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Immodest flirt or competent governor: translating gender in colonial and post-colonial South Asian historiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2023
Abstract
This article examines how an eighteenth-century woman, Mughlani Begum, is depicted in the most informative contemporary Persian auto/biography and how the descriptions, anecdotes, and analysis of her life contained therein, including the brief period she was Punjab's governor, changed as the primary source was translated into or summarised in English. The original Persian and colonial English translations and histories are read alongside an Urdu history of the Punjab, which begs the question: why was the life of a female governor reduced to that of an ‘immodest flirt’ in English sources, while her identity is incredibly nuanced in Persian and Urdu sources? Indeed, post-colonial historians writing in English rarely reference Persian originals: hence, they reproduce what colonial-period English writers before them said, and they completely ignore Urdu histories. While it is nearly impossible to understand the reasons why historians writing in English choose to depict Mughlani Begum in such a flattened way, we can be more critical of our readings of histories written in English, especially when original accounts are available. This article argues for consideration of how transmission of knowledge, language politics, and gender biases inflect historiography and misrepresent historical events and people of the Punjab—especially women.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society
References
1 Tahmas Khan Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, (ed.) Muhammad Aslam (Lahore, 1986), pp. 107–108.
2 Karl Alexander Freiherr von Hügel and Thomas Best Jervis, Travels in Kashmir and the Panjab: Containing a Particular Account of the Government and Character of the Sikhs (London, 1845), p. 265.
3 Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire (Calcutta 1934), Vol. II, 1754–1771, p. 51.
4 Ganda Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani: Father of Modern Afghanistan (London, 1959), pp. 137–138.
5 Lev, Yaacov, ‘The Fatimid Princess Sitt Al-Mulk’, Journal of Semitic Studies XXXII.2 (1987), pp. 319–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Paul E., ‘The Fatimid Caliph Al-Aziz and his daughter Sitt al-Mulk: a case of delayed but eventual succession to rule by a woman’, Journal of Persianate Studies 4.1 (2011), pp. 30–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2010); Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge, 2005); Gulbadan, Humāyūn-nāma, (trans.) Rashid Akhtar Nadvi (Lahore, 1995); Fatima Mernissi and Mary Jo Lakeland, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Minneapolis, 2012); Balabanlilar, Lisa, ‘The begims of the mystic feast: Turco-Mongol tradition in the Mughal harem’, The Journal of Asian Studies 69.1 (2010), pp. 123–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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7 See Khoja, Neelam, ‘Historical mistranslations: identity, slavery, and genre in eighteenth-century India’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 31.2 (2021), pp. 283–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the problems of translation and genre. Pagdi Setu Madhava Rao (trans.), Tahmās Nāma. The Autobiography of a Slave (Bombay, 1967), pp. viii–ix; Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire , Vol. II, 1754–1771; Chatterjee, Indrani, ‘A slave's quest for selfhood in eighteenth-century Hindustan’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 37.1 (2000), pp 53–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 I have not included Syed Muhammad Latif's Tārīkh-i Punjāb Ma Halāt-i Lāhūr because he does not include footnotes or a bibliography of sources he consulted. It should be noted, however, that he, like Salah al-Din, does not vilify Mughlani Begum's character nor her actions.
9 Ayres, Alyssa, ‘Language, the nation, and symbolic capital: the case of Punjab’, The Journal of Asian Studies 67.3 (2008), pp. 917–946CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Gilmartin, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley, 1988); Anshu Malhotra, Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab (New Delhi, 2004).
10 A regional history of Mughlani Begum's husband, Muin al-Mulk, Zafarnāma-i Mu‘īn al-Mulk (Muin al-Mulk's Epistle of Victory), remains in manuscript form at Khalsa College, Amritsar, India [KCA 508]. It was copied by Faiz al-Haq from an original copy in Lahore (PE II 34) for Khalsa College in 1944. The author of the short treatise, Ghulam Muhayyadin Khan, completed it in 1748, the year in which Muin al-Mulk lost his territories to the Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani, who succeeded Nadir Shah in 1747. There is no mention of his wife in this account.
11 Nabi Hadi and Kapila Vatsyayan, Dictionary of Indo-Persian Literature (New Delhi, 1995), p. 369.
12 Ghulam Ali Khan ibn Bhikhari Khan, Shāh ʻAlam nāmah, (ed.) Harinath De, Bibliotheca Indica, no. 211 (Calcutta, 1912), p. 26.
13 Ibid.
14 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma; Rao, Tahmās Nāma; Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol. II, 1754–1771.
15 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 355. There are actually two dates of completion. The first, based on a chronogram, is 1780, the second is 1782. See below for a fuller discussion.
16 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, pp. 114–115. Miskin discloses the name of the woman as Allah Datti, whereas in Rao, Tahmās Nāma, p. 25, she is called Moti. He does not have sexual intercourse with this named woman, but he does have sexual relations with another person, whom he does not name.
17 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 247.
18 Muzaffar Alam, The Crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and Punjab, 1707–1748 (New Delhi, 2013), p. xxx.
19 Qamar al-Din was the founder of the Asaf Jah dynasty in the Deccan. He is considered the most influential person in South Asia after the death of Alamgir I in 1707. He was given the title Nizam al-Mulk by the ninth Mughal emperor, Farrukhsiyar
20 Amin Tarzi, ‘Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi: the first history of “Afghanistan”’, in Afghan History through Afghan Eyes, (ed.) Nile Green (New York, 2016), p. 239; Khoja, Neelam, ‘Competing sovereignties in eighteenth-century South Asia: Afghan claims to kingship’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63.4 (2020), pp. 555–581 (pp. 578–579)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 96.
22 Ibid., pp. 102–103. Miskin is convinced that Muin al-Mulk was poisoned; he describes his body as turning blue.
23 Ibid., p. 103.
24 Ibid., p. 104.
25 Ibid., pp. 105–106.
26 Ibid., p. 105. In the English translation, Rao writes that Mughlani Begum ‘seduced’ men, including Khwaja Mirza Khan. In reality, according to Miskin, she simply bribed them with titles of honour and money.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., pp. 105–107.
29 Ibid., p. 107.
30 Ibid.
31 Khwāja sarā means eunuch.
32 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, pp. 107–108.
33 Ibid., pp. 108–109.
34 Ibid., p. 110.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., p. 111.
37 Ibid., pp. 111–112.
38 Ibid., p. 112.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., p. 113.
41 Ibid., pp. 113–115.
42 Ibid., p. 115.
43 Ibid., p. 116.
44 It is unclear what Miskin means by wilāyat.
45 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 118.
46 Ibid., p. 119.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., p. 120.
49 Ibid., p. 121.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., p. 122.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid., p. 124.
55 Ibid., p. 125. Miskin notes the battle between Imad al-Mulk Ghazi al-Din and Mansur Ali Khan Safdar Jang, which is not in the English translation. He further mentions Muin al-Mulk's brother, a man named Khankhanan, who was also the maternal uncle of Ghazi al-Din.
56 Ibid., pp. 127–128.
57 Ibid., p. 129.
58 Ibid., p. 131.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid. At this point in the narrative, Miskin wrote that it was time for the evening prayers and so he had to stop writing. This resembles a cliff-hanger—as a reader, I was curious to see how Miskin felt about this marriage proposal, but he did not disclose this until the next section!
61 Ibid., p. 132.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., p. 133.
64 Ibid., p. 134.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., p. 135.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid., p. 136.
70 Ibid., p. 137.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., p. 138.
73 Ibid., p. 140.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., p. 141.
76 Ibid., p. 146.
77 Ibid. As Ghazi al-Din complied with Mughlani Begum's request, one can assume that she was exonerated from the accusation that she had had an illicit affair with Miskin as Ghazi al-Din was no longer after his blood and provided him with housing.
78 Ibid., p. 155.
79 Ibid. Miskin documents how Ahmad Shah did the same with Muin al-Mulk earlier, that is, gave him the title of farzand-i khūd and his turban with jīgha (ornament or jewel worn in the turban) and a robe. See Ibid., p. 93.
80 Ibid., p. 164.
81 Ibid., p. 187.
82 Ibid., p. 192.
83 Ibid., p. 194.
84 Ibid., p. 247.
85 Kugle, Scott, ‘Mah Laqa Bai and gender: the language, poetry, and performance of a courtesan in Hyderabad’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30.3 (2010), pp. 365–385CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaharyar M. Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India (London and New York, 2000).
86 Khoja, ‘Historical mistranslations’.
87 Peirce, The Imperial Harem, p. viii: ‘Modern historical accounts of this period have tended to represent the influence of the harem as an illegitimate usurpation of power that resulted from a weakening of the moral fiber and institutional integrity of Ottoman society and that in turn contributed to problems plaguing the empire toward the end of the sixteenth century.’
88 Hari Ram Gupta, Later Mughal History of the Panjab (1707–1793) (Lahore, 1976); Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani; Rajmohan Gandhi, Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten (New Delhi, 2013).
89 Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire , Vol. II, 1754–1771, pp. 52, 57.
90 Ibid., p. 60; Chatterjee, ‘A slave's quest’, p. 56.
91 Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol. II, 1754–1771, p. 66.
92 Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani, pp. 139–140.
93 Ibid., p. 141f.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., p. 142. Singh does not provide a citation for this.
96 Ibid.
97 Gandhi, Punjab, p. 97. He cites Gupta, Later Mughal History, pp. 80, 122.
98 Jadunath Sarkar, Mughal Administration (Calcutta, 1963); Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol. II, 1754–1771; Jadunath Sarkar, The India of Aurangzib (Topography, Statistics, and Roads) Compared with the India of Akbar: With Extracts from the Khulasatu-t-Tawarikh and the Chahar Gulshan (Calcutta, 1901).
99 See Alam, The Crisis of Empire; Munis D. Faruqui, Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504–1719 (New York, 2012); Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707 (New Delhi and New York, 1999).
100 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 121; Mahmud bin Ibrahim al-Husaini, Tārīkh-i Aḥmad Shāhī: Tārīkh-i Tashkīl Awwalīn Hukūmat Afghānistān, (ed.) Ghulam Husain Zargarinezhad (Tehran, 2005), p. 235.
101 Miskin, Tahmās Nāma, p. 137. It is also worth noting that it was another woman, her maternal aunt at that, who accused her of having improper relations.
102 Iqbal Salah al-Din, Tārīkh-i Panjab (Lahore, 1974), p. 322: ‘Murad Begum khūd bhī bahut fahm o firāsat wālī khātūn thī.’
103 Ibid., p. 324.
104 Ibid., p. 325.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid.
107 Ibid., pp. 325–326.
108 Ibid., p. 326.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid., p. 327. Karnal was the place where Nadir Shah had defeated the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah in 1739.
114 Ibid.
115 Ibid.
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid., p. 328.