The Scattered Court by Richard David Williams;

Author:Richard David Williams; [Williams, Richard David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MUS000000 MUSIC / General, MUS015000 MUSIC / Ethnomusicology, SOC008020 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Asian Studies, HIS062000 HISTORY / Asia / South / India
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

The King is adding daily to the number of his wives; they must, each and all be maintained, some of them indeed, in rather an expensive manner; then they have great rejoicings whenever they have children, which is pretty often, and on festival days, and the expense falls on the Royal Treasury.34

Khas Mahal identified herself as a champion of restraint against the exploitative retainers, who had apparently told the king that she was keeping back a secret treasury from him. Her response was unambiguous: “Even if I had, should it go for the payment of thousands of Rupees for His Majesty’s pigeons, and vultures, and wives?”

Despite her arguments, Khas Mahal was unsuccessful with her petitions for years to come, since the British authorities were reluctant to become more deeply embroiled in the family’s affairs.35 When Khas Mahal asked for a separate allowance of her own (5 June 1869), the government refused—partly because she already had private properties on file, but also because Khas Mahal “was known to be in the keeping of Mr Goodall, the attorney, as she is now, so it is said, living with her paramour and physician Mahomed Muhsee.”36 It was the view of the government that “the separate allowances prayed for would, if sanctioned, only have the effect of inducing the ladies to live lives inconsistent with those of purdah women.” Therefore, these government officials had taken it upon themselves to regulate and preserve the dignity of the Royal ladies. While Khas Mahal had asked the viceroy to do so, pleading that the expectations of her rank were being neglected by her cruel husband, she had not anticipated that the British would formulate their own sense of the obligations of a queen in response, and use their sense of endangered tradition to curtail her financial freedoms.

From Khas Mahal’s entry into the royal family to her dialogue with the British in Calcutta, the limits of her freedom were contested in three related spheres. Her mother-in-law was concerned by Khas Mahal’s loyalty to her own prestigious family rather than the interests of the nawabi dynasty, especially since she held an influential position in court as the niece of the chief minister of Awadh. Wajid Ali himself fought with Khas Mahal on the matter of her financial freedom, insisting that her resources should be at his disposal. The British were reluctant to assist the queen, because they feared her economic independence would facilitate a life of immorality that went against their expectations of her dignified status.

Music played a complicated role in this situation. Honorific sonic signifiers such as the naubat and the majālis were core issues in the couple’s conflicts. However, the evidence from the political and financial archive contrasts with Wajid Ali’s musical writings, which suggest a consistent partnership with Khas Mahal in music making and a shared desire to experiment with language and form. Wajid Ali noted that Khas Mahal took an active role in costume design for the parīḵẖāna.37 As already discussed in chapter 4, both

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