BOOK REVIEW Exposing a
Maharashtra legend Shivaji: Hindu King in
Islamic India by James W
Laine
Reviewed by Piyush Mathur
As a
matter of grave regret and plain annoyance, I must
prelude my review of James W Laine's scintillating book
in Indian regional history with a mention of the ugly
physical violence that followed the book's release in
India in December 2003 and January 2004. What would have
ordinarily been but one critical landmark in academic
historiography, Laine's book - really only its title,
Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India - received
significant media attention in India as
well-orchestrated mobs in Pune, Maharashtra, blackened
the face of a Sanskrit scholar
who helped Laine in his research and they ransacked the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Laine's
self-confessed "scholarly home" in India (p vii).
While Shiv Sena, the well-known Hindu right
organization, led the attack on the Sanskrit scholar,
the assault on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute was the handiwork of an erstwhile obscure
group called the Sambhaji Brigade. The latter attack
resulted in the destruction of many original and rare
manuscripts, artifacts, objects and invaluable
out-of-print books. On the whole, the attacks prompted a
national outcry from the elite section of the Indian
intelligentsia; by contrast, the government of
Maharashtra, ruled by an alliance of the Congress Party
and the Nationalist Congress Party, launched criminal
proceedings against Laine and his publishers on January
9, 2004.
The government's charge against Laine
and the Oxford University Press was quite in line with
independent India's general intolerance of
non-conformist scholarship; it was also in line with
India's long-standing suspicion of irreverent foreign
interpreters of Indian history and culture. Accusing
Laine, an American citizen, of hurting public sentiments
and instigating riots, the government banned the book on
January 13, 2004 - even though, anticipating disturbance
on the basis of prior feedback, the Oxford University
Press had already withdrawn it from the Indian market on
November 21, 2003.
Whatever caused the
provocation? The default response to the question of
why some people may have reacted violently to a
publication is to find the cause in the publication.
That line of response needs to be rejected simply
because it lays the blame erroneously on the publication
rather than on the violent, whose relationship to
critical thinking, reading and scholarship is often
tenuous, if at all present.
In the case of this
so-called Laine controversy, the problem goes way beyond
the literacy levels of the attackers - and right up to a
myopic state that has routinely created purist
superhuman icons out of historical figures for the sake
of particular populist ends. In the process, the state,
in deference to the radical end of the citizenry, has
produced a socio-political culture accommodative of
violent public displays of disregard for scholarly
plain-speak about those icons.
The icon under
consideration is Shivaji, a man who ruled parts of the
present Indian states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu,
Karnataka, and Gujarat through the 17th century. In
contemporary India, Shivaji is regarded as a major
regional hero who rebelled against the Mughals - and has
thus become a key cultural idol in the chauvinistic
repertoire of contemporary Hindu nationalism (typically
advertised as Indian nationalism). Within Maharashtra,
Shivaji is easily the most powerful mortal ever born -
is a demigod - for reasons of caste, religion, region
and culture. On the whole, Shivaji is a heroic legend
within modern India's identity politics - and it is this
realization that serves as the point of departure for
Laine's history.
Identity
politics Thorough in research and crisp in
writing, Laine's history is above all smart - and it
thus beautifully transcends the typical academic history
book as well as biography. And so - by way of this
detour - it stands to reason why the book would appear
at all on the public radarscope. Insofar Laine raises
fundamental questions about a range of identities -
religious, linguistic, economic, caste, moral, regional,
national and political - relevant to contemporary
Maharashtra, India and Hindus, his account has aspired
and managed to be unsettling overall.
Laine
wonders: "How have Maharashtrian Hindus constructed a
narrative of Shivaji's life that is consistent with the
narrative they construct of their own identities as
Hindus, as Maharashtrians, and as Indians?" (p 8) The
book is a detailed genealogical exploration of - and
response to - the above query: it traces the
constructions of various regional and other identities
around the figure and the legend of Shivaji
through history. An important component of this
exploration is a consistent counter-focus on how Shivaji
and associated historical personalities themselves
related to and used the complex of identities that was
historically available to them.
Clearly, Laine's
prime commitment is not to an objective end-point as
regards Shivaji's identity; quite to the contrary, he is
committed to a searching skepticism of any fixed or
objective identity-claims - and to their thorough
historical and contextual illumination. This
de-mystification and de-naturalization of the legend of
Shivaji centrally involves an expose of the dominant
cultural, ideological and political values and
objectives that have underpinned its growth over the
centuries and to the present.
"The question of
the inclusion of Shivaji in a narrative of
Maharashtrian, Hindu and Indian identity first involves
the interrogation of these categories, which are too
often assumed to be primordial, objective, and thus
obvious," Laine declares. He goes on to ask: "But if
Shivaji [were] a Maharashtrian, a Hindu, and an Indian,
in what sense did he accept membership in these clubs?
In what sense is it anachronistic to ascribe to him such
memberships, and in what sense not? How have the
processes that came to produce modern Maharashtrian,
Hindu, and Indian identities come to color the accepted
biographies of Shivaji?" (p 9)
Laine deems
exploring the above curiosities "to be the burden of
this entire book" (p 9). The discourse on Shivaji, he
avers, "begins with early accounts of Shivaji's life in
the late 17th century, takes interesting turns a century
later, when the warrior's story is closely linked to
that of the region's saints, and finally comes to the
late 19th and 20th centuries, when the Hindu king is
portrayed as a liberationist, an egalitarian social
reformer, as well as a nationalist." (p 8)
As
part of his critical exposition of that discourse, Laine
promises to provide: "an examination of the narrative of
the Shivaji legend, how this story has become unified
and coherent" (p 5); a report on "the 17th century texts
that give us clues to the legend's genesis as the story
of a martial or epic hero" (p 5); a probe into how the
legend of Shivaji is "embellished by 18th-century tales
of [his] relationship with the well-known saints of his
time" (p 5); an account of "the wedding of Shivaji's
legend to the history of nationalism, first in opposing
British colonialism and then as a story of regional and
Indian identity" (ps 5-6); and "an examination of the
'cracks' in the narrative, places where one might
challenge the ideology that the narrative assumes". (p
6) In the book, Laine makes good on each one of his
promises and he rounds off his delivery with a
much-needed epilogue on the construction of Hindu and
Muslim identities in Maharashtra. Most readers are
likely to find the chapter called "Cracks in the
Narrative" the most interesting.
Critical
highlights There is practically nothing in the
book that could be considered superfluous - a compliment
to Laine's superior writing skills; for the facility of
the reader, however, I wish to point out the book's
highlights.
In relation to the martial dimension
of the Shivaji legend, Laine provides a pertinent
historical and cultural scrutiny of Shivaji's killing of
Afzal Khan (1659), the raid on Shaista Khan (1663), the
escape from Agra (1666), and the conquest of Simhagad
(1670). Also included are critical analyses of Shivaji's
coronation (1674), the Karnataka campaign, family
relations (especially with parents and sons), and death
- and reflections on the accounts authored by
Paramananda and Kavi Bhushan, the two poets appointed by
Shivaji to write laudatory epics about him.
Laine's exposition of the spiritualization of
the Shivaji legend through 1780-1810 includes a critique
of Mahipati's account and highly calibrated reflections
on Gaga Bhatt, Ramdas, Udebhan and Goddess Bhavani.
As far as the nationalistic politicization of
Shivaji is concerned, Laine delves into the historical
accounts of Shivaji written through 1869-2001 (ending
with brief insightful comments on accounts that have
lately popped up on the Internet). Prominent historians
and/or intellectuals that receive Laine's scholarly
attention here are as follows: Jotirao Phule, Rosalind
O'Hanlon, Grand Duff, K A Keluskar, Lokmanya Tilak,
Justice M G Ranade, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, G S Sardesai,
and Babasaheb Purandare.
Laine successfully
brings to light the peculiar contingencies of the above
and other authors - as well as the peculiarities of
their effects on the grand narrative of Shivaji. On the
whole, he relentlessly exposes the deficiencies and
interest of historiographies of all hues devoted to
Shivaji - beginning from the oldest extant hagiographies
to the British interventions and all the way to Hindu
nationalistic, purportedly secularist, and politically
corrected accounts of our day and age.
What we
get in return is a nuanced contextualist account of
Shivaji and a careful portrayal of the complex social
identities around his time as well as the times to which
those trends in historiography and literary creation
belong. In the process, Laine addresses a number of
logical errors and misconceptions that have pervaded
Maharashtra's and India's popular imagination and
scholarship related to Shivaji and social, especially
religious, identities generally.
Misconceptions addressed Laine debunks
the liberal secularist idea that there was complete
harmony and amicability between Hindus and Muslims
during the 17th century and/or thereafter - such that
the specificity of their separate identities did not
matter. Contrarily, Laine points out "that although
being a Hindu or Muslim in the 17th or 18th century did
not mean membership in the religion of Hinduism or Islam
in quite the same sense it means today, it did mean
something. The precise meaning of Hindu and Muslim
identity varied from person to person and depended on
that person's social location, specific experience, and
personal, political, and economic interests." (pp
103-104)
Laine further points out: "By and
large, Muslims were different in their beliefs and
practices but not inexpressibly alien. Moreover, Muslims
[of the 17th century Maharashtra] were not a uniform
group ... they were Afghans and Ethiopians,
Persian-speaking nobles, and lowborn Marathi speakers,
Shi'ites and Sunnis. They were soldiers in the mutually
hostile armies of the Adil Shah, the Nizam Shah, and the
Mughal emperor, of the Abyssinian Siddis and of Shivaji
himself." (pp 42-43).
As such, Laine also
rejects any clear hostility between Muslims and Hindus,
deeming it "a gross misrepresentation" to suggest that
Shivaji led "a band of united Hindu liberationists
against a united Islamic oppressor" (p 43). Contrarily:
"There were many local powers, and local leaders
carefully calculated their own interests, casting their
lot with whatever empire offered them the most wealth
and security and upward mobility ... Shivaji himself
began as a nominal servant of the Adil Shah, and later
agreed to an alliance with Jai Singh and to fight as a
Mughal general. Even Shivaji's son calculated his best
interests, and served briefly in alliance with Dilir
Khan, a prominent Mughal general. This tendency
continued into the 18th century, when the system of
alliance became, if anything, even more complex. But in
the 17th century, it is clear that religious identity
was not a major factor in determining how Maratha nobles
forged military and political alliances." (p 43)
Nevertheless, Laine argues that at the conscious
level of individual choice, Shivaji was an assertive
Hindu within a cosmopolitan Islamicate India of the 17th
century: "Given the world into which he was born, it is
not surprising that Shivaji would participate in many
aspects of Islamicate culture, donning Persian dress,
offering salaam, patronizing the shrines of Sufi
pirs, even fighting in one of Aurangzeb's armies. In
this he followed ways of life similar to those of his
grandfather, father, sons and grandsons. And yet we
suspect that his agenda was something different, and
that he did stand apart. There were constraints on how
independent he could be, but it does seem that when he
could, he attempted to rule as an independent Hindu
monarch, to be a patron of his religious traditions, and
to challenge the hegemony of the Islamicate world around
him." (pp 43-44)
Laine's pertinent conclusion
is that the fluidity of the religious categories
- Hindu/Hinduism and Muslim/Islam - "did not
diminish their usefulness, nor make the enterprise
of constructing religious identity any less real." (p
103) "What makes the understanding of this separation
a matter of subtlety," he observes - citing
prominent examples - "is the fact that on the one hand,
elite Hindus were able to participate in the Islamicate
world of 17th-century Deccan politics, while on the other
hand, elite Muslims often accommodated themselves to
Hindu social structures ... The boundaries were not so
blurred, however, that either Hindus or Muslims would
see the issue of conversion to Islam as inconsequential,
and symbolic markers of difference and boundary
maintenance were often clearly different social
locations, with different interests, found it to their
advantage to define their religious allegiances in
different ways." (pp 36-37)
In addition to
religion, Laine addresses the categories of Maharashtra,
Marathi and India - highlighting their fluidity and
anachronistic application in modern times; he also sets
straight the record of associated misconceptions related
to sects, caste and other contextual affiliations. He
reminds us, for instance, that the state of Maharashtra,
which has claimed Shivaji as its prime symbol, "has had
clear boundaries only since 1960". (p 9)
As far
as the state's identity as a linguistic unit of Marathi
speakers is concerned "linguistic diversity persisted
[in the region] until the 20th century, and the
frontiers between languages were often very hazy". (p
10) Moreover, "the earliest ballad composed to celebrate
the deeds of Shivaji is ... written in a Marathi so
Persianized that virtually no modern Maharashtrian can
read it with ease". (p 10) Laine also notes "by the 17th
century, Marathi speakers did have something of a
cultural tradition to which they collectively belonged,
but the degree to which that was a primary marker of
identity is difficult to assess" (p 10). The Marathi
language became standardized only in the 20th century
owing to "published dictionaries and the technologies of
mass communication". (p 10)
As for the supposed
link of Marathi to Shivaji, Laine brings to our
attention the historical incubation of the language
within the saint tradition of Pandharpur - to which
Shivaji owed no apparent allegiance. Moreover: "Not only
is the deity at Pandharpur, a town that might claim to
be the religious center of Maharashtra, hailed by a
Kannada name, Vithoba, but the city itself was ...
probably an area where Kannada was spoken in the
medieval period; Marathi gradually came to predominate
in the 13th century." (p 10)
Laine further
points out that Shivaji did not consider himself a
Maharashtrian: Much of modern Maharashtra "remained out
of his control" - and he "used the mountain forts of the
Sahayadris as his base of operations" with Raigad as his
capital (p 12). The epic composed in his honor past his
orthodox coronation also "praises him as a Hindu king,
but makes no mention of Maharashtra or Marathas as
such". (p 12)
Laine's overall observation is
that "[f]or 17th century or 18th century people living
in the heartland of what is today Maharashtra,
'Maharshtrian' and 'Hindu' may have been meaningful
markers of their identities. But using the word Hindavi
to mean Indian, which connotes for us a citizen of a
modern nation state, is far more problematic, and to
claim Shivaji as an Indian will also lead us astray." (p
18)
The fireworks Laine's finest,
glittering contributions in the book comprise his
fearless expose of the moralistic, ideological,
political and even psychological concerns underpinning
the standard accounts of Shivaji (especially those found
in government schools textbooks) and his raising and
answering of patently uncomfortable questions about the
life of Shivaji. Spectacular also are the attempts at
de-naturalizing Hindu values and ideals in response to
contextual interpretive demands - and exposing the
hypocrisies that come in the name of Hindu tolerance.
For instance - and as if benefiting from the
vantage point of an original cultural outsider to
India and Hinduism - Laine observes that "there is no
more clearly 'Hindu' position than to exalt Akbar's
policies and to patronize Muslim religious practices and
persons within the context of Hindu culture". (p 39) He
goes on to state: "It is perhaps not surprising that
Muslims [in India] are usually not judged according to
their own community's standards but are included within
a Hindu cosmos, a world of Hindu values." (p 41)
Arguing that the Indian textbook portrayal of
Shivaji is very selectively tailored to appeal to (the
perceived preferences of) Europeans, the Indian
bourgeoisie, and "modernistic" Hindus - what with the
stress on Shivaji's modern navy, efficient
administration, family values, obedience as a son and
penchant for religious tolerance - Laine wonders: "Can
one imagine a narrative of Shivaji's life in which, for
example: Shivaji had an unhappy family life? Shivaji had
a harem? Shivaji's personal ambition was to build a
kingdom, not liberate a nation? Shivaji lived in a
cosmopolitan Islamicate world and did little to change
that fact?" (p 91)
Laine's research-based
affirmative responses to the above queries are liable to
discomfort many a Maharashtrian and Indian - thanks to
the hijack of the education by a politically and
religiously motivated state and the overall culture of
intellectual intolerance. The problem is compounded in
the case of Shivaji because of the issue of caste -
Shivaji had to make serious efforts to lay claim to a
so-called higher Rajput caste (while having been born a
"lower caste").
Well, in addition to having an
absentee father, Shivaji had a "testy relationship with
his oldest son Sambhaji, who deserted his father's cause
for a time and allied with the Mughals, and is primarily
remembered for his affronts to the chaste virtue of
Brahmin women, his drug use, and his association with
Tantric priests of questionable integrity". (p 93)
Shivaji most likely also had a harem - the "names of at
least eight [of his] wives and concubines" occur in the
historical accounts (p 93).
If that does not
offend you enough, then you just might have appreciated
the amount of research and intellectual investment that
has gone into discovering just that and declaring it -
and you may well continue to enjoy the fireworks even as
Laine's legal troubles unfold in India.
Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India by
James W Laine. Oxford University Press: New York, 2003.
(Hard Cover). ISBN 0195141261. Price, US$35, 192 pages.
Piyush Mathur, PhD, an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, and Virginia Tech, US, is an independent
observer of world affairs, the environment, science and
technology policy, and literature.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
face of a Sanskrit scholar
who helped Laine in his research and they ransacked the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Laine's
self-confessed "scholarly home" in India (p vii).
