Reframing royal silence: Feminist histories and cinematic reimaginings of Nur Jahan and Jahanara Begum

This study examines how feminist historical narratives and popular cinematic representations influence our understanding of Mughal heroines Nur Jahan and Jahanara Begum. Through a comparative analysis of selected historical texts and visual portrayals, it explores the tension between scholarly recovery and mainstream erasure. The findings reveal a stark contrast between the two narrative forms. Feminist histories portray these women as politically astute, intellectually engaged, and spiritually influential, challenging the omissions of traditional chronicles. In contrast, cinematic narratives often reduce them to romantic or ornamental figures, prioritizing sentiment and spectacle over substance. While visually engaging, such portrayals risk distorting public memory and obscuring historical agency. By bringing academic and popular narratives into dialogue, this study highlights how collective memory is shaped not only by archival records but also by cultural storytelling. It calls for a more critical engagement with visual media and reaffirms the role of feminist historiography in reshaping historical consciousness. Ultimately, it invites reflection on whose voices are remembered—and how they are framed—in the retelling of the past. Paper type: Research paper.