Velu Nachiyar became queen of Sivaganga, in present-day Tamil Nadu, in the 1780s, and after the British East India Company and an allied local ruler killed her husband and moved to take control of her kingdom, she fled with her daughter and spent years in exile, building alliances with neighboring rulers rather than accepting the loss of her throne.
During her years in exile, she trained and organized her own army, reportedly including a dedicated women's military regiment led by a trusted commander, at a time when women commanding armed forces in the region was highly unusual, preparing methodically for an eventual campaign to reclaim her kingdom.
In 1780, with the support of allied forces, she led a successful military campaign against the British and their local allies, reclaiming Sivaganga. According to regional oral histories and later accounts, one notable tactic involved identifying and destroying a heavily guarded British ammunition storage facility to weaken their military position ahead of the main assault.
She ruled Sivaganga for roughly a decade afterward, and is remembered today, particularly in Tamil Nadu, as one of the earliest Indian rulers to organize armed resistance against British colonial expansion, nearly seventy years before the more widely known rebellion of 1857.