#pukar

Light of the World

as on my Substack

I, as a rule, do not get into the internet chatter, but lately, there’s been a curious discourse surrounding a necklace that belonged to Nur Jahan. And so, I found myself drawn into an inescapable rabbit hole of pouring over books, watching movies, assembling mood boards, all in pursuit of the enigmatic woman who once influenced three of the Mughal empire’s badshahs from behind the veil of her jewels.

Tonight, I’ll be diving into the many sides of Nur Jahan, what historians say, what’s left of her legacy, and how cinema’s tried to capture her essence.

There’s so much myth and mystery around Nur Jahan’s life, it’s tough to separate fact from fiction. And cinema’s definitely played a part in adding to the legend, like her intense relationship with Jahangir and her fight for power after he died. So, before we tumble into the films, I want to untangle the lore surrounding Nur Jahan.

I found the Wikipedia entry on her surprisingly concise and well-written, and so to dig deeper I got my hands on Ellison Banks Findly’s 400-page book, simply titled Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India.

Nur Jahan wasn’t always “Nur Jahan.” This luminous title, which means “Light of the World,” was given to her by Jahangir when they got married. For her parents and family she was Mehru-un-Nisa, “the sun of women.” She got her name because her arrival was a turning point, things started looking up for her family.

She was born on a hot summer day, 31 May 1577, in Kandahar, while they were on the move from Tehran to India. Two prominent legends swirl around her birth, stories that, according to Findly, grew out of the myth-making that surrounded Nur Jahan as she rose to become Jahangir’s dominant queen. As her influence spread, people started digging into her mysterious childhood and youth, to justify her growing power.

There’s a story that goes like this: One day a gang of bandits swooped down on her parents’ caravan and took everything. In the chaos, the parents decide to leave baby Mehru behind. Luckily, the caravan’s leader stumbles upon her and is so charmed by her that he takes her in. And in a crazy coincidence, while searching for a woman to nurse the baby, he hands baby Mehru to her very own mother!

The other legend is as dark as the first. Her parents are having a nightmare journey, trudging along this endless road, exhausted and freaked out by animals lurking in the shadows. In a moment of total desperation, they leave Mehru under a tree, covering her with leaves. They walk away, crying, thinking they’d never see her again. But they couldn’t shake it off, so they rush back and when they get there, they see a black snake wrapped around her! As they approach, it just slides away, leaving baby Mehru safe and sound.

These tales seem to be working towards one thing, highlighting Nur Jahan’s strength of character, that radiant aura of hers, so powerful it could even sway the wild, fierce instinct of a black snake in the wilderness.

Between the wild episode of abandonment and her first marriage, history goes pretty quiet about Nur Jahan’s early life. But it is easy to imagine that growing up as the daughter of a diwan for Akbar had its perks. She probably spent her days in Kabul studying Persian arts and literature, traveling with her family to garden sites, and attending festivities in Agra or Lahore. Now, it’s whispered in the corners of history, though maybe not a solid fact, that during one of these visits, Prince Salim (Jahangir) developed a crush on her. There are a couple of cute anecdotes about this supposed interaction, and they even play out in the films because of their tender quality.

There’s this super cute story, a favourite among filmmakers, in which young Salim hands over his pet pigeons to an equally youthful Mehru for a quick errand, and when he comes back, he finds her with only one. When he enquires about the missing pigeon, she simply says, “it flew away” with an innocent face, and he asks, “how?” Mehru replies by letting the other one go as well. Jahangir is amused by her innocence, and this small, charged moment is something that cinema loves to dramatise on screen.

By 1594 Mehrunnisa was seventeen and married off to a formidable Persian, Ali Quli Khan Istajlu. They had a daughter, Ladli Begum, and were settled in Bengal. Mehrunnisa kept house while Ali Quli was off travelling, doing his duties as an imperial officer. Things turned messy when Jahangir took the throne in 1605. Two years later Ali Quli was accused of plotting a revolt, and when the king’s men showed up to investigate, he refused to answer them, an act that, tragically, cost him his life.

After her husband’s death, Mehrunnisa packed up her life, grabbed her daughter, and headed to Agra. She landed a spot in the imperial harem, serving as a hand-maiden to Jahangir’s Rajput mother, and managed to get by with her skills in painting and embroidery, slowly rebuilding her life.

After living a pretty quiet life for four years, Mehrunnisa’s world turned upside down in the spring of 1611. She ran into Jahangir at a palace bazaar, and just two months later they were married. It was Mehru’s second shot at marriage, but Jahangir’s twentieth (and the last for both of them!). What’s fascinating is how their union played out. As Findly observes, Nur Jahan’s relationship with Jahangir was “exceptionally intimate, its complex structures giving rise to many of the policies and achievements now known singularly to be Nur Jahan’s...”

Reading about this period, I feel like Nur Jahan truly shone in this new chapter of her life, one she carved out for herself, creating a space and role that perhaps never existed before,

Her personal abilities extended well beyond politics and economics into areas of art and architecture, literature and religion, travel and gardening… Nur Jahan was exemplary not because she perfectly fit established ideals for women, but precisely because she stood outside of the traditional Indian prototypes of circumstance, role, and sentiment. Her image did not inherently conform to enduring cultural models but rather came to be seen in the form of a distinct personality, singular in its talents, consuming in its ambitions, and passionate in its tastes.

She moved through history with this incredible presence, really changing what people thought a woman could do. But after Jahangir died, Shah Jahan took over and pushed her out, messed up with her reputation. Even after all the shadows that have chased her name, the legend of Nur Jahan and her hold on Jahangir still casts a spell.

Now’s a good time to see how Indian cinema has tackled Nur Jahan’s story, her magnetic presence brought to life on screen by some of Hindi cinema’s finest actresses of the era, such as, Naseem Banu, Meena Kumari, and Veena.

Meena Kumari as Nur Jahan in Noor Jehan, M.Sadiq, 1967

Noor Jehan totally gets the chaotic, mesmerising drama of Nur Jahan’s life, like a wild fairytale with some really serious consequences. Meena Kumari as Mehrunnisa feels both tender and fierce: she’s the adoring daughter, the dutiful wife to Ali Quli, and then a widow who’s practically demanding justice from the universe itself.

The film starts off with her birth somewhere in the desert and then cleverly jumps between her story and Prince Salim’s (later Jahangir), showing how they first meet, her marriage with Ali Quli, and their eventual reunion, which changes everything. We see her transformation into Nur Jahan. The tale’s a rich, intricate one, with love, loss and fate all coiled up.

The film takes the classic Nur Jahan-Jahangir stories, but tones down the drama and sticks to the facts, making it a gripping watch that’s both engaging and surprisingly revealing. We see Nur Jahan not as a glittering royal icon but as a woman handling the tricky world of powerful men like Akbar and Jahangir. It’s a peek into history with a hint of myth.

Meena Kumari in the movie was basically the same age as Nur Jahan would’ve been, and this totally adds to her performance, making it super believable and kind of hypnotic. She’s not just playing a historical figure, it’s like she’s owning this complex woman and that’s what makes it so compelling.

Noor Jehan is available on Eros Now and Youtube.

Naseem Banu as Nur Jahan in Pukar, Sohrab Modi, 1939

Pukar’s a total standout in Indian cinema, mainly because of its high end production value, every frame’s like a work of art. This movie is a real treasure and I’m glad there’s a decent print floating around on Youtube (sharing the link below). I thought some scenes were shot at Agra Fort, but actually the whole thing was shot at Minerva Studios in Bombay. The sets are super realistic and really convincing. Rusi K Banker, the art director, totally nails the Mughal vibe, there’s a lot of attention to detail.

The narrative of Pukar has a fable like quality. It’s set against the backdrop of this age-old feud between two Rajput families in Agra, think Romeo and Juliet but with a Mughal twist. Kanwar and Mangal are crazy for each other, but their families are like mortal enemies. Her brother finds out about them and it’s chaos after that. Mangal in defending himself ends up killing Kanwar’s brother and badly injuring her father. Scared, he makes a run for it, fearing Jahangir’s fair but pretty unforgiving justice system.

Just like Mangal, Jahangir finds himself in a tough spot when Nur Jahan kills a washerman by accident while hunting. Jahangir’s faced with an impossible decision. He is all about justice, but will he bend the rules for the love of his life?

The plot’s basically built around around these two key events, but it’s the Bell of Justice, or Zanjir-i-Adl, that the film’s all about. Jahangir had this massive 24 meter long gold chain with 60 bells hung at Agra Fort so that people could ring it to get his attention, skipping all the bureaucratic hoops. Different tolls meant different issues, like disputes, thefts, etc. It was like a direct line to Jahangir.

Pukar’s not exactly a true story, more like a drama inspired by the legends about how fair Jahangir was supposed to be.

I’ve placed Pukar after Noor Jehan, even though it came out decades earlier, because they focus on different bits of Mehrunnisa’s life. Noor Jehan’s all about her early days, while Pukar’s more like a glimpse into Jahangir and Nur Jahan’s marriage, what their daily life was like, their chemistry with one another, that sort of thing. It’s interesting, though, neither movie mentions Ladli Begum, Mehru’s daughter with Ali Quli. Maybe they wanted to focus only on the romance bit.

Pukar is available on Youtube.

Veena as Nur Jahan in Taj Mahal, M.Sadiq, 1963

In Taj Mahal Nur Jahan’s a total opposite to how she’s portrayed in the above two films. Here she’s the ultimate villain. The film’s based on this old school, pretty sexist view of her as this manipulative wife and step-mother who’s gone power crazy. The plot is pretty much about how she’s the main obstacle to Prince Khurram (later Shah Jahan) and Arjumand Begum (later Mumtaz Mahal) getting their happily-ever-after, how they overcome all of her evil scheming and murderous games, get married and in the end Shah Jahan build’s the Taj Mahal as a symbol of their love. It’s fair to say that this movie is a dramatic and problematic take on her.

The movie’s a treat, though, especially the music, it sticks with you. And while Veena is totally magnetic and enthralling as this “evil step mom,” she’s not “Nur Jahan” Nur Jahan. Historically, the whole vamp thing is really off because that’s not how it went down. I guess the filmmakers wanted to sell this epic love story but NJ’s reputation paid the price for it. It’s true that Nur Jahan was a political rival to Shah Jahan but the film goes overboard and beyond with the “evil” acts, some of which are simply just made up, and others are exaggerated for drama.

The film’s portrayal of Nur Jahan’s relationship with her niece Arjumand is all wrong, a blatant twisting of historical facts. NJ’s shown as this mean aunt, sweet-talking her brother into letting Arjumand stay with her, just to lock her up and stop her seeing Khurram. But from what I’ve read, they actually got along, and Nur Jahan even helped set up Arju and Khurram’s engagement in 1607, way before she married Jahangir in 1611.

Amongst the many things that the film gets wrong is that it shows Nur Jahan plotting to get Khurram killed by sending him on super risky military missions, but there’s no real evidence for that, the filmmakers simply added this bit to amp up the drama. It seems like they are stuck on Nur Jahan as a vamp, refusing to see her as this smart, powerful ruler who’s also got her own agenda. The film makes out she’s got a personal vendetta against Khurram. But really, Nur Jahan’s playing the politics game, she’s all for Shahryar (her son-in-law) on the throne because he’s easier to work with, whereas Khurram’s too independent and unpredictable.

It’s kind of unfair to reduce Nur Jahan to just scheming and manipulative, when she was actually a total powerhouse. I think this “evil” rep comes from old-school biases, a patriarchal society that couldn’t handle a woman in power, and colonial writers weren’t much help.

Taj Mahal portrays Nur Jahan as this one-dimensional power-mad, insecure woman without ever showing Jahangir’s opium addiction, which is probably why she took the administrational reins. It’s disappointing that the film remains silent on NJ’s strength as an Empress. Under her rule things actually thrived, the economy grew stronger, trade got better, and art, music and architecture were booming. And even though the title of the film is Taj Mahal, the filmmakers missed out on showcasing this one tiny yet essential detail: Nur Jahan had designed this magnificent tomb, Itmad-ud-Daulah, in Agra for her dad, it being the first Mughal structure built entirely of white marble and the design and aesthetics of which eventually inspired the Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal is available on Youtube.

It’s a shame that Nur Jahan’s legacy got so muddled, probably because Shah Jahan worked hard to erase her from history. He destroyed her coins, had her written up as a troublemaker in the court records, called her influence “fitna,” which means chaos. Then he shipped her off to Lahore with a royal pension of two lakh rupees a year, kept her under house arrest away from the action in Agra. In Lahore, she built herself a gorgeous palace to live out her days with her daughter and granddaughter. It had four stunning gardens, all cleverly linked, and so she called it Chahar Chaman, meaning the four gardens. And while she was at it, she also designed a mausoleum for her husband, and a simple tomb for herself, all in Shahdara Bagh.

While Pukar, Noor Jehan and Taj Mahal pick up on different bits of Nur Jahan’s life, and they definitely take some creative liberties, one thing they all get right is the vibe between Nur Jahan and Jahangir. Their bond was rock solid, they totally trusted each other. And Jahangir’s own words in the Tuzk-e-Jahangiri totally back that up. He’s super honest about how much he leaned on her. When he’s talking about tough times, especially with his health, he says she was the only one he could really talk to. He calls her a “sensitive companion” and an “accomplished adviser.”

So his ultimate love letter to her?

I remember I had not only sung a devotional song 'Ek tu hi bharosa' hai in Pukar, but also appeared in the film to sing it. Sridevi was there during the shooting. She suggested I wear a more colourful sari, but I told her I'd like to be seen on screen wearing the white sari with a coloured border that I wear at my stage concerts. Sridevi readily agreed. "Aap jaisa chahen bilkul waisa hi kijiye."

happy birthday to the one and only prabhu deva!

kadhalan 1994

minsara kanavu 1997

pukar 2000