Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire

by Ira Mukhoty

It was a homeland to be created and claimed, at a time when anything less than blistering confidence meant instant death.

It is often forgotten that as the Mughal empire grew in size and splendour, the women involved in its formation also grew in wealth. This increased wealth and the desire to patronise architecture was not only limited to royal women.

Aurangzeb will be torn between disdain and respect for ‘the crass stupidity of the Hindustanis, who would part with their heads but not leave their positions (in battle)’.

Wonder where are those Hindustanis today

Gangetic plains up to Bengal. Hindustan contributes almost a quarter of the world’s economy and to the unabashed astonishment of the Europeans, Hindustan is entirely self-sufficient ‘in all necessaries for the use of man

All that glory gone down the drain. Today the Indians struggle to make ends meet. Can we blame others for looting us, or should we blame ourselves for letting them loot us?

These nondescript dried balls are the indigo of commerce, used to dye the fine cotton cloth that the empire produces. There are some 300 dye-yielding plants in India, which are used by the dyers in a secret and complex technique to create fabrics and designs of such beauty, brilliance and colour that they are the envy of the world. The most popular colours are burgundy, gold, mustard and indigo while recently, a subtler palette has been created to cater to the tastes of the Persianate Mughal court. Thus pistachio green has been created using pomegranate dye while vibrant yellow is derived from the priceless saffron. Black and red are particularly valued dyes but the most expensive and sought-after colour, by far, is indigo.

These arts, where art thou?

Organized by Jahanara Begum in 1633, Dara Shikoh’s ‘wedding is the most expensive ceremony ever staged in Mughal history and costs thirty-two lakh rupees’. When she becomes padshah begum at seventeen, Jahanara must organize the weddings of all the royal princes.

As for the quantities of fine cotton cloth traded, it is said that ‘everyone from the Cape of Good Hope to China, man and woman, was clothed from head to foot in material made in Gujarat’,

Glorious was out country, sadly not anymore. We have let the white man plunder us and they have left us emaciated.

Pedro Alvares Cabral, Portuguese commander of a large fleet sent to the East in 1500 is told: ‘If you encounter ships belonging to the aforesaid Moors of Mecca at sea, you must endeavour as much as you can to take possession of them, and of their merchandise and property and also of the Moors who are in the ships, to your profit as best you can and to make war on them and do them as much damage as possible as a people with whom we have so great and so ancient an enmity.’ And so, inflexible faith is linked with endless greed and leads to a convenient, and widely encouraged, rapacity.

There is time for sightseeing, and for that most favoured of Mughal pastimes, hunting. Jahangir is inordinately fond of hunting, and often takes the ladies of the zenana along with him. Noor Jahan is a particularly good markswoman and Jahangir is very proud when he describes how ‘she shot two tigers with one shot each and knocked over two others with four shots’. The admiring Jahangir underlines that ‘until now such shooting was never seen’ and, much pleased by his wife’s cool-headed skill, gifts her a pair of diamond bracelets worth 100,000 rupees and pours a tray full of gold coins over her head.

No wonder we have only a few tigers today. Not that the white man helped the cause. He took what the kings of the past started and finished off the "game".

die before death to become one with the divine’.

Inevitably, as the years turn to decades, the women of the zenana align themselves with a brother, a father or a husband, and, just as inevitably this results in thwarted lives or muted glory.