Mistress of the Throne (The Mughal intrigues)

by Ruchir, Gupta

  Aba said, “Speak now, mullah – how do you find my son’s actions?”

  Aurangzeb is said to have looked at the mullah and given him a smile, as if the winning hand was now in his palm, and his father was about to be embarrassed in his own kingdom.

  But the mullah replied, “Your Majesty, Prince Aurangzeb’s actions are un-Islamic!”

  Aurangzeb’s eyes widened, I was told. How could anyone call him un-Islamic when he’d devoted so much of his life thus far to serving Allah? This was the greatest insult anyone could give him.

  The mullah continued: “In the Koran, the attacking of women and helpless children is strictly forbidden by the Prophet. Yet the Prince harmed a helpless woman. And what makes his offence even more sinful is that the person he harmed was his own stepmother!”

  The mullah then looked at Aurangzeb and shouted loudly: “Does the Koran not say paradise is at the mother’s feet, you fool?!?”

  The words were said to have echoed in the mosque several times after the mullah finished speaking, amplifying his already loud voice as they reiterated his statement to the young Prince.

  “You have offended Allah and Islam for several generations! Your whole family will have to answer for your sins on Judgment Day.”

  Then the mullah levelled against Aurangzeb a punishment befitting his crime: He was not to be allowed to enter the mosque for a period of 60 days; he was to continue to pray and ask Allah for his forgiveness; he must offer his apology to Manu, and also have ten lashes laid on his back.

  The next day, we siblings stayed in the zenana apartment while Aurangzeb was escorted to a private room to receive his physical punishment. The air seemed thick that day. Everyone knew what was to occur, but no one dared speak of it openly. Very little laughter and levity was heard in Agra on this fateful day. Quietly we all waited for the nightmare to end.

  Aurangzeb, pursuant to the sentence proclaimed by the mullah, received ten lashes on his back. With each lash, he cried out and begged for his Aba to have mercy. Aba, standing outside the door of the torture chamber, told me later he closed his eyes with each cry and shed tears after the fifth stroke. Aba begged forgiveness of Allah on his son’s behalf and asked that he be pardoned on Judgment Day for what he’d done.

  After the tenth lash Aba left, not wishing to be seen by anyone with tears in his eyes, as such a sight would indicate weakness, which a king isn’t supposed to possess. My young brother put his long shirt on and began to walk back to the royal zenana where he lived. With the same urgency a traveller has approaching his destination, I fixed my eyes in the distance as I waited for my wounded, troubled brother.

  Finally in the distance I saw a small, skinny figure nearing. I noticed he couldn’t walk straight – his back must have stung as he walked – and he had a limp as he returned to the apartments.

  We were waiting in Angoori Bagh (literally meaning ‘grape courtyard’), which was located within the harem apartments. We knew Aurangzeb would pass from there, and we hoped to see him up close as he entered.

  The small, olive-skinned, five-foot-tall figure came into sharper focus as he neared, and I noticed dried tears on his face. As he walked, he sounded as if his every step was painful. His head hung low, as if he wished to avoid any embarrassing eye contact with us siblings, all of whom by now knew what had transpired in the mosque behind closed doors.

  With a pang of concern I asked him, “Aurangzeb, my brother, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  I noticed a trail of blood drops along the path he’d walked. “You’re bleeding?”

  “I said I’m fine; I just want to go to my room.”

  Still a head taller, I ran up to him and quickly embraced him, weeping myself. “What did they do to you?” I cried, pressing his wounded body against mine. “You’re just a child; it’s monstrous that they made you bleed. Please let me take care of you; your clothes are bloody; let me help you my brother.”

  Dara then broke in: “He doesn’t need your help, Jahanara. He doesn’t need anyone’s help. Do you, brother?”

  “I just want to be left alone,” he muttered.

  Dara snarled,“Did you leave Manu alone?”

  “That’s all settled now, Dara,” I shot back.

  “What about Gita?” Dara said bitterly. “Is that all settled too?”

  My eyes widened in shock and I slowly shifted my gaze from Dara back to Aurangzeb: I hadn’t made the connection in my mind that perhaps Aurangzeb had orchestrated that murder as well.

  Dara grabbed Aurangzeb by the collar, pushed me aside and cried, “Listen, Aurangzeb, just tell me the truth once: Did you poison Gita?”

  “I just want to go to my room,” he sighed wearily.

  “Not until you answer my question. Did you murder Gita?”

  “I said, leave me alone.”

  Dara pushed Aurangzeb to the ground; his back landed on the hot pavement; it hit his bloody wounds like a hot iron on soft flesh, and he screamed in agony.

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Yes, I poisoned her, okay? I did it! I poisoned Manu, I poisoned Gita! I killed the non-believers. I did what I had to do!”

  Dara, visibly, furiously hurt by the admission he must have known for several days now was forthcoming, lunged on top of my younger brother and began punching him in the face repeatedly. I stood at a distance and struggled to keep myself from jumping in to save Aurangzeb. Then I glanced at Dara’s fists; they were now covered in blood.

  I struggled between the two and covered Aurangzeb’s body with my own. “Stop hurting him! Hit me, stop hurting my brother! He’s just a child! What’s wrong with you people?”

  Dara kept trying to punch Aurangzeb through the spaces my body couldn’t cover, and I felt a sharp blow on my back that caused me to cry aloud.

  Aurangzeb heard me scream and looked up at me. I don’t think anyone had ever before tried to protect him. His earliest memories had been of being abandoned by our parents in a political game and tortured by his captors. Nobody came to his rescue – not even the mullah. Now, for the first time ever, someone was defending him and had actually taken a blow meant for him.

  Dara jumped back in horror from having hit me unintentionally. I got up still weeping and held my brother in my arms and cried, “No one needs to hurt him anymore! No one! He and I will leave this kingdom right away. We need no one! I’ll take care of him! You don’t have to do anything if you think he’s a monster. He’ll be my responsibility!”

  Having heard the commotion, Ami came running from her apartment. Shocked to see not only Aurangzeb dripping blood, but also me crying while holding him, she yelled: “Are you kids already continuing your ancestors’ tradition of killing each other?”

  All us children looked away in shame at our otherwise pacifist mother’s scream: “At least they waited till the King was dead to commit such a sin. If you can’t wait that long, can you at least wait till after I die?”

  We reeled in shock at our mother’s words. Still heavily pregnant, Ami’s health was deteriorating with every successive pregnancy, yet this was the first time she’d ever brought the inauspicious word ‘dead’ to her mouth. “Jahanara,” she ordered, “take Aurangzeb to my room and tell the servant to prepare a warm bath for him with some sponges for his wounds!”

  She turned then to Dara and commanded, “Go to your room! Now!”

  As we stood there in stunned silence for a moment before moving, I felt as if she’d foretold a prophecy, predicting a calamity that awaited the Mughal Empire in the years to come.

  I took Aurangzeb to Ami’s palace and asked him to take his shirt off so I could see his bare skin’s wounds. As per Ami’s wishes, I sent the servant to fetch some warm water. Raushanara hurried in after me and we soon began using warm, wet cloths to wipe our brother’s dried blood off his back.

  Ami came in after we, his sisters, finished washing his back clean. She was aware of and u
nderstood everything that had happened the past few days – the censure by the mullah and the rift now widening between Dara and Aurangzeb. Did she feel herself guilty of failing Aurangzeb as a parent? Could she now play a greater role in his upbringing, and would this be the moment from which she began that new journey? Time would tell.

  “You are a prince, Aurangzeb; don’t let these wounds destroy you,” she said as she applied more warm water to his blistered and scarred back. Aurangzeb moaned at each touch. “You have a gift. You understand morality probably better than anyone your age.”

  Aurangzeb seemed stunned to hear Ami compliment him.

  She went on: “But as you pray, you must remember what it is you’re praying for. Your actions from now on must be such that if someone writes about them, he’ll think he’s reading a verse of the Koran!” Aurangzeb’s eyebrows lifted inquisitively and he moved his head closer to Ami’s.

  “Imagine if someone wrote about your actions: What would they say? ‘Aurangzeb, messenger of Allah, sneakily poisoned his idol-loving stepmother to prevent the infidel culture from prospering in the land of Allah?’”

  Aurangzeb listened silently.

  Ami continued: “We Mughals were a small tribe of nomads who came to this country. ‘Hindustan’ means ‘Land of the Hindus.’ We are in their country. We face not east toward the rest of the country, but west towards Mecca when we pray. We are outsiders. Nothing about this country is to our liking… not the food, nor the religion, nor even the customs. Yet we are here, and we’re slowly bringing more Indians to the grace of Allah. How? By convincing these people, Aurangzeb. Bring Allah into your heart, and the voice that emanates from your mouth will convince all the non-believers to convert!”

  Aurangzeb seemed stunned by what Ami had just uttered to him. Till now, no one had ever truly explained the complexity of India’s culture to him. The heterogeneous, multicultural heritage of India was never discussed in the Mughal household, and teachers often glanced over it as if it was insignificant. Ami, I think, understood this relationship and knew that we children must appreciate it also if we were to maintain the empire after her.

  “We Mughals,” she said, “are to Hindustan what a veil is to a face. We can cover it with our mosques, but we can’t change what lies beneath it.” She then turned him around, cupped his cheeks in her hands and kissed his forehead. “I want to give you something now, which only you deserve to have.”

  She got up, went over to her jewel-studded cabinet and moved her jewels from one of the shelves. She found behind them a small black box, returned to Aurangzeb’s side and handed it to him. She said, “Open it and see what’s inside – but don’t touch it.”

  Aurangzeb slowly opened the lid from the box and found a few brown stands of hair inside; but obeying Ami’s instructions, he didn’t touch them. He said, “What are these, Ami?”

  “This is the most valuable treasure in the world, one passed down to me by my mother and to her from hers. I want no one else to have it because I don’t think anyone but you would treasure it with the respect it deserves. These are actual strands from the beard of the Prophet.”

  “Mohammed?”

  “Yes, the Prophet Mohammed. Before he died, he gave a few strands of his beard to each of his disciples. Few people today still have the originals; you are now one of them.”

  Aurangzeb looked awestruck at what he was being given. Never before, I presume, had he been given any gift of true personal value to him – he thought his father’s riches worthless.

  “But son,” Ami added, “you must promise me this: Now that you have these, you will never do anything that violates the Prophet’s teachings ever again. You will never hurt any Hindu or Christian or non-believer, ever. Promise me!”

  “I promise, Ami,” cried Aurangzeb, and he hugged Ami for the priceless present he’d been given. “I’ll never do anything to harm anyone, I promise.”

  4

  THE EVIL HAND

  3rd September, 1629

  Ami closed her eyes, placed her palms before her, and began to utter words softly aloud so I could faintly hear them as I sat beside her. “Allah, hear my prayers: Please help me make Aurangzeb a better person.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her. Her demeanour had been sad for the past several weeks, and I knew why: She’d suffered another miscarriage, and with each of these, Ami had told me she felt as though she herself was dying. Were all these miscarriages a prelude to something much more serious and tragic? Keenly aware of her own mortality, she began immersing herself in service to the unfortunate, perhaps hoping that helping those in need would absolve her of any sin she might have committed, and that she’d be granted a long and prosperous life, alongside her first love – Aba.

  Now she prayed: “You’ve taken seven of my children, I’ve never questioned your will, and I don’t dare do so now. But, Creator of this World, understand a mother’s anguish at watching her child take the path of evil. To watch as your child, whom you’ve held and hugged and kissed, walks the path of injustice is unthinkable. Give this peasant servant of yours this one wish: Take my life, but spare Aurangzeb’s soul!”

  I looked at my mother in surprise, but then quickly closed my eyes and resumed my own prayer. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my Ami, the anchor that held everything together. If there was one person against whom no one in the family had any complaint – not even Nur Jahan – it was Ami. Her leaving this world would be a disaster not only for me, but the entire imperial household. I began to pray more fervently, hoping that my prayer and not my mother’s would be answered.

  “Please take me, Allah,” I pleaded in my mind. “Take all my riches, and let me live my life in the mud huts on the far side of Agra, and give me a painful death. Deny me any children and any love, and I will still say my life has been blessed. But please spare my mother. Don’t let her die!”

  On the far side of Agra were districts where the peasants lived in simple huts made only of mud and straw. These would often disappear during extreme weather, as the wind and rains washed the inhabitants into the river along with their homes and belongings. While the nobles were often rewarded with hundreds of acres of lands and cavalry, the peasants, the backbone of our revenue system, toiled all day in the fields and gave more than a third of their income in taxes and bribes to corrupt officials. A poor harvest wouldn’t preclude the peasant from paying such taxes, and often he’d have to mortgage his farm during such seasons. Continued poor harvests would cause the peasant to default on his mortgage payments and lose his land and livelihood. Such was the sad, ugly truth behind the opulence of the Mughal Empire. For all the wealth that existed in the royal household, the average citizen’s lot was far from comfortable. Ami understood this and upon Aba’s coronation, she began spending vast sums of money to feed the poor, and she even gave regular audiences to women whose husbands had died and who now needed to feed their families.

  I was tormented by my mother’s anguish and felt compelled to help her somehow. Was Aurangzeb’s intolerance his own creation, or was an evil hand misguiding him? I began pondering the possibilities. I asked my eunuch, Bahadur, to find out who had been in contact with Aurangzeb after we returned from Kashmir. I was certain someone was pulling the strings, and my little brother hadn’t concocted the plan on his own. Bahadur was a gentle soul who never engaged in zenana gossip for her own amusement. After being assigned to me, she became almost an older sibling, protecting me from the dangers that lurked in unthinkable places in the palace. The other women of the harem feared her, and their treatment of me changed once I was placed in her charge. I now commanded respect; my suggestions were no longer met with taunts and sarcasm, and the women would go out of their way to include me on trips and hunts.

  She now told me, “Begum Sahiba, both your brother and your sister, Raushanara, have been paying regular visits to the former Empress, Nur Jahan.”

  I froze in horror. I’d heard of Nur Jahan’s vindictiveness, but I couldn’t believe her ten
tacles could run so deep into the fabric of my family. “Bahadur, are you sure? I can’t act on a rumour…”

  “I assure you, Begum Sahiba, this is no rumour. Several of my sources, including Nur Jahan’s own eunuch, Hoshiyar Khan, have attested to this.”

  I resolved not to make either parent of mine privy to this information; I opted instead to take matters into my own hands. With Bahadur by my side, I took a detour on my way to visit the mud huts of Agra and personally confront the former empress.

  A small haveli began to come into focus as our palanquin made its way towards Nur Jahan’s home. There was an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach as we approached, as if Nur Jahan had placed a curse on the air around her haveli.

  Yet, I was determined to not be intimidated by this woman. She had caused so much grief in my life that I opted to do what was right for my family and confront her. By this age, I’d developed my mother’s sense of confidence and sophistication in dealing with difficult matters.

  Bahadur approached the haveli first and made contact with Hoshiyar Khan. After the two eunuchs discussed the purpose of the visit, Bahadur escorted me to the main room where Nur Jahan would receive me.

  Though we exchanged the customary salutations, I didn’t waste any time on casual conversation, instead forthrightly saying: “Aunt Nur Jahan, I’m here to tell you plainly: leave Aurangzeb alone!”

  Nur Jahan smiled slimly. “What makes you think I’ve said anything to Aurangzeb?”

  “He told me!” I lied. “I know everything. I know how you manipulated him to poison Manu and told him it was God’s will for her to die. Why won’t you leave him alone? Why do you wish to turn him into a fanatic?”

  If Nur Jahan was surprised at my boldness, she didn’t let on. Instead, while I was speaking, she began walking around her room, rearranging figurines on her table as if she were preoccupied. She replied calmly, “I’m not saying anything his own heart’s not telling him.”

  “He’s a child!” I nearly screamed. “You’re poisoning his mind!”