The many strands of the moustache

In February 1620, somewhere in the vicinity of Daulatabad, the Mughal emperor Jahangir had his imagination captured by a woman. It wasn't the conventional, lusty type of obsession that we associate with kings, however.

- MANU S PILLAI

For, as the emperor diarised later, it was some unusual physical traits in the lady that drew his eye. The girl, we read, had “a full mustache and a good handful of beard. Outwardly,” Jahangir added, “she resembled a man.” In a flash of sovereign will—but also the distinctly offensive attitude of a nosy uncle—he commanded some women to “take her aside” for an examination. The idea was to determine if she was genuinely female. “Apparently,” India’s greatest ruler of the time exclaimed—yet again channelling his inner uncle—“she did not differ from other women by an iota.” Her ordeal over, one trusts the girl was allowed to get on with her day.

If facial hair on a gardener's daughter triggered an unbecoming curiosity in our man, in male circles, the same article provoked very different feelings, including threatening ones. Men, after all, used their moustaches and beards as proof of everything from virility to political affiliation. For instance, though their central Asian ancestors glorified beards, the Mughals had, from Akbar’s time, shaved their chins. This was not about fashion; Akbar was adopting the Rajput style, as part of a strategy of political seduction. Jahangir followed the same, as did most of his dutiful court. However, around the same time the emperor met the bearded woman, one of his own children stopped shaving. Relations between father and son had lately been frosty, and the prince's flaunting of facial hair was neither a case of sloth nor of sartorial innovation. Instead, it was a mark of defiance. In a household full of shiny-cheeked men, the beard was the proverbial middle finger to daddy.