Taj Mahal's Love Myth: Rediscovering the Narrative Beyond Shah Jahan

 LOVE MYTH: TAJ MAHAL WAS MEANT FOR SHAH JAHAN TOO 

Vipul Singh 

Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007.

Email: vipulsingh.history@gmail.com

The Taj Mahal has always been in news for its mesmerizing beauty, and a symbol of  love. Whenever a foreign dignitary visits India, he would go to the monument’s  famous platform to get photographed with his partner. Recent few days have  brought the shrine to lime light for wrong reasons. The politically motivated groups  are propelling the mythical stories as historical reality. As a child when I first  visited the monument with my parents in late eighties, the tourist guide would tell  us with routinely certainty that after the completion of the beautiful Taj Mahal, its  builder Shah Jahan (1592-1666) got the hands of the labourers chopped off so that  they could not contribute in the construction of a matching beauty in future. The  second claim by the guide was that it had been constructed in the memory of his  beloved queen Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631) by the Mughal emperor. 

Let us try to understand the first common theory, which insinuates that the hands  of the artisans were cut. No one would imagine that this kind of shoddy narrative  would be used one day to claim with authenticity that thousands of Hindu labourers sacrificed their lives because of the coercion of a powerful Mughal emperor. As a  practitioner of history I have no objection to the use of the term Hindu labourers. It  is quite possible that majority of the non-Islamic subjects from the surrounding  region of Agra were employed to work under the guidance of the master craftsmen  and engineers. The huge amount of Persian influence suggests that many of these  master craftsmen came from Iran. The problem arises when one tends to qualify  such term with sacrifice. The historical documents would suggest that the monarchs  from ancient and medieval past undertook such construction projects to generate  employment among the non-agrarian population. It was one way of redistributing  the surplus that the rulers accumulated from land revenue and war booty. Apart  from that, the splendid monuments were also symbols of authority. The huge number of temples constructed in dravida, nagara and Vesara styles were not  possible without massive use of human and animal labour. The gigantic Vimana and  gopuram of South Indian temples, the large pillared verandas of the Hoysalesvara  temple, and the beautiful carvings on the exterior of high sikhara of Khajuraho  temples were not possible without material prosperity and massive use of the  accessible workforce. So the use of paid workers was a common characteristic in  yester years, and it is true in the case of the Taj Mahal as well. 

For Shah Jahan, the Taj Mahal was only an early major project, and after this he  went on to construct the Peacock throne for himself, a new capital city  Shahjahanbad or the Lal Quila and Jama Masjid. It is hard to believe that a builder  like him would kill the goose that laid golden egg. Further, none of the historical  documents suggest of such ghastly measure against the artisans, who contributed  in the construction of the Taj. An English traveller, Peter Mundy, who visited Agra in  1632 informs us that the construction of the mausoleum was in full swing with  ‘excessive labour and cost’. He also writes in his account that huge amount of  marble was being used. The work at the mausoleum had already started in 1631.  The French traveller Tavernier was witness to the construction of the mausoleum  and its completion “with heavy expenditure and use of some twenty thousand  workers”. Later, another French traveller Francois Bernier, who visited the Mughal  court in the later half of the seventeenth century, praised the astonishing work of  architecture by the Mughals. The myth of hand cutting must have cropped up in  later centuries in order to give weight to the love myth. 

TAJ MAHAL FOR WHOM?

It is generally believed that the term Taj Mahal is actually a derivative of Mumtaz Mahal , wife of Shah Jahan. Mumtaz Mahal was originally named Arjumand Banu  Begum who was married to Shah Jahan in 1612. She always accompanied the  emperor in his campaigns, and was supposedly the closest to Shah Jahan among  his many queens. She died at Burhanpur in June 1631. A popular legend recorded  in the early nineteenth century Persian text of Qasim Ali Afridi suggests that at the time of her death when she gave birth to Shah Jahan’s fourteenth child, the  emperor promised to construct a mausoleum for her “which was not to be found  anywhere else”. For the time being Mumtaz’s body was kept on the bank of the Tapti  river at a garden called Jainabad. A plot of land was demarcated as a suitable  location to the south of Agra city on the bank of the Yamuna river. The land  belonged to Raja Jai singh, the grandson of Raja Man Singh. The emperor  purchased from Raja Jai Singh the entire plot along with the house and gave him  four houses in the city of Agra. The body of Mumtaz Mahal was taken to Agra in  December 1631 and was kept in a small building before being shifted to the  mausoleum. However, the work of the Taj Mahal continued for many more years  and it was finally completed in 1642.

Shah Jahan did not wish to live in Agra anymore, and so within few years began the  construction of another city called Shahjahanbad (Delhi). He lived there till 1657,  when he fell ill and his son Aurangzeb imprisoned him in Agra fort. From there he  used to watch the Taj Mahal across the Yamuna. In 1666 Shah Jahan died and his  body was buried next to Mumtaz Mahal in the mausoleum under the floor of the  central dome. From the positioning of Shah Jahan’s cenotaph it appears as if it was  a later decision to accommodate him as well in the mausoleum. The cenotaph of  Shah Jahan is the only disharmony in the impeccably symmetrical planning in the  central dome. Even Travernier mentions in his travel account that Shah Jahan  during his lifetime had begun to build his own tomb on the other side of the  Yamuna. However, the war with his sons interrupted his plans. This has led  historians to argue that the Taj Mahal was only meant for Mumtaz Mahal, and was  thus a perfect symbol of love. It was a common practice to place wife's cenotaph in  the exact center if she died earlier than the husband. The bodies were buried with  faces towards Mecca and legs towards the south. The grave of a husband was  always placed on the right side. This is also evident in Itmadudaula's tomb of Agra,  wherein the cenotaph of Asmat Begum is in the exact center, and that of Mirza  Ghiyas Beg (Nurjahan's father) is placed asymmetrically on the right side. The  asymmetry in Itmadudaula is not very apparent because the cenotaphs there are  not enclosed by screens. In the Taj Mahal the two cenotaphs are enclosed by the  screen and the passage inside the enclosed area gets blocked by the positioning of  Shah Jahan. So it is because of the presence of the screen that the asymmetry is so  noticeable. It is quite possible that the screen would have been a later day erection. 

The love myth is based on the official historical account of Abdul Hamid Lahawri. He  wrote in Badshah Namah that Shah Jahan was so grieved by death of his beloved  that his beard turned white and he did not come out of his chamber for a week.  Later foreign travellers of the seventeenth century like Travernier and Bernier also  worked on the same theory of undying love. Bernier was so influenced by the  mausoleum’s symbolic beauty that he believed it “deserves much more to be  numbered among the wonders of the world than the pyramid”. Later writings also  started writing about Shah Jahan as the exemplar of devotion who maintained  bachelordom for the next thirty-five years of his life. These claims perhaps stemmed  from the overstated description given in Badshah Namah. Shah Jahan’s political and  courtly activities after Mumtaz Mahal’s death, specially after he moved to Delhi does  not support these claims of an affectionate husband in grief for life. He proved to be  much matured and intense ruler during the later part of his reign. 

After reading the historical sources more critically I would argue that Shah Jahan  built the Taj Mahal also for his own burial. Travernier’s statement that Shah Jahan  had planned another mausoleum for himself is not corroborated by any other  contemporary account. Secondly, it is difficult to believe that a ruler who was such a  prolific builder would have been ineffective in constructing his own tomb. It was a  common practice among the Mughal emperors to build their own tomb in their  lifetime. Humayun was not able to do that because of his sudden death from the fall  of library building. So his wife Hamida Banu Begum later constructed his tomb. His  contemporary Afghan ruler Sher Shah also got his tomb constructed at Sasaram  during his lifetime. Akbar too had already planned and designed his mausoleum in Sikandara that was later completed by his son Jahangir. Following these traditions  Shah Jahan too had planned something for himself. The very fact that he never  erected an independent tomb for himself during his long reign is also a proof that he  always understood the Taj Mahal to be a magnificent and gorgeous edifice for his  own burial. After all, the complex was the result of his assimilation of more than hundred years of architectural evolution that the Mughal empire had witnessed.  From Babur’s char bag to hasht bihist and double dome concept of Humayun’s tomb it was the culmination of various architectural marvels. 

The common belief that the word Taj is a shorter version of Mumtaz Mahal is  doubtful. Taj Mahal consists of two Persian words Taj and Mahal, the literal meaning  of which is “Crown Palace”. In fact, the tomb is mentioned in the contemporary  account as rauza-i munauwara. Further, the repeated references in the engravings  on the walls of the Taj Mahal to the Garden of Eden in all the inscriptions, and  verses relating to Throne of God are suggestive of the fact that Shah Jahan imagined  the monument to be his own.