Strangers’ Gaze: Mughal Harem and European Travellers of the Seventeenth Century
By Faraz Anjum

Travellers generally show an uncommon interest in describing the women of the country they visit and European travellers of the seventeenth century were no exception. This article examines their representation of Indian women and demonstrates how they in their narrative discussed Mughal harem. European travellers’ representation of Indian women and their conditions have been considered by some modern historians as indispensable, simply because the indigenous contemporary writers have left large gaps, which could only be filled by the information provided by the foreign travellers. However, a little scrutiny of portrayals of women by overseas visitors and a comparative analysis of this material with the information provided by local writers, contemporary or of a bit earlier or later period, abundantly reveal that European travellers were equally deficient in this area.

Harem has generally been depicted by foreigners as a place of exotic curiosity and was “viewed with fascination and loathing.” Indira Ghose comments about colonial travellers that “nowhere is the range of travellers’ gazes more clearly shown than in the descriptions of visits to the zenana.”4 The same is true of European travellers’ of the seventeenth century. However, while describing the Mughal harem, European travellers were handicapped in two ways: first as foreigners, they possessed limited resources to understand the language and culture of the locals and secondly, they were all male and thus private domain of the women was nearly completely inaccessible to them. Nevertheless, the Europeans, without realizing these handicaps, used their gaze with unbridled speculative power and unleashed their erotic imaginations by trying to reveal what was concealed from them. In this way, their information is more a case of fantasizing than of historical veracity.

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