1. A Princess in the Shadows
It is a story of a princess who was supposed to live in the
center of the Mughal Empire, under the golden domes of Shahjahanabad (now Old
Delhi), but was never supposed to reign, yet she did. Not by armies, not by
blood, but by the grace, wisdom and a painful silence that rang out louder than
a sword. She was Jahanara Begum, the eldest daughter of emperor Shah Jahan and
empress Mumtaz Mahal who was the very woman that the Taj Mahal was built in
memory of. And the name, once wreathed in poetry, has gone to the fringe of
history, overshadowed by the greatness of the men who surrounded her. Nevertheless,
she was not an ordinary daughter of the king. Jahanara had been born in the
flower of royalty, but a burden that no crown with jewels in it could
alleviate. It was hers the load of power unacknowledged, of loyalty unrewarded,
of love, bitter, immortal--which was to take all away.
2. The Jewel of the Mughal Court
Jahanara was seventeen at the time of the death of her
mother Mumtaz Mahal who died in the process of giving birth to a child. The
empire was in mourning yet no one more than Shah Jahan. Then did he turn to his
eldest daughter to seek comfort--not only in heart, but in state. In a
remarkable gesture, he made her Padshah Begum, or First Lady of the Empire,
thus overlooking his still-living wives. Now she would sit in the royal
household, she would be allowed to take care of the affairs of state, and she
would walk only a step behind her father. She was a patron of Sufi saints, a
student of literature and a diplomat whose words were respected even in the
Persian and Central Asian courts with the wisdom that came despite her age. She
funded caravanserais and libraries, bridges and gardens, such as the famous
Chandni Chowk bazaar, which she contributed to its design. However, behind the
curtain of duty and piety Jahanara slept in a palace of unseen bars--watched
day and night, loved seldom, and free never.
3. A Brother’s Crown, A Sister’s Wound
When her father fell seriously ill, the world of Jahanara
started falling apart. The empire that was once a subtle mixture of family and
politics became a playing field of her four brothers namely Dara Shikoh, Shah
Shuja, Murad Baksh and Aurangzeb. The eldest, Jahanara was in love with Dara
Shikoh, a philosopher-prince who loved poetry and Sufism as she did. He favored
unity of faiths, a soft prince that would prefer to write than to conquer. In
her eyes he was more than a brother--he was her soul mate in thought, her equal
in feeling, maybe even the man she would have loved had fate played them
different cards. Such softness did not matter to the empire. When the most
cruel of all the brothers, Aurangzeb, declared war to gain throne, Jahanara
pleaded with him to save the life of Dara. Even wrote to him, saying that they
had blood, and childhood together. But ambition is insensate to pity. Aurangzeb
deposed Dara, marched him to the streets of Delhi in chains and later executed
him. A grotesque trophy of his victory, the head, bound in a cloth of silk, was
taken to the imprisoned father.
4. Exile and Ashes
Jahanara broke. To protest this action, she refused to serve
in the court of Aurangzeb and instead followed her sick father, Shah Jahan, to
exile at the Agra Fort, where Aurangzeb had confined him on house arrest. Seven
years were spent by her in nursing him--in feeding him, reading poetry to him,
and keeping patiently at his side as he gazed with single-mindedness at the Taj
Mahal far away, the monument to his departed wife. These were silent years. No
kingly feasts. No jewels. No courty politics. Nothing but a father and a
daughter united with grief, memory and slow-burning bitterness. Yet Jahanara
did not even curse her fate out loud. She derived a peculiar strength out of
her solitude. She was the one who bathed the corpse of Shah Jahan and buried
him alongside Mumtaz when the former died in 1666 and closed the largest love
story in the history of Mughal dynasty with her hands.
5. The Unexpected Return
The world anticipated that Jahanara was to be a silent
person after the death of her father. Yet history had a different course. In an
unexpected move, Aurangzeb called her back to the court, and gave her the
position of Empress of Princesses and reinstated her former status. It was
possibly guilt. It may have been tactic. Even a man of steel like Aurangzeb
perhaps saw that the presence of his sister gave the court the dignity which it
so greatly needed. She came back, however, but on her own conditions. She was
no more the gay young lady she had formerly been, and who had lightened gardens
and music-halls, but a white woman, still, but indestructible. She was in a
palace which was close to Jama Masjid and was engulfed with books, Sufi
mystics, and silence. She maintained a close contact with Aurangzeb and would
advise him on issues of diplomacy and charity but never forgave him over the
murder of Dara.
6. A Love That Could Never Be
There were tales that whispered of an illicit affair
Jahanara and Dara, two like souls of royal blood, who were mysteriously
attracted to each other but court poets could not even dare to write about such
thing. And was it so? Nobody is really sure. There are tales that she had a
smaller image of him concealed in her own Quran. According to others, she never
got married as her heart was already taken years ago by a man who was taken
away too early. Jahanara did not get married. She had no power in a court where
even concubines had power in their sons. But she was more respected than ever a
woman was before, or after. Not as a result of who she married but as a result
of the woman she was, a woman of intelligence, strength, and fire that was not
to be put out.
7. Death Without a Monument
Jahanara Begum died in silence in Delhi in 1681, having
spent life in royal service and personal grief. She did not occupy a complex
grave like other royalties but a simple grave close to the shrine of her
religious guide, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Modest and spectral is her epitaph:
“And do not make over my grave a covering of earth but only
a covering of greenery for this is the house of lovers, not of stone and brick”.
No great mausoleum. No
marble dome. No minarets. Just grass and earth--the only throne that she ever
wanted, possibly.
8. Why History Forgot Her
Why does Jahanara not feature in our text books? Why does no
one speak her name with the adulation which Akbar or Aurangzeb receive? The
reality is in how history recollects men and forgets women and most
particularly those who exercised power through wisdom and not through
bloodshed. Jahanara was not a conqueror. She did not command any armies and
construct monuments in her honor. She cured, interceded, conserved and guarded,
and with that broke the very concept of power. Her work in the field of
literature, architecture, trade, and politics is enormous. Her works Munis
al-Arwah (The Confidant of Spirits) are full of spiritual wisdom. But otherwise
she is barely mentioned in any general work or documentary.
9. Her Legacy Lives On
Even Jahanara was buried in the middle of Delhi today and
many a person passes the tomb of Jahanara without even knowing the legend that
has been buried there. The Chandni Chowk that she assisted in designing is
still one of the busiest market in India. Her caravanserais, a few of which are
yet standing in ruin, were the homes of traveler’s of all parts of the empire. Yet
other than buildings, her real legacy is her silent rebellion, a life that she
led on her own terms, in a world that gave her very few options.
10. The Woman Behind the Lattice
You can have her, behind the carved marble lattice of the
Red Fort, and observing with herself denied the right to influence events that
were taking place. A daughter who kept an empire together when her father
mourned. A sister who put everything on the line in order to save her brother. A
woman who did not want to get married so as to make her life legal. Jahanara
Begum was not supposed to reign. However, in some ways she did. Not by armies
or edicts--but by presence, purpose and poetry. She is a queen who was
forgotten by history. But we do not forget.
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