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Published on: 05/8/19 7:24 AM

Book review: Daughters of the Sun by Ira Mukhoty

 Behind the zardosi drapes

This wonderful book is a detailed  riposte to the traditional image of harems as a place of hothouse sex, with special focus on the Mughal harems.

In her foreword, the author states that accounts of the Oriental harem are usually a lurid and sometimes fantastical mix of bazaar gossip, stray gleanings of fact and sexual fantasy. The image of a cruel despotic and endlessly lascivious emperor surrounded by thousands of nubile young women competing for his attention and pining away in sexual frustration, willy-nilly,  seeped into both the Western and Indian consciousness.

But. The zenana was an industrious,  carefully calibrated world. A busy, well- ordered place where accomplished educated women were prized, well-spoken, articulate, and cultured women most likely to advance. The intrigues were of a different kind, more about prestige and power than sex,  and the overwhelming nature of the zenana was one of warm support and companionship, one in which excellence was valued.

It was an organised place. The zenana had a mahaldaar who had numerous darogaas under her, and all of the women in the harem were paid a salary. Akbar was  guarded by `sober and active` women, most probably slaves of Ethiopian, Turk, Tartar and Kashmiri extraction. They were  usually clad in uniform and armed with bows and arrows.

We get a look into the zenanas of Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, down to Bahadur Shah Zafar II. We read of Humayun`s Hamida Banu, Akbar`s Rajput wife Harkha Bai, the Queen Mother and mother of Jahangir Maryam uz Zamani,  who trades in indigo and owns ships.  When the Portuguese armada intercepts the Hindu queenHarkha Bai`s Muslim ship carrying Haj pilgrims in Christian waters and carries the vessel  off to Goa, the skirmishes that start up then, eventually end Portuguese dominance in Indian waters.

We learn about how Jahangir`s Noor Jahan had  gold coins struck in her name, engaged in trade via her ships with Africa and the Middle East, and built a series of magnificent buildings throughout the empire; of the power wielded by Shah Jahan`s Mumtaz Mahal, of Aurangzebs sister Jahanara who was  a poet, writer, built many major structures in Shahjahananabad, was  gifted the port city of Surat by her adoring father, and had a brand new ship built for her use. Then, there`s Aurangzeb`s daughter Zeb-un-Nisa,  the last of the padshah begums, another woman of letters,  who writes:

Were an artist to choose me for his model

How could he draw the form of a sigh?

We also read of a whole host of other most fascinating women of the harem, all of them cherished and respected, the older women  venerated; they arrange marriages and feasts, they watch over the continuation of the royal line, they are the guardians of the Timurid bloodline. They move with the emperor in tents, they are a presence on the periphery of the battlefield, they are sometimes held hostage.

In fact, the elder daughters of these powerful emperors found  it difficult to marry because they possessed  a powerful charisma that was better kept within the controlling orbit of the zenana.  We learn that of the nineteen major structures that Mughal women built in Shahjahanabad, fourteen were  completed by 1650 by the wives and daughters of Shah Jahan.

In fact, the imperial women in Mughal India were allowed a far greater degree of independence than in their other contemporary Muslim empire, the Safavid empire.

So much for historical stereotypes.

Daughters of the Sun by Ira Mukhoty/Aleph Books.

 

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Sheila Kumar • May 8, 2019


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