Jahanara: A Novel

Little is known about Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara, the most erudite of Mughal princesses. Even as an adolescent she advised her emperor father on state affairs and diplomacy. Fending off the machinations of Shah Jahan’s devious stepmother, Noor Mahal, who manipulated her husband Jahangir and later Aurangzeb like a puppeteer, Jahanara is known to have continually attempted to broker peace between Shah Jahan, Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb. Conversant in Persian, Sanskrit and several other languages, she had studied not only the Quran but also the Vedas and Puranas. She owned, at one point, the largest number of ships for sea trade in the Bay of Bengal. However, hers was also a life of great emotional turmoil. Her grandfather, the Emperor Akbar, had ruled that women born into the royal family were not to take lovers or enter into marriage. But Jahanara had fallen deeply in love with the Rajput king Chattar Sal. She led a life of constant isolation, tending to her father and relying on the friendship of a tenacious eunuch called Panipat. An unusual novel in Tamil literature, Sukumaran’s Jahanara tells the story that Panipat stood witness to. It brings to vivid life a woman whose personal freedom was tossed into the hellfire burning between her brothers. Stifled by the veil of Mughal traditions, Jahanara found solace in writing diaries, which this moving novel draws upon.