Writing the Sovereign Self: Representation and Reconfiguration of Female Sovereignty in Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam's An Account of My Life (1912)

This article examines Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam’s An Account of My Life (1912) to delineate how she employs her autobiography as a site for representing and reconfiguring existent discourses on female sovereignty. Sultan Jahan Begam was the last of the four successive female rulers who ruled the erstwhile princely state of Bhopal for over a century. The article traces how the Begam, by drawing upon a varied lineage of influences from Mughal imperial self-representation to modern modes of self-narration, and creating a narrative niche of a legendary female tradition, represents herself as a ruler in late colonial India. In doing so, it unravels the royal woman’s self-fashioning through a strategic utilisation of her position as sovereign to redefine the dynamics between gender and power in a predominantly patriarchal socio-political context.