"Demeaning Shivaji, denigrating dharma" (Sandhya Jain)

[Guest guest]

>Priyadarshi Rajiv <Rajiv

>manthan (Manthan)

>Manthan <manthan

>[manthan] "Demeaning Shivaji, denigrating dharma" (Sandhya Jain)

>Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:58:46 +0000 (UTC)

>

>************************************************************************

>manthan: Information Exchange Network for Intellectual Defense of Dharma

>Sponsored By: Bharatvani - http://www.bharatvani.org

>************************************************************************

>

>Title: Demeaning Shivaji, denigrating dharma

>Author: Sandhya Jain

>Publication: The Pioneer

>27th January 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withdrawn by the publishers, I cannot view the events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

>s 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.

>

>

>************************************************

>Manthan is a moderated, by invitation only list.

>Listowner: owner-manthan

>************************************************

>

 

_______________

Scope out the new MSN Plus Internet Software — optimizes dial-up to the max!

http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=byoa/plus&ST=1