Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  A few months ago, Mir Jumla, prime minister in a Deccani kingdom, had proposed to defect to the Empire if Shah Jahan would provide him with protection. In return, he had offered a bag of diamonds that he claimed were mined in Golkonda. Aurangzeb had assumed the governorship of the Deccan again, and Shah Jahan had sent him orders to allow Mir Jumla safe passage into Mughal land, and then to provide him with an escort to court so that the Emperor could see these brilliant stones for himself and judge their worth. If there was an abiding fault in her father, Jahanara thought, it was his intense love for these inanimate things—to her the diamonds were simply stones, doubtless of immense value, and their cool luster had lit her arms and neck many times, made her feel beautiful, wanted, desired. But she had felt so even clad in only a string of flowers, freshly picked, dewy from the night. When the stones had come, she almost changed her mind. For Mir Jumla had held out the best stone in his palm in open an durbar—as massive as his large fist, ablaze like the sun at high noon, seeming to draw all the light of the Diwan-i-am into its brilliant heart. It had appeared alive and throbbed in the hand of the man who had brought it.

  The next day, despite Dara’s and her repeated cautions, Emperor Shah Jahan had sent a fifty-thousand-strong army to the Deccan to be under Aurangzeb’s command and given him orders to invade Golkonda. If there were more diamonds to be found in the Golkonda mines, they had to belong to him, first and last. What of strengthening Aurangzeb in the Deccan? they had asked their father, and he had laughed, saying only that his third son was a fool and would not know how to rebel against his father even if he tried. The fever of greed had caught Emperor Shah Jahan firmly, and he thought of all the monuments and forts he had built so far, the immensely rich Peacock Throne (though it was only one of seven upon which he gave audience), and decided that possession of the world’s most magnificent diamonds—which were to be found in Golkonda if that one diamond was any indication—would make him the world’s most potent monarch.

  Dara and Jahanara had talked for long hours, knowing that their father was aging, that, in some senses, he was losing control of his mental faculties. When Jahanara thought of these discussions, she cringed. If she had not agreed with Dara all those months ago, perhaps he would have behaved better when their father had fallen ill this time. In the ten days that had passed, Dara had closed down all the roads leading into Shahjahanabad, not allowed any news to seep out, and taken over the role of sovereign. He gave all the orders at court, and, because of his lack of tact, he had offended too many of the old and powerful nobles at court. When they had come hesitantly to beg information about their king, Dara had had his eunuchs drive them away from the Lahore Gate that led into the fort. Before he had shut the doors, Roshanara Begam had slipped away, and Jahanara heard later that she had gone down the Yamuna to Agra and established herself in Aurangzeb’s house there.

  All these years Roshanara had been sending secret missives to Aurangzeb, this Jahanara knew well, since she had intercepted and read some, but they seemed harmless—spiteful, vituperative letters insulting her father and her sister, sometimes Dara, always ending with a profession of deep love for Aurangzeb. Jahanara had been too disgusted to read more than a few, and if Aurangzeb replied to Roshan, she did not know about it, and so she suspected that he did not. He, on the other hand, had been deeply involved until now in a . . . love affair.

  The girl, for she was barely seventeen years old, was a concubine in her uncle Saif Khan’s harem, called Hira Bai. Aurangzeb had seen her in Zainabad Bagh, when he had gone there to pray at the baradari where their mother had initially been buried, and a variety of tales had reached Jahanara’s ears about the beginnings of this silly affair. Hira Bai had been holding down a branch of a flowering mango tree, the blooms framing her pretty face, and Aurangzeb had fallen into a faint upon first seeing her. There were reports also that Saif Khan had declined to let her go, but it was not so, Jahanara knew, for the two men had exchanged women from their respective harems—Aurangzeb giving up some concubine for Hira Bai, whom he titled Zainabadi Begam after the place where he had first seen and so precipitately fallen in love with her. He had spent hours at her feet, singing songs to her, reading poetry, or watching her sleep—neglecting all of his other duties. Already in trouble with Bapa about his handling of the Balkh and Qandahar affairs, Aurangzeb had further ignored his father’s commands and laid himself out in the service of an insipid, though supposedly beautiful, concubine. Jahanara had written to him then, for the first time voluntarily. You have had the temerity to stand in judgment on my love for Mirza Najabat Khan, and what do you do now—moon about a child young enough to be your child? Younger, in fact, than your own children? Does she even have the capacity for conversation, Aurangzeb?

  He had not replied for a long while, and when he did, it was to say simply that she had hurt him profoundly, and if she could only know Zainabadi as he knew her, she would come to love her also. Besides, he was a man, with a man’s needs, and she was a woman in purdah who should have had the prudence to remain behind the veil and not attempt to besmirch all of their reputations.

  It was this affair Bapa had referred to when he called Aurangzeb a fool, but Jahanara was afraid that her brother was a fool no longer. The woman, that girl child, had died recently of consumption, and Aurangzeb had no further distractions to take his mind away from his early ambition. With Dara being so stubborn, perhaps Aurangzeb had no other alternative than to be aggressive. But they were both behaving as though Bapa was on his deathbed.

  When Shah Jahan woke to his daughter’s touch the next morning, she said to him, “Bapa, you must show yourself at the jharoka this morning.” She would not listen to any more protests from him or, surprisingly enough, from Dara, who ought to have known better—for if his father was shown to be alive he still had some standing at court, even as the heir apparent. If the amirs at court thought Shah Jahan dead, Dara would not find many of them supportive of him.

  They carried Emperor Shah Jahan to the jharoka balcony, and two eunuchs propped him up below the balustrade. Hidden behind his back, Jahanara lifted one of his arms so that he could wave to the crowds below. The men roared out their greeting, “Padshah Salamat!” But they fell quiet too soon after, and a forest of murmurs rose and buzzed along the banks of the Yamuna River as Shah Jahan stepped back and disappeared through the silk curtain because he could not stand anymore. By that night, rumors droned from one mouth to another that the Emperor was dead and that a substitute had been found for the jharoka, but that no one who had seen the man had been deceived for an instant.

  • • •

  In the Deccan, the news of Shah Jahan’s illness came to Prince Aurangzeb one morning after he had finished his first prayer of the day. He stayed kneeling on his prayer rug, facing west, toward Mecca, the tight roll of the letter in front of him. Over the past few years, he had taken to writing to everyone he knew, and then some others he did not—letters of mere salutation, of respect when the amir at court was barely known to him and greater in years, of humor to his peers (in age, for in status there were none). And finally, he had been writing to his brothers, Shuja in Bengal and Murad, who had been sent back to govern Multan. So their missives had crisscrossed the Empire for a while, frequent enough to set up special runners for this imperial purpose and to construct sarais for these runners, who were kept on a permanent salary, which Aurangzeb willingly paid.

  Murad was six years younger than he, Shuja two years older, and though they had come together originally because of their intense, and so naturally unspoken, dislike of Dara, Aurangzeb did not think either of them was capable of ruling the Empire. But then he had never thought so. He had made sure that each wrote to the other through him—he told Murad that he wanted to read all of his letters to Shuja, just for the news, and so that Murad would not have to repeat the same in another letter to him, and that he wanted to add postscripts to Murad’s letters so that Shuja would receive news from both Multan and the Deccan at one time. His two
brothers had believed him, so they had but little contact with each other directly.

  To the nobles at court, whether they openly supported him or not, Aurangzeb penned noncommittal notes, merely to keep in touch, he said, and every bit of information in the Empire was valuable to him, so if they chose to share it with him he would be honored. He sent presents of silks and jewels when their children were married and when their grandchildren were born, or ivory and silver figurines when they built new homes and sent him invitations to their housewarmings. To most of these matters, he attended himself, asking the advice of none of his ministers or nobles, keeping his own counsel.

  Now this. Prince Aurangzeb had been visited by a vision this morning while he prayed—a flash of radiance had filled the darkness under his eyelids and set his limbs quivering. The letter, he thought, had something to do with it. He willed himself into serenity, wiped his face with his hands, rolled the prayer rug and handed it to an attendant eunuch, then sat cross-legged on the floor to open and read the news of his father’s illness. He set the paper down with shaking hands. How old was he this year? Thirty-nine. If he became Emperor, he would have at least thirty years to rule.

  For the next week, Aurangzeb moved patiently through his duties in the Deccan, never seeming flurried or flustered. Because his fingertips were constantly stained with the ink from his quill, and because he wore white—a noncolor more in keeping with his asceticism—he held his hands away from his qaba and his person awkwardly, as though he was reaching out to something. He wrote letters late into the night, every night, and woke in the mornings with dark circles around his eyes. But his energy did not flag; it was quiet and burned with a relentless flame. In carrying the letters, the imperial runners zigzagged over almost every established route, and some new ones, patterning the map of Hindustan with sets of lines, but they did not touch the heart, the city of Delhi. For Dara had closed down all the arteries into Shahjahanabad, and for what Aurangzeb wanted to achieve, he did not need to reach out to Delhi.

  To each of his other two brothers, he offered his backing, indeed, his ardent wish for them to be Emperor, and he told both of them to wait for a short period to assure themselves that their Bapa was dying, or dead, and read the khutba in their names in their provinces.

  There were three bastions of sovereignty in Mughal India—the khutba, the ability to issue imperial farmans, and the minting of coins in the name of the Emperor. In the vast and far-flung Empire, where communications between provinces and states took days if not weeks, the muezzins in the mosques sang out the official proclamation of sovereignty, the khutba—“All hail the mighty Emperor, Lord of our lands.” This they did every Friday before the noon prayers, so that the populace would know on a weekly basis toward whom they should be bowing their heads.

  Murad and Shuja proclaimed themselves kings in Multan and Bengal, and at the same time, Prince Aurangzeb brought together his men, including the mammoth army his father had so providentially sent him to conquer Golkonda, and spoke to them of his designs. They were to leave for Agra the next day. He did tell his commanders and generals that his father was dead—nothing else, certainly not the idea of a coup, would have persuaded them to move—and that there was a danger that Dara would become king.

  You see, my dearest Jahan, Najabat Khan wrote from the Deccan,

  how perfidious the two princes are to announce themselves sovereign even before the Emperor is dead? My prince, Aurangzeb, is more discreet. We have started for Agra with an army, for he believes Prince Dara wishes him ill, and perhaps it is just a show of might on his part . . . how can I fault this? I am a soldier myself and recognize the value of the sword. Against my advice, Prince Aurangzeb has halted our march five days out of Burhanpur; he says that we left in a hurry and these past few days would have afforded all the amirs a chance to decide whether they want to offer their allegiance to him . . . or slip out of camp in the dark of the night to Prince Dara, whose army is said to be on its way to meet us.

  Aurangzeb is assured that we will thrash Prince Dara’s army, the part that he sends here, and then we will move ahead to meet the rest near Agra so that we can release the Emperor and you from your captivity.

  As they waited out the next two days, Prince Aurangzeb wrote again to every amir who had been sent in command of forces against him, asked for their loyalty, and promised them riches when he became Emperor. There was no hiding anymore the fact that he was on his way to depose his father, who had committed a grievous wrong in allowing Dara control of the Empire even before he was dead. Dara hated him, did Bapa not know that? Aurangzeb had always been a good and respectful son, but Bapa had always favored the weakling Dara—how could Shah Jahan even bear to think of handing his precious Empire into the hands of someone so incompetent?

  And so he revealed his intentions fully and directly. Prince Aurangzeb was in rebellion, much as his father had been thirty years ago against his father, and there was only one way this would end—someone would die.

  Dara’s two armies were routed over the next few days, and by the time Prince Aurangzeb arrived at Agra, only a skeleton of forces, mostly from the imperial bodyguards, the Ahadis, surrounded the fort.

  Princess Jahanara received Najabat Khan’s letter around this time, and when he begged for an audience, she refused him one, furious that his faith in her brother was unshakable. Her own, in Dara, was wavering. For it was true what Najabat had said—Bapa and she had been held prisoner in the fort at Delhi, their movements restricted, Dara himself not available to respond to any questions. She had been fearful for the first time in her life and it was a real, palpable anxiety, because she did not know what was happening outside the zenana’s walls or how this was all going to end. She did write to Najabat Khan in Aurangzeb’s encampment outside the fort. Leave him, my lord, she said.

  You did not listen to me all those years ago when I cautioned you against putting too much trust in my third brother, and now you and he are camped outside my father’s palaces awaiting his surrender. His surrender? From what? He is Emperor Shah Jahan—your king, your monarch, your master. Bapa has sent Aurangzeb a splendid sword, which he has called the “Alamgir,” the Conqueror of the Universe, as a token of his friendship. Why then does this worthless son of my father’s wait for the Emperor’s submission? A son cannot wear the crown upon his head while his father is still alive; every regulation, legal and moral, rebels against this, and yet it would seem this is what Aurangzeb wants. Does he? And where is Murad? Why is there no news of him?

  Najabat Khan did not respond for a long while to this missive, knowing that he and his beloved princess were on two sides of an ever widening void. Everything she wrote in the letter was accurate—Aurangzeb’s intentions and their consequences. But he had sworn fidelity to the prince; he had vanquished Prince Dara’s army and sent him fleeing north, and . . . Najabat had taken Prince Murad prisoner and escorted him to the fort at Gwalior, which was the imperial penitentiary. He did not think Murad would leave there alive.

  At Agra, on the thirty-first of July, 1658, some ten months after his father had fallen ill, Aurangzeb conducted a small ceremony in Princess Jahanara’s garden on the eastern bank of the Yamuna River and announced that he was now Emperor. For his title, he chose Alamgir—the same name as that of the sword his Bapa had presented him. Shah Jahan had been King of the World; Aurangzeb was now Emperor Alamgir—Conqueror of the Universe. Then, with Najabat Khan and a large army, he set off to pursue his oldest brother.

  Over the next few months, Dara was constantly on the move—Lahore, Multan, Sindh, Cutch, back to Gujarat, Ajmer, Ahmadabad, back again to Sindh, hoping to get some refuge, finally, from the Shah of Persia. Aurangzeb’s men hounded him through the Empire, a step or just a few behind him at all times—so assiduously had Aurangzeb cultivated the friendships and the loyalties of the grandees of the Empire, so detested was Dara himself. Finally, in 1659, a year after Aurangzeb had proclaimed himself Emperor of Hindustan, Dara was betrayed to the imperial for
ces by a tribal chieftain who had ostensibly been helping him escape.

  He was brought to Delhi, paraded through the streets seated backward on a donkey, and his head was sliced off the next morning . . . and sent in a silver box to Emperor Shah Jahan and Jahanara at the Agra fort.

  Shuja was killed a year later, and in 1662, Aurangzeb put the imprisoned Murad out of his misery by hanging him. Now only his sisters were left. Roshanara had come to live in his harem, but Jahanara had refused even to speak to him these past three years. He went to see her at Agra, bareheaded, holding his imperial turban in his hands.

  • • •

  “What is it, Aurangzeb?” Jahanara asked dully. “What murder have you come to boast of now?”

  It was a few days after Murad’s death, and when Jahanara had received the news, she had stared dumbly at the messenger, Ishaq Beg, unable to comprehend for a moment who he was talking about. Then she remembered that little boy who had wrapped his arms around her waist and muffled his sobs in the silk of her ghagara on the day they had buried their mother in Burhanpur. She thought of the innocent trust that he had always had in all of them, that Aurangzeb had used to his advantage. She was fatigued now, almost every day, her heart toughened against hurt, and it had been almost torn asunder on the day she opened the box from Aurangzeb and saw Dara’s bloody head inside. She had not been able to hide the bloodstains on her hands from her father, and so Bapa had known also. Aurangzeb had left them at the fort at Agra, confined within its walls. The first month after he had had the khutba read in his name, he had written to her and begged her to come and be with him.

  Jahanara leaned against the warm teak of the door to her apartments and set her ear to the wood, listening for a sound from the other side. But Aurangzeb was silent. She had not responded to his many pleadings—what did they mean, anyway? How could she leave Bapa and go out? Who would look after him? And if he were to be allowed out with her, what amir at court would profess loyalty to his vicious son? She realized that Aurangzeb never meant to see his father again or consent to his showing himself in public—it would be fatal for the sovereignty Aurangzeb had just set up for himself.