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With a Goan professor claiming her to be a Portuguese lady, the contentious issue of Jodha Bai’s existence refuses to fade away

The controversy over Jodha Bai never seems to die down. After the film Jodhaa Akbar, a Goan Professor of History, Luis de Assis Correia has claimed in his new book “Portuguese India and Mughal Relations 1510-1735” that she was actually a Portuguese lady, Dona Maria Mascarenhas. She and her sister Juliana were rescued from pirates by the Portuguese and handed over to Bahadur Shah of Gujarat who presented them to the court of Akbar.

According to the book, Akbar, then 18 married Maria (17) but the Portuguese were loathe to admit that one of their own was living in the harem. The Mughals on the other hand could not accept that a firangi had wed the Emperor. “Hence the myth of Jodha Bai was created.” However the “myth” did have some substance. As the name suggests, she was the bai from Jodhpur, “daughter of Mota Raja Uday Singh”.

Mughal records pre-dating the book say that Maria and Juliana were honoured ladies of the harem. Juliana was in charge of the Seragilo as harem physician while Maria occupied the position of Akbar’s confidante and companion. Juliana’s was married off by Akbar to the fugitive French prince, Jean Philippe de Bourbon and both died in Agra, leaving behind the Indian branch of Bourbons.

In the old Agra cemetery is the grave of Juliana’s so-called niece, Bibi Ammiana while that of Maria (no longer traceable) was in the graveyard behind Akbar’s Church, a mile or so away. Imagine a Portuguese lady giving birth to the Great Moghul’s heir apparent at the wilderness abode of Sheikh Salim Chisti! Sounds implausible.

Dr Ram Nath, former Head of the History Department of Rajasthan University, tends to agree that there is no mention in history of Akbar having wed Jodha Bai, though she is sometimes referred to as one of Jahangir’s wives, with a Mahal in Fatehpur Sikri adorned with the Star of David (also representing the six Ritus). Dr Shireen Moosvi of Aligarh Muslim University also emphasises that there is no mention of Jodha Bai in the “Akbarnama”. The Rajput princess Akbar married was the daughter of Raja Baarmal of Amber, the aunt of Maharaja Man Singh I, and she is only referred to by her title of Mariam-uz-Zamani, mother of Salim (which prompted some to aver that she was the Emperor’s Christian wife as Mariam corresponds to the name of the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ).

Dr Nath says, Akbar was 20 when he married his fourth wife in 1562. He contracted three other marriages thereafter. The names of all the wives are faithfully recorded and Maria is not among them. “Noteworthy is the fact that the so-called daughter of Raja Baarmal was only 10 or 12 years of age when she was married to Akbar. She lived for 61 years thereafter, and died in 1623, as her son Jahangir has recorded. That Raja Baarmal had a 10 or 12 years’ old daughter in 1562, when even his grandson Mansingh was 12, is neither a historical record, nor is warranted by circumstances as a reasonable proposition,” says Dr Nath. Incidentally, this Rajput princess is commemorated in a mausoleum built near Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra and known as Mariam’s maqbara (in keeping with her title of Mariam-uz-Zamani). This monument housed Sindhi refugees in Agra after Partition and suffered some damage as a result. Even now it is in urgent need of repairs.

Sarai and baoli

“Mariam Zamani (elaborates Dr Nath) is recorded to have built a large sarai (inn) with a monumental gate, a baoli (step-well) and a garden at Barah, a village situated 5 km from Bayana (Rajasthan) in 1613. Jahangir, her son, noted these buildings in his memoirs. The baoli and its Persian inscription have survived. It is surprising, nay, intriguing that she did not raise any building at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri where she mostly lived. She appears to have been more sentimentally attached to this village, than to Amber or any other place. This raises the question: why did the Queen of Akbar and mother of Jahangir prefer this remote obscure hamlet to large metropolitan Mughal towns as Agra, Delhi, Ajmer and Lahore, for this purpose, and how was she connected with this place ? Was she born there? It is all very mysterious as were, in fact, the secrets of the medieval Rajput raniwas and the Mughal ḥarem.”

Facts, however, suggest that Mariam belonged more to Barah than to Amber, asserts Dr Nath, though film-maker Gowarikar has tried to show Akbar’s wife in the form of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, “an incarnation of feminine beauty who looks more like the mythical Menaka or Urvashi, rather than an ethnic Rajput lady from Rajasthan.” Authenticity, says Dr Nath, “is in fact the most tragic casualty of the Jodhaa Akbar film, an anti-thesis of Mughal-e-Azam where history has been distorted.” As for Dona Maria Mascarhenas, Prof Correia’s claim will add to the riddle of Jodha Bai, who also had a palace and temple in the Agra Fort, not known as Maria Mahal or Firangi Mahal but Jahangiri Mahal.

The Mughals did keep their secrets close to their heart, among them (sic) the mystery of “Akbar’s Christian wife”. After all he had 3,000-odd zenana , including a Turkish Sultana. Maria was one of them but certainly not Salim’s mother, whom the prince called “Jagat-Gosain”.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Society> History & Culture> Down Memory Lane / by R.V. Smith / April 17th, 2017