Like the Thread says, Under what Circumstances could Queen Lakshmi Bai & Her Allies have been able to Defeat or Stalemate the British Empire?
Yup. With some more defections, we could see some sort of North Indian rebel state led de jure by the Mughal Empire.If the British attack on Delhi had failed (and it was a VERY near thing IOTL), it would have caused other lukewarm supporters of the British to go over to the side of the Mutiny. Lakshmi Bai might then have emerged on the winning side, at least, so long as a few other things fell into place (more effective leadership among the rebels, first and foremost). On her own, though, she stood no chance at all.
Lakshmibai's war is a subset of the Mutiny as a whole.
I think one possibility here is if the Khalsa throws in on the side of the Mutiny. IOTL the Sikh regiments stayed on the British side- one imagines that the political aspect of the Mutiny with regard to Mughal reestablishment did not exactly appeal to them.
One of the ideas kicking around in the back of my head is a surviving Sikh state tossing its weight behind the Mutiny. It's tricky (After all, one of the causes of the mutiny was the replacement of Muslim and Hindu troops with Sikh soldiers), but not insurmountable. The Mughals could give a Sikh state in Northern India a veneer of legitimacy, and relations between the Sikhs and Mughals were more complicated than simple emnity.