"C.M.Naim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 22:15:37 -0600
To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
From: "C.M.Naim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Gail Omvedt on the Bhandarkar Inst. episode
o o o
Date: 7 Jan 2004 11:28:07 -0000
From: Gail Omvedt [address protected]
Dear H and friends,
Below is what I had sent to a couple of
yahoogroups and friends about this incident.
I would add: it's not correct, as the Hindustan
Times editorial does, to simply blame goondas.
All groups have to seriously think about what
thsi means. Maratha=Kunbis may be dominant in
politics in Maharashtra today, but educationally
and intellectually they are far behind -- it's
hard to think of an English-speaking and writing
Maratha intellectual. In this they're like OBCs
throughout IIndia. The kids today face
unemployment and all kinds of problems, and are
getting a steady diet of chauvinism poured into
their minds. Upper castes can in appearance be
more liberal because they're more comfortable;
some are genuinely so but many are not.
my original comments follow:
It is sad to hear that members of the Sambhaji
Brigade of the Maratha Seva Sangh � which was
supposed to be the more progressive breakaway
from the Maratha Mashasangh � have attacked and
destroyed manuscripts at the Bhandarkar Institute
in Pune. Sad because it is Kunbi-Marathas
themselves who are defamed by this act of
goondaism.
The traditional saying � bahmanancya ghari dnyan,
kunbincya ghari dan, maharancya ghari gan � has
been broken in the case of Dalits, who are moving
into all kinds of fields. Unfortunately it seems
to remain true in the case of Kunbi-Marathas, who
are less able to read and by this act � and by
the support some of their intellectuals have
shown for banning Jim Blaine�s book � that they
don�t read and don�t want to read.
Unfortunately they are only playing into the hands of Hindu chauvinists.
The book by James Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in
Islamic India (OUP), was written by a professor
religion whose main concern is the formation of
�Hindu� and �Muslim� identities. The book is not
a history of Shivaji, but a depiction of the way
legends and stories ABOUT Shivaji have been
formed and used in the course of Maharashtrian
history. As he concludes his introduction,
�The Shivaji legend is a glorious story. Good
guys, though often outnumbered and outgunned, win
in the end. Shivaji is brave, fair and
compassionate. He loves his mother. He is
pious. He is patriotic. It is no wonder that
the Shivaji of these stories is held up to the
children of Maharashtra today as a hero of whom
they can be proud. What is problematic, though,
is the fact that good history is rarely about
good guys and bad guys, and that the simplistic
reading of history in these terms leaves
Maharashtrians with a history in which Muslims
(12% of the current population of Maharashtra)
can only play the role of aggressors, usurpers
and oppressors. The modern descendents of those
Muslims are thus vilified as outsiders to a
society which, though founded on secular
principles, is easily swayed by the rhetoric of
Hindu chauvinism. In reviewing in these pages
the growth of the legend of Shivaji, I hope that
I can contribute in some way to a richer
understanding of this great man, and rescue his
biography from the grasp of those who see India
as a Hindu nation at war with its Muslim
neighbors� (6).
This is what Laine tries to do � and this I think
is the REAL reason that the high castes who claim
possession of the legend of Shivaji object to the
book.
The various chapters of the book cover:
ONE: Shivaji and Maharashtrian Hindu Identity
TWO: The Epic Hero: Seventeenth Century Sources
for the Heroic Legends of Shivaji
THREE: The Hindu Hero: Shivaji and the Saints, 1780-1810.
FOUR: The Patriot: Political Readings of Hindu
Identity in the Tales of Shivaji, 1869-2001
FIVE: Cracks in the Narrative
SIX: The Construction of Hindu and Muslim Identities in Maharashtra
Chapter Five is the most controversial. Let me
first give the passage that was shown to me as
the highly objectionable one: (Would you let
people write like that about your mother? was the
qeustion put by a retired Maratha history
professor when I argued about banning books):
�The repressed awareness that Shivaji had an
absentee father is also revealed by the fact that
Maharashtrians tell jokes naughtily suggesting
that his guardian Dadaji Konddev was his
biological father. In a sense, because Shivaji�s
father had little influence on his son, for many
narrators it was important to supply him with
father replacement. Dadaji and later Ramdas.
But perhaps we read the story of his life as
governed by motivations buried deep in his psyche
by a mother rejected by her husband�.� (p. 91).
[this may, to Maharashtrians and especially
Marathas, be something like saying that Jesus was
fathered by a wandering Roman soldier. This is
the kind of thing that does get said in the U.S.
which does not have �blasphemy� laws]
I would say here Blaine�s mistake is that
he does not give his sources. Undoubtedly they
were Pune Brahmans, who were most of his
informants, and who would have been likely to say
that Dadaji must have been his father.
Anyway, what Chapter Five actually does is
important to take account of. Llaine wants to
question some of the pro-Hindu and widely
accepted interpretations of Shivaji. Thus he
writes,
�What, then, are some of the unthinkable
thoughts, carefully held at bay by the narrators
who have shaped the Shivaji legend into a
familiar tale? Can one imagine a narrative of
Shivaji�s life in which, for example:
Shivaji had an unhappy family life?
Shivaji had a harem?
Shivaji was uninterested in the religion of the bhakti saints?
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).
Fear of raising questions like this can only help
the spread of Brahmanism and Hindutva.
"Time will submit to slavery
from illusion's bonds we'll be free
everyone will be
powerful and prosperous --
Brahman, Ksatriya, Vaishya, Shudra
and Chandala all have rights
women, children, male and female
and even prosttitutes"
--Tuka (Tukaram), 17th cent. Marathi Sant of India
_____
--
C. M. Naim
5402 S. Dorchester Avenue
Chicago, IL 60615
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