The Historical Novel: Tracing Nur Jahan in Contemporary Historical Accounts and Fictions

Mr. Jaydrata

Research scholar

Department of English PG Studies and Research in English

Kuvempu University Jnansahyadri

Shankarghatta 577451, Shivamogga Karnataka.

Abstract

The historical fictional novel with its mix of creativity, imagination, and facts, also comes with notions which have emerged from colonial and empirical sentiments. This paper aims to look at Indu Sunderesan’s The Twentieth Wife and study the patterns of colonial prejudices which lie in works of historical fiction. This paper will also explore the impact of colonial trade on the cultural tropes of the 21st century. More importantly, the paper will trace the dismantling of the preconceived idea of the ‘woman in the harem’ through the figure of Jahangir’s Twentieth Wife. The main focus of this paper would be to trace her presence in popular imaginations of today and further challenge the notions of white supremacy through the tales of prowess of Empress Nur Jahan in history and literature.

Keywords: Historical fiction, postcolonialism, colonial stereotypes, Mehrunnisa, Nur Jahan, women

Introduction

The popular cultural representations of subjects from the Global South differ vastly in their portrayals by white writers and travelers. A glimpse at the travelogues of Portuguese, Dutch, or English writers would show the inherent stereotypical notions that the Global North held (still holds) of the Global South. Gabriel García Márquez, in his Nobel lecture,1 elaborates on these models of realism which he, along with others in the world, had grown up reading. He questions its sustainability and truthfulness, he questions its one-sidedness, and its inflexibility. He says in his speech, delivered on 8th December 1982, ‘I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. […] Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.’ His point of contention is that the reality of Latin America is very different from its contemporary North America, thus rendering it unbelievable to the colonizers. And if the everyday realities of these once-colonized lands are not believed, there is no way or no reason to try and represent it through the mainstream modes of representation since these modes developed in response to different kinds of realities.

The paper argues that most historical fictions of the subcontinent, despite being written by South Asians or diasporic writers, embed Reality for the purpose of serving it on a platter, so as not to challenge the beliefs of the colonizers. The ‘exotic’ lands are kept alive in these texts through descriptions of landscapes, food, garments, languages, and people. The paper would begin by discussing the category of ‘Third World Cosmopolitans’2 so as to establish Sundaresan’s geographical and cultural position within the category of historical fiction writing emerging from South Asia. To corroborate the claim that her writing caters to a predominantly white audience, it would further take recourse to the accounts of travelers and courtiers who came to Mughal India and wrote about it in their memoirs as a way of comparison. Post this, the paper would discuss the progression of Mehrunissa till her becoming Nur Jahan, taking into consideration how different historians have described her and where Sundaresan falls amidst them. To make the picture holistic, it becomes imperative to highlight certain stereotypes for which ‘Third World Cosmopolitans’ fall since they target white readership. Conclusively, the paper would talk about postcolonialism and historical fiction; the ways in which they can coexist within the parameters of realism and historicism.

Narratives of Jahangir’s Hindustan

The presence of the Jesuits has predated that of the English or the Dutch, and they became especially important and influential during the reign of Jahangir. ‘The Jesuits had been in India for a long time. Now there were other firangis also. The world was indeed opening up. The newcomers styled themselves ‘ambassadors’ from a tiny island in Europe called England.’ (316) Sundaresan talks about the presence of merchants, traders, and diplomats in her novel very elaborately. The aim is to highlight how nobles in the Indian subcontinent viewed merchants as the lowly-kind, not suitable to be present before the emperor. This is undoubtedly because of the lack of noble birth and a stable occupation, their nomadic tendencies, and unawareness of court etiquette. ‘What were the English after all but a country of fishermen and shepherds? […] The foreigners wanted the spices, calico and saltpetre that India had in abundance. If so, they should have taken the trouble to approach the emperor with an appropriate ambassador.’ (316-317) Mehrunnisa’s musings in the novel are heard through these lines by Sundaresan. Along with an indication that she was politically very aware and concerned, these lines also highlight the importance and stature of the Mughal Empire in the eyes of its subjects. Nur Jahan, being one of the highly invested and knowledgeable subjects of this empire, has been labelled as scheming and cunning by many, but Sundaresan paints her as a woman of the world, a woman who did not want to spend an anonymous life within the walls of the imperial harem. Findley, in his book titled Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India, writes, ‘The stories preserved of this period, however, portrayed a Mihrunnisa full of schemes and hardened dealings.’ (34) As consumers of such narratives, what has to be kept in mind is that it is through the eyes of these merchants and fishermen that some of the most popular representations of the subcontinent have been documented in the books of the world. Mehrunnisa wasn’t like the Virgin Mary or like Elizabeth I; she was a widow with a child, had an ambition with the understanding of politics and administration, wanting to marry the emperor of one of the largest empires in the world. The descriptions of her would be clouded when viewed from the eyes of men who have hailed certain images of womanhood as ideal and divine

From Mehrunnisa to Nur Jahan

It is important to note how the entire novel, since the time Mehrunnisa saw Salim for the first time at the age of eight, revolves around her heart’s deep-rooted desire to marry him one day. She is shown to be an intelligent girl, a quick learner, and a determined student, but it all comes down to her usage of this intelligence in finding ways to be seen and appreciated by Salim. This can also be seen as an inversion of courtly love, given that the agency to desire rests with the woman, where Mehrunnisa pines for an object beyond her reach. But at the same time, we cannot forget that this agency rests with her because she belongs to a class which isn’t noble. Does this mean that women born in lower classes had more agency than women with higher ancestries? In some nuanced cases, they did. This is because the higher the class, the more confined a woman becomes through restrictions in mobility and regular decision-making. Since marital alliances were based on political alliances, for them to be fruitful, the woman had to be ‘pure’. This manner of confinement is not quite visible across women of lower classes because of lack of means to confine them and also lack of political motivation and social obligation. Such trends of portraying female characters as the subject instead of the object of desire, especially from the 19th century onwards, have been common across the globe — in the novels of Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Barbara Pym, Leo Tolstoy, or Attia Hosain. But does this subjectivity come despite class, race, and in the Indian subcontinent, caste barriers? At the tender age of eight, Mehrunnisa exclaims that she finds Salim to be ‘beautiful’. But Beni Prasad, in History of Jahangir, writes, ‘She aspired to the conquest of Prince Salim and succeeded, by a dexterous use of her charms and accomplishments at an entertainment, in casting a spell over him.’ The association of women with witchcraft in luring men has been universal, especially in works of male writers and historians. On the other hand, Ruby Lal, in her feminist history of Nur Jahan, gives her a different dimension altogether and with it, a novel reason for the readers to imagine why Jahangir would have found her extraordinary. She writes, ‘In that turbulent land, she’d witnessed the troubles that arose when the capital and the province knocked against each other, when an emperor and his son collided, when ambition, ego, and factionalism tangled. She seemed cannier than other royal women her age about the workings of the empire, exhibiting the knowledge expected of esteemed elder women like her harem mentors.’ (110) Alternatively, this can be read as the writer’s aim to depict women of vision as wanting male stalwarts to rely on for the purpose of being powerful. Mehrunnisa has been portrayed as a very self-aware and self-reflexive character, knowing very well that in the world of men, power had to be extracted from them. Sundaresan talks at length about Mehrunnisa’s fascination with Ruqayya Sultan Begum, Akbar’s chief wife, who was the most powerful woman in the harem. Her power came with her title, Padshah Begum, and this title became hers only after her marriage to the Emperor and her success at making herself indispensable to him; (in Ruqayya’s case) not sexually, but intellectually and emotionally.

Sundaresan also gives in to the prevalent stereotypes while describing her male characters. Her description of Salim’s first glimpse of Mehrunnisa aides the pre-conceived notions that the Global North has of the Islamic World. ‘Ya Allah! Was he in Paradise? Words from the Holy Book came unbidden to his mind: “The believers shall find themselves reclining upon couches lined with brocade, the fruits of the garden nigh to gather; and will find therein maidens restraining their glances, untouched before them by any man or Jinn, lovely as rubies, beautiful as coral.” She was all that and more. He stared at her, his gaze riveted, everything else fading around her.’ (81) The Mehrunnisa of Sundaresan’s historical fiction is a woman of immaculate beauty and charm, and it is this charm which helps her woo Salim, even after years and years go by. A lot of historians claim that Mehrunnisa was a woman of intelligence and wit, she was well versed with the political scenario of the world, good with calculations, and with running the Empire. It has been mentioned even by Sundaresan as to how her fearlessness was attractive to Jahangir, ‘He admired her fierce independence, her deep sense of self, her convictions about her actions. She scorned the rules, trod on them.’ (352-353), but in order to cater to the cyclic progression of the trope of a love story, this union has been credited primarily to her unconventional beauty which is unmatched. Mehrunnisa, the name meaning Sun Among Women, has been highlighted and reiterated multiple times in the novel, only to bring back attention to her features, her ‘slender back’ even after being a mother, her breasts, and her body. Moreover, such associations in the novel have been made with other women as well; for instance, Arjumand (Khurram’s wife who would later be the famous Mumtaz Mahal), Jagat Gosini (Jahangir’s supreme wife before his marriage to Mehrunnisa), and also Anarkali, Akbar’s concubine whom Salim allegedly falls in love with. An alternative way to look at the constant reiteration of the meaning of her name, Sun Among Women, would be to say that she is the Man Among Women. The Sun stands for masculinity, in opposition to the Moon, which stands for femininity.

The entire novel, and even this mystery behind this figure of a woman who ruled one of the largest empires of the world, is one that derives its foundation from her un-femininity. Wit, intelligence, knowledge, and diplomacy are unwomanly traits. They make a person aware and accustomed to surviving in the world of monetization and trade. Nur Jahan, being well versed with all of these and more, then becomes not only Sun Among Women, but quite literally, the Man Among all Women. Is Sundaresan then trying to project her desirability as being a result of the masculine in her? This paper argues that even though Mehrunnisa has been depicted in masculine terms, moving away from the docility of the feminine, the author doesn’t take this to the realm of the physical. ’Driven to a frenzy by his one glimpse of Mehrunnisa, Salim groped and grabbed at the girls, thinking one, then the other, to be the angel of the morning.’ The conscious description and language used to picture Salim after his meeting with Mehrunnisa, is the language of the Coloniser. The frenzy to explore uncharted territory brought the Europeans to South Asia (and other places), similarly, the frenzy in Salim led him to grope and grab at other girls, finally making his way to Mehrunnisa after years of exploration, and at the end, designating her his Twentieth Wife; Nur Jahan, Light of the World.

Conclusion

Historical fiction has made reading and memorising of history convenient as compared to earlier times. The genre and the writers have given new dimensions to the subject. So much so that these books are fast disappearing from the book stores and ending up in homes of common man. Historical fiction comes alive in front of our eyes through this book as the Mughal Empire turns lively with the words of Indu Sunderesan and the aspects of history which we dreaded to read also become spell – binding. The rulers and the emperors who were known only by names come live in front of the human eyes. The life style and the grandeur of the Mughals is discussed at length and many references can be cited from the novel for the same. Their movements, the dresses’, the food, the war tents, the servants, the attendants all give the reader a glimpse of the times. The imagination and representation of the same is unparalleled amongst the contemporaries of the writer.

Works Cited

Dow, Alexander. The History of Hindostan. Vol. 3, From the Death of Akbar to the Settlement of the Empire Under Aurunzebe. 1770. Reprint, Today and Tomorrow’s Printers and Publishers, 1973.

Elliot, H. M., and John Dodson, editors and translators. The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period. Vols. 5–7, Trübner and Co., 1873–77. Reprint, AMS Press, 1966.

Findly, Ellison Banks. Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India. Oxford UP, 1993.

Foster, William, editor. The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615– 1619, as Narrated in His Journal and Correspondence. 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, 1899.

Lal, Ruby. Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. Penguin Random House, 2018.

Lau, Lisa. “Making the Difference: The Differing Presentations and Representations of South Asia in the Contemporary Fiction of Home and Diasporic South Asian Women Writers.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2005, pp. 237–56. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3876512.

Manucci, Niccolao. Storia Do Mogol or Mogul India 1653–1708. Translated by William Irvine, 4 vols., Murray, 1907.

García Márquez, Gabriel. “Nobel Lecture.” NobelPrize.org, Nobel Media AB, 2020, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1982/marquez/lecture/.