THE KING OF HEARTS
Though Vaibhav Purandare holds Shivaji in high esteem, his book on the Maratha king is no hagiography
FFinally, a new biography of Shivaji in English in which legend does not overshadow recorded history. Vaibhav Purandare is an obvious admirer, but is careful in situating his subject in his 17th century context.
The broad details of Shivaji’s epic story are well known, but Purandare has ably mined the vast literature that has grown around the Maratha king from the late 19th century; his text is further illuminated by contemporary European accounts and primary sources in Marathi. The net result is an accessible English biography, especially good for the reader who seeks a change from the pathbreaking but century-old work on Shivaji by Jadunath Sarkar.
Shivaji’s influence over a large part of the 17th century acquired a larger-than-life role in our national consciousness from the end of the 19th century. History and hagiography thereafter often got mixed. In this work, the author remains conscious of the weight of both elements without letting them overwhelm his account.
The popular narrative around Shivaji is largely framed by his long contest with Aurangzeb. But his geopolitical environment in the first three quarters of the 17th century was more complex. His more immediate rivalry was with the Sultanate of Bijapur in whose armies his father had served. It was against Bijapur that Shivaji had to first act in order to consolidate his putative dominion. The Mughal expansion southwards was a threat, but it also provided an opportunity given the adversarial relations with Bijapur. Alongside were other factors, including outposts of European power in the form of trading companies along the western coast, and intraMaratha feuding.
Shivaji’s great quality, and something that enthralls all his biographers, was the single-minded pursuit of his and his people’s interests through this maze of conflicting forces. His most celebrated feats—the killing of the Bijapur general Afzal Khan, the night raid on the Mughal Viceroy Shaista Khan, the escape from Aurangzeb’s custody in Agra—were a demonstration of his personal courage and tactical brilliance. Besides this, he also showed a greater consciousness of the maritime domain than any of his predecessors or contemporary powers in medieval India, and that in itself shows his distinctive quality.
Shivaji’s major adversaries were Muslims. His refusal to accept a subordinate status under Bijapur or the Mughals inevitably adds a religious dimension to his story. But did he seek through his resistance to found a theocratic Hindu state to counter the turn to orthodoxy and bigotry that both Bijapur and the Mughals progressively demonstrated through his life span? Varied answers have been provided by different historians. In Purandare’s reading, Shivaji consciously adopted Hindu motifs and symbolism to energise his followers, and this distinctively marked his realm. But alongside, perhaps the kingdom he founded shared other attributes with these contemporary states than Purandare acknowledges.
More significantly, as Purandare emphasises, he was not a ruler guided by religious and sectarian considerations; he “fashioned his own template of governance” and this was of a “robust expression—by way of words and actions- to values of religious plurality”. In the mid to late 17th century, if this appears incredibly modern, it is all the more reason to celebrate the great Maratha. ■
There are hardly any relatively recent singleauthor histories covering such a vast period
The periodisation of Indian history remains a matter of scholarly debate, often contentious. It might then be wise to write a popular history of the subcontinent by avoiding the ancient-medievalmodern division, thus side-stepping these debates. John Zubrzycki’s ‘shortest’ account of India’s past (and present) covers the several thousand years from the earliest humans to the ongoing pandemic. He has selected representative aspects of key moments that correspond to standard narratives of serious textbooks. There are hardly any relatively recent single-author histories covering such a vast period, perhaps other than the book by John Keay. Zubrzycki has undertaken a rather daunting task in attempting a briefer history of the huge subcontinent, and has been successful.
The account begins with the discovery of the Harappan civilisation and its dating in the 1920s, which pushed back, by several centuries, the known past of India. Subsequent excavations have revealed that the civilisation had its origins in neolithic villages such as Mehrgarh in Baluchistan (c.7000 BCE), and evolved into its mature phase around 2500 BCE. The end of the civilisation (c. 1900 BCE) overlapped with Aryan migrations. The Vedic-Sanskrit-speaking Aryans initially settled in the northwest. Their spread into the GangaYamuna Doab coincided with the use of iron, which made possible the clearing of dense forests. The emergence of complex societies led to the emergence of states, which in turn facilitated the rise of the Magadhan empire under the Mauryas, reaching its peak under Ashoka. Next, the rulers of the Kushanas contributed to Indian civilisation through their “patronage of Gandharan art and Buddhist architecture”. The book adheres to the traditional dynastic format, in which the era of the Guptas (c. 320-550 CE) is regarded as the “classical age”. Zubrzycki casts a glance at the Pallavas and Cholas in the south. It might have been worthwhile to have paid some attention to regional formations of the post-Gupta period, too.
While discussing the coming of Islam, the Delhi Sultanate, and the age of the “magnificent Mughals”, the author notes: “The characterisation of Muslim rulers as destructive and despotic was popularised by the British in the nineteenth century onwards to justify their rule as just and benevolent.” Apart from Akbar and his pluralism, Jahangir receives special attention for his patronage of painting, exemplified by a drawing of the dodo.
The 18th century saw the establishment of British rule. Territorial expansion and colonial consolidation were momentarily checked by the struggle of 1857-58, and the national movement gathered momentum at the beginning of the twentieth century. The two concluding chapters survey developments of the post-1947 period, stating, “If the billion-plus citizens of India are given the chance to achieve their full potential”, India’s “greatest moments are yet to come”. ■