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The Politics of Pleasure: Wajid ‘Ali Shah and his manuscript, ‘Ishqnama
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Abstract
This article deals with an 1849 semi-autobiographical manuscript, ‘Ishqnama, from Avadh (present-day Uttar Pradesh), to explore the courtly politics of the last nawab (ruler) of Avadh, Wajid ‘Ali Shah. I argue that, in the ‘Ishqnama, a language of love and sex exists and portends a logic of political comportment and control between ruler and lover, ruler and servant. After surveying the importance and meaning of the manuscript during Wajid ‘Ali Shah's reign, I examine the dissemination of the handwritten manuscript via lithograph copies, tracing the specific textual and visual elements that have been obfuscated and manipulated in the transition from a handwritten design to print technology. I argue that the political content of the ‘Ishqnama has been neglected because of the material differences between the lithograph copies and the manuscript format and because of the sexual nature of the ‘Ishqnama narrative.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
I would like to thank Umar Anjum for reading large sections of the ‘Ishqnama with me in Lahore in 2015. Saad Ayub was also of a great assistance by providing me with a rough translation of the Parikhana, which I used as a guide in reading the ‘Ishqnama. In this article, all the translations are my own, including the excerpts from the Parikhana. Thanks are also due to Iftikhar Dadi, Durba Ghosh, Robert Travers, Ryan C. Edwards, and Osama Siddiqui for reading earlier drafts. Research for this article was funded by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, American Institute of Indian Studies, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
References
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7 Muhammad Isa Waley summarized the ‘Ishqnama in ‘Islamic Manuscripts in the British Royal Collection: A Concise Catalogue’, Manuscripts of the Middle East, vol. 6, 1992, pp. 15–16. Waley also numbered the paintings, which corresponded to the folios’ older page numbers written in Persian. I have found his numbering to be slightly off, so I have renumbered the textual folios. I have retained his numbering system for the paintings but not for the text so that art historians can still refer to his catalogue for reference.
8 Historians have actually utilized two alternate texts that are translations of the ‘Ishqnama: the Parikhana and the Mahal-i Shah-i Khana. Both texts purport to translate the ‘Ishqnama from Persian to Urdu. In reality, both these later texts and the ‘Ishqnama are in Urdu; the authors of the Parikhana and the Mahal-i Shah-i Khana have only transformed the ‘Ishqnama's poetry and images into a simplified prose.
9 Even Karl Marx in 1853 famously argued that these princely states in India, including Avadh, were in a state of decay. Karl Marx, ‘The East India Question’, New York Daily Tribune, 25 July 1853, in by Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Collected Works, 1853–1854, vol. 12 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979), pp. 148–156Google Scholar. For an overview of the decadence paradigm and a rejoinder to this historiography, see Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Introduction’, in The Mughal State, 1526–1750 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
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17 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 1v– 2v.
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19 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 2v: ‘[Z]amīn ‘ishq hī āsmān ‘ishq hī.’
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34 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 3v: ‘jamāl ūskā har cand āīsa nathā/ magar bi namak uskā cherā nathā.’
35 Ibid., fol. 410v.
36 Ibid., fol. 350r–351r.
37 Ibid., fol. 12r.
38 Ibid., fol. 374v.
39 Ibid., fol. 377r–379v.
40 Ibid., fol. 348v, 350v.
41 Ibid., fol. 408r–411v.
42 Ibid., fol. 410v.
43 Ibid., fol. 317v–318v.
44 Ibid., fol. 409r.
45 Ibid., fol. 18v.
46 Ibid., fol. 108r.
47 Ibid., fol. 36v–37r. The ‘Ishqnama states that they were Mir Insha's daughters (dukhtar). In the Parikhana, the author says they were his granddaughters (nawāsīān). Tehsen Sarwari, Parīkhāna (Rampur: Delhi Printing Press, 1965), p. 29.
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50 Sleeman, Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 1849–1850, p. 386. Bhatnagar, Awadh Under Wājid ‘Alī Shāh, pp. 104, 199.
51 Michael H. Fisher, ‘Women and the Feminine in the Court and Culture of Awadh’, in Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety, (ed.) Gavin R. G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 491–492.
52 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 This idea is borrowed from Lal, Domesticity and Power, p. 173.
54 Ibid. Ruby Lal advocated for such a language to discuss the Akbarnama, which was completed in 1596 and is a history of Akbar's life. It reveals personal details regarding Akbar's sexual history and yet does so to reveal how, for Akbar, pleasure is tempered in his sexual politics. Although the Akbarnama and ‘Ishqnama have different ways of expressing pleasure and desire within their texts, Lal's analysis was very useful as guidepost for this article.
55 Dr Mana Kia, conversation, October 2016.
56 The text also mentions that Sahiba Khanum has two daughters.
57 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 30v.
58 Ibid., fol. 31v–32r.
59 Ibid., fol. 44r.
60 Her suicide attempt was also connected to her grief over the passing of her daughter (fol. 44v).
61 Ibid., fol. 140r–v.
62 Ali, Daud, ‘Anxieties of Attachment: The Dynamics of Courtship in Medieval India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2002, p. 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 40v: ‘Jis ko khudā'ī ne diya.’
64 Ibid., fol. 253v.
65 Ibid., fol. 254v–255r.
66 Ibid., fol. 264v–266r.
67 Ibid., fol. 272r–278v.
68 Ibid., fol. 279v.
69 Ibid., fol. 387v–388v.
70 Ibid., fol. 390r: ‘Girāḥaml un kā huā. Mujh ko ranj.’
71 Another story excised from the ‘Ishqnama in the copies is dastan 89, fol. 317r. In this account, under the guidance of Wajid ‘Ali Shah, one of his lovers, Mah-i ‘Alam, strikes a watchman with a golden whip as penalty for making a false accusation. 1262/1846–47.
72 Bhatnagar, Awadh under Wājid ‘Alī Shāh, pp. 193–199.
73 ‘Ishqnama, fol. 232r–233v.
74 Eaton, Richard M., ‘Introduction’, in Slavery and South Asian History, (eds) Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard M. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 2Google Scholar.
75 Ibid., p. 3.
76 Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, special issue: How Social, Political and Cultural Information Is Collected, Defined, Used and Analyzed, 1993, pp. 229–251.
77 Lahore copy, Punjab University Library, fol. 433.
78 For instance, the verb guft is changed to guftam. These lines further authenticate Wajid ‘Ali Shah's authorship by incorporating his takhallus, Akhtar.
79 Wajid ‘Ali Shah and Mirzā Fidā ‘Alī Khanjar Lakhnavī, Mahal Khānah-yi Shāhī (Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, 1914), p. 125, <https://rekhta.org/ebooks/mahal-khana-shahi-wajid-ali-shah-akhtar-ebooks>; Wajid ‘Ali Shah and Mirzā Fidā ‘Alī Khanjar Lakhnavī, Mahal Khānah-yi Shāhī (Lucknow: Nami Press, 1926), p. 160; Sarwari, Parīkhāna, p. 190.
80 Waley, ‘Islamic Manuscripts in the British Royal Collection’, p. 16.
81 Ibid., p. 16; Mildred and Archer, William, Indian Painting for the British (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 62Google Scholar.
82 In contrast, Lord Teignmouth in 1799 donated a few manuscripts to the Queen, which had been gifted by Nawab Asaf al-Daula to the English. Windsor Castle 1005091.a and 1005091.b.
83 Katherine S. Diehl, ‘Lucknow Printers, 1820–1850’, in Comparative Librarianship: Essays in Honour of Professor D. N. Marshall, (ed.) N. N. Gidwani (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1973), p. 115; Graham Shaw, ‘Calcutta: Birthplace of the Indian Lithographed Book’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, vol. 27, 1998, p. 106.
84 Sprenger, A Catalogue, pp. vi–vii.
85 Diehl, ‘Lucknow Printers’, p. 119; Bayly, C. A., Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 240CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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87 Bhatnagar, Awadh under Wājid ‘Alī Shāh, p. 73n21; Pemble, John, The Raj, the Indian Mutiny, and the Kingdom of Oudh, 1801–1859 (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977), p. 9Google Scholar.
88 Kaukab Qadir Sajjad ‘Ali Mirza, Wajid Ali Shah ki Adabi aur Saqafati Khidmat (New Delhi: Taraqqi-yi Urdu Bureau, 1995), p. 72; Chatterjee, Black Hole, p. 220.
89 A. Sprenger notes, ‘One of the most remarkable results of the progress of printing is the rapid increase of periodical and light literature’ in A Catalogue, p. vii.
90 Sinh, Wajid Ali Shah, p. 141.
91 Qureshi, Hamid Afaq, Sources on Awadh: From 1722 A.D. to 1856 A.D. (Lucknow: New Royal Book Co., 2004), p. 19Google Scholar; Syed Masood Hasan Rizvi, Lakhnau ka Shahi Istej, pp. 33, 74, 76; Kaukab Qadar Sajjad ‘Ali Mirza, Intikhāb, pp. 10–11, 39–46; Kaukab Qadir Sajjad ‘Ali Mirza, Wajid Ali Shah ki Adabi aur Saqafati Khidmat, p. 111. Qureshi expressly mentions the existence of a lithograph copy in poetic verse. Both Rizvi and Mirza provide direct poetic quotations from the ‘Ishqnama, which means that they could have had access to a photographed copy of the ‘Ishqnama manuscript or the lithographed poetic-verse format.
92 Rampuri, Muhammad Najm ul-Ghani Khan, Tarikh-i Awadh, 5 vols (Lucknow: Newal Kishore Press, 1919)Google Scholar.
93 Ibid., vol. 5, p. 47.
94 Kaukab Qadar Sajjad ‘Ali Mirza, Intikhāb, p. 62: ‘Voh garmi voh lun aur voh xaur ki tapish.’
95 Ibid.: ‘Jo tha jānwar munh ko kho le tha voh.’
96 The larger social arrangements that were put in crisis during Wajid ‘Ali Shah's exile were metaphorically represented by the reorganization of the Bengal landscape into risk/safe limits.
97 ‘Abdul Halim Sharar, Lucknow, the Last Phase of an Oriental Culture (London: Elek, 1975), p. 66; ‘Abdul Halim Sharar and Muhammad Ikrām Cughāī, Guzashtah Lakhnaū: Hindustān men Mashriqī Tamaddun kā ākhirī Namūnah (Lahore: Sang-i Mīl Publications, 2006), pp. 96–97.
98 Christopher Ryan Perkins, Partitioning History: The Creation of an Islāmī Pablik in Late Colonial India, c. 1880–1920 (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011), p. 4.
99 Sharar, Lucknow, p. 63; Sharar and Cughāī, Guzashtah Lakhnaū, p. 96.
100 Orsini, Francesca, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009), p. 9Google Scholar.
101 Charu Gupta, ‘(Im)possible Love and Sexual Pleasure in Late-Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2002, p. 197.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., p. 198.
104 Ibid.
105 Mahal Khana Shahi, (trans.) Mirzā Fidā ‘Alī Khanjar Lakhnavī (Lucknow: Nami Press, 1926), p. 3.
106 Ibid., p. 4.
107 See, for instance, Afroz Taj, The Court of Indar and the Rebirth of North Indian Drama (New Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu [Hind], 2007), p. 31n16. He states that his translation of Wajid ‘Ali Shah's Persian Ishq Namah’ is ‘taken from an Urdu translation with references’.
108 The Parikhana was later printed in devangari in the 1980s. See Iqbal Bahadur Devsare, Parīkhānā (Ilāhābāda: Sāhitya Bhavana, 1982); and Wajid ‘Ali Shah, Parīkhānah, (trans.) Śakīla Siddīqī (Mumbai: Paridrśya Prakāśana, 1998).
109 Sarwari, Parikhana, p. 5.
110 Ibid., p. 6.
111 Ibid., p. 10.
112 Tehsen Sarwari's Parikhana text was reprinted as Wajid ‘Ali Shah Akhtar, Parikhana (Karachi: Collection Books, 2000)Google Scholar.
113 National Archives of India, Foreign Department Political Consultations, 29 November 1845, no. 186, quoted in Bhatnagar, Awadh under Wājid ‘Alī Shāh, p. 7.
114 Chatterjee, Black Hole, p. 204.
115 Sharar, Lucknow, p. 63; Sharar and Cughāī, Guzashtah Lakhnaū, p. 96.
116 Sharar, Lucknow, p. 66; Sharar and Cughāī, Guzashtah Lakhnaū, pp. 96–97.
117 Archer, Indian Painting for the British, pp. 62–63.
118 Reena Dube, Satyajit Ray's Chess Players: The Discourse of British Colonial Enterprise and Its Representation of the Other through the Expanded Cultural Critique (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2001), p. i.
119 Robinson, Andrew, Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye (London: A. Deutsch, 1989), pp. 242–243Google Scholar. Satyajit's Shatranj ke Khilari was completed in 1977 and was based on writer Premchand's 1924 novel.
120 Ibid., pp. 240–251.
121 For more on this debate, see Ashis Nandy, ‘Beyond Oriental Despotism: Politics and Femininity in Satyajit Ray’, Sunday, Annual No., 1981. Reprinted in Nandy, Ashis, The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 209–216Google Scholar.
122 Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie, The Last King in India: Wajid ‘Ali Shah, 1822–1887 (London: Hurst & Company, 2014)Google Scholar. She states that she is using the ‘Ishqnama but, in her footnotes, she cites the Parikhana. She describes the ‘Ishqnama/Parikhana as a ‘straightforward case of a child who was sexualized at an early age and spent the rest of his life seeking fulfilment by marrying vast numbers of women, but not finding much real satisfaction’ (p. 130).
123 Tushara Bindu Gude, ‘Hybrid Visions: The Cultural Landscape of Awadh’, in India's Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, (eds) Stephen Markel, Tushara Bindu Gude, and Muzaffar Alam (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010), pp. 98–99; Hannam, Emily, Eastern Encounters: Four Centuries of Paintings and Manuscripts from the Indian Subcontinent (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2018)Google Scholar, catalogue entries 78–81; Losty, Jeremiah P., The Art of the Book in India (London: British Library, 1982), pp. 146, 151Google Scholar. Like Gude and Hannam, Losty provides a short catalogue entry. He argues that the text and images of the ‘Ishqnama represent ‘lovely ladies’ who care for Wajid ‘Ali Shah ‘far from affairs of state’, which positions proper state governance as antithetical to Wajid ‘Ali Shah's relationship with his household.
124 Busch, Allison, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
125 For an overview study on the heterosexualization of the Indian nation in the wake of India's independence, see Ruth Vanita (ed.), Queering India (New York: Routledge, 2002).
126 ‘Ishqbazi can also be translated as ‘amorous speech’.
127 Rao, Velcheru Narayana, Shulman, David Dean, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India, 1600–1800 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001)Google Scholar.
128 For a case in point, see Malhotra and Lambert-Hurley (eds), Speaking of the Self.