'Through the Looking Glass': The Narrative Performance of Anarkali

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the figure of Anarkali, an Orientalized persona assigned to the haram of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. In most iterations of her narrative, Anarkali is the lover of Akbar’s on, Salim, the future Mughal Emperor Jahangir which places her in a contentious space between Akbar and Salim. But while both Akbar and Salim are historically attested personalities, Anarkali is not. Yet, her narrative is pervasive from architecture to film in South Asia. The enigma of Anarkali till now has always centered on uncovering her historicity. My dissertation approaches understanding Anarkali, not as a yet undiscovered historical person, but as a narrative persona construed under the male gaze and questions the significance of the liminal space she occupies between Akbar and Salim. As the basis of my methodology, I argue for the existence of an Anarkali qissa (an oral narrative) that predates extant iterations of the narrative. Each of the four dissertation chapters examines the re-performance of the Anarkali qissa across different mediums and the ensuing signification of the figure of Anarkali. The chapters focus, in turn, on the Tomb of Anarkali in Lahore, early travel writings on Anarkali, Imtiaz Ali Taj’s seminal play ‘Anarkali’, and the Indian Cinema films Anarkali (1953) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960). While chapter one, on the Tomb of Anarkali, defines the topophilia contained within the architecture’s re-performance of the Anarkali qissa, the driving inquiry for chapters two, three, and four considers how Anarkali is employed as a medium for domestic and social anxieties at stake between the imperial personalities of Akbar and Salim.