Wonder Woman of the Week: Mai Bhago

This week’s Wonder Woman falls somewhere between Tomoe Gozen and Abraham Lincoln in the spectrum of amazing people in history. You would not find this Sikh warrior’s story in any animated Disney movie because it involves a few severed heads, calling boys pansies, and fighting in massive Mortal Combat-style battles.

Mai Bhago was born in the Punjab region of India sometime in the late 1600’s. At this point in India’s history there were two major events taking place. First, the Sikh religion, a splinter of India’s Buddhist and Hindi practitioners were constantly being beaten up by all the neighborhood bullies- the most terrifying of which were the Mughals. The second major even was the Mughal occupation. The Mughals were descendants of Uzbek invaders originally led by Tamerlane who famously used severed Sikh heads as desktop tchotchkes.

The Sikhs however were no pacifists- they were known for their insanely incredible skill in battle which fell somewhere between Neo from the Matrix and Bruce Lee in anything. They carried high-powered muskets and curved sabers with which to decapitate those Mughal bullies when necessary. The Sikh’s were also led by a religious authority called a “Guru” comparable to the Buddha or the Pope who the Mughals hated above all else.

One day, the Mughals decided it would be a good idea to barricade the Guru in a castle and kill him and everyone who stood in their way. During an intense siege, the Guru and his warriors broke wave after wave of Mughal attackers, but after months of fighting Mughals and eating nothing but nuts and leaves from trees in the fort, the Mughals gave an opportunity for their enemies to surrender. The Mughals stated any Sikh who renounced his faith would be allowed to leave the castle alive and unharmed. Forty of the Guru’s best remaining soldiers took the offer and headed home.

Where is Mai Bhago in all of this? Well when Bhago heard about these douche canoes splitting on their Guru, she went crazy. After backhanding the crap out of the forty men she called cowards and a bunch of other names not suitable for young children, Mai Bhago delivered a series of Shakespearean level speeches to reignite their courage and charge back towards the Mughal army.

Meanwhile, the Guru realized he could not defend the fortress any longer and made a break for it with his remaining soldiers. They escaped the castle, but were constantly chased across India by the Mughal army and secured themselves in another fort ready to fight to the death before surrendering.

Well Mai Bhago arrived just in time. This Mulan of India was not about to stay home and cook dinner and other domestic stuff while her Guru was in danger. With just herself and her forty pumped-up warriors, Mai Bhago charged into the Mughal army of almost ten thousand soldiers. The Guru noticed the battle going on and took his warriors to a nearby hill and fired as many arrows as he and his forces could on the Mughal army while Mai Bhago and her forty men tore shit up.

It’s hard to say exactly how the battle went from there, but all accounts state the Mughals retreated and the Guru went down from the hill to find his rescuers. Mai Bhago was the only one of the forty-one in the field who survived and would have died from battle wounds had the Guru not found her. After receiving medical aid, Bhago made a full recovery and the Guru made her one of his personal bodyguards. Mai Bhago’s spear and gun are now housed in a museum in India and her house is now a Sikh place of worship.