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VOL. 8, ISSUE 2 (2026)
The gendered ecology of empire: Women, nature, and the architecture of Mughal State Power, c.1526–1707
Authors
Kumar Avaneesh
Abstract
In this paper, I would like to suggest that in the Mughal realm, as in
the rest of the premodern world, gender and ecology are the two themes that
cannot be separated from one another without losing the sense of the Mughal
imperial state's structure, functioning, and ideology. This paper argues two
things based on Ruby Lal's work, Shireen Moosvi's, Irfan Habib's, Michael
Fisher's, Pratyay Nath's, Emma Kalb's, and the foremost sources, the
Humayun-Nama of Gulbadan Begum and the Ain-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl. First, that
the elite and subaltern women of the Mughal court were active participants in
the political, economic, and cultural life of the empire, and that gendered
spaces like the haram sara were not places of isolation but of rule. Second,
that the Mughal state in its very core was an ecological enterprise - the
revenue system, the military organization, urban planning, and the ritual of
the Mughals all depended upon the systematic mobilization, manipulation, and
control of the natural world. Finally, the paper digs deeper into the overlaps
between these two categories, as the gendered ecology of Mughal imperial
culture, manifested in women's garden patronage, the symbolic masculinization
of human-animal relations, and the differential allocation of environmental
labour, exemplifies a power structure with a gendered and an ecological
constitution.
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Pages:198-202
How to cite this article:
Kumar Avaneesh "The gendered ecology of empire: Women, nature, and the architecture of Mughal State Power, c.1526–1707". International Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Vol 8, Issue 2, 2026, Pages 198-202
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