suffered defeat at the hands of the American colonists more than two decades ago. It was making millions of pounds every year, winning wars all around the subcontinent, and consolidating power with much ardor and subordination. The French were vanquished, the Indian rulers of Bengal were conquered, prompting other kings of Indian princely states to shudder in fear and — eventually — acknowledge the might of the British. These rulers were cornered into making a deal with the company — in exchange for higher payoffs, the British East India Company was supposed to protect their kingdoms from attacks by other rulers. And so began the forceful and inhumane extraction of taxes on almost everything from the already poverty-stricken subjects by their Indian rulers.

One of these princely states was the southern Indian state of Travancore, ruled by the pitiless Avittom Thirunal Balarama Varma I, who, in following with his allegiance to the British, compelled his subjects to pay taxes for the oddest of things. A fisherman had to pay taxes for his fishing nets, a bearded man for having facial hair, and women for covering their breasts.

Yes, you heard that right. Women couldn’t cover their bodies in public, unless they paid taxes according to the size of their breasts. The bigger the breasts, the higher the taxes!

This ludicrous set of taxes, called the Mulakkaram, or the “breast tax,” was enforced with a grim stringency, and anyone who failed to comply with the system could have their possessions taken away from them. The tax applied to lower caste women in a country which has still — even in the 21st century — not been able to break free from that most ominous of religious hierarchies, Hinduism’s caste system, which stigmatizes entire subsets of people on accounts of the families of their births. The upper caste rulers, or Brahmans, had made their women exempt from paying the Mulakkaram, adding insult to injury to lower caste women who already spent their lives engaged in rigorous labor, tapping toddy and being farm hands for their upper caste superiors.

Nangeli, a young head strong woman belonging to the lower caste Ezvaha community, was also forced not to cover her breasts. When she would work in the fields, upper caste men would leer and pass obnoxious comments at her. Her only respite would have been to pay the taxes and get past the humiliation, but impoverished as she was, it was beyond her powers to keep doing so.

Then one day after the turn of century in 1803, Nangeli did something which would shape the course of history in this region for years — and decades later — finally become the reason that Mulakkaram would be abolished for good. Seeing that Nangeli was covering her breasts as she went out to work, Pravathiyars, or the tax men, landed up at her hut, demanding to check her past dues and force her to pay the tax if she came up short. These upper caste men would hunt in packs, taking a perverse pleasure from the helplessness of the lower caste women, who were always at the wrong end of misogynistic derision and foul play at the hands of the pravathiyars.

Nangeli hadn’t paid the mulakkaram, but was covering her breasts in public. She asked the pravathiyars permission to go inside her hut so she could bring back the tax that she owed the king. She brought back plantain leaves — used for serving dishes — and a recently sharpened sickle.

Placing the plantain leaves in front of the tax men, she took the sickle and cut off her breasts right in front of them. Gasps and shrieks of horror escaped Nangeli’s humble abode. The pravathiyars, terror stricken with what they had witnessed, fled away in packs just as they had come, leaving the beautiful, unconquerable Nangeli to bleed to her death. The morality and efficiency of self-immolation could be debated in today’s globalized context, but in that time and period — and in the context of Nangeli’s life — it was her only means of rebellion.

The young woman was dead, but in truth, she had woken up an entire community from millennia-long slumber. For the first time, thanks to Nangeli’s radical act, the Ezvaha women realized that there was a way of dealing with their oppressors, which was neither paying taxes for their bodies, nor not covering their breasts in public — and that way was to fight back.