Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World

Journal of the American Oriental Society, The, Oct-Dec, 2006 by Angma D. Jhala

Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World. By Ruby LAL. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii 241, plates.

The book under review is a significant and vital contribution to a subject that has been relatively neglected in the study of South Asian history: namely the domestic sphere of the early Mughal court. In this lively record Ruby Lal highlights the influence of the familial world, especially the role of women, upon the reigns of three Mughal kings: Babur, Humayun, and Akbar. Her study spans the period from 1487 to 1605 C.E.

As she illustrates in her introduction, the domestic space or haram of the Mughal court has invariably been orientalized, exoticized, or simply written out of a scholarly narrative. Lal alerts us to a 1993 publication on Mughal India by the New Cambridge History of India Series, which included only one brief sentence on the institution, painting it in "fantastical" terms as a haven for sexual indulgence and excess. In addition to disputing this portrait of lasciviousness, she questions the prevailing view of the haram as an architecturally bounded and structured space, constrained by physical markers. In contrast, her findings reveal that the haram had no "fixed realm" and only became a representative symbol of the Mughal world during Emperor Akbar's reign.

Lal challenges two prevailing misconceptions of the haram in her history: first, the sharp distinction between the "private" and "public" domains in the early Mughal world; and second, the complex and often contradictory nature of the lives of noble women, lives that were not merely an "endless journey between bedroom and kitchen, with the primary function of raising children and caring for husbands" (p. 4). As she argues, the creation of a more regulated and institutionalized Mughal domestic space reflected the making of a new Mughal monarchy. Thus women's roles, as mothers, wives, queens, elders, or juniors, were influenced by changing historical climates. "My hypothesis is a simple one, that the meanings of motherhood, wifehood, love, marriage, filial relationships, and sexuality are not given to us in some fixed, unchanging form. These meanings are historically and culturally constructed--in the light of different experiences, needs and conditions" (p. 5). As she points out, her book has three potential audiences: scholars of Mughal India, students interested in the diversity of differing Islamic societies, and those working on gender relations, domesticity, and the question of "public" and "private" in the early modern world. The main aim of her work is to "excavate a domain, the boundaries of which are very unclear" (p. 22). In this manner she brings attention to the "denizens of a hitherto invisible Mughal world: the mothers of the royal children, their nurses, and servants, and others who formed part of these (changing) intimate circles" (p. 22).

In her second chapter, Lal examines the writing of early European travellers and their encounters with the Mughal haram, drawing on a host of sources: the records of Jesuit missionaries who arrived at Akbar's court during the late sixteenth century; the diaries of English diplomats from the court of James I on delegation to visit Jehangir; commercial accounts from emissaries of the Dutch East India Company, and non-commercial records of Europeans who had intimate exposure to the haram. She suggests that these descriptions, which were marked by their fluidity, self-contradictions, and "rich" and "fair" openness, acquired a different meaning in the nineteenth century, once colonial rule was established and orientalist readings had taken off in India (p. 23). By the nineteenth century, the "layered, surprising" nature of the haram was undermined by a portrait of a "decadent, already known and feminized East," and Mughal women themselves appear "faceless, submissive, licentious and intriguing, all at the same time" (pp. 48-49).

To contest this essentialist picture of Mughal royal women, Lal devotes her third chapter to critiquing the memoirs of Gulbadan Begum. She demonstrates how the private "domestic" sphere of family life invariably influenced the political dimensions of the male court. She emphasizes how the memories painstakingly describe and catalogue the gifts for functions, ceremonial observances, and the role of the padshah himself in facilitating arrangements for the women of his court. Although she does not unearth new sources, she re-examines existing but neglected material, such as imperial chronicles, ethical digests, visual representations, and architectural remains (p. 52). The re-examination of such sources, particularly the princess's courtly history, portrays a Mughal empire still in formation and not fully institutionalized. In contrast to imperial records such as the Akbarnama or the A'in i Akhari her analysis reveals an empire that is "being formed" (p. 66).

The fourth chapter examines Babur's arrival in Hindustan and Humayun's conflicts with his step brothers. The reigns of both Mughal rulers are reflected in the "unsettled" and "peripatetic" nature of the domestic life of early Mughal rule. She notes that against the backdrop of nearly perpetual warfare, the entire court--women, children, servants, nurses, and goods-were in constant motion, and famil-ial functions such as births, marriages, celebrations, and festivities were nonetheless still being performed while on the move (p. 70). Through such accounts she investigates the intimate relationships between members of the court, particularly the homosocial nature of Mughal life, producing an intriguing expose of. among other things, drinking parties, the women who circulated around the king, and country manners. She concludes the chapter by introducing the next topic of investigation: the absence or presence of women in Humayuni records.