Originally posted by: sashashyam
Mansi,
I agree with you about the special circumstances of his early life being responsible for Jalal being the way he is, but with some fairly substantial reservations.
First, the age factor. In those days, it was the opposite of what you think, in terms of age related expectations of a person. The average life expectancy was about 35, and everyone had to mature and take on responsibilities from a very young age, both for boys and for girls. Nowadays, a 14 year old is called a child, and a 17 year old a juvenile, who is not thought capable of judging right and wrong and thus can get away lightly even with murder, as in the Nirbhaya case.
In the West these days and increasingly here as well,22 years olds are normally still studying and might do so for some more years, and many of that age are commitment phobic and averse to marriage and its responsibilities. This is the opposite of maturity.
Not so in those days; when fathers died unexpectedly and very young boys had to shoulder the burden of a household.
As for formal education, in a gurukul in those days or thru tutors at home, I doubt if such education, useful in itself, would have made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. But yes, it would, or rather might have made for somewhat greater patience and a greater sense of accommodation towards others.
But even here, princes like Jalal would always have been in a category apart; for how could they have had a number of friends of their age? It was always a very small circle in which they moved, limited to the immediate family, for the next kingdom and comparable royalty of their age would have been a few days ride away. The only way out would have been to have numerous siblings, brothers and sisters, and Jalal of course has no brothers. So he has not had to duke it out with obstreperous younger brothers and to get used to having his will crossed occasionally.
Even so, it is not that he has no capacity for affecfion or no sense of responsibility towards those he cares for; his attitude towards Bakshi Banu is enough to disprove any such ideas. He is also very affectionate towards, and grateful to both his mentors, almost to excess. This is a very rare quality in an emperor, for royalty is notorious for its sense of entitlement and kings take a lifetime of devoted service to them as no more than their due; gratitude is not even in their dictionary. Jalal is in this respect almost unique.
He is also remarkably kind and obliging to Bharmal & Co.; not many javais would have been so thoughtful, then or now, especially when the wife is so aloof and unaccommodating.
I think the real problem with Jalal, which makes him ultra sensitive when he, very rarely, gives his trust to another person, lies in the circumstances of his early youth. He was in constant danger of his life, not just from his enemies but from his own family, like the uncle who almost killed him as a child. He was on the run, in hiding, always at the mercy of others, always on edge.
This kind of life makes Jalal totally disinclined to trust others who are outside a closed circle - Bairam Khan, Mahaam Anga, Ruqaiya. It is natural and was also entirely necessary. Think of young princes in British history, the ones Richard III, their chacha, had killed in the Tower of London, think of Mary and Elizabeth I, both daughters of Henry VIII, always in terror of the chopping block or of being burnt at the stake. A potential enemy was not just likely but sure to exhibit a sweet and endearing appearance and behaviour, and Jalal had to be always on guard against treachery from even near ones outside the troika. Jodha, cocooned in Amer and free from the cares and dangers of an empire in the making, could afford to babble about prem and vishwas being all important and be ready to trust all and sundry. Not so Jalal.
Which is why the child is so important to him even at that age: which 22 year old today longs for a child? It would have represented an object of his unconditional love, and it would have been all his in a way that no one else had been so far. It would, he would have assumed, have given him unconditional love and a sense of belonging. That is why the loss of that child, not by an act of God, but by the act of murder, affects him so badly.
Henry VIII never cared for a child per se, all he wanted was a son and heir. Jalal wants a child, son or daughter, first, and only then an heir. He wants someone who belongs to him and to whom he can belong.
It is the same with his attitude towards Jodha. To recap some of what I wrote in my Wuthering Depths post of Thursday last:
Very recently, Jalal began, for perhaps the first time in his life, to trust in the unselfish goodness of another human being. He was now sure that the Amer ki shehzaadi was special, that even if she did not care for him and even if she still hated him, she was capable for deep and genuine affection for the child which was already the closest to his heart. Everyone else who was close to him had always wanted something or the other from him, but Jodha was unselfish and undemanding, he believed, and so she was in a class apart.
It was from these heights in Jalal's innermost being that Jodha fell, and fell precipitously, the same night when, after fighting the idea initially and threatening the Khwaja with dire punishment if she turned out to be wrong, Jalal succumbed to what seemed to be a cast iron case against Jodha. Whence also his anguished cry to Jodha, repeated on Friday : Tumne yeh kyon kiya? Tum itne neeche kaise gir sakti ho?
Jalal feels exposed, in his own zehen, as a soft fool, who had succumbed to a hitherto unknown weakness and had placed his trust in, as he now believes, a devious murderess who had channeled the hatred she felt for him into this vile crime, in order to hit him where it would hurt the most.Whence his savage desire now to hurt her as much as he can, to punish her not just for extinguishing his dearest hope and joy, but for having, as he sees it, made a complete fool of him by trampling on the innermost recesses of his being, where no one else had ever been allowed entry.
But in spite of all this, somewhere deep inside, he still hopes that there will be some way to restore that trust, and this feeling fights for domination with the savage hostility he feels towards Jodha specifically.Whence the studied, refined cruelty amounting to sadism towards her, for he hates her above all for, as he sees it, betrayed his very rarely given trust and liking.
The real problem also is that Jalal is an absolute 16th century monarch, with no one to advise him or moderate his reactions to what he sees as betrayal. In any other such set up, Jodha would have been executed out of hand. Asoka the Great pre-Kalinga, or any of the medieval rulers in Europe, the Russian Tsars till the 19th century, would have done the same,with no farce of a trial even. So one has to factor in the era and the key element of absolute power as well. By the standards of his era, Jalal looks almost moderate.
I too can thus understand where Jalal is coming from, and I make allowances for him, though for reasons somewhat different from yours.
Shyamala
Ishaani
Cricket
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