Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World.

• Author: Jhala, Angma D.
• Position: Book review

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...