Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 27, 2004
Having purchased and read James
Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India only after it was officially
withdrawn by the publishers, I cannot view the events at the Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute (BORI) as totally unjustified. Certainly, attacks
on centres of learning have no place in Hindu ethos and must not recur.
Yet, having gone through 105 pages of shoddy polemics posing as historical
research, I am constrained to state that Oxford University Press needs
to re-examine its commissioning policy if it hopes to retain credibility
as a publishing house.
Moreover, the BORI scholars acknowledged
by Laine must honestly inform the nation of the extent to which they are
responsible for the unwarranted assertions - we cannot call them conclusions,
as no evidence has been adduced or offered - in the impugned book. Far
from being a meticulous scholar who has uncovered unpalatable truths about
a revered historical figure, Laine is an anti-Hindu hypocrite determined
to de-legitimize India's ancient civilizational ethos and its grand rejuvenation
by Shivaji in the adverse circumstances of the seventeenth century. BORI
is not generally associated with substandard scholarship, and should explicitly
declare its position on the actual contents of the book.
Laine exposes his agenda when he
foists the unnatural concept of South Asia upon the geographical and cultural
boundaries of India; this is awkward because his discussion is India-centric
and specific to the Maharashtra region. He is also unable to disguise his
discomfort at the fact that Shivaji withstood the most bigoted Mughal emperor,
Aurangzeb, and established political agency for the embattled Hindu community,
amidst a sea of Islamic sultanates. This has so unnerved Laine that he
repeatedly makes inane remarks about Hindus employed under Muslim rulers
and vice versa, to claim that the two communities lacked a modern sense
of identity, and could not be viewed as opposing entities. What he means,
of course, is that Hindus of the era cannot be ceded to have had a sense
of 'Hindu' identity.
Reading the book, I was struck by
the fact that it did not once mention Shivaji's famed ambition to establish
a Hindu Pad Padshahi. This is a strange omission in a work claiming to
study how contemporary authors viewed Shivaji's historic role, and the
assessment of his legacy by subsequent native and colonial writers. The
most notable omission is of the poet Bhushan, who wrote: "Kasihki Kala
Gayee, Mathura Masid Bhaee; Gar Shivaji Na Hoto, To Sunati Hot Sabaki!"
[Kashi has lost its splendour, Mathura has become a mosque; If Shivaji
had not been, All would have been circumcised (converted)].
Bhushan's verse has immense historical
value because the Kashi Vishwanath temple was razed in 1669 and thus lost
its splendour, and the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple was destroyed and converted
into a mosque in 1670. Bhushan came to Shivaji's kingdom from the Mughal
capital in 1671, and within two years composed Shiv Bhooshan, a biography
of Shivaji. It clearly states that Shivaji wanted to set up a Hindu Pad
Padshahi.
Hence the view that Shivaji had
no ideological quarrel with Aurangzeb and was only an adventurer in search
of power and resources is juvenile. Laine obviously subscribes to the secularist
school of historiography that decrees that Hindus must forget the evil
done to them, a phenomenon Dr. Koenraad Elst calls negationism. But history
is about truth, and Hindu society's long and painful experience of Islamic
invasions and the subsequent Islamic polity has been so well documented
in standard works like Cambridge History of India, that it is amazing a
modern historian should claim there was no tension between Muslim rulers
and their Hindu subjects.
Shivaji strove consciously for political
power as an instrument for the resurrection of dharma (righteousness),
a quest he termed as "Hindavi Swarajya," a word having both geographical
and spiritual-cultural connotations. When still in his teens in 1645 CE,
Shivaji began administering his father's estate under a personalized seal
of authority in Sanskrit, an indication that he envisaged independence
and respected the Hindu tradition. A 1646 CE letter to Dadaji Naras Prabhu
refers to an oath that Shivaji, Prabhu, and others took in the presence
of the deity at Rayareshwar, to establish "Hindavi Swarajya."
Shivaji was aware of the economic
ruin and cultural annihilation of Hindus under the various sultanates.
He desired to end this suffering, but was personally free from bigotry,
as attested by contemporary Muslim chroniclers, notably Khafi Khan. It
is therefore galling when Laine smugly proclaims: "I have no intention
of showing that he was unchivalrous, was a religious bigot, or oppressed
the peasants." A.S. Altekar (Position of Women in Ancient India) has recorded
how Shivaji, in stark contrast to Muslim kings and generals of his era,
ensured that Muslim women in forts captured by him were not molested and
were escorted to safety. It is inconceivable that Shivaji would not know
that Hindu women similarly situated would have to commit jauhar. It is
therefore incumbent upon Laine and BORI to explain what "unchivalrous"
and "bigot" mean.
The insinuation about "bigot" is
especially objectionable in view of Laine's insistence that Shivaji had
no particular interest in Hindu civilization and no proven relationship
with the revered Samarth Ramdas or sant Tukaram. A Maharashtrian friend
suggests that Laine has probably not read the references cited in his book!
What the reader needs to understand is that Ramdas' historical significance
lies in the fact that he openly exhorted the people to rise against oppression
and hinted in Dasbodh that Shivaji was an avatar who had come to restore
dharma. By denying that he was Shivaji's spiritual mentor, Laine seeks
to disprove that the great Maratha wanted to establish a Hindu Pad Padshahi.
Ramdas, a devotee of Rama (Vaishnava
sampradaya), visited the Khandoba temple at Jejuri, Pune; apologized to
the god (Shiva) for boycotting the temple due to the practice of animal
sacrifice there; and built a Hanuman temple at its entrance. I mention
this to debunk Laine's pathetic insistence that devotion to a personal
god divides Hindu society. This is alien to our thinking; we see no conflict
between Ramdas and the Bhavani-worshipping Shivaji.
Then, there is Laine's tasteless
allegation that Shivaji may possibly (whatever that means) be illegitimate,
simply because Jijabai, who bore many children while living with her husband
in the south, gave birth to Shivaji on her husband's estate near Pune and
continued to live there. Maharashtrians point out that Shahaji had to send
his pregnant wife to safety in Shivneri due to political instability. Shahaji
was on the run with the boy king Murtaza Nizamshah, in whose name he controlled
the Nizamshahi. After its fall in 1636, service in the Adilshahi took him
to Bangalore (his remarriage produced the distinguished Thanjavur-Bhonsle
dynasty); he administered his Pune lands through Dadaji Konddev.
My response to Laine's profound
Freudian analysis is that he has thanked his wife and children and dedicated
his book to his mother; I couldn't but notice the absence of a father.
Is one to deduce something from the omission? Laine can relax: since the
Vedas, Hindus have placed only proportionate emphasis on biological bloodlines;
there is no shame if a man cannot mention his father; a true bastard is
one who does not know the name of his mother.