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The son also rises. While the volunteer army formed in the name of the father, the Shiv Sena, has acquired an impeccable pedigree in defending the name and ‘philosophy’ of their eponymous hero, it is now the turn of the son’s acolytes to lift his credit ratings.
It is understandable too, for whichever way you look at it, Sambhaji is hardly hero material. So some posthumous doubling up in defense of his late father, even if it is a little too late, can only help shore up his reputation.
It is said that the Maratha Mahasangh, the parent outfit of the Sambhaji Sena, has the backing of that great modern Maratha, Sharad Pawar, hardly a hero himself.
But then these days you don’t need to be a hero to become one, you merely need a Sena. It is fitting therefore that the Maharashtra government has chosen to ban the book which ‘caused’ the trouble. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that an alliance with the NCP has forced Congress’ hand. For if there is one thing the Congress party is good at it is sweeping contentious issues out of sight.
In fact historically this party of consensus has been incapable of handling ‘public sentiments’.
Moreover, who in Maharashtra can be ‘seen to be’ soft on defending Shivaji? ‘Seen to be’ is the clinching fulcrum of the equation. For the mob that ransacked the institution did so not so much for Shivaji but for their immediate political patrons, the Maratha Mahasangh and to challenge the legitimacy of Shiv Sena as the sole spokesperson for Shivaji. They were concerned not so much with criticism about Shivaji as with positioning themselves as a force.
These kinds of tactical ‘mob-letting’ takes place everywhere in the country. In a political culture where posturing and reality have diverged far apart, the former still retains a surprising importance, as therefore do these acts of ‘protest’. To decry this as ‘vandalism’ is to ignore the larger political reality that invites, supports and thrives on these tamasha protests.
However, it is one thing to dig pitches or stop a shooting or demand a ban or two on books and quite another to attack an institution which is virtually a national treasure.
The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, founded in the memory of the great R G Bhandarkar, Sanskritist and Indologist of gigantic stature, is India’s pre-eminent institution for the study of ancient Indian society and religion. Sanskritists from around the world visit and work at the institute, for most of whom it is a kind of pilgrimage. Attacking the institute and destroying the rarest of manuscripts from the Vedic period is virtually akin to attacking the Taj Mahal and defacing it. Imagine the furore that would cause.
The mob targeted the institute as Shrikanth Bahulkar, a research scholar and member of BORI’s managing committee, was among scholars credited in James Laine’s book, ‘Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India’.
The book apparently contained some criticism of Shivaji, but I am sure nobody knows what. Thousands of books, rare manuscripts in Sanskrit, Pali and Ardha Magadhi and old Vedic literature, research work, meticulously and painstakingly arranged index cards for reference and photographs were seen strewn all over the two buildings housing the institute after the incident.
Of course the irony is that R G Bhandarkar (1837-1925) was the one scholar who pioneered a modern study of ancient India and did more than most to edit, translate and publish many rare Vedic, Buddhist and Jain manuscripts of that period. Some of his books were written over a hundred years ago but remain in print even today, example, ‘Early History of the Dekkan Down to the Mohomedan conquest’ (reprint Poona 1895, edition 2001), Wilson Philological Lectures on Sanskrit and the Derived Languages (Reprint 1929, edition 1991).
Along with other contemporaries such as G V Ranade, Sardesai, Dharmanand Kosambi and later D R Bhandarkar, he was part of the Maratha renaissance that virtually rewrote Indian history (with their Bengali counterparts) following the template of British Orientalists.
In the second half of the 20th century, these pioneering scholars would evoke great criticism for their relatively uncritical acceptance of British suppositions, especially over the periodisation of Indian history and the nature of Islamic rule. So, in a sense the scholars who first made Shivaji a great icon and hero through their writings are now posthumously witnessing the seamier side of nationalist historiography.
Thus the cycle of virtue following
necessity comes full circle again. All the 13 scholars named in the book
have been given police protection, the Maharashtra government has banned
the book (not before OUP, on its own, had apologised and withdrawn the
book from circulation) while the Sambhaji Sena has warned Marathi scholars
against criticising it. Is Shivaji happy that Sambhaji has finally got
to work, even if it is his own admirers who are under threat? Maybe a Shahuji
Sena can set the record straight!
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Friday, January 30, 2004
Editor
Mid-day
By e-mail
Sir
Re: "Historical cycle of virtue" by Mahmood Farooqui, Mid-day: January 16, 2004
(http://web.mid-day.com/columns/mahmood_farooqui/2004/january/74011.htm)
Questioning ethics of 'using' names of historical personages for partisan ends could perhaps be justified; commenting with wanton casuistry upon those personalities themselves can't. The abysmal roguishness to which current politics has sunk may - as indeed it should - engage the journalist. But willfully 'deconstructing' a venerated idol, without even half-baked knowledge about him, is tantamount to crime.
His remark, "Sambhaji is hardly hero material", or "some posthumous doubling up in defense of his late father, even if it is a little too late, can only help shore up his reputation" needs to be explained by him pronto, unless of course he wishes to follow in Laine's ignominious footsteps!
Perhaps, Sambhaji is not hero material to those relying upon aliens with an agenda for most of their inspiration and information about India. An occasional descent from their high intellectually correct perch to a mundane 'native' plane, where India lives, might just convince them that Shivaji needs no defense by posthumous doubling up (whatever Farooqui intends to convey by that de rigeur but curious lapse into Americanism) in order to shore up Sambhaji's reputation!
While bowing in abject humility to superior knowledge, presumed by journos to be their (exclusive?) possession, one wonders how much about Sambhaji he truly knows. Does he, for instance, know that Sambhaji had engaged in a far-sighted political alliance with Akbar, Aurangzeb's youngest son, and had succeeded in encouraging him into an open rebellion against his father, which would have rid the entire nation (and perhaps our historical heritage itself) of any trace or remembrance of so capricious a tyrant? (Incidentally, Tipu Sultan is hailed no end for making a similar attempt with Napoleon! Only, if it had succeeded, we might have become a French, instead of British, colony!) Does he know how Sambhaji had held both the English and the Portuguese 'traders' completely at bay by his swift and deadly maneuvers on land as well as at sea? Is he aware that Sambhaji was an accomplished ruler as well as scholar, linguist and poet in his own right, having authored an entire treatise on Civil Administration? That he had composed the Budhabhooshanam in Sanskrit, and the Nakhashikha, Satasataka and Nayikabheda in the Brij dialect? That Khafi Khan, the chronicler of the Muslim Court, had described him as several times more challenging militarily than his father? Or that he displayed superhuman fortitude and courage during the several agonizing weeks under Aurangzeb's novelties in inhuman emotional and physical torture - parading through the streets in jester's attire, slowly peeling the skin off, being blinded, severing of the tongue, and final decapitation?
Farooqui's ilk couldn't have known all this even from hearsay, because the insidious aim of Marxist historians, who rewrote Indian history for promoting their own slant in post-independence history textbooks, has been to denigrate everything even remotely inspirational to the Indian. Our mortgaged-to-Macaulay/Marx academia took pains to highlight mainly every negative aspect about our great men. Sambhaji is no exception.
None seeks to compel detailed study on someone who is oh-so-anathematic to many a 'rightly-guided' pen pusher. What is expected of responsible (?) journalism in the circumstances, nevertheless, is a trifle less presumptuousness and sleight-of-pen: the will to shun a penchant for using uninformed journalistic weaponry in converting patent fallacy into fact.
Laine attempted nothing different in his evaluation as caste-biased every indigenous depiction of the "Shivaji story". The results, to say the very least, have been disastrous!
Sambhaji suffered Aurangzeb's personal
indulgence physically. Do we need a Farooqui to also torture him historically?
Bhalchandrarao C Patvardhan
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