By Sunil Kumar
Excerpts from Nehru’s Discovery of India;
“Only an Akbar might have understood the situation and controlled the new forces that were rising. Perhaps even he could have only postponed the dissolution of his empire unless his curiosity and thirst for knowledge led him to understand the significance of the new techniques that were arising, and of the shift in economic conditions that was taking place.
Aurangzeb, far from understanding the present, failed even to appreciate the immediate past; he was a throw-back and, for all his ability and earnestness, he tried to undo what his predecessors had done. A bigot and an austere puritan, he was no lover of art or literature. He infuriated the great majority of his subjects by imposing the old hated jeziya poll-tax on the Hindus and destroying many of their temples. He offended the proud Rajputs who had been the props and pillars of the Mughal Empire.
In the north he roused the Sikhs, who, from being a peaceful sect representing some kind of synthesis of Hindu and Islamic ideas, were converted by repression and persecution into a military brotherhood. Near the west coast of India, he angered the warlike Marathas, descendants of the ancient Rashtrakutas, just when a brilliant captain had risen amongst them.
‘The Indians,’ writes Professor Macdonell, ‘are the only division of the Indo-European family which has created a great national religion — Brahmanism — and a great world religion — Buddhism; while all the rest far from displaying originality in this sphere have long since adopted a foreign faith.’
It is true that during this period of disruption, when a great empire was breaking up and many adventurers, Indian and foreign, were trying to carve out principalities for themselves, nationalism, in its present sense, was hardly in evidence at all. Each individual adventurer sought to augment his own power; each group fended for itself. Such history as we have only tells us of these adventurers, attaching more importance to them than to more significant happenings below the surface of events. Yet there are glimpses to show that it was not all adventurism, though many adventurers held the field.
The Marathas, especially, had a wider conception and as they grew in power this conception also grew. Warren Hastings wrote in 1784: ‘The Marathas possess, alone of all the people of Hindostan and Deccan, a principle of national attachment, which is strongly impressed on the minds of all individuals of the nation, and would probably unite their chiefs, as in one common cause, if any great danger were to threaten the general state.” Probably this national sentiment of theirs was largely confined to the Marathi-speaking area. Nevertheless the Marathas were catholic in their political and military system as well as their habits, and there was a certain internal democracy among them. All this gave strength to them. Shivaji, though he fought Aurungzeb, freely employed Moslems.
An equally important factor in the break-up of the Mughal Empire was the cracking up of the economic structure. There were repeated peasant risings, some of them on a big scale. From 1669 onwards the Jat peasantry, not far from the capital itself, rose again and again against the Delhi Government. Yet another revolt of poor people was that of the Satnamis who were described by a Mughal noble as ‘a gang of bloody miserable rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble beings.’ Thus far revolts had been confined to princes and nobles and others of high degree. Quite another class was now experimenting with them.
While the empire was rent by strife and revolt, the new Maratha power was growing and consolidating itself in western India. Shivaji, born in 1627, was the ideal guerilla leader of hardened mountaineers and his cavalry went far and wide, sacking the city of Surat, where the English had their factory, and enforcing the chowth tax payment over distant parts of the Mughal dominions.
Shivaji was the symbol of a resurgent Hindu nationalism, drawing inspiration from the old classics, courageous, and possessing high qualities of leadership. He built up the Marathas as a strong unified fighting group, gave them a nationalist background, and made them a formidable power which broke up the Mughal Empire. He died in 1680, but the Maratha power continued to grow till it dominated India.”
Source: What Did Nehru Think Of Aurangzeb?
Edit 1: Somebody from Maharashtra suggested that this is not what Nehru originally said about Shivaji. It is an edited version after a lot of controversy. I have researched more on Nehru’s opinions on Shivaji Maharaj. The conclusion is this- The answer is true as to what Nehru wrote about Shivaji in the ‘Discovery of India.’
But, as for Jawaharlal’s opinions about Shivaji, they are a mixed bag. In contemporary Maharashtra, the great king is revered and used for political gains making him virtually untouchable from any cogent analysis and speculation. Similar blind devotion is seen in Bengal towards Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose(sometimes criticised as a ‘fascist’ by some historians) and Rabindranath Tagore(even though W.B. Yeats(the man who nominated him for the Nobel prize) and a few other people(Khushwant Singh, Girish Karnad) have cast aspersions on his ‘literary excellence’.
Frankly, I admire Shivaji more than the figures from Bengal(also worthy of respect) and so have read through more accounts from the British, the Mughals and other Muslim sources of the period, Jadunath Sarkar and the views of pre-independence leaders.
Growing up in British-controlled India and subscribing to his own interpretation of India’s dharmic heritage, Gandhi shied away from lauding any symbol of military valour amongst the Hindus including Shivaji, Rana Pratap or even Gobind Singh. Nehru initially dismissed Shivaji’s epic life in his ‘Glimpses of World History’ as a ‘predatory career.’
This is what he wrote in Glimpses of World History:
‘Some of Shivaji’s deeds, like the treacherous killing of the Bijapur general(Afzal) lower him greatly in our estimation. But it seems that in all his warfare, he was careful to avoid attack or injury to the common people, to women, to mosques, and the lame.’
Even in pre-independence Maharashtra, the people held Shivaji in high esteem. So, for political expediency and after receiving feedback about resentment in the state from the Congress leader Deogirikar, Nehru dropped any non-complimentary reference to the great king Shivaji in subsequent versions.
Gandhi ridiculed Pratap as a ‘giant bandit’ and termed the sacrifice, struggle and bravery of Hindu revolutionaries as ‘misguided.’
Read more here;
Stealing Shivaji: Why liberals hate the Hindu emperor but also want to make him secular | IndiaFacts
It is also a fact that many political parties go ballistic on the ‘Shivaji’ issue due to his ‘political’ significance in Maharashtra regardless of ideology including the Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena and the BJP. Over the years we have had Marxist historians like Ranade who called Shivaji a ‘plebeian’, ignorant king and had to retract under pressure. Seems like the proletariat has very patrician, bourgeois opinions.
James Laine’s book about Shivaji – ‘Hindu king in Islamic India’ had very uncomplimentary references to his origins that the author himself admitted were ‘inside’ jokes told to him by people in ‘Maharashtra’. But, it was sad and unpardonable that the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute was attacked in protest.
Politics in the state has now devolved on casteist lines – the Brahmin-Maratha animosity(Peshwas(largely Brahmins) and the Marathas), and now the Dalit vs the rest narrative that led to disturbances here(the Mahar regiment fighting for the British in the final Anglo-Maratha war ). Jyotiba Phule(Dalit icon)’s views on Shivaji are also different according to differing sources.
Mughals and Muslim sources from the period were obviously not very complimentary to Shivaji. From referring to him as ‘Shiva’ without the ‘ji’ and this comment from Kafi Khan, a Mughal court historian exemplifies their attitude towards a worthy adversary: ‘kafir bhi jahannum rast’(the infidel went to hell). However, even this man admitted that Shivaji never disrespected their book and never touched mosques. When Aurangzeb reimposed the hated ‘jaziya’ tax; Shivaji mentioned Akbar and the amity between most religions in India in his letter;
‘In this land Muslims, Hindus, Christians and other people have stayed together without any problem. Your own great grandfather Akbar was well known for his tolerance and fairness to all faiths. Your imposing of this tax will lead to terrible hardship for poor people and your empire will not survive. The Quran is God’s revelation and it does not make distinction between God’s children. In the mosque, the Muslims give Azaan while the Hindus ring bells in temples — what is the difference?’
Why Shivaji is a pan-Indian hero
It is a fact of the time that Hindu kings had Muslims working for them and his opponents like Afzal had a Maharashtrian Brahmin aide, Krishnaji Bhaskar Kulkarni.
The idea of the Indian nation-state was cultural rather than a ‘geographical’ construct which is largely a notion from the 19th and the 20th centuries. Shivaji inspired the native people of this land with the ideal of ‘Hindavi Swaraj’ and replaced Persian(a foreign tongue which had become the ‘de-facto’ language of administration due to Muslim rule) with Sanskrit in all official correspondence.
The British also had a vested interest in not promoting any martial ‘Hindoo’ leader and praising his virtues, cleverness and courage.
Due to this, the modern Indian state duty-bound to extol ‘secularism’ downplayed the contributions of great tolerant ‘Hindu’ leaders like Shivaji, Rana Pratap etc. Similarly, Pakistan hates any narrative in which great ‘Hindu’ leaders rose up and inspired a people to revolt against barbarism and cruelty. The Maratha empire later even protected the ‘Mughal’ king in Delhi from fellow Islamic bandits and Afghan raiders, but due respect has to be given to the originator and pioneer of the Maratha confederacy, Shivaji Maharaj.
