SHIVAJI – FROM MORTAL HERO TO POLITICAL ICON

Irate Shiv Sainiks had violently protested a book by James Laine called `Shivaji - Hindu King in Islamic India’ - and had it banned. The agitators were outraged that the book had dared to say that there had been some speculation suggesting that a certain Dadoji may have been Shivaji’s biological father and had vandalized the prestigious Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. It is most unlikely that the Shiv Sainiks would have read the little book though the agitation gave unexpected fame to a small scholarly work that would otherwise have faded into oblivion.

Shivaji, who was the first Hindu ruler to successfully challenge the Mughal Empire, had become an iconic love and hate figure for most Hindus and Indian Muslims. Those who do plough through the text will however find that it very objectively records the great differences between the accounts written by Hindu and Mughal sources during Shivaji’s lifetime in the 17^th century and the later glorified accounts in Maharashtra. The book extols Shivaji’s heroic feats about the killing and beheading of Afzal Khan, the daring raid on Shaista Khan’s fortified camp, the loot of Surat, Shivaji’s escape from Agra and the conquest of Simhagad etc. Shivaji’s audacious courage in daring to humble the hitherto invincible Mughals instantly made him a great Hindu hero at a time when Hindu’s had no hero role models to emulate except for those of mythology.  

The contemporary accounts however contain several inconvenient facts that do not fit in with later accounts that sought to glorify Shivaji’s life notably that Shivaji’s father Maloji loyally served as a Jagirdar of Muslim Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar and was a devotee of a Sufi saint after whom he named his two sons Shah and Sharif. His tomb at Ellora looks like a Muslim tomb.

Shivaji began his career as an Adil Shahi jagirdar of Pune and like his father and grandfather before him served, allied or opposed the Muslim rulers of Ahmadnagar, Berar, Golconda, Bijapur and Agra as and when it was expedient. Shivaji had gone to Agra in the hope of being made a Mughal Amir but rebelled when the emperor Aurangzeb did not give him the rank that he felt he deserved. Shivaji’s sons Sambhaji and Rajaram both married their daughters to Mughal nobles. Marathas fought in Muslim armies and there were many Muslims in the Maratha armies. These clearly show that Maratha opposition to the Mughals was political and not at all religious.

Shivaji was born in February 1639 at the hill fort of Shivneri, and hardly knew his father Shahji who abandoned his mother Jijabai soon after he was born. Shahji was in the service of Adil Shah of Bijapur including a long stint as governor at Bangalore. Jijabai named him Shivaji after the local goddess Shivai and not the Hindu deity Shiva as many assume. Jijabai, of the Jadhav clan, was also of a better caste than her husband who was a Bhonsle of a farming caste that is not listed among the ninety-six high caste Maratha families. Shahji sent his trusted lieutenant Dadoji Konndev Kulkarni, a Brahmin, to look after Jijabai and Shivaji. He was a warrior and swordsman and was Shivaji’s guardian, teacher and mentor.

Shivaji’s rise did not have the support of all Marathi speakers and there was no concept of a Maratha nation. His main supporters, the Mavlis, were simple hill people opposed by the aristocratic Maratha sardars like the Nimbalkars, Deshpande’s, Ghorpandes, Moreys who he had to kill before he could establish his kingdom. Shivaji however needed a high caste that the heads of other Maratha clans could respect. The local Brahmins refused to perform the rites of kingship on a non Kshatriya so he imported two Brahmins from Benares who dutifully organized a huge ceremony in June 1674. Marathi was not yet widely known as a written language and most accounts were in the state language of Persian. The early Marathi accounts were also so Persianised as to make them difficult to understand today.

Contemporary records show that Shivaji was a Shaivite and a devotee of the goddess Bhavani who like Durga and Kali needed constant blood sacrifices of buffaloes, goats and fowl. He was a follower of the non Brahmin Tukaram and records also show that he also went to the tombs of several Sufi Pirs. After Shivaji’s death the rule of his sons did not last very long and his son Sambhaji wrested the throne from Shivaji’s second wife (out of seven) named Soyarabai, regent for the ten year old Rajaram. Sambhaji had no compunctions about killing Soyarabai and several important Maratha supporters. Sambhaji however ruled for just nine years and the Maratha Empire passed into the hands of their Brahmin prime ministers who moved the capital from Raigadh, near Mahableshwar, to Satara.

Many Brahmin priests and scribes were now patronized who, while glorifying Shivaji’s memory, began to alter and Brahminise the eventful records of his life. The legends about Shivaji were now made to resemble the mythical heroes like Ram and Krishna. Parmananda’s popular Sivabharata even alludes to his conception through a visit to his mother Jijabai by the god Vishnu. 

The early accounts of Shivaji’s escape from Agra record that he dressed as a sadhu and went to Benares before quickly returning to his kingdom. In the Brahminised later accounts he reverentially travels to other the holy places like Hardwar, Prayag, Ayodhya and Gaya as well. The killing of Afzal khan was glorified as a fight between good and evil and the battle becomes a narrative of a growing Hindu identity in opposition to oppressive Islam. Afzal Khan was portrayed as the stereotyped evil Muslim who kills cows, destroys temples and disrespects Brahmins and Hindu deities. Brahmins like Mahapati and Chitnis begin to now spread the idea that Shivaji was an ardent devotee of Rama, Vishnu and Marut (Hanuman) and was a vegetarian according to a new devotional cult of Vithoba of Pandharpur.

The 19^th century was marked by the arrival of the British who installed a puppet raja at Satara in 1818 and assumed sovereign control in 1848. Grant Duff wrote his `History of the Marathas’ that portrayed Shivaji as a plunderer and freebooter. It was to stir most Maharashtrians to condemn it. They began to call Shivaji `Father of the Nation’. Shivaji’s story was now portrayed as a Hindu, and later an Indian, rebellion against foreigners whether Muslim or Christian.

Liberal British education however also resulted in an internal rebellion with some socialist writers attacking the Brahmin domination of religion and customs during the earlier century. He rejoiced in Shivaji’s low caste origins claiming that he was descended from India’s original warriors who had been suppressed turn by turn by Aryan (Brahmin), Turk and European usurpers. They claimed that all Shudra and groups labelled as low caste were really members of a great pre Aryan nobility.

Gangadhar Tilak sought to reject all British efforts to intrude into Hindu life. He started the Ganesh Chaturti festival in 1903 to compete with the Muslim Muharram processions. It was hugely successful quickly making a minor elephant headed deity Ganesh into a popular icon in every Indian home. These festivals were seen as being both anti Muslim and anti British and Tilak was twice imprisoned for sedition. The theme with many variations was then taken up by Annie Besant, Gokhle, Lajpat Rai and others and there was now a babble of voices of many writers  notably Tagore, Rajwade, Mandal and others who used the icon of Shivaji to promote their views on Indian nationalism and a Maharashtrian sub nationalism. Veer Savarkar’s book `Hindutva’ was to add a virulent note to the debate.

Many inconvenient facts were however suppressed. Few know that Shivaji had seven wives or that he had an unhappy family life. There is little evidence that he was interested in religion or was a follower of Bhakti saints nor any evidence that he was hostile to Muslims even if he had fought against many Muslim political enemies. He was clearly determined to build his own kingdom but the idea of creating a Hindu or Maratha nation does not seem to have been his mission.

Over the centuries, several hundred writers manipulated the traditions about the heroic Shivaji to illuminate their own points of view. The historic non Brahmin military hero became, turn by turn, a virtuous spiritual model according to Brahmin standards, an enemy of Islam, a ruthless freebooter according to the British, a low caste hero among socialist thinkers and then the maker of a Maharashtrian and later a pan Indian identity. Each political agenda developed their own virtual scriptures and generated heated anger against anyone who dared to blaspheme their strongly held beliefs. They wanted to believe that the story of Shivaji was immutable and unchanging and their beliefs became almost as rigid as religious dogma. But the record shows how the facts of Shivaji’s life were manipulated over time.