The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin

by Manu S. Pillai

  In 1781, Begum Samru, now confirmed master of Sardhana and commander-in-chief of all of Reinhardt’s troops, took the unusual step of converting to Catholicism. It was an act as much of religious conviction as of political imagination. Though she shared no tongue with the priest who baptised her, and despite disapproval over her retention of an Islamic appearance even after her conversion, the begum spent lakhs of rupees on Christian institutions, constructing also what is still one of north India’s largest churches. Becoming a Christian seemed also a suitable strategy for a woman unhappy with Islamic restraints on her sex: Catholicism gave her the freedom she required to rule Sardhana while creating a legitimate (and distinct) space in Hindustani politics. Her very story and rise were unusual; now, even in power, she retained distinction by securing a place unlike any other for herself. Some, in fact, claim that Begum Samru foresaw British dominion and wished to curry favour with India’s future masters by accepting the Christian faith—a claim not borne out by evidence, even if it lends itself to speculation, not least because she corresponded enthusiastically with the pope.

  As a military commander, Begum Samru showed all the qualities that marked leadership in her tumultuous age. When necessary, she could be ruthless: while she never ordered large and indiscriminate massacres, when two murderous maidservants set fire to her buildings, she had no hesitation in having them buried alive. In the 1780s, when the Mughal emperor was imperilled and surrounded by enemies, it was she who rode more than once, for not only the defence of his imperial person but also of his capital. It was this service that earned her those aforementioned titles, and it was her genuine affection for his well-being that saw the former dancing girl become one of Shah Alam’s most beloved confidantes. (Unfortunately for the emperor, on the one occasion he needed her most, Begum Samru was unable to come to his aid: falling into the hands of a particularly sadistic enemy called Ghulam Qadir, he saw his daughters violated and was himself blinded before he could be rescued.)

  The begum also had to balance factions within her own armed forces. A motley crew of European adventurers and assorted Indian sepoys, whose moral compass was barely more evolved than Reinhardt’s, they had their own politics and rivalries. That is how, for instance, when she went ahead and married an unpopular French gun-founder in 1795, she provoked the mutiny which saw her tied up and left to die in the scorching heat. She survived the debacle and was restored to power, but never again permitted her heart to reign over her head. Her husband, of course, could learn no lessons—he was shot dead by the begum’s men.

  By the early nineteenth century, the middle-aged begum (‘a bejeweled vision of delight’), who had hitherto loyally served the tottering Mughal crown, knew that English power was in the ascendant, and soon she was their ally—a potential adjustment to altered political realities after the emperor and his dynasty went into terminal decline and British supremacy became India’s new normal. Instead of military engagements, it was her soirées that now attracted Europeans for whom she was also an object of curiosity. As late as 1834, when she was ‘bent in two’ and ‘shriveled like dried raisins’, her energy never ceased to dazzle. In fact, writes the scholar Brijraj Singh, she actively ‘preferred European people and things to their Indian counterparts’. It was another matter that despite admiring her, Company officials never saw her as an equal. But that didn’t depress her either, in the big picture: she had begun life in poverty and worked in a public house. By the eve of her demise, she not only enjoyed military salutes, but was also one of India’s richest women. As her memorial in Sardhana records, when ‘Her Highness Joanna Zeb-ul-Nissa’ died on 27 January 1836, she was ‘revered and lamented by thousands of her devoted subjects’—not a predictable ending for someone who was once a courtesan, and whose successes so bewildered the world that rumour insisted she was actually a witch.

  MEERABAI A DIFFERENT KIND OF VALOUR

  Perhaps if Meerabai of Mewar had jumped into a fire, she too might have had armies of twenty-first-century men prepared to smash glass and destroy public property in the name of protecting her honour. After all, nothing rouses patriarchal masculine pride more than illusions of stoic sacrifice by unreal beauties, who, between managing their heavy jewels and rich skirts, spout tedious lines about valour and fortitude. So while (the possibly fictional) Padmavati, by dying the way she is supposed to have, went down as the right kind of tragic heroine, the definitely real Meerabai presents a minor problem by refusing to bow out in the correct fashion. On the contrary, far from yearning to kill herself after her husband succumbed on the battlefield, Meerabai declared firmly, ‘I will not be a sati.’ She chose instead, to live for decades more, singing praises of her favourite deity, Krishna, while rejecting pressures from the muscular guardians of Rajput society. Patriarchy accommodated her as an icon of feminine, god-loving devotion, but in her own verses, we find a lady with a mind of her own; one who stood up to all established norms of honour, and to the authority of every mortal man around her.

  Meerabai was born at the dawn of the sixteenth century in Merta in Rajasthan. According to hagiographies composed by her earliest admirers, this motherless child was raised in her grandfather’s household, and from a tender age showed great affection for Krishna. Around 1516, when in her late teens, she married Bhojraj, son of the legendary Rana Sangha of Mewar. Their complicated union did not last, however. In the next decade, Meerabai lost her husband and her footing in his royal household. Her refusal to commit sati may have added to the erosion of status that came automatically with widowhood, but she did not care about being perceived as a troublesome woman. As one of her verses, addressed to her husband’s heir, declares: ‘Rana, to me this slander is sweet … Mira’s lord is [Krishna]: let the wicked burn in a furnace.’ There is no doubt that Meerabai was passionate in her love for god—some of her greatest works are those expressing deep sorrow at her ‘separation’ from her divine beloved. But there is also no doubt that hers was a voice that challenged the world, refusing the control her husband’s relations sought to exercise in the name of their own prestige and her patent lack of aristocratic reserve.

  Some of this resistance is encapsulated in Nabhadas’s Bhaktamal , composed soon after Meerabai’s time. ‘Modesty in public, the chains of family life/Mira shed both for the Lifter of Mountains,’ the saint writes. She had ‘no inhibitions’ and was ‘totally fearless’. ‘She cringed before none, she beat love’s drum.’ In other words, far from leading an unobtrusive life in widow’s garb or fitting into the role of a pativrata (devoted wife), as Padmavati is supposed to have done, Meerabai engaged freely with other devotees and moved in spaces not ordinarily permitted to women. Her interlocutors, furthermore, included a diverse cast of men, from backgrounds that did not make them ideal companions for a Rajput widow. Where custom demanded social invisibility of her, Meerabai chose the opposite, further enraging her family. Still, she did not care—‘I don’t like your strange world, Rana,’ she records. ‘A world where there are no holy men, and all the people are trash.’

  In the face of her resolve, there was even an attempt to poison her, but our poet was uncowed: ‘Rana,’ she announced, ‘nobody can prevent me from going to the saints. I don’t care what the people say.’ Eventually, Meerabai was cast out and became even more determined in her ways. ‘Fools sit on thrones,’ she sang, while ‘wise men beg for a little bread.’ Elsewhere she proclaims: ‘If Rana is angry, he can keep his kingdom/But if god is offended … I will wither,’ making clear where her loyalties resided. ‘She danced,’ writes Dhruvadas, ‘with anklebells on her feet and with castanets in her hands. In the purity of her heart, she met the devotees of god, and realised the pettiness of the world.’ Much had to be given up, but she did so readily in the pursuit of her calling. ‘What I paid,’ writes Meerabai, ‘was my social body, my town body, my family body, and all my inherited jewels.’ With Krishna as her focus, she was able to survive every loss and become one with the people. She would sing his songs and, through him, be also h
er own person.

  In due course, Meerabai became a travelling saint, an outcast where she was once a princess. Her satsangs were attended by many, but the path was riddled with privations and tests—there were those within the Bhakti tradition who challenged her or sought to take advantage of this woman on her own. But she survived, dying on her own terms, in Dwarka by the middle of the century (and not in a blazing flame). Her story has since found several takers—Mahatma Gandhi saw an exemplar of non-violent resistance, while Carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmi highlighted Meerabai’s religiosity at the cinema. But just as importantly, Meerabai also ‘disowned, defied and subverted the … values associated with powerful and entrenched institutions—family, marriage, caste, clan, royalty and even the realm of Bhakti.’ She threw off the weight of expectations from every quarter, and painstakingly embraced only that which brought her closer to god. Passion, flaws, rejection and greatness were all woven into this mortal one, remembered to this day by that fascinating, immortal name, Meerabai of Mewar. And so she went down as the woman she truly was, refusing to become another Padmavati, that imagined paragon of monochrome glory.

  THE AKBAR OF THE DECCAN

  In the twenty-fourth year of Jalal-ud-din Akbar’s reign, a ten-year-old boy was installed on the throne of the Adil Shahs of Bijapur. Ibrahim II was the Mughal emperor’s junior by several years, but if the two had met, they would have delighted in each other’s company. For though separated by distance as well as a generation gap, there was a great deal the Mughal badshah and the Deccan sultan had in common. Both were patrons of the arts, and each was a man of ability as well as charisma. And in what is directly relevant to our own times, Akbar and Ibrahim both embraced the plural impulses of the societies over which they reigned, birthing a magnificent age and lighting a path that still shines, centuries after they went to the grave.

  The horror with which Akbar’s religious views were perceived is well chronicled. But in the shadow of the emperor, Ibrahim languishes forgotten. Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur was a man full of surprises, and not only because he coloured his nails red. As a boy, he once came across a party of Shaivites and was so profoundly influenced by their exchange that it ignited a lifelong fascination in him for Hindu traditions. Indeed, though formally a Sunni Muslim, when he died, such were the suspicions around his true loyalties that his epitaph served primarily as a reassurance to all concerned: ‘No, Ibrahim in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian; but he was a Muslim, and one pure of faith; certainly he was never of the idolators.’ The last line was, of course, insincere, for the Adil Shah’s universe was bursting with Hindu influences, and his career had seen him endow temples, affirm the rights of pilgrims at popular shrines, and consciously exalt Hindu gods to the heights of kingly devotion.

  This is not to ignore this gentleman prince’s military avatar (like Akbar’s) that allowed brothers to be killed and overpowering regents blinded. But when he was in his gentler, more constructive mood, Ibrahim could charm the world. Calling himself Adil Shah Sufi, a number of his farmans begin with an invocation of the Hindu goddess Saraswati. It was, in fact, such unconcealed devotion to this deity that eventually convinced a section of his court that the Adil Shah, if he was not already secretly a practising Hindu, was flirting dangerously with apostasy—at one point, he renamed Bijapur (originally Vijaypur, the City of Victory) as Vidyapur (City of Learning). In a poem Ibrahim composed, he expressed ideas that to the conservative appeared dangerously heterodox, and antithetical to their brand of puritanical Islam. Thus, for instance, we have the prince declare:

  There are different languages;

  But there is one emotional appeal.

  Be he a brahmin or a Turk,

  He is only fortunate on whom

  The Goddess of Learning [Saraswati] smiles.

  Indeed, when Ibrahim produced his celebrated Kitab-i-Nauras , what he offered the world besides ‘an engaging text that is … highly visual in its imagery and metaphor’ was a glimpse of the splendid syncretism of his age. The Kitab refers to the world of politics as much as it does to his royal household, featuring characters such as the warrior queen Chand Bibi, not to speak of his pet elephant, Atash Khan. There are Hindu gods like Shiva and Parvati, alongside influences from the great Sanskrit epics. In what is equally noteworthy, among the several paintings he commissioned is one of Saraswati where she appears on a golden throne, with all her traditional instruments and symbols—the peacock, the conch, a veena, a lotus, and so on. But unlike her familiar representations today or even in sculptures of yore, Ibrahim’s Saraswati is dressed in white robes, appearing more ‘in the form of a royal [Muslim] princess’ than in any immediately recognisable ‘Hindu’ style. Equally striking are the words that appear within the painting, embodying the depth of the Adil Shah’s love for the goddess: Ibrahim is described as he ‘whose father is guru Ganapati, and mother the pure Saraswati’. No wonder some at court were apoplectic.

  While the Adil Shah—often painted with rudraksha beads and proclaimed, in Sanskrit, as ‘protector of the weak’ on his coins—thus embraced Hindu traditions in all their richness, his policy had practical repercussions too. Following the fall of Vijayanagar in 1565, large numbers of Hindu artists were set adrift; Ibrahim opened his heart and his treasury to support them in Bijapur. Marathi brahmins were already powerful in the bureaucracy; Ibrahim now introduced Telugu and Kannadiga professionals into the fields of art, music and architecture. The Adil Shah himself, a Mughal envoy was surprised to discover, preferred speaking Marathi in court, and one of his harem favourites was a Maharashtrian dancer called Rambha. It was also well known that Ibrahim had an excellent grasp of Sanskrit, far superior than his grip over Persian, the language of his Iranian ancestors and of the emperor’s durbar in the north. To the more orthodox, the Adil Shah’s ‘native’ preoccupations seemed almost like a betrayal, given that only some generations before, his forebears were an exact contrast in conduct, exalting Persian, banishing local influences with vehemence and even having soldiers imitate Iranian patterns in their uniform and drills.

  It was not surprising, then, that a reaction from the orthodoxy awaited only round the bend in Bijapur, just as Badauni held Akbar ‘in defiance and contempt of the true faith’ in the north. In the Adil Shah’s case, interestingly, the backlash originated not from conservative clerics as much as from the Sufis. When one saint arrived in the city and learnt that the ruler was ‘enamoured’ of ‘Hindu singing and playing’, he insisted that Ibrahim proactively cease to surround himself with such ungodly influences. The latter said, like young people do to evade tiresome old men, that he would try—and then, eventually, had the old Sufi shipped off to Mecca with a pension. Another saint’s hagiography has large numbers of people seeking his aid to ‘rescue’ the Adil Shah from the hands of a Hindu yogi —in the story, the Sufi succeeds, and not only does Ibrahim return to the right path, but the yogi also converts to Islam. Regardless of the veracity (which is dubious) of the account, the picture is clear: the ruler was surrounded by enough non-Muslim influences to give cause for worry to powerful parties in Bijapur—and to attract the attention of people in the capital of the Mughal emperor in Agra.

  If Akbar and Ibrahim returned to gaze upon our world, they would see, like them, many with minds full of curiosity and spirit—but they would also see, as in their own time, others issuing diktats on what one should think, whom one should obey. Centuries and many ages separate us, but in the story of society, these kings might chuckle, some things clearly never change.

  JAHANGIR THE ENDEARING ECCENTRIC

  If ever there was a Mughal ruler who lived the good life, that man was Emperor Jahangir, in whose veins flowed Persian, Turkic and Rajput blood—besides double-distilled spirits and a whole lot of wine. Jahangir, who died on 28 October 1627 aged 58, was the least militarily inclined of the great Mughals (that is, at a personal level), and though he once led a half-baked rebellion against his illustrious father, he preferred having other men fight the ba
ttles that mattered. In an age of violence this was something of a character defect, but Jahangir’s indulgence was a mark of stability in the empire he inherited—after all, if he could afford to live the way he did, it was because he was parked at the apex of an order well settled by his father Akbar. Far from the heat and fury of conflict, deep in the embrace of art and aesthetics, he quickly came to represent both self-assured power and the height of Mughal imperial splendour.

  Even today, reading the Jahangirnama is a fascinating exercise. For the figure that emerges is at once pampered prince, curious dilettante, ruthless emperor, and sentimental man. The first-born of Akbar and the so-called Jodha Bai, Shaikhu Baba, as Jahangir was lovingly known, was one upon whom luck bestowed an early blessing. By eighteen, he was falling in love with his goblet; luckily for him, his brothers were worse. Not even royal commands could move him if he didn’t wish it: once, when his father sought to appoint him leader of a campaign, the prince simply absented himself from court. One of those ill-fated brothers accepted the charge and won a few battles before losing himself forever to drink. Akbar, meanwhile, turned his hopes towards Jahangir’s son, provoking a hundred intrigues and yet more tragedy.

  Shaikhu Baba, however, was too shrewd to drown in wine and die. He understood quickly what was at stake and where to draw the line—no son of his could be emperor before he had had his time. So while he continued to drink—pretending after his accession that he only indulged ‘to promote digestion’—he toned down the quantities. He even presented himself to the orthodox faction as a more pious Muslim than Akbar, to win them over before his favoured son. To be sure, having become emperor, he dabbled in more than one religion, till rumours floated that he was a Christian, and he commissioned art in which he appeared cross-legged and shirtless—more Hindu deity than a Muslim sovereign.