Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 9780231511438

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CREATIVE PASTS

Cultures of History

cultures of history Nicholas Dirks, Series Editor The death of history, reported at the end of the twentieth century, was clearly premature. It has become a hotly contested battleground in struggles over identity, citizenship, and claims of recognition and rights. Each new national history proclaims itself as ancient and universal, while the contingent character of its focus raises questions about the universality and objectivity of any historical tradition. Globalization and the American hegemony have created cultural, social, local, and national backlashes. Cultures of History is a new series of books that investigates the forms, understandings, genres, and histories of history, taking history as the primary text of modern life and the foundational basis for state, society, and nation. Shail Mayaram Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins Tapati Guha-Thakurta Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India Charles Hirschkind The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, editors Nakaba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory Laura Bear Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self

CREATIVE PASTS historical memory and identity in western india, 1700–1960

 Prachi Deshpande 

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex This edition is authorized by the original publisher, Permanent Black, for publication and sale outside South Asia. Original edition copyright © 2006 Permanent Black This edition copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deshpande, Prachi. Creative pasts : historical memory and identity in western India, 1700–1960 / Prachi Deshpande. p. cm. — (Cultures of history) Based on the author’s thesis (Tufts University). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-231-12486-7 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-231-12486-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-231-51143-8 (electronic) ISBN-10: 0-231-51143-4 (electronic) 1. Maratha (Indic people)—Historiography. 2. Maharashtra (India)—Historiography. 3. Group identity—India—Maharashtra. I. Title. II. Series. DS485.M349D47125 2007 954’.79025072—dc22 2006023551 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book was printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

To the memory of Chaitanya

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1

4

Bakhar Historiography 19

2

Representing Maratha Power 40

3

History, Print, and Education 71 Historiography and Nationalism 94

5

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 126

6

Maratha History and Historical Fiction 151 7

Caste, Identity, and Difference 177 Conclusion

203

Notes 211 Bibliography Index 297

269

Acknowledgments

It is going to be difficult to adequately thank everyone who has helped in the making of this book. A dissertation fellowship from the history department at Tufts University, where this project initially took shape as a doctoral dissertation, and a grant from the Tarakhnath Das Foundation enabled research in India and England. I am grateful to these institutions and also to Colorado State University and Rutgers University-Newark for their generous intellectual, financial, and institutional support. Sincere thanks are due to the staff of the following institutions and libraries in India: the Maharashtra State Archives and the Marathi Grantha Sangrahalaya in Mumbai; the Jayakar Library of the University of Pune; the Marathi Granthalaya, Shasakiya Granthalaya, the Libraries of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal, and the Mahatma Jotirao Phule Samata Pratishthan, all in Pune; the Centre for Shahu Studies and Shivaji University Library in Kolhapur; the Gazetteers Library in Bhopal; the Maharashtra State Archives in Nagpur; the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; the libraries and staff of Tufts University and the Widener Library at Harvard University in the Boston area; Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Rutgers University-Newark; and the Research Division of the New York Public Library. I also thank the Garde family for their hospitality and much-needed help in accessing CP-Berar sources in Bhopal. Fieldwork was made possible—and much more enjoyable—thanks

Acknowledgments x

to the hospitality and good humor of Gouri, Jay, Swati, Arnab, Amitava, Jit, Tithi, and Richard in Bombay, Delhi, and London. I would like to thank Sugata Bose, my dissertation advisor, for his unstinting support over the years and for consistently urging me to think beyond my empirical context toward wider South Asian and historiographical concerns, and Ayesha Jalal for inspiring discussions on the importance of revisiting controversial, and often uncomfortable, aspects of the past. C. A. Bayly gave very valuable advice in the early stages, helping me widen the scope of my investigation from a study of political symbolism. I am grateful to Doug Haynes for useful pointers about revising the dissertation; his suggestions were critical in sharpening my focus on shifts in Marathi historiographic practice under colonialism. Shahid Amin and Janaki Bakhle read the entire manuscript and pointed out critical areas for improvement; their close reading has made the book much more coherent than it would have otherwise been. I also thank Shahid for many insightful discussions on historiography and much else. I am deeply indebted to two people, without whose support the successful completion of the dissertation and its evolution into a book would have been impossible. I have benefited immeasurably from Sumit Guha’s deep knowledge of Maharashtra and its history, readiness to share ideas, willingness to listen to long ramblings and give precious feedback, and generously supplying several important sources at critical moments. John Rogers has seen this project through from its early stages as a proposal at Tufts to this final version. His careful and patient reading of many successive drafts, insistence on my clarifying important concepts and arguments, and incredible generosity, friendship, and encouragement have been invaluable. Thanks are also due to several people who have given generously of their time and extensive knowledge about Marathi history, politics, and sources over the years: Bhaskar L. Bhole, G. P. Deshpande, Anne Feldhaus, Daniel Jasper, A. R. Kulkarni, Sanjay Palshikar, Suhas Palshikar, Y. D. Phadke, Lee Schlesinger, and Rajendra Vora. Many of the ideas and questions raised in this study took hesitant shape during my M.A. years at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. I warmly thank Neeladri Bhattacharya, Indivar Kamtekar, Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee, K. N. Panikkar, Shereen Ratnagar, Satish Saberwal, and Majid Siddiqui for providing the tools and confidence that enabled me to sharpen my ideas and questions, and above all, for opening my eyes to the joys of studying history.

Acknowledgments xi

I have also benefited greatly from conversations and feedback received during various presentations at conferences and seminars. I thank Mahesh Rangarajan for inviting me to present my work at Cornell University and for many stimulating discussions about the contemporary importance of this study. I am grateful to Sheldon Pollock and Dipesh Chakrabarty for instructive feedback and searching questions following a seminar at the University of Chicago, which have been critical to the clarification of some essential ideas contained in this study. Thanks are also due to Anne Feldhaus and Raja Vora for inviting me to the Symposium on Regions and Regional Consciousness in Pune, and to Sugata Bose for inviting me to the New Perspectives Conference at Harvard University. I was very lucky to find an immensely supportive atmosphere at the history department at Colorado State University. Many of the arguments in this book took shape in its Faculty Research Seminar, and during the two enjoyable years I spent there. I cannot thank enough all my colleagues and friends there, especially Elizabeth Jones, Alison Smith, Jeff Snodgrass, Thaddeus Sunseri, and Frank Towers, for their friendship and intellectual companionship. At Rutgers UniversityNewark, I thank Susie Carruthers and Jon Cowans for being there for me at a time when I needed it most; Jessica Roszkowiak, my research assistant, for help with endless rounds of photocopying; and the incomparable Christina Strasburger for her friendship and for cheerfully and tirelessly taking care of a million administrative and computer requests. At UC-Berkeley, I would like to thank my colleagues Vasudha Dalmia, Eugene Irshick, Tom Laqueur, and Peter Zinoman for their sustained enthusiasm about the project. The anonymous reviewers for Columbia University Press and Permanent Black lent considerable support through their enthusiasm for the project, and their incisive comments have helped greatly in tightening many arguments throughout the book, especially in placing my arguments about western India in wider geographical and theoretical contexts. Thanks are also due to Peter Dimock, Kabir Dandona, and Leslie Kriesel at Columbia University Press. I am deeply grateful to Rukun Advani at Permanent Black for being extremely patient and accommodating with my numerous requests. Of course, several colleagues and friends—Manan Ahmed, Senthil Babu, Aparna Balachandran, Eric Beverley, Tithi Bhattacharya, Madhavi Bokil, Indrani Chatterjee, Kim Frederick, Anjali Gopalakrishnan, Gouri

Acknowledgments xii

Jaychandran, Rajeev Kinra, Himadeep Muppidi, Christian Novetzke, Mridu Rai, Modhumita Roy, Pallavi Rastogi, Ramya Sreenivasan, Jayeeta Sharma, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, Latha Varadarajan, and Chitralekha Zutshi—have lent more than they can imagine to the ideas in this work through long conversations and often heated debates about politics, social theory, and much else. I am especially grateful to Eric Beverley for reading the chapters very closely and urging me to clarify my thoughts and sharpen my arguments. I cherish the memory of Arvind N. Das, whose friendship and guidance was crucial to this project in its early years. It saddens me greatly that he is not here today to see it completed. Finally, I owe thanks to my family for being such a rock of support in all my crazy endeavors. Prama and Vishwamber have helped in innumerable ways and readily borne complicated requests from across the seas. My in-laws, Benu and Ujjwal Banerjee, have also been very supportive of my work and interests. My parents, Bharati and Hanumant Deshpande, have displayed unconditional support, encouraged me to think critically and independently about society and politics, and had the faith and courage to simply let me go where my interests take me. To Priyodorshi Banerjee, for being the best combination of companion, critic, and cheerleader in life and work, my dearest thanks.

Introduction

One of the most striking features of the western Indian region of Maharashtra is the pervasive presence of the past. A particular period, known as “Maratha history,” is physically inscribed into modern cities and towns. Maratha history began in the seventeenth century, when an independent Maratha state was established by the military hero Shivaji Bhosale, and lasted until the establishment of British rule in 1818. Development plans, public parks, squares, markets, warehouses, schools, universities, and neighborhoods are named after historical figures from this period. For well over a century, these figures and their exploits have informed a range of expressive forms—plays, novels, poems, songs, festivals, and everyday sayings. Regional politicians have routinely employed Maratha historical metaphors in political rhetoric; Shivaji was celebrated all over India as the archetypal symbol of independence during the anticolonial movement against the British and continues to be the prime symbol of Hindu nationalism. Several decades ago, the noted historian Tryambak S. Shejwalkar despaired that “history [had] gripped Maharashtra like the devil.”1 Another prominent Marathi historian, Y. D. Phadke, also gloomily concluded that the ordinary Marathi speaker, although physically resident in the twentieth century, mentally inhabited the Maratha period with considerable enjoyment.2 In recent years, the powerful Hindu nationalist party of the region,

Introduction 2

the Shiv Sena (literally, Shivaji’s Army), has renamed several major landmarks across Maharashtra’s capital city of Bombay (itself renamed Mumbai) after Shivaji and other figures, an activity that other political parties such as the Congress have enthusiastically supported. Protests against interpretations of Shivaji and other figures perceived to be insulting or derogatory have periodically erupted in the region. The latest to gain much press coverage was in 2004, when a group of over two hundred men belonging to the organization Sambhaji Brigade attacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. Their anger was directed at James W. Laine, a U.S.–based academic who had penned “insulting” references to Shivaji in his recent book, and at the institute ostensibly because Laine had done research there and thanked its staff in his acknowledgments. Regional political parties jostled for space and credit in the chorus of protests and calls for banning the book.3 Understanding how and why “Maratha history” has come to play such a prominent role in modern Maharashtra is the central concern of this book. The invocation of Shivaji and his enduring popularity as a site of political conflict have received a lot of scholarly attention.4 The political appropriations of the Shivaji symbol, however, cannot be seen in isolation of the complex processes through which historiography and collective commemoration emerged as distinct practices in western India. This study focuses on the wider historiographic context in order to understand the current prominence of the past in political and cultural spaces. Beginning with a consideration of historiography under the Maratha state itself, it goes on to examine shifts in these practices as a form of modern historical consciousness and method took shape through the encounter with British colonialism. Focusing on the production of historical narratives in a variety of genres, public spaces, and institutional contexts, the book explores the construction of an enduring, shared historical memory of the Maratha past. Traversing a long, chronological period from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, it considers the changing social and political contexts that produced these representations; their diverse implications for the people who witnessed, celebrated, and participated in them; and the ways the representations enabled them— and enable us—to think through the changing meanings and dimensions of categories and identity markers such as “Maratha,” “Hindu,” and “Indian.” One of my principal arguments is that Maratha historical memory has been crucial not only to the creation of a modern regional Marathi identity in

Introduction 3

western India but also to the successful articulation of that identity within wider Hindu and Indian national imaginations.

History and Memory in recent years, the category of Memory has emerged as a prominent framework to examine cultural practices through which groups represent the past. Much of the scholarship that has led to the memory boom has followed two broad tracks. One major strand contrasts Memory and History, the latter seen as replacing the former after the Enlightenment in the West as a more critical, rational, and scientific appreciation of the past.5 This approach suggests that History came to view the past as more distant and objectified, and gradually eroded spontaneous connection with it and its presence in everyday life. Scholarship on technology and culture has reinforced this view, tracing a linear development from oral myths, legends, and texts in mnemonic verse that provided an unbroken, living connection with the past to a critical distance and exteriority introduced first by literacy and later, more emphatically, by print.6 Broadly then, Memory and History, orality and literacy (and, very often, non-West and West) have appeared as homologous binaries placed along a linear, unfolding path from tradition to modernity. This has resulted in the renewed privileging of Memory as an elusive, yet more legitimate means of getting closer to the past.7 Led by Holocaust studies, it has become an immensely popular structure for exploring personal experiences of survivors of traumatic events such as war or genocide and for emphasizing the inadequacy of the conventional historical archive for accessing a wider range of human experiences. As a counterpoint, or more strongly as an antidote, to History, Memory has been employed to highlight popular visions of the past that subvert dominant, official commemorations.8 It is in this vein that the category has also figured in recent South Asian historiography, with oral narratives illuminating marginalized communities and worldviews.9 Another major strand of scholarship has argued for Memory as a collectively constructed modern phenomenon imbricated in relations of power. Building on the insights of Maurice Halbwachs about the social nature of remembrance and on Eric Hobsbawm’s seminal work on “invented traditions,” this approach has foregrounded the intimate relationship between

Introduction 4

social commemorative practices and collective identities. Memory has been viewed as the artificially constructed past, necessary for projecting the modern nation as timeless and eternal while bringing the relatively new national community together through repetitive remembrance in shared, cultural activities.10 Much of this focus has involved an investigation of Memory as a contested construction in museums, memorials, and other public sites outside the academy. As some commentators have noted, this argument of a popular, real memory contesting an orchestrated, official memory has become somewhat predictable, producing a “memory fatigue.”11 As Alon Confino has noted, rather than as a simplistic documentation of how different media are used to constitute and renew public memory in different geographical settings, Memory as a category of cultural history is more useful if employed to investigate the many contexts within which some representations become part of popular memory and others do not. One should, in other words, investigate not just how but also why specific representations become the subject of collective commemoration.12 A key domain in this regard is the practice of professional history and its relationship to popular commemoration. Although scholarship on the emergence of modern, disciplinary history in the West has forcefully demonstrated the unequal relations of power through which specific kinds of narratives and narrators of the past were constituted as professional and others as amateur, it has proceeded largely independently of these Memory debates, sidestepping the question of how professionalization is related to ongoing popular, politicized commemorations.13

Social History of Historiography the linkage—or more correctly the gap—between scholarly and popular history is surely a favorite topic of anecdotal observations among academics everywhere. In recent years, however, popular interpretations of the past that are couched in claims of historicity and the historian’s methods but radically oppose conclusions reached in scholarly research have made their presence felt ever more strongly in the public sphere through print and electronic media. The power and success of these interpretations has put professional historians increasingly on the defensive. For example, the spectacular success of Gavin Menzies’s book, 1421, arguing that Chinese

Introduction 5

naval fleets led successful expeditions to different areas of the Americas in the early fifteenth century, has dismayed professional scholars. Some have taken a legal route, invoking publishers’ classifications of “history” and “fiction” in consumer court to counter the author’s claims of historical truth and evidence.14 In the last couple of decades, popular commemorations of specific episodes have also taken center stage in Indian politics, with violent, bloody consequences. Debates over historical interpretation regarding the “Hindu” and “Muslim” periods of Indian history have turned not just electoral platforms but also, more recently, the pages of secondary school textbooks within India and beyond into battlegrounds.15 The complex braiding of the vocabulary of sentiments and belief with that of documentary evidence in the bloody, successful campaign to destroy the sixteenth-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya and replace it with a temple “remembered” to have been at its exact spot has made it increasingly difficult for historians of South Asia to ignore the question of how the spheres of academic and popular history interact, or ought to interact, with each other. In seeking to understand the centrality of history in the Ayodhya movement and the ineffectiveness of professional historians attempting to influence its violent outcome, some scholars have condemned the politicization of history and reiterated the need to emphasize its boundaries as a scholarly, scientific discipline. Simply reinforcing disciplinary boundaries, however, only serves to widen the current gap between scholarly and popular domains without any further understanding of the making of popular narratives and their appeal.16 Others have persuasively argued that rather than retreating further into the ivory tower, professional historiography needs to engage more seriously with popular narratives of the past. In this regard, Vinay Lal has rightly pointed out the need for scholarly historiography to interrogate its own certainties and the rigid methods of disseminating them, such as the textbook. However, in seeking to critique an excessive commitment of history to discourses of modernity, he identifies the problem as originating with the very discipline of history itself, and advocates embracing “ahistoricity” or the “mythic structure of Indian civilization.” Sharply contrasting this vaguely characterized mythic structure to modern, professional historiography, Lal unfortunately reiterates the sweeping generalization of a lack of historical consciousness in the long centuries of precolonial India.17 Instead of such a history/myth dichotomy, Shahid Amin has suggested that a serious examination of popular retellings of the martyrdom

Introduction 6

of the tenth-century warrior saint “Ghazi Miyan” can enable an alternative history of the Turkish conquest of north India and the response to it from pastoral groups.18 Amin’s plea is for “alternative histories” from within the historical profession that critique and defamiliarize the metanarratives and categories of “India,” “Hindu,” and “Islam.”19 Still others have pointed to the need to investigate the “conditions of production” of Indian historiography. In a searching essay just a few years after the Babri mosque was destroyed, Sumit Sarkar observed: The existence of not one but many levels of historical awareness attracts much less attention [than debates within academic scholarship]. But outside the world of metropolitan centres of learning and research there are provincial universities and colleges, schoolteachers, an immensely varied student population. . . . What is neglected is the whole question of the conditions of production and reception of academic knowledge, its relationships with different kinds of common sense. We lack, in other words, a social history of historiography.20

This book attempts such a social history of historiography in western India. I use the term “historical memory” to refer to visions of the past that are enthusiastically invoked by the broader population of a society, produced through frequent debate, and generated through scholarly writings as well as a variety of forms that I designate as “popular histories”: amateur biographies, historical fiction and poetry, performance, film, and polemical tracts.21 I approach memory, therefore, neither as the authentic recovery of the experience of trauma nor as the premodern precursor of modern history, but as a modern phenomenon itself, constructed through cultural practices. Instead of positing an a priori sharp disjuncture between popular and academic or between amateur and professional histories, I am interested in probing the interaction between such apparent polarities. The importance of narratives of the past in public life and the emergence of the modern intellectual practice of historiography have to be located and understood together within a political process whereby some narratives become official and others marginal, and some discourses are constituted as scholarly and others as popular. I use the joint category “historical memory” to probe this complex interaction between scholarly and popular commemorations without conflating and celebrating them uncritically as equally valid or true

Introduction 7

representations. As we shall see in this book, popular memory can and does emerge as the underwriter of majoritarian and divisive politics; the pitfalls of uncritically celebrating memory’s emancipatory potential in order to critique the limits of narrow, professional history have also been painfully demonstrated in the case of the Ayodhya debates. Rather than abandoning history altogether in favor of a vaguely defined myth, the compound “historical memory” points to the need to retain the distinctiveness and continued importance of scholarly historiography and its methods, even as it seeks to illuminate a complex history of borrowing and conflict between scholarly and popular views.22 Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that the institutional establishment of historical research under the postcolonial Indian state in the 1950s resulted in an increasing gap between the academic and the popular, and a new, scientific history gradually pushed an older, social history of the colonial period into the popular domain.23 However, an exploration of the dynamic relationship between scholarly and popular discourses, indeed their mutual constitution, must go further back into the colonial period itself, when modern Indian historiography developed both inside and outside colonial institutional structures and competing narratives generated shared and contested pasts for the new modern communities of nation, region, and caste. Such an exploration enables us to historicize the relationship between regional and caste movements and university-based politicized historiography that Chatterjee locates in the postcolonial period.24 This institutional context of historiography was also marked by the class and linguistic hierarchies and unequal distribution of resources that characterized the colonial education system generally. It is especially important to attend to it in order to probe the historiography that emerged in real and perceived regional margins in the subcontinent, where scholars based in provincial cities wrote in regional languages and focused on “their” regional histories, but simultaneously engaged with an emerging national narrative being produced by Indian scholars in the English language in urban institutional centers. These centers and margins were also reproduced at the provincial level between provincial capitals and mofussil towns, as well as in caste terms between, for instance, Brahman and non-Brahman perspectives. Examining the making of Maratha historical memory, then, involves a consideration of these political, social, and intellectual contexts of colonial modernity, including the intellectual and institutional career of modern, disciplinary history in Maharashtra.

Introduction 8

Scholarship on the emergence of modern Indian historiography has emphasized the deep rupture in historical consciousness that came with colonialism. The transfer of Western ideas and methods of history through colonial education has received considerable attention, with an emphasis on the dominance of Western historiographic models in the discourses of nineteenth-century Indian nationalism. Precolonial historical narratives tend to flicker very briefly in these works before dying out and giving way to an examination of the Western models.25 Some theorists have characterized all precolonial traditions in India as history’s “forgotten doubles,” fragments of folk memory that were trampled by the onward march of Western concepts of modernity and history across the world through colonialism.26 Scholarship on the precolonial period, on the other hand, has presented rich examinations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century narrative and historiographic practices from a variety of perspectives. Nicholas Dirks, for instance, argued that Tamil vamcavalis, or genealogies of chieftain families, embodied a valid sense of the historical, with a narrative logic of genealogical transformations that sought to plot and explain people’s rise and fortunes within regional structures of power and patronage.27 Other scholars have fruitfully employed Dirks’s “ethnohistorical” approach to read other late medieval texts not just for their facticity but also for their ideological objectives and the perceptions of history they embody.28 A collaborative work by V. N. Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam has recently sought to recover “as history” different genres of narratives, primarily in Telugu and Tamil, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Arguing for a “texture” of linear, factual narrative prose in these diverse literary genres, the authors suggest that it was recognizable to “native” listeners and readers of the communities in which these works were produced, and may be discerned through close reading practices.29 The examination of these early modern narrative traditions, however, usually stops in the early nineteenth century with the arrival of colonialism, thus emphasizing the radical break.30 Certainly, Western models were dominant in the colonial period. The work of Dirks in particular has shown powerfully how these narrative traditions entered the colonial archive and were deployed toward a colonialist discourse on the lack of a historical consciousness in India.31 But we can ask slightly different questions in order to further probe this transformation under colonialism. What happened to precolonial historiographic and narrative practices under the ascendancy of

Introduction 9

Western methods? What was their influence, if any, on the idea and practice of modern historiography among Indians themselves in the colonial period, and do they have any relevance for a study of modern historical memory? This book addresses these questions in two ways. First, it examines Marathi historiographic practices that existed in the century immediately prior to colonialism; second, it explores how these practices survived and adapted during the colonial period itself. Rather than assume the smooth domination of Western models in modern Indian historiography, therefore, I seek to illuminate the complex engagement with older, precolonial methods, narratives, and categories that attended this process.

Maratha/Marathi History and Historiography i use the term “Marathi historiography” to refer to histories produced in the Marathi language, and to histories produced (sometimes in English) by those people identified as members of a Marathi community in western India. This book explores the ways historical narratives of the “Maratha period” contribute to modern regional, linguistic, and ethnic glosses of the categories “Maratha” and “Marathi.”32 Before moving on to the details, however, I will sketch the broad contours of this “Maratha history.”33 Scholarship on late medieval and early modern Maharashtra in the last few decades has tended to move away from political history proper and examine in painstaking detail long-term trends in socioeconomic, administrative, and cultural history. It has illuminated a world of complex institutional and economic developments,34 state formation,35 diverse cultural and religious beliefs,36 multiple linguistic cross-influences,37 and contradictory forces of caste mobility and disability.38 This brief narrative, while drawing on this recent scholarship, is intended as a provisional “high politics” account of Maratha history and a rough map for general readers to its major events and personalities, primarily to signpost their significance within the debates examined in later chapters. The book itself seeks to situate the very crystallization of this broader, coherent narrative.39 Marathas were Marathi-speaking units in the armies of the Muslim kingdoms of Bijapur and Ahmednagar of the Deccan region. The term came to describe local elites who found avenues for social mobility through employment in these kingdoms between the fourteenth and seventeenth

Introduction 10

centuries. These elites, many of whom claimed Rajput descent, were more than administrative gentry; they were “co-sharers in the realm.”40 In the 1640s, Shivaji Bhosale (1630–1680), the son of one such Maratha official of Bijapur, successfully carved out an independent Maratha state. He captured important forts around the region of Pune with a small, mobile cavalry. Many heroes of later popular memory, such as Tanaji Malusare, would be drawn from this band of loyal lieutenants. A skillful use of guerrilla warfare allowed Shivaji to hold his own against Bijapur and, to a lesser extent, the Mughal Empire; his exploits included a daring escape in 1666 from the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s captivity in Agra. In 1674, amid resistance from the local priesthood about his eligibility, he had himself crowned Chhatrapati, or “Lord of the Umbrella,” invoking high Hindu idioms of kingship. Gaga Bhatt, a Brahman from Benares, certified Shivaji as a Kshatriya from the Sisodia clan of Rajputs. Through his coronation, Shivaji emphasized the departure of his state from existing Muslim kingdoms, but also from other long-standing Maratha chiefs, whom he had to persuade, through diplomacy, marriage, and violence, to serve under him. Representations of the Maratha state also stemmed from this tension between Shivaji and his successors, and the other chiefs. The ideology underlying Shivaji’s actions forms the core of the constructions of the Maratha past. Recent scholarship has underlined continuities with earlier kingdoms, especially in revenue administration and the patronage of Muslims, as well as divergences, through Sanskritized titles and the use of the Marathi language in administration. Crucial to the expansion of Maratha power were the claims to chauth and sardeshmukhi, different portions of revenue in lands outside Maratha control; even as he developed these claims, Shivaji created policies meant to protect rural cultivators from continuous military raids and depredations of war.41 Shivaji’s older son, Sambhaji, succeeded him to the throne in 1680 after a brief but bitter struggle with his younger brother Rajaram. Although Shivaji intended Sambhaji to be his heir and the latter was able to continue his father’s policies, the Mughal invasion of the Deccan over the 1680s did not allow this for very long.42 Sambhaji himself was captured and executed in 1689, and his son Shahu was taken into Mughal captivity. Rajaram, and later his widow, Tarabai, continued the struggle against the Mughals until Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. The pattern of diplomacy and warfare involved Mughal sieges and Maratha devastation of Mughal lands. Both sides also

Introduction 11

wooed Maratha chiefs, who frequently shifted sides in an effort to improve their entrenched rights.43 Sambhaji’s son Shahu returned to the Deccan in 1707 and fought Tarabai (who now ruled in the name of her son, Shivaji II) for control of the Maratha state. He gradually drew influential new families and commanders, including Brahmans, to his court at Satara.44 Tarabai maintained a small court at Kolhapur. Under the leadership of Balaji Vishwanath Bhat, one of the new Brahman men from the Konkan appointed as Peshwa (prime minister), Shahu got Maratha claims to chauth and sardeshmukhi legally ratified by the Mughal empire for the Deccan and parts of central India. De facto power soon shifted to the Peshwa, whose office became hereditary with the appointment in 1720 of Bajirao I, Balaji Vishwanath’s son. Bajirao’s reign (r. 1720–40), marked by decisive military leadership, inaugurated the expansion of Maratha power into northern and central India. Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of this arrangement between Shahu and the Peshwa to the expansion of the state as a whole.45 The legitimacy of this transfer of power, however, was a controversial issue in the eighteenth century as well as in the colonial period; it forms the core of modern castebased debates of Maratha history. As Maratha armies attacked Gujarat, Rajasthan, Malwa, and Bundelkand for revenue and, increasingly, to settle succession disputes within local kingdoms, several new chiefs came to the fore, including Malharrao Holkar, Ranoji Shinde, and Damaji Gaekwad. These chiefs did not have deep, patrimonial roots in the Deccan but were newer recruits from diverse social backgrounds who prospered as a result of this expansion. This was a period of growing military opportunities, and consequently of social mobility. The chiefs were dependent on the Peshwa for their rise, but also keen on preserving their autonomy. Their relationship with the Pune-based Peshwa remained fraught as they developed their own administrations. From the 1740s onward, Maratha chiefs also became embroiled in the complicated politics of the Mughal court at Delhi, and the Mughal–Maratha relationship was a tangled web at all levels, with overlapping revenue rights and simultaneous moves toward diplomacy and warfare.46 In 1752, the Marathas were named protectors of the Mughal throne, and given chauth rights in the Punjab, and Maratha armies went deep into the northwest. These campaigns “beyond Attock” figure in later imaginings as evidence of Maratha national and imperial ambitions.

Introduction 12

In 1761, during the reign of Nanasaheb Peshwa (r. 1740–1762), the Marathas clashed famously at Panipat with a coalition of the invading Afghan ruler Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Rohilla ruler Najib-ud-daulah, and the Nawab of Awadh Shuja-ud-daulah, and suffered a massive defeat. Several young and prominent Maratha leaders died—Nanasaheb’s son, Vishwasrao, and half-brother, Shamsher Bahadur; his cousin and general of the Panipat campaign, Sadashivrao Bhau; and the Shinde chiefs Jankoji and Dattaji.47 The scale of this loss made it one of the most prominent topics for historical narratives during the Maratha period and later. Although Peshwa dominance was periodically resisted by other Maratha chiefs, all the kings after Shahu’s death in 1751 remained in virtual confinement at Satara. Maratha administration was stabilized under Nanasaheb, his son Madhavrao (r. 1761–1772), and later, during the regency of Nana Phadnavis (r. circa 1775–1800). It was also at this time that the Peshwai (Peshwa rule) emerged as a “Brahman raj,” with increased patronage of Brahmans and efforts to strictly enforce Brahmanical hierarchy across the Maratha lands. These included attempts to designate all non-Brahman jatis as “Shudras,” thus denying important officials and landed elite the ritual privileges they had been entitled to, and strict regulation of jati laws for Brahman communities.48 These practices, and the Peshwai in general, also figure prominently in caste debates in the colonial period. Madhavrao, following an unresolved succession conflict with his uncle Raghunathrao or Raghoba, died young in 1772 of tuberculosis. At Raghoba’s instigation, his younger brother, Narayanrao, was murdered a year later in his own palace. The tragedy of the brothers’ deaths and the greed and ambition of their uncle and his wife, Anandibai, provided much fodder for modern historical fiction. Raghoba’s fight to be Peshwa led him to seek East India Company help, and from the 1770s onward, Company and various Maratha forces came into more frequent conflict. Despite Raghoba’s efforts, however, the senior official Balaji Janardan, a.k.a. Nana Phadnavis, held de facto power at Pune in the name of a younger Peshwa, Sawai Madhavrao. Together with other powerful, able chiefs like Mahadji Shinde and Ahilyabai Holkar, Nana was able to keep the Maratha state together until his death in 1800. The lives of these personalities figure prominently in popular biographies.49 The reign of the last Peshwa, Bajirao II (r. 1800–1818), Raghoba’s son, was marked by a general decline in administration and stability, with increasing conflicts among various Maratha chiefs and wars

Introduction 13

with the company. The British gradually subdued all of them, and Maratha power formally ended with the removal of the Peshwa from power in 1818. This broad set of events, personalities, and processes would form the basis of Maratha history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Plan of the Book as noted above, this study begins with an examination of precolonial Marathi historiographic practices. Chapter 1 focuses on the bakhar, a prose historical narrative widely produced in eighteenth-century Maharashtra. Bakhars were narrative accounts of families, events, or prominent figures’ lives; they described the causes and outcomes of important recent events. These texts recognized the discreteness of the past and its roots in everyday, secular time. They placed events in sequence and explained how and why they occurred through a literary re-creation of the past. Through a close reading of some prominent narratives, the chapter explores the contours of their historical analysis and the bureaucratic elite world within which they circulated. Building on Sumit Guha’s recent work on historical narratives as mechanisms for competing claims in the legal arena,50 the chapter examines the bakhars in the context of the emergence and spread of the Maratha state, and argues that they were deeply embedded in its overall structure of power and legitimacy. Chapter 2 considers the bakhars as sites for the articulation of different actors’ claims to political and social power. It focuses on different interpretations of the concept of “Marathi dharma” or “Maharashtra dharma,” ranging from religious difference and ritual hierarchy to a military-cultural code of conduct. It explores the ways the narratives, even as they acknowledge multiple loci of power and contested interpretations of the past, invoke the idea and authority of a larger, centralized Maratha state. This chapter also looks at the powada, a contemporaneous, primarily oral and poetic form of heroic commemoration. Transmitted by wandering professional performers, powadas had a wider circulation than the bakhars. I argue that while powadas performed the important ideological task of bringing together diverse social groups under a common banner, the past they narrated was a collective space for ordinary people and soldiers to identify with a larger political tradition while simultaneously enabling loyalty to military chiefs.

Introduction 14

Beginning in the 1830s, the British ushered in a new system of liberal education, at the heart of which was the inculcation of History as a positivist discipline and a rationalist philosophy. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the impact of colonialism on Marathi historical consciousness through three strands of argument. The first strand, in chapter 3, examines the emergence of a colonialist discourse on the history of the Maratha state through the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone and James Grant Duff, especially the latter’s magnum opus History of the Mahrattas. Grant Duff not only claimed to have written the first real history of the Marathas but also argued that theirs was a predatory, backward state of plunderers that a superior British military and civilizational force had done well to subdue.51 His history relied heavily on older bakhars and reproduced their arguments in many ways, but also brought to bear on them a new conception of the Maratha social and a historical perspective in which the bakhars were viewed not as narratives of power or instruments of legitimacy but as problematic sources for a larger, sweeping judgment of the “Maratha people” through the centuries. Rather than solely emphasizing the ideological thrust of Grant Duff ’s argument, the chapter also illuminates the conditions—his Maratha interlocutors, access to translators and suppliers of manuscripts, and dominant political position—that made this monumental work possible in the early years of colonial rule. The second strand of argument explores the transmission of the new Western ideas of history among the newly created Western-educated Marathi intelligentsia through the channels of colonial education and print throughout the nineteenth century. Chapter 3 explores the conceptual tools available to new Marathi middle-class thinkers and writers and the conditions under which history was taught and perceived. An important aspect of colonial education was the projection of history as Western and modern in contrast to Indian myth and legend. However, this was done not through the introduction of historiography as a method and interpretive skill, but through an emphasis on sequences of prominent events, dates of battles, and dynasties and, not least, on judging the contributions of famous personalities within the broader unfolding fortunes of nations. Complex Western historiographic methods and debates were thus distilled into a simplistic positivism, projected as a fully formed, “Western,” and universal historical practice of narrating the truth that, all too often, boiled down in colonial school and college courses to empiricist fact-gathering.

Introduction 15

The third strand of argument, elaborated in chapter 4, examines debates on historiography within the new Western-educated intelligentsia. Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade, and Jotirao Phule put forward different arguments about the nature and practice of historiography. They engaged with questions of truth and positivism, philology and source criticism, and debated the relationship between history and literature and the importance of creativity, evocation, and polemic in re-creating the past. The chapter explores the many different factors through which the immediate precolonial period in western India emerged by the late nineteenth century as a coherent historical era and the prime resource for a nationalist historiography. Maratha history was by no means the only possible choice for a “glorious past,” but was constituted as a discursive field through these debates over the practice and purpose of history. Its prominence and popularity were also enabled by specific material conditions for historical research in terms of archives and sources, and its crystallization as a viable and desirable field of study shaped by broader changes within western Indian society. These include the modernization of Marathi prose; the dominance of upper castes, especially Brahmans, in the middle class and the Marathi public sphere; and the wider introspection that colonialism produced in Marathi religion and culture. The abundant availability of an archive in the form of bakhars and Maratha administrative documents coincided with the search among uppercaste nationalists for the crucial ingredient of successful political power in the Indian past, and identified Maratha history as the perfect, indeed natural, resource for a nationalist historiography. These social and political compulsions also enabled Maratha history to dominate alternative areas of inquiry, such as Indology. Also, while most upper-caste historians working on Maratha history remained outside the colonial academy and this consciousness, they became authoritative within the Marathi public sphere. At the same time, lower-caste writers such as Jotirao Phule and their radical, polemical visions of history remained marginal to both institutional structures and the upper-caste nationalist public sphere. This caste-based marginality would also shape the conflicts over the past and its symbolic capital throughout the colonial period, and continues to do so in the postcolonial period.52 From the late nineteenth century onward, middle-class nationalists drew heavily on figures and themes of Maratha history. In diverse media,

Introduction 16

colonialist pronouncements about the Marathas as rapacious and backward were hotly contested. Instead, the Marathas were projected as India’s original nationalists, symbolized most strikingly by their leader, Shivaji Bhosale. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 examine this discourse of nationalist historiography, roughly from the 1890s to the 1940s, as it was manifest in prose monographs and journal articles as well as in novels, plays, poetry, and the public arenas of cultural festivals and akharas (exercise schools). They highlight the extent to which this discourse was not simply a uniform celebration but also a contested space constituted through diverse political and social concerns. Underlying these arguments over history was the struggle for regional leadership; by claiming the Maratha legacy as their own, different groups sought to bolster their claims to speak for Maharashtra’s future as its rightful leaders in all walks of life. Chapter 5 examines these different interpretations in detail, especially those of the category of “Maharashtra dharma.” Hindu right-wing nationalists highlighted Maratha rulers’ struggle against Muslims as a point of emulation for modern Hindus. Moderate, secular nationalists instead emphasized a more generic struggle against invaders. Marxist and peasant leaders wrote passionately about Shivaji’s concern for peasants, depicting him as a modernist who fought against feudalism. The importance of history as an instrument for putting forth claims within Marathi structures of power thus continued, but these claims were now being articulated on behalf of large, enumerated, and bounded communities rather than families and holders of patrimonial rights. This chapter also explores how the idea of “Maharashtra dharma” created a common space, in print and the public arenas of anticolonial protest, for articulating a relationship among the emerging Marathi regional, the Hindu religious, and the Indian national communities. All the conflicts notwithstanding, the Marathi region was projected as the bulwark of the Hindu community and the Indian nation. Chapter 6 takes up the large corpus of Marathi historical novels and plays and the representations that emerged in them. These re-creations of the Maratha past played a crucial role in rendering themes and figures from Maratha history familiar, important, and real; the characters also reflected deeply gendered national and regional imaginations and projected a masculine Maharashtra as the protector of the feminine Indian nation. The chapter also considers the debates among novelists and historians

Introduction 17

over questions of historical truth and reality. Through the positivist search for and articulation of a “general truth” about Maratha history, novelists and playwrights also contributed to overall notions of historiography. Fictional as well as nonfictional narratives heavily depended on and borrowed from each other and often converged, even as they contested each other’s conclusions. In the early twentieth century, the “non-Brahman” movement among representatives of a range of middle castes emerged in Maharashtra as a powerful critique of Brahman social, cultural, and political dominance. Chapter 7 explores the articulation of Maratha historical themes in this protest and expression of caste difference in newspapers, rallies, colorful pamphlets, songs, and festivals in the 1920s and ’30s. Alongside sharp conflicts, however, there also emerged strong points of consensus between Brahman and non-Brahman visions of Maratha history across the wider middle class, comprising upper and middle castes. While the consensus regarding the essentially Hindu nature of the Maratha state was crucial to the dominance of this strand within Maratha historical memory by the mid-twentieth century, other narratives and memories continued to interrogate and interrupt it. The chapter also considers the articulation of this dominant strand and its contestations in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of the 1950s, which culminated in the carving out of a separate Maharashtra state in the Indian union in 1960. Colonial rule brought new educational and legal opportunities for women and lower castes as well as new forms of social interaction—colleges, public arenas, urban entertainment centers, etc. Colonial discourse also raised new anxieties over masculinity, through a racialized stereotyping of some Indian groups, especially Brahmans, as effeminate. Changing rules and practices of gender relations and caste relations and the search for a new, confident masculinity sparked tremendous debate in the Marathi public sphere about the need to establish a “modern” yet comfortably “Maharashtrian” respectability and code of moral conduct that did not completely replace “traditional” beliefs and practices. In this wider context, idealized and celebrated Maratha men and women were created as templates for Marathi manhood and womanhood and the desired blend of “traditional” and “modern” beliefs and practices. Through these representations, aspects of both tradition and modernity were to be clearly demarcated. I shall examine, therefore, the ways different characters, such as Shivaji, Sambhaji,

Introduction 18

Jijabai and Ahilyabai, Tanaji, and Nana Phadnavis, among many others, became sites for debating what constituted a modern individual, what the desirable modern Marathi family and social values ought to be, and the importance of maintaining a respectable tradition even while embracing the fruits of modernity. Recent scholarship examining the emergence of modernity in different parts of the world, especially in ex-colonial societies, has emphasized the need to study social and cultural practices, especially those of the middle class, along with political, economic, and structural changes. Modernity, in this view, includes not just enlarged economic networks, political institutions, and enumerated social categories but also cultural values, aspirations, norms, and practices that were subjectively defined and experienced in radically different ways across the world.53 In the case of the former colonies, of course, this does not mean denying the tremendous influence of Western colonialism. Instead, it involves exploring how this influence was subverted and molded to local conditions, and further exploration of the influence of the precolonial upon particular experiences of modernity. In examining this interpenetration of old and new, this book seeks to highlight how Western ideas of history and method “translated” into the colonial Marathi context and shaped a modern, Marathi historiography and a popularly shared historical memory.54 Themes, figures, and events from Maratha history emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as an extremely popular vocabulary with which the Marathi middle classes could debate the impact of colonialism and the meanings and contours of tradition and modernity. Representations of the Maratha past gradually developed an explicitly Hindu nationalist slant that identified Muslims as equally foreign to Indian society as the British and continues to fuel a muscular Hindu chauvinism in Maharashtra and other regions of India today. The growing dominance of this modern Hindu interpretation gradually marginalized the linguistic and cultural influences of Muslim rule on Marathi society and the Maratha state. The Maratha historical memory that became popular thus emerged as the powerful underwriter of a majoritarian Hindu nationalist politics, but as we shall see in this book, it was—and continues to be—a contested terrain.

 1  Bakhar Historiography

When the prominent nationalist historian Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade (1864–1926) encountered the precolonial tradition of Marathi prose historical narratives or bakhars, he identified an urge among his ancestors to know their own history. Trained in a rigorous, positivist tradition, he was severely disappointed at not finding the scientific method he eagerly sought in his past. Describing the bakhars as “full of meaningless verbosity” and “fragmented, contradictory, vague and unreliable,” Rajwade’s harsh dismissal of this tradition was reminiscent of Macaulay. “Even one tiny scrap of correspondence from the Maratha administrative record,” he concluded, “is more valuable as history than all the bakhars put together.”1 The judgment of his contemporary and fellow historian, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, was equally contemptuous; he pronounced the bakhars “collections of gossip and tradition, sometimes no better than opium-eaters’ tales.”2 To Sarkar and his Marathi colleagues seeking to establish a modern, rational, and scientific history of precolonial India, these narratives were useful neither as methodological guides nor as reliable sources. Instead, the liberal use of exaggeration, the inconsistency in specifying dates and names, and the regular recourse to mythological references in these texts was an unforgivable and uncomfortable reminder of the colonialist argument about the lack of a historical consciousness in India.

Bakhar Historiography 20

The earliest Marathi bakhar was probably composed in the sixteenth century, but the bulk of them were composed from the late seventeenth century onward, reaching their peak in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, numbering about 200. These narratives were composed as biographies of great rulers, genealogies of prominent families, or accounts of momentous battles.3 The predominant stylistic frame was the letter, usually addressed by a junior official to a senior as the response to a specific question. The narratives are long, many running to more than a couple of hundred printed pages, with multiple linguistic influences. Local Marathi idioms mingle with Persian administrative jargon and Sanskrit aphorisms. Many are full of dry and monotonous information regarding matters of administration, sometimes achieving an astonishing level of detail. Interspersed with this empirical style are colorful and hyperbolic character sketches, fact and legend mixing easily in descriptions of both events and people. Puranic legends, divine intervention, and dramatic tales of fantastic physical prowess thus often appear alongside routine administrative and military procedures. Naturally, the prose is uneven, fevered at some points and almost soporific at others. Most of the bakhars comment freely on the characteristics of different subcontinental groups and often display very clear affinities of loyalty to particular rulers and chieftains. This disregard for impartiality and the rather cavalier attitude to dates and chronology, not surprisingly, were the characteristics that most annoyed historians in the colonial period. Marathi literary critics have frequently published and analyzed bakhar narratives,4 but have tended to highlight them as proof of a widespread precolonial prose genre in Marathi and to foreground their literary merits almost as a consolation prize for their perceived historical shortcomings.5 This chapter, by contrast, critically examines in detail some of these bakhar narratives from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. My intention is to explore, mainly through a close reading of the texts themselves, the perceptions of history and historiographic practice and the social milieu within which they were produced and circulated. I have chosen four texts for a close analysis here.6 The first is the Sabhasad bakhar, one of the earliest biographical narratives on Shivaji, written circa 1694 by one of the older officials in his administration, Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad.7 Another biography of Shivaji, this one from circa 1811, is the Chitnis bakhar by Malhar Ramrao Chitnis, a senior writer at the Satara court of Shahu

Bakhar Historiography 21

II.8 A third text is the Peshwyanchi bakhar from circa 1818, composed by an erstwhile Peshwa official, probably Krishnaji Vinayak Sohoni, narrating the history of the powerful Peshwas over the eighteenth century;9 the final selection is the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, a late eighteenth-century account of the 1761 battle of Panipat, the famous Maratha Waterloo.10

A Question of Origins scholarship on the genealogy of this narrative form has turned on the origins of the term bakhar itself. Most scholars tend to agree that bakhar is a metathesis of the Arabic word khabar, meaning information, and point to the frame of the letter used for the bakhar to suggest its development from akhbars, or Perso-Arabic intelligence newsletters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.11 S. N. Joshi, on the other hand, while accepting the newsletters as influences, has argued that since the word bakhar appears at the end of most texts, it is derived from the Persian word khair or bakhair: the end salutation in a letter, suggesting “all is well.”12 Still others reject the akhbar genealogy altogether. Pointing to the translation of bakhair as akhyayika (story) separate from khabar as vaarta (news) in the Sanskritderived glossary of administrative vocabulary issued in 1674, the Rajvyavaharkosh, Bapuji Sankpal has argued that the bakhars of the eighteenth century were not derived from Perso-Arabic newsletters at all but from older Puranic akhyayikas, and were explicitly intended and understood as literature, creative stories loosely derived from historical events and figures.13 The underlying idea throughout this scholarship has been that a text cannot be literary and be concerned with narrating historical events at the same time. Moving away from this linguistic debate to an exploration of the social origins of the bakhars from the seventeenth century onward, Sumit Guha has recently argued that factual narratives detailing local events and information emerged through the exertion of bureaucratic power in two important contexts. The first was the framing of knowledge regarding frontier zones following conquest: information gathering by the Maratha administration from the 1650s regarding existing tax rates and administrative arrangements in a particular region generated detailed historical accounts and memoranda from hereditary officials. The second was the law court, where

Bakhar Historiography 22

narratives of the past were crucial to the settlement of legal disputes over patrimonies in medieval Maharashtra.14 Guha shows that central to the adjudication of these legal disputes was the notion of antiquity or “the old way,” which served as the most hallowed source of right in the kingdom, and its presentation through narratives that drew on a variety of document types such as family lists, deeds given to ancestors, details of ancestral contribution and participation in battles, etc. These were significant tools of negotiation in Maratha politics and were composed for use by families seeking to gain or protect grants of land and office. The narratives did not simply provide proof of land grants or deeds but sought to authenticate the grants by locating them within wider, more well-known events and places while simultaneously anticipating and refuting contesting claims made by other disputants.15 Importantly, the narratives were scrutinized, debated, and authenticated not by a small, literate elite but by public assemblies formed of people of diverse religious and social backgrounds, who “would periodically gather to hear, debate and renew local knowledge and common sense.”16 The bakhars, Guha persuasively argues, were intended, and emerged as, local factual narratives; the past they invoked was authenticated with the “facts” already established within the common knowledge of local communities.17 Rather than viewing their literary and historical qualities as separate and incompatible, he locates the “softening and omission of truth, to ornamented narrative and rhetorical device[s]” in the context of securing this authentication and appealing to this common knowledge.18 This continuous invocation of the past, interlinking of local and broader, regional events, and frequent rehearsal and remaking of this knowledge in public assemblies created the conditions in Maharashtra for constructing larger historical narratives, with the establishment of the independent Maratha state in the 1650s and the expansion of Marathi-speaking gentry and bureaucracy across large areas of the subcontinent in the eighteenth century. There were many different ways the past was invoked. A large corpus of Marathi akhyan literature in this period drew on the rich resource of the Puranas. Alongside mythical heroes in these stories, more recent ones such as Shahaji and Shivaji and a range of Maratha chiefs and warriors were memorialized in different poetic genres, ranging from the explicitly eulogistic and adulatory Sanskrit epic poem Shivabharata composed by Shivaji’s court poet, Paramananda, to the shahiri poetry that memorialized

Bakhar Historiography 23

the battles, heroism, and hardship of both chiefs and ordinary Maratha soldiers.19 From the turn of the eighteenth century, however, longer and more complex prose narratives were produced with some distinct and identifiable history-writing conventions. Composed by literati in the large and polyglot Maratha bureaucracy in the eighteenth century, these bakhars built upon the smaller legal ones of the law court and drew on Perso-Arabic newsletters and histories and Puranic akhyayikas, and bore interesting similarities to contemporaneous historical narratives in the South Indian languages.20 The chapter now turns to exploring these in detail.

From Akhbar to Bakhar as maratha power expanded from the 1670s onward, exchanging daily and weekly newsletters, along the lines of Perso-Arabic akhbars, among various far-flung offices was a crucial part of day-to-day administration as well as policy making. C. A. Bayly has described in detail this world of information gathering and the importance of intelligence networks to the workings of eighteenth-century states.21 One of the most detailed bakhars on Shivaji’s rule composed in the early nineteenth century, the Chitnis bakhar, enthusiastically discusses the policies Shivaji put in place for the “information department”: Halkaras were kept for the purposes of information. Bahirji Naik was chosen to lead them. . . . He conducted the delicate and urgent work of gathering information from various regions both in the kingdom and outside, and from senior clerks, military officials, all the chiefs . . . by acquiring akhbars (news reports), lakhotepatre (closed letters), and zabani (witness testimonies) from . . . all these places. He then submitted all the information to the Maharaj. The letters actually came to the Chitnis, who then wrote summaries of them, prepared yadis (lists), and kept the Maharaj informed on a daily basis.22

Thousands of such akhbars, with an unadorned, yet occasionally gossipy style of narrating events, were produced by the Maratha bureaucracy and are available in the vast printed collections of Maratha documents. There is, for instance, a letter written on September 2, 1773, only three days after the

Bakhar Historiography 24

murder of the young Peshwa Narayanrao in his own palace by the Gardi soldiers at the instigation of his ambitious uncle Raghunathrao: At your service with respect. Until now Thursday afternoon the happenings are such that yesterday you had been conveyed through the writer’s man to come at once. That was then. And you had been told accordingly. But now it turns out the Gardis have become very powerful and declared arrogantly, “We killed the King’s servant [Peshwa]. The one that was is no more. Now give us half the kingdom.” All the arrangements inside were made by Sumersing and Muhammad Isaf and Kharagsing the guard. He was the one who let them in. There were no Maratha men inside. Nobody did anything for fear of the city being looted. Such was the condition.23

The newsletter then goes into intricate detail explaining the movements of the Gardis inside the palace and the murder, then narrates movements of important officials in the town. As an intelligence document, it is clearly intended to frustrate anybody other than the person for whom the letter was meant: Once the deed was done the second day the writer whose name begins with M was called and asked to take [a letter to the person] whose name begins with N. Both were told that they should now work as the Phadnavis. Wonderful, they both said, and told Bajipant and Parchure to also go on writing as the orders came, and then came home. Both now go regularly and handle papers per the Shrimant’s [Ragunathrao] orders. . . . Name-beginning-with-C and Bhide are both busy with work. Names-beginning-with B and S, the fish-eating Name-beginning-with-B and the Prabhu whose name begins with S are now close to the Shrimant. It is said that the elder two of these four are very deeply involved at the court. That is how it seems. . . . Letters have gone to the Baramatikar and he is due to arrive. The Peshwa appears to be leaning toward his counsel.24

And so on, describing the changing dynamics in Pune as the new Peshwa Raghunathrao sought to consolidate his court and supporters. The newsletters were intended to serve as a succinct summary of recent happenings of various kinds, but also to report and occasionally speculate, like any intelligence report then as now, on possible alliances and

Bakhar Historiography 25

movements of other powers and other interesting tidbits of less immediate political importance. Let us now consider the Sabhasad bakhar, composed circa 1694 by Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad on the express order of Shivaji’s second son, Rajaram. It opens thus: For the attention of Shreemant Maharaj Rajashree Rajaramsaheb Chhatrapati, this servant Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad of the royal council respectfully submits as follows. Your majesty . . . asked, “Our father, the senior king [Shivaji], performed many acts of bravery and took on four padshahis. Such were his exploits. This being so, Aurangzeb came and caused havoc in so many of our forts. What does this mean? You are an elder, a knowledgeable person in this kingdom. So write and submit his charitra from the beginning.” This was your order. Accordingly, this is what happened (tyajvarun vartaman aisi je).25

Addressed to Rajaram as a letter, the bakhar is a biography of Shivaji. It starts by telling of Shivaji’s grandfather Maloji’s service at the Ahmednagar Nizam’s court, describes all the major events of Shivaji’s life and the establishment of the Maratha state, and ends with Shivaji’s death. “This is how the story of the Raja’s charitra unfolded from birth to death,” Sabhasad concludes, and adds with a tone of reverence, Confiscating and subduing the Adilshahi, Qutbshahi, Nizamshahi, and Moglai, these four padshahis, and also the padshahis of the ocean, a new kingdom was established and the Maratha padshah became the lord of the throne and a Chhatrapati. . . . No one like this came before, and no one will hence. This was how it happened with the Raja (ase vartaman rajache jahale). It ought to be known. (87)

Sabhasad’s use of the term vartaman for the series of events or “what happened” and the framing of the narrative as a letter is the same as in the newsletters described above. However, this stylistic closeness apart, it is important to note that Sabhasad, at the very beginning, sets up a specific problem for his bakhar: not just to narrate the rise of Maratha power under Shivaji and the crisis that beset it in the 1680s, but also to account for these shifts and explain their meaning. The task of the bakhar, then, is certainly to narrate what happened, but as an ordered selection of events based on

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the central question identified at the beginning. It is intended as a processing and analysis of a historical problem at some remove, a problem that the author believes is worthy of explanation. A close reading reveals this process of selection and ordering. The very boundedness of the Sabhasad text is itself an indicator. As noted above, it begins and ends with a central problem, seeking to explain the shift of power between Shivaji and Aurangzeb. Throughout the narrative as well, in the important episodes in Shivaji’s career—the killing of Afzal Khan, the Mughal general Shaistakhan’s flight from Pune minus three fingers, the stalemate with Mirza Raje Jaisingh and Diler Khan, Shivaji’s escape from the emperor’s captivity, and his coronation—Aurangzeb constantly hovers in the background. After every successive achievement of Shivaji, we read of Aurangzeb’s reactions; Sabhasad beautifully plots these, from mere curiosity and annoyance about Shivaji to increasing alarm about his power and finally the determination to destroy him. Thus we read that Aurangzeb was well informed about Shivaji right from the beginning, when he began to take over Bijapuri territory (5). After hearing of Afzal Khan’s death, the emperor muses, “Shivaji has become more powerful. A force like the Bijapur Afzal Khan’s, 12,000 horsemen defeated, taking over so many forts, what is the solution to this?” and sends Shaistakhan, his relative and “very own mirror image” to subdue Shivaji (22). When he too is sent packing by Shivaji through a daring night raid on his palace in Pune, Aurangzeb, now much less sanguine, despairs, “The force of a Nawab, and he enters it in disguise and causes such havoc! What is this!” and angrily refuses Shaistakhan an audience (25–26). After much hand-wringing, the emperor then sends Mirza Raje Jaisingh and Diler Khan to finish the job. After Jaisingh’s successful diplomatic efforts, when Shivaji visits the emperor at his court, Aurangzeb is still somewhat in awe of him. “He isn’t an ordinary man . . . he killed Afzal Khan when he went to meet him. If just like that he flies on to my throne and betrays me, what will I do then?” he thinks, and remains alert (35). When Shivaji escapes despite the emperor’s efforts to imprison him, he is amazed and warns his men, “Shivaji is ingenious and is surely in some disguise. Look for all kinds of religious men . . . investigate all disguises, find the Raja and arrest him” (40). One of the achievements of Sabhasad’s narrative is the emphasis on the awe-inspiring power of the Mughal empire while simultaneously describing its successful trumping by a new, young leader like Shivaji. The latter’s

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successes thus are portrayed as hard-won, even as Aurangzeb is made to look unsure and unsettled by the Maratha leader’s activities. After hearing report after report of his looting of Surat and other Mughal regions, Aurangzeb is desperate for action: “What is the remedy? I sent lakhs and lakhs of horsemen; all returned subdued and harassed. Now who should I send? I could have sent my son, but they will win him over and take Delhi instead. For this reason nobody can be sent. I might just gird up my loins and go myself, but what if I too face Shaistakhan’s fate? While Shivaji is alive, better not to leave Delhi” (56–57). Throughout this construction of Aurangzeb’s responses to Shivaji’s career, Sabhasad explains not only the reasons for the Mughal emperor’s attack on the Marathas but also the precise timing of the attack in the 1680s, after Shivaji’s death. Written over a century later, the objective that Malhar Ramrao Chitnis’s biography of Shivaji sets itself is to narrate how, after years of rule by foreigners, “in the human form of shree Shiva Chhatrapati dharma was reestablished and extraordinary acts and exploits happened.”26 Although the bulk of the narrative is almost certainly based on Sabhasad’s text, he begins with hoary, Puranic origins and genealogies that eventually reach Shivaji’s grandfather Maloji. He also rejects a straight chronological narrative and instead divides his text thematically into seven “episodes,” structured around the expansion of Maratha power, Aurangzeb, administrative information, southern campaigns, and so on. Shivaji’s coronation is saved for last, as the pièce de résistance of the narrative. The device works beautifully, and through a long, heady description of the ceremony, Chitnis achieves his goal of establishing Shivaji’s exploits and the new Maratha kingdom as a watershed in Deccan politics. The Bhausahebanchi bakhar, written several decades after the fateful battle at Panipat, seeks to account for and analyze the massive Maratha debacle against the Afghan forces of Ahmed Shah Abdali. Locating the causes for the Maratha defeat within the shifting political alliances in Hindustan at the time, it establishes an incredibly detailed set of events from the 1750s onward before leading up to the final encounter at Panipat in 1761. It begins with the competing ambitions of the Shinde and Holkar powers in central India and their changing positions within the web of political relationships with the Mughal courtiers, the Nawab of Awadh, the Rohillas, the Rajputs, and the Jats. After sketching in this background, the author introduces the Peshwa and his brother Bhausaheb, the ill-fated general of the Maratha

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forces, into the story and outlines the tense nature of the latter’s stewardship over the Maratha chiefs Shinde and Holkar; after several skirmishes with the Afghan forces, the final battle looms large. Interspersed amid the details of these alliances—the mistakes in diplomatic judgment, military strategy, and the personality clashes—is an emotional narrative that slowly but subtly moves from initial enthusiasm about the Maratha forays into northern India to the growing anxiety and despair among the chiefs, and finally to the chaos as the survivors fled from the Panipat battlefield. This construction of the narrative forcefully and tragically conveys the extent of damage this encounter did to Maratha power.27

The Contours of Historiographic Practice the literary nature of these narratives, far from taking away from their historicity or being mere metaphorical garnishing that embellished the “real,” underlying historical text, was intrinsic to this historiographic practice. The crafting of plausible situations, the composition of credible and appropriate dialogue, and the description of the mood of personalities before and after events have to be seen not as creative flourishes to improve the historical analysis but as crucial to the historical re-creation and understanding itself. In the Sabhasad bakhar the narrative of Shivaji’s actions is continuously interwoven with that of Aurangzeb’s responses, each successive episode marking the latter’s growing impatience and fear; this plot structure, complete with Aurangzeb’s outbursts to himself and others, is key to the author’s argument about the magnitude of the new Maratha state ’s threat to Mughal power. Likewise, through the description of the slow but steady move toward diplomatic and military disaster—through the well-crafted plot structure of the proverb vinashakale vipareeta buddhi (when ruin is foretold, the mind is perverted)—the Bhausahebanchi bakhar seeks to convey the enormity of the Maratha defeat at Panipat. The bakhars, therefore, bring together both the narrative frame of the akhyayika and the reportage of the akhbar and must be seen in their totality as an exercise in history.28 The events the bakhars seek to narrate and analyze are all recognized as being unique and discrete, in a linear time understood as being eternal and singular, but with different indexes and measures. Most narratives routinely

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provide the dates deemed important simultaneously in multiple dating systems: in the Shalivahana Saka era, the Arabic era, and, following Shivaji’s coronation in 1674, the Rajyabhishek era as well.29 What is interesting is that although there existed chronicles in the form of shakavalis (literally, sequence of years) prepared by families and hereditary officials, to which many bakhar writers as part of the Maratha bureaucracy surely had access, the larger narratives anchor only some events to specific dates—usually birth, death, coronation, accession, and marriage—in this flow of time. I suggest that although the knowledge and importance of the shakavalis and chronology is implicit in the bakhars, its detailed inclusion within the text was deemed methodologically less important than the larger narrative evocation and analysis of the past. In their analysis of contemporaneous Telugu historical narratives in Textures of Time, V.N.R. Rao and his colleagues describe the presence of kalajnana, a heterogenous temporality—the anticipation of future events in the present and recurrent patterns of important features in successive periods—that appears to coexist with a linear understanding of singular events, human actions, and their consequences. Indeed, it is within this conflict between a deep, mythic certainty of recurrent time and an understanding of particular, singular events that they locate the very historical intent of the narratives.30 Predictions and prophecies are present in the bakhars as well, and important, watershed events such as the establishment of Maratha power or the loss at Panipat appear as inevitable, already foretold or divinely willed. However, these do not disturb the otherwise strictly linear unfolding of the narrative; their inclusion serves the specific function of underscoring extraordinary actions and events, and they form part of the moral universe within which the bakhar writers judge the protagonists’ actions and their outcomes. All of Shivaji’s biographers, for instance, describe him as sakshat avatar or a divine incarnation, and the patron deity of the Marathas, Bhavani, repeatedly steps in to legitimize Shivaji’s actions as honorable. Almost as if to satisfy skeptics among their audience, however, after every divine pronouncement Bhavani makes while Shivaji is in a trance, Sabhasad and Chitnis inform us that her instructions are duly written down by the clerks present, so as to inform Shivaji of them after he comes to.31 The Maratha loss at Panipat is also repeatedly described as a tragedy foretold, but this too is ascribed to the morally reprehensible actions of various Maratha chiefs, such as Sabaji Shinde’s ravaging of a holy

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shrine in Kumaon and his harassment of Brahmans, and Sadashivrao Bhau’s desecration of the sacred silver canopy of the Mughal throne in spite of protests all around.32 The Peshwyanchi bakhar, narrating the history of the Peshwai from the early eighteenth century onward, contrasts its prosperity under the honest and honorable Nanasaheb Peshwa with its decline under the unethical and “distrustful” Bajirao II. Even though it invokes the final outcome as predestined by God and the Puranas, the blame for this debacle is laid squarely on the immoral conduct of the final Peshwa.33 These narratives, then, do not fit Ranajit Guha’s characterization of all precolonial historical perspectives as essentially Puranic, “a generic discourse by which Indian culture had, since antiquity, constructed and cyclically reproduced the past as a sacred and ancestral time, distantiated altogether from the times and values of its authors.”34 Instead, they represent a historiographic practice distinct from Puranic perspectives “not because of a lack of divine agents or of a Puranic frame for the story, but because human actions are, in the final analysis, comprehended in a manner that renders them largely autonomous of this frame.”35 Indeed, stories, metaphors, and templates of ideal characters and moral behavior from the Puranas, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata are plentiful in the narratives, but overall, the bakhars remain grounded in their immediate environment and circumstances, and feature events and personalities of the recent historical past. Arguments and analyses are located in structures of authority recognized and accepted in the world in which these texts circulated. The most significant figure of authority is the author’s own description, presented through the words of the commissioning senior official or king, as a repository of knowledge and reliable source of information—for example, Sabhasad’s rendering of Rajaram’s brief: “You are an elder, a knowledgeable person in this kingdom” or Chitnis’ description of Shahu’s order: “You are a long-term servant, in charge of the writing.” The very invitation to investigate problems of the past by virtue of being a puratan (long time) or mahitgar lok (knowledgeable person) within the kingdom thus serves as authoritative backing for the narrative. Usually, the narratives also open and close with a declaration of having consulted all the appropriate sources and other knowledgeable people within the kingdom, with an acknowledgment, not unlike many self-deprecating disclaimers witnessed in prefaces and acknowledgments today, of possible errors and oversights. The precise style appears to vary. While Sabhasad, therefore, is content with

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claiming his status as an elder and knowledgeable person at the beginning of his narrative, the writer of the Bhausahebanchi bakhar emphasizes at the end that “only those who experienced those times know what happened. Others cannot know it . . . this narrative could only be written with this full knowledge and accordingly, giving full thought to it, I have written it out in detail.”36 Although Krishnaji Vinayak Sohoni is believed to have dictated the Peshwyanchi bakhar from memory in the early nineteenth century, the wealth of detail in the text suggests that he did occasionally steal a glance at older documents.37 Chitnis goes a step further than the others and indicates the specific sources he consulted: The order was to write . . . how the political activities and genealogy in the Deccan happened, based on older documents that have been written and kept and based on everything learned, heard, and studied, all the shastras and knowledge which should come easily. Accordingly, based on the shastras such as the Vishnupurana and other texts, and Dandaniti, Rajadharma, Rajamayukh, Ramalshastra, and state documents, diaries, and tales of exploits in my family archive, with the Lord’s blessings, the narrative is presented thus.38

While the narratives acknowledge having used reliable sources, these do not figure as part of the narratives themselves. Rao and his colleagues argue in the context of Telugu and Tamil histories that “the sifting of sources and work of judgment and integration take[s] place offstage—never as part of the historiographical document itself. It is as if the historical work has to be presented as a completed aesthetic whole, as part of an accepted literary genre with its own formal features, rather than as an edifice that reveals its own scaffolding.”39 Some process of transmission and reliance on older sources certainly occurred; however, this sifting can be only indirectly inferred from the selective appropriation of earlier narratives and their arguments. In spite of the details Chitnis provides about the writer’s world, we know little of what generalized practices of source criticism existed, if any. To cite just a couple of examples, nearly all of the Sabhasad bakhar is bodily incorporated into the Shedgaonkar bakhar, a composite document detailing the genealogy of the Bhosale family probably composed at three different times, the third and last section in the early colonial period. The late eighteenth-century Chitragupta Bakhar also incorporates it near verbatim.40 Similarly, the Bhausahebanchi bakhar built on and incorporated the shorter

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Bhausahebanchi Kaifiyat.41 Smaller documents, yadis in particular, were frequently incorporated whole into larger bakhars, and as we have seen, Chitnis used older narratives, including Sabhasad, as a base on which to compose his own.42 Narratives were frequently “improved” by copyists in the course of transmission, with changes in idiom, words, and explanatory interpolations. There are numerous such examples in the Bhausahebanchi bakhar. Although it was written by a Marathi speaker living in the north in a heavily Persianized Marathi, other copies found in southern towns such as Sangli and Satara freely translate Urdu and Persian words and phrases into Marathi, sometimes Sankstritized usage, with expansive, explanatory interpolations.43 Besides its foregrounding of the Chitnis family’s history, the Chitnis bakhar also stands out for its forceful analysis of Shivaji’s project as being explicitly conceived for the protection of the Hindu dharma and destruction of Muslim power in Maharashtra. It departs from Sabhasad at several points and ascribes, often approvingly, many social practices and changes that emerged over the decades of Peshwa rule in the eighteenth century to Shivaji’s earlier reign, seeking to give it a heavy Brahmanical gloss. I shall consider the implications of this Hindu interpretation for exploring the contours of Maratha identity in greater detail in the next chapter. Here, it is important to point out that it also reflects Chitnis’s urge, like that of many historians then as now, to selectively borrow and depart from older texts, even though this departure is not made explicit in the text itself. Besides his narrative on Shivaji, Chitnis wrote biographies of Sambhaji, Rajaram, and Shahu that interpreted the course of the Maratha state through his own contemporary lenses.44 His texts allow us to glimpse shifts in interpretation of specific events and processes of the past and view the writing of the bakhars as a “historical consciousness, actively addressing [past] events in the light of its own primary notions and concerns, its sense of time and sequence, its implicit causal explanations.”45

Contestation and Authentication one of the contemporary concerns of these narratives was the articulation of legitimate status and authority, in favor of individuals as well as families and social groups. An underlying thread of the Sabhasad narrative,

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for instance, is establishing the legitimacy of Rajaram, whom Sabhasad describes as having commissioned the text, to rule over the lands carved out by Shivaji. Rajaram was besieged in the 1690s not just literally by Mughal forces at the fort of Jinji for nine years but also by the deeper problems of stabilizing the Maratha polity and administration rendered fragile by the Mughal devastation, factional fights within his family, and the defection of key officers.46 Faced with Mughal incursions into the Deccan and into the network of chiefs who were the key to real control over the land, Rajaram had to reiterate the necessity and justness of the Maratha efforts to reclaim it. Then he had to reiterate his own rightful leadership over those efforts. A bitter succession struggle between Shivaji’s older son, Sambhaji, and Rajaram’s mother, Soyrabai, had preceded Rajaram’s accession to the Maratha throne. Aurangzeb’s capture and execution of Sambhaji in 1689 settled the matter in favor of Rajaram, but the problems of winning over influential chiefs and officials remained. Sabhasad’s interpretation of the establishment of the Maratha state can be seen in this context as an attempt on the part of a loyal, elder official to stake Rajaram’s legitimate claim to the Maratha lands. His detailed lists of the number of forts, the amount of treasure, and the officers under Shivaji’s control were, therefore, not mere stock-taking but a claim to what was thought to be rightfully Rajaram’s. Recall that the goddess Bhavani frequently appears in Shivaji’s dreams and trances, to justify his actions and urge him on in his fight against Bijapur and the Mughals. In one dream she takes credit for having killed the Bijapur general Afzal Khan through Shivaji’s hands47 and commands him, “A great duty has to be performed in the future too. I shall live in your kingdom. Establish me and ensure my continued worship.” In a later dream, she insists that Shivaji’s kingdom has to exist for twenty-seven generations. Having thus established the honorable purpose of the kingdom through Bhavani, Sabhasad underscores Rajaram’s claim to it as his rightful heir: [The Raje’s wife Soyrabai, of the Mohite family] gave birth to a son . . . the Raje declared that he would overturn the Padshahi of Delhi. The astrologer then predicted the boy’s future: “He will be a great king and will perform far greater deeds than Shivajiraje.” The Raje then named him Rajaram and said, “He will keep his people happy and scale greater heights than me, and will be known far and wide. He will honor and protect my name.”48

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The text goes on to justify Rajaram’s accession at some length, depicting Shivaji himself as being unsure of Sambhaji’s capability to rule and wishing Rajaram to succeed him on the Maratha throne.49 Later narratives also recast older ones in the light of their own concerns. In Chitnis’s elaboration of Sabhasad, for instance, Rajaram fades into the background, but the author skillfully weaves the presence of his own family into the story instead, by privileging the role of his ancestor Balaji Avji, the principal Chitnis or head writer of Shivaji’s administration. Balaji Avji takes center stage in almost all the important events in Shivaji’s career, his advice and counsel indispensable. When Shivaji’s Kshatriya status is in doubt before his coronation, it is Balaji Avji who reiterates his master’s descent from the royal family of Udaipur, secures for him the right to the coronation, and locates the Benares priest Gaga Bhatt for the ceremonies through his many contacts in north India. When offered a prestigious seat on the council of ministers after the coronation, Balaji Avji demurs, preferring to continue serving in his capacity as writer.50 The Bhausahebanchi bakhar is a good example of how such texts integrated into the broader narrative the claims to rights and prestige of different actors on the Maratha political stage.51 The writer, almost certainly a Delhi-based official of the Shinde family, deftly tracks the growing popularity of the Shinde chiefs Jankoji and Dattaji in central India and Rajasthan throughout the narrative and contrasts their good deeds with the relatively opportunistic practices of their rival Maratha chief, Malharrao Holkar, even as he narrates the broader story of the battle of Panipat. Holkar is Shinde’s Other not just politically but also in his outlook and behavior: he is trigger happy, hotheaded, and eager for a quick-fix solution, thus clashing with the Shindes’s calm, farsighted, and dignified bearing, and the bakhar points toward him as the cause of many of the problems that beset the Shindes. Certainly, one of the text’s literary achievements is its construction of the Shinde men as extraordinarily brave and honorable, yet sensitive and even credulous. Dattaji Shinde in particular is naïve and emotional, but his courage unmatched; he is even given to poetic outbursts to rally his men.52 This feature of articulating legitimacy on behalf of specific actors on the Maratha stage clearly demonstrates the bakhars’ affinity to documents prepared for the law courts. The past was recognized, in the legal arena as well as in the larger narratives, as being molded by social and political power and presented from a particular point of view. Historiographic practice was

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understood as a narrative process open to analysis, reappropriation, and contestation, but at the same time, to recall Guha’s argument, it was also rooted in a strong tradition of factual narration and authentication. Moreover, intertwined with the urge to foreground specific groups or political actors were narrative and historiographical ambitions that frequently went beyond these concerns to address broader concepts such as the rise and fall of Maratha power. Consider the historical problem addressed in the Peshwyanchi bakhar: How the Shrimant Peshwa acquired the Peshwai; which man performed courageous exploits under Shahu Maharaj and after earning his favor, what great acts he committed; how Shahu was pleased and why he decided to hand over the Peshwai only to him; and which man ruled for how many days.53

De facto control of the Maratha state shifted in the early eighteenth century from Shivaji’s heirs to the prime minister Peshwa in Pune and until 1818, the Bhosale kings remained titular and confined at Satara. The bakhar clearly views this takeover as rightful. The narrative begins somewhat abruptly with the decision of the first Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath’s decision to migrate from the Konkan coast into the Desh hinterland of Maharashtra in search of a job. It depicts Shahu as extremely eager to hand over the robes of the Peshwai to Bajirao, while simultaneously describing the bravery and unrivaled loyalty of and the strenuous military efforts undertaken by Balaji and his son Bajirao on Shahu’s behalf.54 This bakhar is a chronological but uneven account of all the Peshwas. The campaigns and administrations of Bajirao I and Nanasaheb, under whom the Maratha state grew and stabilized, are narrated in glowing tones of approval, but these sections are relatively brief compared to the later sections on lesser Peshwas such as Sawai Madhavrao and Bajirao II. Within the chronological frame of the Peshwa genealogy, it also recounts a broader history of the Maratha state over the eighteenth century. Nearly two thirds of the narrative is focused on the later eighteenth century, arguably because Sohoni had greater access to sources from this period, or because having lived through it, he was more familiar with recent events. In spite of the specific question of the legitimacy of the Peshwa’s authority, the bakhar does not extol the virtues of the family as a whole. Moreover, as we have seen above, it does not hesitate to make moral judgments on

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the actions, positive and negative, of various rulers. Nanasaheb’s famous patronage of Brahmans and Brahmanical learning through the Dakshina gains divine sanction in the text and a detailed, approving description.55 His cousin Sadashivrao, the ill-fated general of the Maratha forces at Panipat, appears credulous and hotheaded. The bakhar strongly criticizes the ambition and demeanor of Nanasaheb’s brother Raghunathrao and his wife, Anandibai, and their role in sanctioning the murder of the young Narayanrao Peshwa, and is most critical of the last Peshwa, Bajirao II, for his hapless reign and the loss of sovereignty to the British. Indeed, the star of the latter half of the bakhar is not a Peshwa family member at all but Nana Phadnavis, the official with de facto control of the Maratha state from the 1770s onward, in the name of the Peshwa Sawai Madhavrao. It details the growing clout and power of the Maratha armies across the subcontinent and the growing prosperity of the Peshwai capital, Pune, especially during the reign of Nana Phadnavis. The author differentiates between the power of the expanding state and that of the Peshwa family itself, although he is aware that they are linked: “The kingdom reached its peak. So also did the Peshwa’s domains. How can they be described?” (192). Elsewhere he tells us, “Visajipant Biniwale went into Hindustan and established one or two more kingdoms there. The kingdom’s forces were now superior to those of the emperor of Delhi. Such exploits happened everywhere. The kingdom’s power extended all the way to Delhi” (72). As noted earlier, it concludes with a stinging condemnation of the final Peshwa, Bajirao II: This is how the English secured the kingdom. In the family of the king’s servant the Peshwa, there never had been one such as Bajirao, cowardly, distrustful, and unable to draw intelligent men around him, weak in battle, how can one describe him? . . . Until Sawai Madhavrao, all the enemies stood defeated in front of the Peshwa. Once Bajirao Raghunath came to the throne, there was no campaign or attack, and since he didn’t need the army, this is what it came to. Here this bakhar ends. (241)

The bakhar, therefore, is both a genealogical account of the Peshwas and an analysis of the spread of Maratha power in the eighteenth century. Similarly, even as the Bhausahebanchi bakhar paints the Shindes in a favorable light, it also comments on the weaknesses of Maratha military strategy and conduct and concludes that the Marathas themselves were to blame for

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their loss at Panipat. The next chapter shall consider the implications of these two narrative strands for representations of Maratha power; here it is important to reiterate that bakhar historiographic practice was marked by this tension between underscoring authority on behalf of specific groups and setting up a wider inquiry into historical events and processes.

The World of Scribes it is interesting to consider, through the narratives themselves, the social world of scribes and literate officials who created them. The presence of the business of writing and the people with these special skills is one of the strongest underlying themes of all the bakhars. They give us a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the heavily bureaucratic Maratha state: all kinds of information travels on paper, and every so often in the narrative, someone is writing, dictating, or delivering a letter. Malhar Ramrao Chitnis, being from a scribal family himself, no doubt knew a lot about this world, and the elaborate, loving picture he paints suggests that he enjoyed his job as well. So we read about the changes Shivaji instituted in the dating and addressing of letters, record keeping, and accounting, and the new Sanskritized names given various departments following his coronation. Chitnis approvingly describes these reforms as getting rid of the yavani paddhata (Muslim conventions) in favor of old Shastric practices, and details various posts that dealt with information gathering, including that of the Chitnis himself, entrusted with writing all the royal letters and letters of political negotiation.56 Malhar Ramrao reminds us that the role of the scribe was creative and often involved doubling as the ruler’s strategist and representative in negotiations with allies and enemies. Elsewhere, this point is illustrated through an anecdote of his ancestor Balaji Avji’s ability to think on his feet: once, Shivaji asked that an important letter be written urgently, and asked Avji to read it back to him before the latter had had a chance to compose it. Unfazed, Avji held out a blank sheet of paper and “read” the letter extempore. The trick caused the man holding up the lamp to the paper to giggle, and when reprimanded by Shivaji, Avji had to confess. When Shivaji told him to write out the letter that very instant, he wrote it down word for word, just as he had uttered it! Pleased, Shivaji showered him with gifts, and the

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sardeshmukhi of Dabhol. Recall that instead of taking a seat in the king’s council, Balaji Avji preferred to continue his duties as Chitnis.57 This rather prominent depiction apart, most of the scribes we meet in the bakhar are ever-present, but in the background. Their centrality to the political process is never overtly stated but is impossible to ignore. Whether it is Pantajipant, the Bijapur negotiator in the Sabhasad narrative who successfully stages the encounter between Shivaji and Afzal Khan with the careful crafting of karinas to lure the Khan to Pratapgad, or Ruparam Katari, the wise advisor of Surajmal Jat who helps the Marathas navigate the minefields of Hindustani alliances in the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, there is no mistaking the stamp of the shrewd, literate bureaucrat who is important to the workings of the state. The bakhar authors dwell on the qualities and deeds of various literate officials and “intelligent men,” repeatedly emphasizing the need to hire such intelligent, resourceful men for the administration. As channels of communication between different sites of political authority, these literati are cast as being part of, yet somewhat distanced from, the authorities themselves. In passages describing details of administrative and revenue policy, the biographers of Shivaji in particular slip into didactic mode, frequently shifting between past and present tense, making sections of the texts appear almost as a prescriptive reference manual. These passages, however, also enable the literati themselves to emphasize their importance to the efficient working of policies. As Malhar Ramrao observed, it was not enough for the Chitnis to be literate; his office was political, and he had to often read the king’s mind and anticipate his intentions, which required much imagination and intelligence. This depiction of the Marathi scribe-cum-negotiator in the texts resonates strongly not only with the world of the karanam literati of various south Indian kingdoms and states who “control[led] the domains of writing, accounting, and policy-making without claiming any public visibility”58 but also with Indo-Persian literary traditions and conventions of insha’ (belles-lettres) and the world of the Mughal munshis (secretaries). There is no one name by which all the Marathi literati are known. We meet them as the Chitnavis, Waknavis, or at times, the Vakil, bureaucratic literati drawn primarily from various Brahman and Kayastha jatis who were, by the eighteenth century, a remarkably mobile and polyglot social group traveling and working “not only in Maharashtra but in Bikaner, Gujarat, Hyderabad, Karnataka and Tanjore,” spanning Persian and Hindustani to

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Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu-speaking worlds.59 For all his insistence on the ousting of yavani paddhata from the Maratha state and bureaucracy, Chitnis’s descriptions of the creativity and diplomacy of the ideal scribe, the achievements of great scribes of yore, and the didactic passages in the bakhars detailing the proper functions of different administrative departments resonate strongly with the descriptions of the creative dimensions of the secretarial arts in Persian ethical literature, especially the genre of nasihatnamas (Mirrors for Princes).60 In many ways, then, the bakhar form exemplifies the Marathi Deccan’s position as a “bridge region” between north and south, and the narratives reveal awareness of contemporaneous history-writing and narrative practices in other parts of the subcontinent. The bakhars certainly form part of the “ecumene,” the broader world of communication described by C. A. Bayly.61 At the same time, as this chapter has shown, they emerged through and circulated in the legal and bureaucratic world that had developed over the preceding centuries in the Marathi Deccan. By the early nineteenth century, they embodied a historiographic practice that made narrative sense of the recent past through literary frames familiar to the Marathi bureaucratic literati and appropriate to the writer’s analysis of the specific events under consideration. They were also created with certain conventions of authentication and narration that were recognized and accepted within this bureaucratic world. A central feature of bakhar historiography was the tension between the narrative of power, putting forward claims to legitimacy on behalf of various actors in the Maratha political environment, and a more detached, critical voice that commented, from within a moral universe, on historical actors, events, and outcomes. In the following chapter, I will consider the ways this tension produced representations of Maratha power and identity in the bakhar narratives. I shall also consider the intertextuality of the narratives with popular poetry and contemporaneous ballad forms circulating in Maharashtra, and its implications for a wider circulation of the ideas and representations contained in the bakhars, beyond the bureaucratic literati.

 2  Representing Maratha Power

The last chapter examined the emergence of a historiographic practice among the Marathi bureaucratic literati in the eighteenth century, through the form of the prose bakhar. Alongside these prose narratives, there existed a popular poetic tradition called shahiri kavan that also narrated and commemorated heroes and battles from the recent past. This poetry, comprising two related forms called powada and lavani, was produced and disseminated in a much wider social setting than the elite bureaucratic circles of the bakhars. This chapter explores the similarities and contrasts in these narrative styles and the generation of a popular historical memory among the wider Marathi-speaking population. It also considers the different representations of Maratha power in the bakhars and powadas, and the ways these allow us to glimpse different facets of what it meant to be Maratha in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A New Beginning: Representing the Maratha State a large body of empirically rich scholarship has, in recent decades, detailed the multiple sites of authority that obtained within the Maratha state, or the “co-sharing” of power that existed between the Maratha king (and

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later the Peshwa) and the various chiefs and lineages of the region. The roots of these lineages and their patrimonial rights over various offices and lands in the Deccan predated the Maratha kingdom, and there remained a reciprocal, yet deeply uneasy relationship between the king and the many chiefs he depended on for the very existence of the state. This cooperation and conflict, replete with the anxieties of faltering loyalty and legitimacy, continued in the eighteenth century as the Peshwa sought to maintain his leadership over the large number of fractious chiefs who extended but also resisted his control over their newly acquired domains in central and northern India.1 Rejecting a simple binary approach to the Maratha–Mughal conflict, André Wink has persuasively shown with a wealth of empirical detail that Maratha svarajya (self-rule) did not represent an absolute, abstract sovereignty over specific territories, but referred to Maratha claims to revenue that frequently overlapped with the Mughal pararajya (rule by others). Emphasizing this diffuse nature of Maratha power, Frank Perlin has also argued against “functionalist” frameworks of precolonial state formation that worked with the organizing principles of political history and the a priori assumption of a new, self-contained Maratha system, or a uniform and pervasive “Shivaji’s Maharashtra,” from the seventeenth century. Instead, he has pointed to a “gradual, many-sided process of centralization” that continued to coexist uneasily with centrifugal institutions and ideologies well into the eighteenth century.2 As instruments of negotiation and narratives of legitimate claims to a wide range of offices and rights, the bakhars reveal a sharp awareness of this unsteady balance. They can be seen as articulating different perspectives on the nature of the Maratha state and Maratha power as it consolidated under Shivaji and spread in the eighteenth century. In the Sabhasad bakhar, the earliest narrative available to us on the establishment of the Maratha state, Maratha power is represented repeatedly and above everything else as a novelty, worthy of awe and appreciation. Sabhasad enthusiastically gives the details of the navi paddhata (new course) put in place under Shivaji. “Never before had a Maratha padshah defeated four other padshahis in this way, and never again would one.”3 As discussed in the previous chapter, the goddess Bhavani steps in regularly to legitimize Shivaji’s actions, especially the killing of Afzal Khan after his destruction of temples on his march from Bijapur, but religion in the text appears overwhelmingly to underscore Shivaji’s own religiosity and piety (in contrast

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to his opponents’ disrespect of religion), and underscores the rightfulness and divine backing of his political project. Although Sabhasad provides details of the Vedic coronation, it is noteworthy that he describes Shivaji as a “Maratha padshah” who deserved the honor of becoming a Chhatrapati by sheer dint of his achievements, rather than as a natural expression of his Hindu difference from the four padshahis he had defeated. Sabhasad constructs a primarily political conflict between the Marathas and Mughals through the personalities of Shivaji and Aurangzeb; Shivaji himself—presented repeatedly as bold, extraordinary, innovative, breaking with tradition, honorable, and divinely blessed—is the most striking representation of Maratha power in his narrative, embodying all the qualities Sabhasad believed this new political entity to have. Although the foundational descriptions of Shivaji’s seventeenth-century state and an emphasis on its radical departures have frequently been ascribed to nineteenth-century nationalist historiography, the Sabhasad bakhar can be seen as first articulating this novelty and radical departure, and informing many of the later assumptions about the self-contained nature of different state systems of the Marathas and Mughals. Shivaji, it is well known, had to adopt different methods of suasion to bring the entrenched elite families of the Deccan away from the sultanates to cooperate with and serve in his own centralizing efforts. As stated in the last chapter, articulating the legitimacy of the fledgling state became even more urgent for his descendants in the face of the Mughal invasion from the 1680s onward. Other efforts such as the Shivabharata, the epic poem by Kavindra Paramanand commissioned by Shivaji to commemorate his coronation, announced Shivaji’s difference from existing rulers by invoking high Hindu ideals of Kshatriya kingship in overtly Sanskritic and Puranic idioms. There is ample evidence that idioms of a religious war were used on both sides of the Mughal–Maratha conflict.4 The Sabhasad bakhar, however, produced and circulated within the Maratha bureaucratic world, not only draws on an existing narrative instrument of legitimacy and negotiation but also emphasizes more mundane administrative details to call attention to the importance and legitimacy of the centralizing process started under Shivaji. This normative centralized authority was hardly a reality in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century, but it was certainly an aspiration; Sabhasad’s emphasis on the navi paddhata put in place with Shivaji’s coronation implicitly acknowledged that the new Maratha power was not the

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only site of authority, and sought to represent it as the legitimate central one above all others. The Sabhasad bakhar’s discursive concerns, in this respect, had to do with other such contemporaneous representations produced in sites that had fiercely, if unsuccessfully, resisted centralization. For instance, the Jawalikar More Yanchi Chhoti bakhar, a short account of the exploits of Chandrarao More, one of the most well-known and illfated of Shivaji’s early skeptics, acknowledged the reality of More ’s defeat by Shivaji but steadfastly ignored the latter’s larger claims to legitimacy.5 Chandrarao appears first in this narrative as a “self-willed soldier, a manly trooper from an old family” who is a devoted servant of the Adil Shah and who successfully takes on the challenge of fighting a tiger in order to protect his master’s lands from its depredations. This achievement enabled him to ask for the lands of Jawali, as well as higher titles for twelve of his fellow Maratha chiefs from the Adil Shah. Together, they successfully subdued the older chiefs of the Jawali region, the Gujar, Mahamulkar, Shirke, and Mohite. After this, the narrative tells us, “Jawali became a seat of royalty and became well known because of Chandrarao. All the people of Jawali, big and small, call More the Raja. His name still carries authority around there.”6 Although the bakhar refers to Shivaji as a zabardast (forceful) soldier, divinely blessed, Chandrarao questions the Bhosale family’s claim to kingship, invoking his own divine sanction from the local deity Sri Mahabaleshwar. Acknowledging the military defeat by Shivaji, the narrative nevertheless repeatedly emphasizes Chandrarao More’s rejection of the service, titles, and honor offered to him. Shivaji himself is presented as eager to induct More into his service and reinstate him as the rightful ruler of Jawali. Only when he intercepts a couple of letters between More and the Ghorpade of Mudhol, another chief in the Adil Shah’s service, does Shivaji decide More is dangerous and disloyal, and have him killed. The narrative ends: Since then Jawali the seat of More power has been polluted. Chandrarao’s descendants are there, but there is no kingdom at Jawali. Chandrarao was a moral, benevolent king who set aside soldiers to protect the land, another division for food shelters and charitable donations, and another to build temples of Shiva and other gods and of the five rivers at Mahabaleshwar. Seven such holy places had been run by his ancestors and so did he till the end. And so More was a moral king. Shivaji Maharaj built Pratapgad on top of the

Representing Maratha Power 44 mountain near Jawali and installed the goddess Amba of Tuljapur there. But Chandrarao is renowned in the world for his exploits. This is his account.7

The Persian genealogy of the Ghorpade family of Mudhol, composed circa 1699 by a Muslim writer in the service of Maloji Ghorpade,8 is similarly unconvinced of Shivaji’s centralizing claims, repeatedly presenting them as disturbances in the benevolent rule of the Adil Shah, and later Aurangzeb. The narrative most likely blended an older history of the Bahmani kingdoms with a genealogy of the Ghorpades. It describes in detail the emergence of Mudhol as the seat of Ghorpade power over generations of service. After describing a letter from Shivaji asking the Ghorpades to leave the Adil Shah and join him, the narrative gives Maloji’s response declining this offer: Until today we have spent time under the service of the Adil Shahi and Bahmani Badshahs and achieved great honor. We do not think it appropriate to desert them when they don’t have a capable leader. . . . The Pathans have become stronger but bringing down the Adil Shahi will not be possible for us in this life. Your father and you also earned many honors from them . . . returning this favor does not show your lineage in a good light. Conduct yourself so your father’s exploits are not dishonored.9

The Sabhasad bakhar, therefore, was an exercise in rising above these competing claims to kingship. It was produced in the same close bureaucratic circle as and served as a precursor to the Ajnapatra, the early eighteenth-century Marathi normative treatise on statecraft attributed to Shivaji’s longtime official Ramchandra Nilkanth Amatya. As is well known, the Ajnapatra advocates in considerable detail centralized administrative procedures with respect to payment structures, military arrangements, and divisions of authority to ensure the king’s sustained power over hereditary landed chiefs. I would argue that the representations of Maratha power in the bakhars can be seen as approaching the idea of a centralized Maratha state, a Marhashta or Maharashtra rajya, from multiple existing sites of authority, even as they acknowledged and were marked by the realities of these competing sites and the co-sharing of power detailed in recent scholarship. This tension is evident in the Peshwyanchi bakhar. As seen in the previous chapter,

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this narrative takes up the Peshwa family as its principal subject, but also charts and celebrates the growth of the Maratha state. The state is subject to the Peshwa’s authority, but is nevertheless not reducible in the narrative to his own lands or the specific achievements of his family. This is particularly so for the later eighteenth century, as the bakhar extols the successes of the Maratha armies against the East India Company forces in the first Anglo-Maratha war of 1779 and the administration of Nana Phadnavis. Despite the deference to the Satara-based king Shahu, the narrative clearly displaces him with the Pune-based Brahman Peshwa as the centralizing authority of this growing state. The Peshwyanchi bakhar articulates the legitimacy of this displacement in ways that are strikingly similar, yet distinct from Sabhasad’s invocation of Shivaji’s religiosity and piety: it emphasizes the Peshwa’s morality and adherence to dharma through the depiction of the “Brahman raj.” This is done in many different ways. Ordinary Brahmans from far-off regions such as Awadh and Hyderabad come to the Peshwa seeking help against their Muslim rulers. The Peshwa is able not only to generously support and protect them in his own domains but also to successfully intervene on their behalf in these foreign areas.10 The Peshwa’s own Brahman status, moreover, also paves the way for his diplomatic and military successes and the spread of the Maratha state; for example, when the divine weapon sudarshan chakra protects Bajirao I from harm in the campaign against Jaipur, the ruler Jaisingh bows to him and gives him the territory of Ujjain as the rightful donation to a Brahman (32, 62–63). A fascinating ideological exercise in the Peshwyanchi bakhar is its attempt to simultaneously emphasize both the traditional ritual supremacy of the Peshwas’ Brahman status and their military campaigns and prowess. The Peshwas Nanasaheb and Madhavrao, in particular, are depicted as eager patrons of the Dakshina and Brahmanical hierarchy and as courageous, martial heroes (54–57, 69, 78–80). In spite of the periodic visits by the Peshwa to Satara, the narrative makes clear that the military initiative and the religious impulse for the expansion of the Maratha state came from the Peshwas (12). All the other chiefs of states across central India appear powerful but deferential to the Peshwa, and regularly visit his court at Pune to submit reports, present respects, and seek advice. Here, it is interesting to contrast the Chitnis bakhar, also composed in the early nineteenth century, but at the court of Satara under the patronage of

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Shahu II. As already mentioned, it builds on the Sabhasad text but replaces Shivaji’s personal religiosity and piety with an overtly political understanding of Hindu religious difference and the need for its protection through political and military action: When the mlecchas [foreigners] took over this earth, Dharma was threatened and Gods, Brahmans, and cows were insulted. For that reason Shivaji Maharaj was born with the Divine ’s blessing. He realized that he had to destroy the mlecchas and establish Dharma, and many other good men also took human form at the time to help him.11

The protection of gods, cows, and Brahmans is invoked time and again invoked as dharma and as the basis for Shivaji’s actions throughout the narrative. In order to emphasize this religious identity of the Maharashtra rajya, Chitnis not only delves into traditional Hindu texts to create an idealized description of Shivaji’s rule, down to his daily routine of ritual and moral introspection, but also ascribes many of the eighteenth-century Brahmanical shifts under the Peshwai, such as the increased interest in policing jati differences, retroactively to Shivaji’s reign. The poet-saint contemporary of Shivaji, Ramdas, appears several times in this text as Shivaji’s guru, and Chitnis also includes in full the letter the poet is believed to have sent to the Maratha ruler: They broke holy places, Violated Brahman spaces Overran the entire earth, Dharma was lost. . . . Nowhere on this earth, Is there a protector of Dharma Maharashtra Dharma has survived, only because of you.12

Irina Glushkova has shown how the term “Maharashtra dharma,” used in various texts from the fifteenth century onward, was a cluster of Brahmanical values and prescriptive behavior, especially the maintenance of jati social practice, and not initially a geographically rooted category.13 Ramdas also alluded to this cluster of Brahmanical values and practices, but urged its protection by the new political entity of Maharashtra rajya established by Shivaji. This interpretation, understood specifically as the political protection of Hinduism as represented by gods, cows, and brahmans, is also invoked in Chitnis’s analysis. James Laine has written

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recently of the ways the writings of the Bhakti hagiographer Mahipati in the later eighteenth century sought to merge Shivaji’s political project with the wider Marathi devotional tradition, including the teachings of Ramdas. Although Chitnis remains firmly focused on Shivaji’s political career, his harnessing of the Bhakti tradition to underwrite the religious underpinnings of Shivaji’s reign resonates strongly with Mahipati’s.14 His emphasis on the Brahmanically correct aspects of Shivaji’s life and reign also suggests the consolidation, at least among sections of the upper-caste bureaucratic elite (including Kayastha writers such as himself ), of the Peshwas’ representation of the Maratha state as one identified with Brahmanical values and the need to politically establish those values in opposition to a primarily religious Other. What is interesting, however, is that Chitnis ascribes these efforts to restore a traditional Brahmanical hierarchy to the seventeenth-century state established by Shivaji, rather than to the Peshwa reign of later decades to which they belonged. His bakhar, therefore, certainly points to the success of these efforts, but it also reveals the continuing tensions between the Peshwas and the Bhosales over the legitimate claims to the establishment of this state and its flourishing. Chitnis’s discursive concerns as a senior writer at the Satara court in the early nineteenth century, therefore, had no longer to do with dissenting narratives produced by recalcitrant chiefs skeptical of the very idea of a new Maratha state, but with competing claims from the Peshwas to its expansion and achievements. Accordingly, his narrative on the life of Shahu, who was king when the Peshwas assumed de facto control, traverses the same battles, treaties, and expansion described in the Peshywanchi bakhar, but seeks painstakingly to place the Maratha king himself at the center of military, political, and moral decision making.15 Like the documents produced for the legal arena on which they drew, therefore, some of the “macro-bakhars” of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, as Sumit Guha has termed them,16 continued to reflect the fragmented and contested nature of Maratha power. Nevertheless, they also articulate a centralized, if idealized and sharply contested, authority within the Maratha state that is not reducible to any of the individual actors on the political stage. Indeed, the narratives formed a part of this very process of contestation. In underscoring the legitimacy of these rival claims, the narratives also articulate Maratha difference from the Mughals in sharply

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religious terms. This religious difference too was hardly uniform but interpreted differently by different bakhars. The Maratha leader, therefore, appears either as a divinely blessed patron of piety (Sabhasad bakhar) or as the active rescuer of Hindu sacred spaces and symbols and Brahmanical values as expressed in Maharashtra dharma from the depredations of Muslim rule (Chitnis bakhar) or as the leader and patron not just of Hindu sacred spaces but also of the narrow, specific social context of Brahman jatis (Peshwyanchi bakhar). The question of Maratha identity itself, or what it meant to be Maratha in this period, is treated ambivalently within the narratives discussed above. The category appears in Sabhasad as a political marker (Maratha padshahi) of the state set up by Shivaji, and occasionally as a broad reference to his military chiefs. Chitnis, preferring to gloss the state as a “Hindu” padshahi opposed to the Muslim ones, clarifies during the description of Shivaji’s coronation that the Rajput clans of Jaipur and Udaipur, who regularly performed a range of high rituals, “called themselves Marathas in Maharashtra.”17 The Peshwyanchi bakhar also uses the term occasionally to carefully differentiate Brahman military chiefs from others: “Brahmans and Marathas were together given jahagirs for their forces’ expenses.”18 The legitimate basis of Maratha power is overtly expressed in different interpretations of Maharashtra/Marathi dharma as Hindu religious difference and the need to politically establish it in opposition to the Mughal empire, and the term “Maratha” is occasionally applied to the military power as a whole, implicitly including the ordinary soldiers. This difference, however, is not rooted in wider social contexts, and the cultural contours of being Maratha are not elaborated. Given the contestation over these symbols between multiple sites of power, the dominant register of Maratha identity in these bakhars is one of administrative and political authority and military leadership, rather than a clearly demarcated or fleshed-out Maratha social.

The Ideal Warrior-Chief let us turn to consider in some detail the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, also produced within this world of contested rights and expanding political and military power, which elaborates on the military context of Maratha identity. Many bakhars are replete with avenging oaths taken by warriors and

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their bloody fulfillment; interspersed with metaphors of heroes or villains or battles of the Mahabharata and other Puranic legends, the narratives put forward the template of an ideal warrior to be revered and emulated. Narratives of warriors and their bravery and the expression of veera rasa (martial courage) articulated a code and way of life for the military-bureaucratic elite of the Maratha state and represented its culture often as it was, but also frequently as it ought to be. The Bhausahebanchi bakhar, the graphic, fervid, and melodramatic account of the Panipat battle, is easily the most riveting of this genre, with many of the characters repeatedly rushing out of their tents, ready and eager to behead the enemy. As discussed in the previous chapter, this narrative attempts to analyze and account for the disastrous Maratha defeat, and its central conclusion is that the Marathas were themselves responsible. It presents this argument through a discussion of Marathi dharma as a cluster of moral values and code of behavior, and its importance in this turn of events. In doing so, the narrative allows us to glimpse attempts among the military-bureaucratic elite to identify, and redefine, what it was to be a Maratha as the state and its growing armies faced new challenges and environments in the eighteenth century. What was this Marathi dharma and what ought it to be? The narrative discusses this code in terms of specific fighting practices as well as broader military-cultural values. This is done repeatedly through comparisons with the values of the Rajputs, identified as “Hindustani dharma.” The Bhausahebanchi bakhar clearly comprehends the Rajputs, much like the Marathas themselves, not as a jati but as a broad attributional and relational category signaling a specific kind of military culture and ethos.19 Such discussions are usually cast in direct speech and conversations between two chiefs on the horns of a moral dilemma. The bakhar identifies such negotiations as more than just the normal business of warfare and diplomacy; moral dilemmas test the honor and code of behavior of the Marathas and their interlocutors all the time. Right at the beginning of the text during a campaign in Rajasthan, Jayappa Shinde is mulling over whether to help Surajmal Jat, even though this means opposing his own ally, Malharrao Holkar. Surajmal’s plea for help with turban in hand, symbolically indicating a brotherhood, throws him into a quandary. [After the Jat’s visit] Jayappa Shinde thought to himself, “If I side with one, I will be a traitor to my lord, and [if I side with the other], I will be

Representing Maratha Power 50 betraying my friend. . . . The Hindustani way is that a brother of the turban is a sacred ally and must be protected, but which way is right here and which way is wrong?” So he got together four strong and trusted chiefs, who deliberated on right and wrong and advised him, “Never turn away one who comes asking for help, never let him fear death, the law books say this is the right way.”20

At other points in the text, the Marathas usually come up short in this comparison. For instance, before the battle in Marwar against the Rajput chief Bijesing, Jayappa balks at the fearsome reputation of the Marwari Rajput armies, knowing that his men, used to guerrilla raiding tactics, will be no match for them. “These are Marwadi Rajputs, incredibly valorous; their bodies dance around even if they are beheaded. They . . . also have a lot of firepower. Our people are faint of heart to begin with, with steel weapons; tied to a tree, they will uproot it to try to flee. We were unsuccessful at one point but didn’t let that get us down. But what if we face failure again? We have two options: giving up our desh or our life.” But then Dattaji Shinde and a couple of other chiefs big and small reassured him: “You are serving the great, valorous Shrimant Nanasaheb. God will be with you. We are here to help Ramsing . . . turning back will be effeminate. The battle should happen; victory and failure will depend on the brave.” And so it was decided to go into battle. (90)

The battle is described as being bloody and evenly fought and later on, we read: They were Rajputs, Marwari Haras; of course their courage was not surprising. But the Marathas did put up a brave show. . . . Many Marathas were killed, but even so, they must feel that blessed were the Rajput mothers that bore such sons. (92)

Clearly, the Rajputs were not simply one military group among many, but also the one to be emulated by newer military forces such as the Marathas. However, there are some aspects of Rajput fighting practices that the Marathas in the text find difficult to follow, such as the practice of jauhar or killing off one’s women and children and going into suicidal battle. After

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Abdali routs Dattaji Shinde’s forces, there is some indecision among the Marathas about what to do next. Dattaji is eager to die fighting, but the other chiefs and his wife, Bhagiratibai, try to persuade him against it: “You are ready to die, but what sins have the children committed? We should send the camp beyond the Chambal for their sake, and let your destiny take its course.” Upon which Dattaji Shinde replied, furiously, “Nana, how can you say this? I too know my life is at its end. Why then should the women and children live? We should slaughter them and . . . die fighting on the battlefield. Defeat is worse than death.” To this Naro Shankar replied, “Patil, no doubt you will suffer as you have said. You can do that, but it is not possible to kill women and children. . . . The Shaka kings, the rajas of Bundi and Kota, and the Hara Rajputs can commit such acts, but the Marathas find it hard to break the bonds of affection. These things will not happen.” And so they returned to their camp. (157)

This admixture of defiance and admiration for Rajput or Hindustani military practice and values points to Maratha attempts to construct a separate, yet adequately honorable ethos and Marathi dharma for themselves in north India.21 This was based on their reliance on guerrilla warfare, which involved sudden raids and quick escape. The self-deprecatory, yet defiant tone used to describe these fighting practices suggests that the Maratha attempt to adapt to infantry, artillery, and other facets of north Indian plains warfare was driven as much by cultural motives as military ones. It was an attempt to shed tactics of flight and evasion, now perceived as a less honorable, cowardly form of battle, in favor of a more upfront and face-to-face, and therefore more honorable, form as they encountered new groups, terrains, and fighting codes. Besides Jayappa’s lament above about the Maratha propensity to run, there are several other such comments in the bakhar, which cast doubt on Maratha valor.22 The term used regularly to describe the Marathas and their military behavior here, and often interchangeably in most other places in the text, is Ganim. Literally meaning “enemy” in Marathi, the term captures the complex Maratha position of being both dominant and out of place in north India. On the one hand, simply calling themselves the Ganim suggests Maratha pride in being able to take on the Mughal empire, their newfound power in north India, and the fear they spread with their frequent raids.

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Certainly, the bakhar uses the term in this way, with several north Indian chiefs periodically expressing fear about facing the Dakshini Ganim or the southern enemy. On the other hand, the term Ganim, or Ganimi kava, also refers more specifically to the Maratha style of guerrilla warfare. It comes in for considerable criticism in the text as a style of fighting that is not only impractical in the north but also undesirable. The bakhar thus attempts to adapt the old Marathi dharma of guerrilla warfare that had paid rich dividends under Shivaji to a more practical, yet desirable and honorable technique, frequently by emulating and comparing Maratha performances and courage in battle favorably to the well-known Rajputs. This comparison and emulation takes place in much broader terms as well. The bakhar describes Marathi dharma in many different ways as a form of “Kshatriya dharma,” but this is expressed as a broad, elite ethos, not as a specific caste or jati marker. As noted above, the Rajputs too are conceived of in such broad terms, and the attributes of a true Kshatriya are exhorted in the text as a set of desirable values embodied by Maratha chiefs. These attributes are not restricted to military qualities; they also include good leadership, religiosity, and of course, morality. Recall that the Shindes, the favored chiefs in the narrative, are described repeatedly as conducting appropriate religious rituals and donations. The bakhar details their excellence at handling the army’s morale and keeping their soldiers satisfied even in times of severe inflation. Time and again, when at a low ebb after a defeat or a death, the Maratha chiefs urge one another to be brave and behave as true Kshatriyas. Consider Jayappa’s admonition to Dattaji when the latter bursts into tears at his deathbed: “The enemy is at hand and you weep like a widow? Does this suit your Kshatriya dharma? Nothing will happen to me. You should go defeat the enemy” (95, 97, 155). The text, however, acknowledges that no matter how laudable their qualities of leadership and generosity, if Marathas were to be Kshatriyas in the final analysis, they could no longer run away from the battlefield. That fighting to the end and being loyal to one ’s chief was also the proper Marathi dharma is indicated in the moving description of the final battle at Panipat, where despite the attempts of Bhau and the other chiefs, the Maratha men do begin to flee. Bhau, foaming at the mouth, does his best to rally them, and his loyal follower Tukoji Shinde applauds his Brahman chief, “Maharaj, you have excelled at your Kshatriya dharma.” Inspired by his master, Tukoji too jumps off his horse and plunges into battle, and the

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bakhar approvingly notes, “His heroism that day proved what the Marathi dharma was all about” (251). This inclusive interpretation of Kshatriya dharma is all the more interesting because, in striking contrast to the uniformly deferential attitude of all the chiefs to the Brahman Peshwa in the Peshwyanchi bakhar, the Bhausaheb narrative also makes explicit references to the jati tensions between Brahman chiefs and others within the Maratha fold, and the attempts by Shinde and Holkar to resist the Peshwa’s domination in central India. The irascible Malharrao Holkar, for instance, pragmatically advises the Shindes to keep the threat of the Rohilla leader Najib-ud-daulah alive in northern India in order to prevent the Peshwa from becoming all powerful: You are still young. There is now one kingdom from Attock to Rameshwar. Najibkhan is the only nuisance remaining. If he is removed, the Peshwa will bring revenue all the way from Attock through his messengers. Then you and I will become useless and nobody will ask for us. . . . If you destroy Najibkhan, the Peshwa will surely make you wash his dhotis. (128–129)

As the narrative moves toward the clash at Panipat with Ahmed Shah Abdali, it also dwells on Shinde and Holkar’s annoyance at the Peshwa’s newly arrived Brahman chiefs and followers in north India, led by his brother Sadashivrao Bhau. When Balwantrao, Bhau’s annoying Brahman confidant and advisor from Pune, taunts Holkar for being afraid of Abdali, the old man retorts: “You are Brahmans, totally feeble. You haven’t descended on earth from the heavens. Since you have never encountered the lion you can afford to say such things.” And he stormed out of the tent. Bhau was angered . . . and suspected Malharrao of being a traitor. (219)

Balwantrao later taunts Shinde and Holkar for resenting Bhau’s entry into Hindustan. This leads Jankoji Shinde, otherwise a cool-headed man, to exclaim, “Balwantrao, what are you saying? Is it we who have lost courage? What empires have you conquered?” Gathering his army later, he mutters angrily, “Surely, to lead a faulty army and to listen to a Brahman’s taunts is idiocy!” (230). Clearly, it was this articulation of resentment and skepticism that the Peshwyanchi bakhar’s depictions of the Peshwa’s military valor and

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the other chiefs’ deference to him, discussed earlier in the chapter, sought to counter. In spite of the unresolved tension between the Brahman and other chiefs, the Bhausaheb narrative continues to employ Maratha and Marathi dharma as an inclusive, military-cultural category. In contrast to the Chitnis bakhar’s sharp and uniform depiction of Hindu religious difference and consistent antagonism to the presence of mlecchas, the Bhausahebanchi bakhar presents a much more complex picture. We read, early in the text, an awestruck description of Ahmed Shah Abdali’s disciplined religiosity during his first invasion of Delhi, which allows only killing sanctioned by his faith: He looked at Najibkhan and . . . holding up a small dagger, yelled “Kill!” And his forces set about killing everything and everyone in sight. . . . Abdul Ali said his namaz and then sheathed his scabbard. The minute he did that mercy was proclaimed. The Gilchyas were very disciplined; that very second, even if their swords were at someone ’s neck, they stopped and let him go. (114–115)

Such a description surely suggests that Abdali was constructed in the text as a classic military and religious Other of the Marathas, condemned for his later destruction of their Hindu forces. However, when read alongside other equally awestruck descriptions of Abdali’s firmness and political sagacity, and matter-of-fact discussions of which kinds of killing were sanctioned by religion (and therefore legitimate) and which were not, the passage appears less as demonization and more as acceptance of, even respect for, a worthy adversary. Such discussions are found all over the text. They usually involve negotiations over a severed head, an important point of honor for Maratha chiefs. One example will suffice: [When Dattaji Shinde fell to the ground] Rajaram Chopdar saw Qutb Shah on his elephant and having known him for long, saluted him and . . . said in the Muslim tongue, “Saheb, our Patil has fallen, please save him.” Qutb Shah . . . asked him to take him there. Upon reaching Dattaji he asked him, “Patil, will you really fight us some more?” Dattaji, still alert, recognized his sarcasm and boldly replied, “Inshallah! If I am saved, I will certainly fight you some more!” Enraged, Qutb Shah unsheathed his sword, kicked Dattaji over, and

Representing Maratha Power 55 beheaded him, despite Rajaram’s pleas. . . . Najibkhan then gifted it to Abdul Ali, whose joy knew no bounds. . . . Rajaram Chopdar pleaded with Najibkhan, “Dattaji’s head was cut off; what happened has happened according to his destiny. You fulfilled your dharma as you should. Now, it’s a question of our Hindu dharma. There is no profit to you in keeping the head. [Your own officer] Umraogir Gosavi has many Marathas. They will bring the head and body together and take care of it.” Najib refused, and Rajaram went to Gosavi and pleaded, “You are also of the Hindu dharma. If you rescue Dattaji Shinde ’s head and cremate it, God will bless you and you will acquire great fame in the Deccan.” (170–171)

Umraogir Gosavi’s pleas also fall on deaf ears. Finally, when he reminds Shuja-ud-daulah, the ruler of Awadh, about how the Shindes in the past protected the honor of his father, the great Safdar Jung, Shuja-ud-daulah manages to persuade Ahmed Shah Abdali to relinquish Dattaji’s head, but only after the Marathas fork over a lot of money. It is noteworthy that the narrative sees no paradox in having Dattaji, a Hindu and Kshatriya Maratha chief in the text, exclaim “Inshallah!” even as it describes Urdu as a “Muslim” (avindhi, meaning unpierced ears) language, and has no problems describing the Rohilla leader Najib-ud-daulah as the Maratha chief Malharrao Holkar’s dharmaputra (adoptive or honorary son) earlier. Unlike the other bakhars discussed earlier in this chapter, therefore, the Bhausahebanchi bakhar’s understanding of Marathi dharma was not centered on Hindu exclusivity or the protection of cows, sacred temples, and Brahmans, but on invoking desirable military-cultural values for a broadly defined Maratha elite to follow. The preoccupation with correct practice, generosity, and leadership all indicate that this was not a popular ethos for the warrior-peasant masses; they are only hinted at, waiting in the wings to charge on behalf of their masters, and they regularly die in the thousands. At one point in the text, Marathi dharma also appears as a gendered code to refer to the seclusion of women practiced by elite families: Until Jankoji Shinde came back [from the battlefield], the women did not know Dattaji’s condition. When they heard the news [of his death], Bhagirathibai and Jankoji’s wife Kashibai came running out into the courtyard, both forgetting their Maharashtra dharma. (172)

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Powadas and Lavanis alongside the prose bakhars, there emerged during the Maratha period an extensive tradition of Marathi poetry called shahiri kavan. It comprised two related forms of the powada, a narrative commemorating momentous events and heroic actions of military figures, and the lavani, a bawdy love song, often with erotic overtones. Both forms were composed by poets known as shahirs; hence the term shahiri kavan. Usually, groups of Gondhalis, devotees of the goddess Bhavani, wandered the Maratha country, singing powadas during ceremonies and festivals. Similarly, lavanis were an integral part of the popular folk theater, Tamasha, but both forms of poetry were also performed on occasion by the shahirs themselves, summoned to court by chiefs to compose verse in their honor and celebration. Most of the 300-odd shahiri poems collected and published are from the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but some fragments from the later seventeenth century have also survived. Most nationalist scholars of this poetry have casually assumed that while lavanis were a disagreeable consequence of the dissoluteness of the later Peshwai, the heroic powadas were a natural by-product and spontaneous mass expression of Maratha patriotic fervor in the eighteenth century.23 Some recent scholarship, however, has attempted to explore the cultural matrix that gave rise to this poetry, and persuasively argues for its roots in traditions of heroic commemoration in Marathi folk religious practice. While R. C. Dhere has shown that commemorations of the pawad or heroism of deities and their self-mortifying devotees, such as those of Khandoba, developed into powadas about Maratha military prowess in the seventeenth century,24 D. A. Kulkarni’s detailed and thoughtful study of narrative practices in Marathi folk performances argues persuasively for a cross-pollination between older devotional forms and shahiri literature and shows how eighteenthcentury lavanis in the increasingly popular Tamasha drew upon existing Krishna–Radha motifs and erotic overtones in the repertoire of a range of devotional performers—Vasudevs, Vaghyas, Bharadis.25 The roots, transmission, and consumption of shahiri poetry, therefore, were in a wider religious and popular public tradition of the gondhal (a combination of rituals and storytelling during weddings, festivals, and other events) and were more popularly oriented than the praise singing of chiefs and legitimation of authority of such contemporary bardic traditions as the Rajasthani

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Charans or Bhats or the Gujarati Barots.26 However, with the establishment of the Maratha state, Marathi poetry developed a new social-political importance and became more closely linked to sources of political patronage. Studies of Rajasthani bardic traditions have highlighted the importance of heroic poetry as a powerful inspirational and ideological instrument for creating rallying symbols and values that reinforced popular loyalty and brought together diverse groups in support of military chiefs.27 One reason for the sharp increase in shahiri poetry under the Marathas was its ability to perform this ideological task and its increasing closeness to sources of political patronage. The bulk of the Maratha armies were drawn from the cultivating peasantry of the region, most of whom spent much of the year on campaigns north and south of their Deccan homeland but returned to tend their fields during the four-month-long monsoon. As the military activities and successes of Shivaji and his Maratha soldiers grew, the narratives about them with more local, earthy heroes replaced the older, more generic heroic stories of the gondhal. The powadas created a space within existing folk traditions for this mass of peasants, the rank and file of the Maratha armies, to take pride in Maratha political successes. The wandering Gondhalis and other performers frequently incorporated a local chieftain’s deeds and bravery into their songs during performances in his territory.28 One of the earliest powadas we have today, on Shivaji’s famous encounter with the Bijapur general Afzal Khan, was composed during Shivaji’s lifetime; the shahir Adnyandas writes at the end of the poem that Shivaji’s mother, Jijabai, had commissioned it to commemorate the victory.29 There were significant attempts, particularly by the Peshwas in the later eighteenth century, to influence this popular sphere for the purposes of political and social legitimation, and many of the popular shahirs were associated with the Peshwa’s court, composing several powadas and lavanis commissioned by the rulers. A popular powada on the Marathas’ recapture of the fort of Sinhagad from the Mughals and the martyrdom of the Maratha general Tanaji Malusare in the process, probably composed in the mid- to late seventeenth century, is an excellent example of how both loyalty to a chief or ruler and identification with the larger political tradition were simultaneously enabled in the powadas. The ballad begins with Jijabai wistfully wishing that the Sinhagad fort were back in the Marathas’ control. She summons Shivaji from Rajgad and bids him to play a game with her. After Jijabai wins, he begs her to ask something of him. She asks for Sinhagad, her favorite fort.

Representing Maratha Power 58 Facing Poona, beside Jejuri Stands the fort of Sinhagad Conquer it for me I will pray for your kingdom. (33)

When Shivaji entrusts Tanaji with the task of recapturing the fort from the Mughals, Tanaji is busy with his son’s wedding preparations. Turmeric laid out for the fifth day, the wedding date set for the sixth His child’s wedding all set up, and here come the orders for Sinhagad Rayba’s wedding was halted, Tanaji began rallying his chiefs The eighty-year-old Shelarmama warned him, my dear Subedar Tanaji Those who go on a Sinhagad campaign rarely come back. (40–41)

Unfazed, Tanaji continues to prepare for the assault. As he is about to leave, his son stops him in fear, and Tanaji assures him of his return. At the capital, Raigad, before the campaign, Jijabai blesses Tanaji with wealth and success, and he says to Shivaji: I leave now for Sinhagad, please take care of Rayba If I return I will perform his wedding, but if I don’t You should do it for me and give him my ancestral lands . . . Uphold the Malusare ’s lands and honor. (42)

At Sinhagad, Tanaji uses the ghorpad or mountain lizard with its tough claws to scale the fort, as was the practice, but this time it is unsuccessful. Enraged, he declares: Twenty-seven forts I have taken Never has the ghorpad failed me But I am a Maratha’s son And I do not fear death. (49)

Finally, he wins the fort back for the Marathas, but dies fighting. Shivaji, shattered by his death, personally escorts Tanaji’s body back to his village and consoles his son:

Representing Maratha Power 59 “Don’t fear, my son, Shivaji himself has died Henceforth I will be your Tanaji subedar.” (55)

The ballad then describes how Shivaji fulfills Tanaji’s last wish by performing Rayba’s wedding himself and installing him in his father’s office, “upholding the Malusare lands and honor.” It ends with the declaration, Brave men should listen to this powada of a brave man! Both the singer and the listener will acquire great merit.

Tanaji appears in the powada as an ordinary man with family attachments and duties, but also a brave and loyal general who gave his life for the Maratha cause. His life and this episode were a template for the ideal warrior of the Maratha armies, and a vehicle for ensuring the peasant masses’ greater identification with the objectives of those armies. These ordinary warrior-peasants and their concerns also figure prominently in the song. Before heading out to Rajgad, Tanaji begins assembling a force of 12,000 men, who are armed only with “sticks and sickles stuck at their waists.” Tanaji doles out cash to properly fit them out, but many of them still worry about whether the local shepherd who made warm cloaks for them will harass their wives when they are away. At Rajgad fort, the soldiers greedily devour an enormous meal Jijabai lays out for them before the campaign. Twelve thousand cups and twelve thousand saucers Twelve thousand plates and a freshly cooked meal Tanaji saw it all and was overwhelmed Eighteen courses, eighteen vegetables, everyone was served at once Half of them stood up and began to rush One asked for bread, another for sweets One asked for vegetables, the other for lentils With all this rush, the mother Jijabai was exhausted. (42–43)

Even though we may safely assume that Jijabai did not personally serve the entire army, she appears here as a loving and concerned mother not just to Shivaji but also to the wider Maratha population. As a seventeenth-century recruitment poster, this description of the soldiers’ good treatment works

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very well. Jijabai is prominent in a number of powadas and is as melodramatic in her worry for her son’s safety as she is unwavering in her confidence in his project. Almost a human avatar of the Bhavani encountered in bakhars, she could simultaneously symbolize the honorable purpose behind Shivaji’s activities and underscore his humanity and ordinariness to the common people who heard the ballad. Shivaji certainly appears as the ideal ruler, who cares for his warriors and their families and most importantly, keeps his word. The powada projects him quite literally as a leader to die for, but he is simultaneously rendered human and accessible; he is, ultimately, a loving son who plays games with his mother and is eager to do her bidding. This process of rendering familiar a distant chief whom most ordinary people had never seen, nor could hope to see, was certainly part of the powadas’ ideological function. One way this was achieved was through an intense visual description of Shivaji or the other heroes. Adnyandas’s powada details Shivaji’s preparation before the meeting with Afzal Khan at the foothills of Pratapgad: Shivaji asked his good people “How should I go to the meeting?” The guard Krishnaji warned, “Shiva-ba, wear your armor!” He who wore God’s armor, needed but a thin robe and silk pants Dagger to his left, tiger claws to his right A loose shirt on the top cummerbund fastened Pearls around his neck, a colored scarf from Jija-u Breaking the shackles, Shivaji the leader set off. (17)

This description of Shivaji’s bearing and dress was arguably well known, for there is a similar one—including the tiger claws that Shivaji surely didn’t wear every day—in Tulshidas’s visualization of the ruler. Another way chiefs appeared much closer and ordinary to the powada’s audiences was through colloquial conversations and outbursts produced by a range of emotions. Thus, we see Jijabai wistfully longing for her favorite fort, and Tanaji annoyed that his son’s wedding preparations have been disrupted and later suffering a crisis of confidence when his plans to scale the fort are thwarted. Throughout, the sane and reasonable older man Shelar mama, through an earthy, colloquial style, cajoles, consoles, and encourages the younger soldier to rise to his duty and do his chief ’s bidding.

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Commemorations of brave chiefs and momentous battles continued in the powadas of the eighteenth century, and it is not surprising that the battle of Panipat was a favorite subject. The famous shahir Saganbhau’s powada manages to combine beautifully an upbeat, rhythmic description of the army’s preparation before the battle with the horrors of the Maratha defeat after: All the chiefs from the ninety-six clans who gathered, Here are their names in detail. . . . Dhaigude, Paigude, More, Shedge, Pandhare Khallate, Lokhande, Bhise, Hatkar, Waghmare Shelke, Bolke, Kale, Kharade, innumerable Shirke, Mahadik, Misal, Pisal . . . the dependable. (107)

After a long and breathless description of the negotiations leading up to the battle and the final skirmish, the powada describes the sinking fortunes and the scattering of the Maratha army: The very mountains began to tremble as anger gathered in the brave soldiers Cutting down others, they surged forward. . . . Hero came up against hero, horsemen against each other. . . . Three thousand horses lost and the elephants Eighty thousand of Holkar’s men, nowhere to be seen Infantry soldiers falling everywhere, dry throats gasping for water Innumerable wounds as headless bodies danced The sun too lost courage and went to hide. (119–120)

Powadas and lavanis became increasingly dense, informative, and proselike by the later eighteenth century, and many have been found as written documents in the private collections and records of various chiefs, not collected orally from gondhalis. We know that shahirs of the early nineteenth century in particular, many resident at the Peshwa’s court, composed their poetry by consulting existing documents on the subject. Many of the famous shahirs like Ram Joshi, Anant Phandi, Honaji Bala, and Prabhakar, although not always resident at the court in Pune, were very popular with the Peshwas Sawai Madhavrao and Bajirao II.30 Much of the verse from the later years of the Peshwai is very strongly concerned with underscoring

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the virtuous and benevolent leadership of the Peshwa family itself. Most interesting is the long poem Madhavgranth by Anant Phandi, a shahir from a gondhali family in Ahmednagar district, well respected at the Maratha court at the turn of the nineteenth century. The poem tells the story of the Peshwa Sawai Madhavrao’s suicide in 1795 and the events leading up to the accession of Bajirao II. Bajirao himself commissioned it and supplied the shahir with letters and other material as sources. It indicates the ways these poetic forms were employed not only as entertainment but also as legitimating accounts of the past for posterity: Long ago the exploits of the Pandavas Doings of kings and happenings in palaces Read about in Damajipant’s bakhars These lines too will tell such stories.31

Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that shahiri poetry in the later Peshwai also became a site for articulating competing versions of recent events.32 Although some of the poems, especially those written during the reign of the final Peshwa Bajirao II, are unabashedly sycophantic, others are critiques of and commentaries on events and personalities. Consider another powada on Panipat, which not only celebrates the heroics of Sadashivrao Bhau and laments his death but also describes in detail the dispersal of the Maratha forces and pronounces it shameful: A jewel like Bhausaheb, why did he leave us? . . . Vishwasrao the brave soldier, a true prince Charged through the forces with sword in hand Bullets showering all around him, the chief in their midst Cut open countless enemies Bhau told him to turn back, even as a bullet struck the warrior He cried out Hari hara as he fell A jewel like Bhausaheb. . . . Those who were under Bhau’s spell stayed on the field The traitors ran away to the Deccan to safeguard their own lands God will ensure their destruction, for giving the enemy victory Bhau’s spell entranced man and woman alike, old and young A jewel like Bhausaheb.33

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As the Maratha state expanded in the eighteenth century, powadas, like the bakhars considered above, became sites for representing Maratha power. The capital, Pune, grew into a prosperous city in this period, and not surprisingly, there are several powadas in celebration of this prosperity. A composition by Ram Joshi, one of the most popular shahirs of the eighteenth century, describes the city as follows: A veritable Lanka, Pune has not a trace of poverty. . . . No town has ever been built like this one. . . . Grand palaces and houses of the rich Straight and shining roads everywhere Everyone is happy in this city, rarely any begging And those who do it at all do it for religious reasons The ramparts around the temple of Parvati on the hill Steps as if crashing down to the ground No dearth of food here, and the priests pray to Uma-Maheshwar Golden statues dressed in bright yellow, Soldiers guarding them at all times Across the lake and the waterfall The Ganpati temple. . . . All around, enjoyment is inevitable Where do I stop describing these sights?34

The prominence of religion and its patronage are striking in this powada; it begins by extolling the strength of the “Brahman raj.” Honaji Bala’s powada on Bajirao II’s reign reflects not only the strongly adulatory tones but also the decadence and self-indulgence often noted of the last days of the Peshwai: Blessed the lords Peshwas, the heart gladdens at the sight of their prosperity Enemy after enemy beaten back to obscurity They have made the land happy, saffron rice cooked in every kitchen Neck-deep in ghee, honoring gentlemen and ascetics.35

As a performative form that was part of folk religious and narrative traditions, shahiri poetry surely had great potential for interpolation and adaptation, as vehicles of representation for the world in which they were transmitted, where both audience and performers were common folk—drawn from

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the same Maratha peasantry that periodically served in military campaigns. V. L. Bhave noted several decades ago that powadas and lavanis were not distinct forms of poetry but served as two mirrors of a warrior-peasant culture.36 If the powadas were overtly concerned with masculine heroics, the lavanis served as a site for re-creating the larger environment of which the Maratha soldiers were a part—the village they would return to in the monsoon, the wives who awaited their arrival, the cultural practices they would participate in after returning from a campaign, and even the horses that were so integral to the Maratha light cavalry. The ordinary warrior appears thus in a lavani by Honaji Bala: A handsome man just so Like nectar in the universe Thirty-two qualities overflowing Just ask him where he ’s come from! Slim and short in stature, fair and fine smelling. . . . So playful, my dear girl, with his paan-stained mouth! . . . His dark and well-dressed looks He’s surely from some noble place. . . . A brave warrior is a jewel among thousands.37

Although composed by and for an exclusively male audience at the Peshwa’s court but performed by lower-caste female dancers, usually slaves in the dancing houses and other departments of the palace, the lavanis are cast as female narratives, invoking themes of love, longing, and challenges to fidelity in the long periods of separation due to war and far-off campaigns: This vast ocean of separation When will I cross, o dear When will my chief return?38

Some lavanis were adapted from older devotional songs of the Vaghya murali folk traditions, with Krishna himself appearing as a Maratha warrior and the curses heaped on him by the gopis of Mathura coarse and colloquial Marathi ones.39 It is important, however, to also emphasize the elite constraints on this popular genre, especially at the turn of the nineteenth century. The

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experience of wars, long campaigns, and separation that formed part of the ordinary Maratha warrior’s world entered shahiri poetry, especially the lavanis, as part of wider ideological constructions of propriety, sexuality, and adultery, produced for elite consumption at the Peshwa’s court. Sharmila Rege has argued that these compositions increasingly took on an explicitly erotic idiom in the later decades of the Peshwai, especially during the reign of the last Peshwa Bajirao II, when the numbers of female slaves in the government’s employ increased and the trade in female slaves became an important source of revenue.40 Lavanis, in this context, became a site for articulating a desirable and controlled female sexuality, sharply contrasting the uncontrolled and illegitimate sexuality of the dancer/prostitute with the love and longing of the faithful wife, and the construction of the innate adulterous tendencies and insatiable sexuality of lower-caste women served as a legitimating argument for this appropriation of their sexual labor. In this context of the construction of a desirable femininity alongside an idealized, courageous and masculine Maratha soldier, we can consider the term Marathmola. Often used to describe the lavani form as a deeply rooted popular and rural form of entertainment, it also appears frequently in the lavanis themselves. Translated as “practices peculiar to the genuine Maratha,” the word conveys the idea of a Maratha quintessence, something integral to the culture and values and used in tandem with the word assal or “true,” emphasizing a core or essence. Lines such as “[Where is] your Marathmola! Walk carefully, people will talk, telling you, woman, don’t show off,” penned by Ram Joshi, suggest this articulation of a chivalrous code that sought to identify clear boundaries of appropriate masculine and feminine behavior in a popular idiom.41 Marathmola can be seen as articulating and fleshing out a gendered cultural matrix of the Maratha warriorpeasantry; it evoked a more popular world than the one witnessed in the bakhars, but nevertheless a world deeply implicated in elite consumption and values. From the nineteenth century onward, the term emerged as a marker of “truly elite” Maratha families, and was increasingly applied almost exclusively to the seclusion of women as a sign of elite status, as the lavani itself came under harsh criticism from the new middle classes for its “obscenity” and “vulgarity.”42 The regular commemoration of events, heroes, and battles in powadas and their circulation via the wandering gondhali performers, then, was crucial to the emergence of a historical memory of the Maratha military successes and

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rulers in a social context wider than the bureaucratic elite of the state. Indeed, increased elite patronage may be seen as an indicator of the power of the powada form to shape and contribute to this historical memory. Within existing folk religious practices and performance milieus, however, ordinary soldiers and their concerns also crept into narratives, and their exploits were commemorated along with their chiefs’, even if the soldiers served primarily as loyal lieutenants. As the Englishman Thomas Coats observed about the Maratha peasantry in the early nineteenth century, They are fond of conversation, discuss the merits of agriculture, the characters of their neighbours and every thing that relates to the concerns of the community, and many of them are not without a tolerable knowledge of the leading events of the history of their country.43

To recall Sumit Guha’s argument from the last chapter, this renewal of historical memory also took place as a public activity through the settling of disputes and policy, and involved the participation of diverse social groups. Also, on the writer’s part, the historiographic practice of the bakhar involved drawing not only on older bakhars and administrative documents but also on this broader historical memory, fed by written narratives, public testimonies, Puranic knowledge, and the popular commemorative tradition of powadas. Although produced and transmitted through different cultural practices, then, the bakhars and shahiri poetry did not operate totally separately; a fascinating feature of the circulation of ideas and images of historical events and personalities in these narratives is their intertextuality. Familiar idioms, metaphors, narrative situations and descriptive styles recur not just in different bakhars ascribed to different personalities and periods but also in the shahiri poetry. The cross-pollination takes place in both directions; only by chronologically fixing the specific episodes or personalities being described in either the powada or the bakhar can we surmise which form was borrowing from which. Between bakhars, therefore, the Peshwyanchi bakhar contains a description of Nanasaheb Peshwa’s defiant incognito visit, as a good Brahman, to Benares for a dip in the Ganga despite the danger presented by Shuja-ud-daula of Awadh.44 The story is remarkably similar to one in many other narratives of Shivaji’s devout nature and insistence on coming to a small temple in Poona to listen to Tukaram’s kirtan (sermon), despite Shaistakhan’s control over the

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town. The description of Bajirao’s lover Mastani’s fair skin, so pale that paan juice is visible in her delicate throat when swallowed, similarly uses a familiar benchmark to convey just how beautiful she is.45 When Bajirao and the Nizam of Hyderabad meet in the same narrative, the latter’s zenana (women’s quarters) is all aflutter with the news of Bajirao’s good looks.46 In the Sabhasad text, it is aflutter with rumors of Shivaji’s handsome bearing instead.47 Describing the honor and bravery of the Hara Rajputs against whom the Marathas put up a valiant fight in Rajasthan, the Bhausahebanchi bakhar comments, fairly awestruck, that when defeated Rajputs came back to camp, only those with wounds in the front of their bodies were tended to by their wives, and those injured in the back were abandoned.48 Remarkably, this same sign of honorable battle is mentioned in contemporary Telugu and Tamil narratives on the ill-fated Desingu Raja of Senji, whose queen demands to know how he was wounded before deciding to commit sati by joining him on his funeral pyre.49 Such intertextual examples abound between the bakhars and the powadas as well, but a few examples should suffice. Given the remarkable similarity of Sabhasad’s and Adnyandas’s descriptions of Shivaji’s preparations before going to meet Afzal Khan, it is tempting to argue that the former had actually heard this very ballad.50 Certainly, Sabhasad’s repetitive descriptions of Shivaji’s caring for chiefs who gave their lives in battle resonate strongly with the imagery in Tulshidas’s Tanaji powada. A grisly story of the Maratha attempts to recover the severed head of Dattaji Jadhav from the Mughals after the Purandar campaign in a late seventeenth-century powada appears in the Bhausahebanchi bakhar a hundred years latter, this time fitted to the severed head of Dattaji Shinde.51 Stories of heroism, superhuman physical prowess, and honor also tended to be disengaged from their specific, original context and used as templates to describe the adventures and exploits of many ordinary soldiers, along with their chiefs.

Power and Identity the question of who the Marathas were, how they perceived their role in the politics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India, and the extent to which that role was rooted in a sense of broad-based political and cultural identity has tended to be polarizing. Indeed, the long-term contestation

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over this very question in western Indian society forms the subject of this book. As subsequent chapters will show, if the standard stereotype of the Marathas in British colonial discourse was as predators and marauders with no real sense of belonging, to Marathi nationalist historians and leaders during the colonial period, they were the subcontinent’s first nationalists. Many of these historians believed the Marathas fought not just against foreign rule but emphatically to protect their Hindu identity from Muslim rule. More recent scholarly work on the Maratha state and its expansion in the eighteenth century has debunked both the colonialist stereotypes and the sweeping nationalist generalizations and has illuminated in painstaking empirical detail the complex relationship between the Maratha and Mughal states. The picture of the diffuse nature of Maratha power and of the Marathas as quasi-Mughal gentry, however, has sat uneasily with the one put forward in other recent research on the ideological origins of Shivaji’s state and the question of a Maratha regional homeland in the eighteenth century. C. A. Bayly has argued that the Marathas formed a “patria” and represent the “paradigmatic example of pre-colonial patriotisms” in India.52 All three conditions deemed critical for the development of a “patria” are present: the Bhakti tradition, which ensured greater social cohesion along the axes of culture and language; state efforts to consciously foster a common Maratha identity; and the reinforcement of such an identity through the memorialization of conflicts with the Mughal and Bijapuri Others.53 More recently, James Laine has also argued for the conscious foregrounding of Hindu symbols by the Maratha state under Shivaji and the shaping of Shivaji’s biographical story over the eighteenth century into “a narrative of Hindu identity in its opposition to Islam.”54 While works emphasizing the intricacies of revenue power-sharing have elided representations of the state and its power, works highlighting these representations have ignored the many contestations that underlie them and, in the case of Bayly, assume their roots in popular sentiments of patriotism.55 The bakhar narratives, even as they implicitly acknowledged the numerous sites of authority that obtained within the Maratha state and the intricacies of power sharing among them and with rivals such as the Mughals, nevertheless sought to represent Maratha power as different, centralized and uniform. The centralizing drive and the expression of difference through idioms of Brahmanical values, Hindu exclusivity, and a uniform hostility to the Mughals as a Muslim Other were themselves part of this

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process of power sharing and contestation within the Maratha political framework from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. An older, prescriptive cluster of religious values and appropriate Brahmanical practice signified by Maharashtra dharma was thus annexed in some of these narratives to an idealized and centralized conception of the Maratha political, fusing idioms of religious and political difference. However, this centralized domain and its idioms of Maharashtra dharma remained a site of sharp contestation between different actors such as the Bhosales at Satara and the Peshwas at Pune, and continued to be interrogated and resisted by others within the Maratha fold. Moreover, as this chapter has shown, the concept of Maharashtra dharma itself, although loosely understood as a cluster of values and code of appropriate behavior, was hardly uniformly designated as Brahmanical values and ritual adherence, much less rooted in a clearly identified Maratha social, but was variously applied in different contexts. As a moral code of conduct, it signified a range of meanings from the protection of temples and the patronage of Brahmans to the militarycultural values for elite Maratha chiefs. Therefore, rather than viewing Maharashtra dharma as a generalized moral order reflective of an equally generalized Maratha patriotism nurtured by an egalitarian Bhakti atmosphere and religious cohesion, as Bayly does, it is important to highlight these varied applications of the category in different contexts. The crystallization of a language community did take place in medieval Maharashtra along the axis of Bhakti. As seen here, however, a specifically hierarchical understanding of this devotional tradition, as represented by the Brahman saint-poet Ramdas, informed the idioms of Hindu religious difference put forward as part of the political legitimacy of the Maratha state. Critiques of priest-dominated ritual and hierarchy certainly formed a hallmark of Marathi devotional poetry, and the world of military opportunity offered the possibility of upward mobility into the category of Kshatriyas in the eighteenth century. However, these critiques cannot be generalized into a “Maharashtrian moral order” that was disdainful of caste differences, because this would suggest an egalitarianism in western Indian society that did not exist, certainly not in the Brahmanical values by which the state projected its legitimate authority under the Peshwai in the eighteenth century.56 Bakhar narratives not only represented a particular sense of the past and Marathi historiographic practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

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but also served as important sites for representing the ideological underpinnings of the Maratha state and articulating the legitimacy of its multiple sites of authority. Alongside these prose narratives, shahiri poetry celebrated the world of the ordinary Maratha warrior and created a space for the warriorpeasant backbone of the Maratha state to participate in this new political entity. Rather than being a pristine representation of popular Maratha cultural identity, however, it was mediated through elite patronage and hierarchy, and performed the important ideological task of generating desirable values of fidelity, courage, and steadfastness. Both genres, with porous boundaries, contributed to the formation, over time, of a popular historical memory of the Maratha military and political exploits. Narratives of the past were used to highlight the legitimacy of different sites of political authority in the precolonial period structured around lineages, official administrative positions, and royal claims. But in spite of their representations of the expanding and, at times, abstract Maratha state as embodying specific religious and military-cultural values and institutions, they did not carry a sense of a generalized Maratha “social” and did not reflect larger social categories. History in bakhar historiographic practice, therefore, was not harnessed to a “collective” Maratha identity, but recognized and worked within multiple and contested organizing principles of political power. In the nineteenth century, as western India encountered colonial modernity, historical narratives would be mapped onto larger social categories, increasingly bounded and enumerated, and historiography would emerge as the terrain for the imagination of new, modern communities. It is this transformation that the rest of this book will address.

 3  History, Print, and Education

In 1818, the Peshwa state was snuffed out and the British military presence, already considerable by the turn of the nineteenth century in western India, was formally established in the form of Company rule. British government in Maharashtra was accompanied by a series of historical surveys of this process, and set in motion efforts to take a more comprehensive look at the political entity that had preceded colonial power. As James Cuninghame Grant Duff ’s magnum opus, History of the Mahrattas, famously began: The want of a complete history of the rise, progress and decline of our immediate predecessors in conquest, the Mahrattas, has been long felt by all persons conversant with the affairs of India; insomuch that, it is very generally acknowledged, we cannot fully understand the means by which our own vast empire in that quarter was acquired until this desideratum be supplied.1

The publication of this history in 1826 signaled the twilight of not just the political world of the Marathas but also the intellectual practices that had shaped the historical bakhar narratives. It heralded the beginning of a new historiographical discourse. As in other regions of India, the nineteenth century witnessed new histories by European, especially British, writers and the emergence of new perceptions and practices of history among Indians.

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This chapter and the next critically examine this transformation. This chapter first outlines the emergence of a historical view of the Marathas in British colonialist discourse, its principal features, and its underlying philosophical perspectives. It then considers the structural changes in society and politics brought by colonialism, especially the impact of Western liberal education, the emergence of a Western-educated intelligentsia and its caste base, and the introduction of Western historiography to the new Marathi intelligentsia through printed books, colonial classrooms, and syllabi. Together with the next chapter, which looks at the intellectual debates over the meaning and method of history, it examines the broad conditions that enabled a new historiographic practice to emerge in the later decades of the nineteenth century.

James Grant Duff and the Marathas english histories of the Marathas began well before the formal subjugation of Maratha power in 1818. Late eighteenth-century surveys of the declining Mughal Empire and the ascendant power of the East India Company in the subcontinent usually included information about skirmishes between the British and the Marathas as well, but mainly about Shivaji.2 Many of these drew not only on Company dispatches and records of the India Office but also on earlier, seventeenth-century travel accounts. In the posthumously published, but elaborate and influential eighteenth-century narrative, Historical Fragments of the Moghul Empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan, Robert Orme, the historiographer of the Company, drew heavily on the works of Bernier, Tavernier, and Thevenot besides the Bombay and Surat Factory records to project a somewhat awestruck image of Shivaji and his military successes. Orme’s curiosity about the Marathas at the time was stoked not by a sense of their being a military threat to the Company but by the popular reputation and mystique of the figure of Shivaji reported in the travelogues and dispatches. He accordingly presented a breathless account of the Maratha leader as the principal military thorn in the mighty Aurangzeb’s side.3 Although Company officials initially made considerable use of the Indian rulers’ system of newsletters and writers for their own informationgathering purposes, by the early nineteenth century they came to see this

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network as somewhat farcical, and to view the penchant for recording and narrating anecdotes and exaggeration with increasing suspicion.4 The growing mistrust of native agents and Maratha networks of information underscored the need for independent analyses as the British presence grew in the region. Colonialist historical narratives on western India thus began as part of Company surveys and analyses of recently conquered lands, with a view especially to disentangling details of existing administrative practice, revenue arrangements, and the like.5 One such survey was Mountstuart Elphinstone’s Report on the Territories Conquered from the Peishwa, written soon after the formal takeover of power in 1818.6 The principal document setting out an expansive civil and administrative policy for stabilizing colonial rule in the Maratha territories, Elphinstone’s narrative sought to ascertain which areas were absolutely vital to British interests and which could be given away, if necessary, to native rulers in exchange for peace. In sorting out the intricacies of land and revenue arrangements and police and justice methods, which as Commissioner of the Deccan he was in charge of overseeing, Elphinstone resorted to a “hasty view of the history of the Mahrattas.” This early historical statement, therefore, grew out of immediate political imperatives of stabilizing, even extending, British power in the region. Elphinstone’s exercise for western Maharashtra was matched by John Malcolm’s 1823 memoir-cumpolicy statement, A Memoir of Central India, Including Malwa and Adjoining Provinces and Richard Jenkins’s Report on the Territories of the Raja of Nagpore, published in 1827. Educated at the University of Edinburgh in the late eighteenth century, Elphinstone drew his ideas about the wider meaning, constitution, and method of history from the teachings of the Scottish Enlightenment and its idea of a “philosophical history,” which placed contemporary human actions within a wider framework of the natural and cultural environment, and marked them along an evolutionary scale from barbaric to civilized. Of course, the “hegemonic” text that viewed the Indian past through this approach was James Mill’s 1817 work The History of British India. Elphinstone was deeply critical of Mill’s extreme contempt for and Utilitarian approach to all things Indian. Along with other Company officials in the region, such as James Mackintosh and William Erskine, he was impressed with the work of Orientalist researchers in Calcutta, and encouraged similar work in western India through the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and

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the Bombay Literary Society. All these men, however, shared with Mill the broad framework of a “philosophical history,” especially the urge to produce a narrative of India from ancient to present times that would provide not just fragmentary textual glimpses, but a comprehensive understanding of its people, their predilections, and their achievements in the context of the progress of human civilization.7 As we shall see below, this conceptual approach to the writing of history among early British officials, especially on the part of Elphinstone, would deeply influence the production of James Grant Duff ’s “hegemonic” historical narrative on the Marathas. After taking over power in 1818, the Company reinstated the Satarabased king Pratapsingh, a descendant of Shivaji, as the head of the Maratha kingdom, in an effort to symbolically delegitimize the Peshwas and underline their historical role as Brahman usurpers of power from Shivaji’s rightful heirs. The supervision of the Peshwai’s dissolution in Pune and negotiations with various Maratha chiefs gave Elphinstone both a taste of the kind of contemporary Marathi historical materials that existed in the region and the power to acquire them on a large scale from Maratha officials at all levels. As many Company officials collected, translated, and edited many of the existing Persian and Marathi historical materials they came across, they came to share in the important consensus within Indological scholarship about the lack of a proper historiographical method in precolonial India, and in the conviction that it was up to the British to “get at facts and to combine them with judgment so as to make a consistent and rational history out of a mass of gossiping bukkurs and gasconading tawareekhs.”8 Born in 1789, James Grant Duff joined the Bombay Native Infantry as an eighteen-year-old, and took part in much of the final military subjugation of the Marathas. His military prowess brought him to the attention of Elphinstone, who appointed him Political Agent at Satara after the Peshwa government was dissolved and Pratapsingh was installed as a puppet ruler. Grant Duff remained at this post until his departure for England for health reasons in 1823. Much of the research and writing for his History of the Mahrattas was done during this period.9 Elphinstone not only encouraged Grant Duff to take up the project but also continuously guided him throughout the process by supplying both materials and the underlying historical approach. The correspondence between the two men shows the extent to which Elphinstone’s ideas and critiques of the existing debates between the Orientalists and Anglicists shaped Grant Duff ’s work.10 While Elphinstone

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emphasized the necessity of Company officials using their own personal impressions in interpretation and judgment, he also alerted Grant Duff to the importance of the method of the “philosophical history” outlined above. Grant Duff ’s caveat at the beginning of his narrative therefore rejected both the “injudicious praise . . . lavished on the learning and virtue of the Hindoos” and the “still more injudicious censure” that sought to counter it and emphasized that future officers of the Company had to come and experience for themselves both the good and the bad that India had to offer. Taking this middle road, he sought to reveal the first “complete history” that documented the “rise, progress and decline” of the Marathas over time. Through a long perspective, he sought deeper, civilizational explanations for their eventual defeat by the British. After reading some early chapters, Elphinstone approvingly wrote of this approach, “The wholeness of your subject is one of its greatest beauties.”11 Grant Duff began his narrative by sketching in the geography and natural features of the Deccan, then moved on to describe the caste-based divisions of the primarily Hindu population, their treatment of women, and their basic religious belief systems and superstitions. His knowledge of these belief systems and the idea of the caste system came from Orientalist scholarship in the pages of the Asiatic Researches as well as local informants, and his framing of the local story into the larger Indological narrative of Indian “essences” is clear: “In Maharashtra, and indeed throughout all the country of the Hindoos, next to their singular arrangement into castes, the most striking feature in their polity is the division of the whole country into villages, each of which forms a distinct community.”12 Within these “preliminary observations” of a seemingly fixed system of belief, social division, and village life, he placed the central category of his narrative, the “Mahrattas.” Although mindful of the somewhat inconsistent regional application of the term to the mass of cultivators as well as to a small military elite,13 Grant Duff used it throughout his work to indicate the entire population of Maharashtra, as a nation and a people. Grant Duff ’s narrative thus drew generalizations on the character of the population as a whole, weaved in all the individual personalities it described as being either representative of a “Mahratta” character or exceptional to it, and added all the events of western Indian politics and society into a history of an overarching “Mahratta” category. His characterization and generalization of this category is uneven, which stems from his

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attempt to provide a complete civilizational explanation in a nutshell as he believed a good history ought to, while trying to incorporate all the facts he was able to lay his hands on through Marathi manuscripts and his own personal experience. Throughout the text, therefore, we find references to individual personalities whom Grant Duff found worthy of generous praise and admiration, from Shivaji in the seventeenth century to Madhavrao Peshwa in the eighteenth. His private correspondence also reveals deep, abiding friendships he formed with various people while in Satara, including the puppet ruler Pratapsingh, and Grant Duff often referred to himself as a “Maharatta Manoos” or Maratha man by the end of his stay.14 His personal sympathy for the Marathas with whom he interacted was undoubted; in his historical narrative, however, his urge to explain specific events and processes in terms of an unchanging disposition of the people as a whole led him to make generalized judgments that were usually pejorative, very occasionally positive. One of the most important of these judgments involved a detailed exposition on the Maratha population as unaware and unappreciative of Shivaji’s ambitions, and a reluctance to term the ambitions themselves as born of patriotic feeling.15 This conviction regarding the lack of coherent sentiment and moral fiber underlying Maratha activities led Grant Duff to argue that the Marathas were able to rise only because the states they fought against were in disarray. As the narrative proceeded into the eighteenth century, this argument grew into an indictment of the Maratha armies as indiscriminate and somewhat uncouth predators, and of the “Bramin character” represented by the Peshwai as deceitful and treacherous. The crystallization of the Marathas as a historical category worthy of independent analysis, outside the larger story of the Mughal Empire in which earlier writers had placed it, is no doubt the central, historiographical importance of James Grant Duff ’s work. By considering the military and political activities of Shivaji within the activities and character of the broader Maratha population, it served to regionally focus events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a larger, coherent narrative that put a seal, as it were, on the British takeover from the Marathas and symbolized British triumph through its pronouncements on Maratha politics and society. For all practical purposes, Grant Duff ’s word on Maratha history now became final; as Elphinstone noted, through his historiographical endeavor, “Sivajee, Sumbajee and Ram Raja now [stood] in full light, as

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simple and intelligible as Hyder and Tippoo,” now mercifully quiescent under Pax Brittanica.16 This regional focus and Grant Duff ’s generalizations about Maratha character were deeply influential in framing the arguments of Marathi historians in the late nineteenth century as they began to look toward Maratha history for a nationalist historiography.

History Workshop the detailed notes and references at the end of this voluminous and important work provide a good glimpse into its making. Although Grant Duff had at hand earlier English sources of authority such as Orme’s Fragments, Mill’s British India, and other histories of the Deccan, several Company officials also helped him sort out materials from the official records of Company government at Bombay, Surat, Calcutta, and the India Office, and even the Portuguese government at Goa obliged him with help. While some of his colleagues who were better at Persian translated older narratives from that language for him, he also voraciously collected Marathi “records of temples and private repositories . . . family legends, imperial and royal deeds, public and private correspondence, and state papers . . . law suits and law decisions; and manuscripts of every description.” Grant Duff also noted that much of this material initially came his way from deposed chiefs “for the purpose of substantiating just claims, or setting up unfounded pretensions.”17 It is not clear how much Marathi he read or spoke, but he was familiar with some Persian and Urdu; at any rate, he had over a hundred such narratives translated both by English and Marathi-speaking servants of the Company, besides assembling older, knowledgeable people at the Satara court such as Balwantrao Chitnis (a relative of the Chitnis mentioned in earlier chapters), Aba Parasnis, and Balajipant Natu to help him with details, clarifications, and acquisition of more materials. In describing the tremendous resources at his disposal in creating his narrative, A. R. Kulkarni has rightly called the making of the History of the Mahrattas a veritable “history workshop.”18 For the bulk of his narrative, Grant Duff relied on Marathi bakhars. The Sabhasad and Chitnis narratives, besides a number of others on Shivaji’s life, were his main sources for the seventeenth century, and he mentions having used about twenty different narratives on the early history of the

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Peshwas; it is really only for the later eighteenth century onward that he relied more on English records. Unlike some earlier scholars, Grant Duff did not debate the relative trustworthiness of Persian and Marathi narratives; in his opinion, they were all equally to be viewed with some suspicion. Although he does call them “histories,” his summary mention of “Mahratta MSS” in his references without specifying any details reveals his treatment of them as raw materials rather than proper historical works. Differing accounts of the same event in multiple narratives only added to his suspicion, as did the liberal use of hyperbole. Having seen the importance of historical documents for the negotiation of land and social claims in the region, Grant Duff was also convinced that more materials existed that were hidden from him, and there is some evidence that he might have been right. Pratapsingh, despite regarding the Scotsman as a friend and mentor, was not entirely happy about having to give up all kinds of documents to him. For his part, Grant Duff pointed out that Pratapsingh had made no good use of the materials despite having had them for so long, and suggested that his using them to publish a book abroad would only be to Pratapsingh’s benefit. Despite this tantalizing promise of global publicity, however, control over the records and their interpretation for Grant Duff appears to have become a site of resistance for Pratapsingh.19 Grant Duff, when not demanding more material, badgered Chitnis, Parasnis, and Natu for interpretations of policy terms and explanations for events in the materials that he did have. His questions were foundational, always seeking the origin and justification of specific policies and concepts such as chauth and sardeshmukhi and was frustrated by what he deemed inconsistent answers. Chitnis and Parasnis, for their part, resented the insistent cross-examination, especially the charge that the exaggeration in the bakhars implied falsehood,20 and it is tempting to argue that their perpetual foot-dragging in fulfilling his demands, which irritated Grant Duff immensely, were weapons of the weak. Pratapsingh’s injunction to Chitnis on how to respond to these demands and charges suggests both the importance the bakhar narratives held in the older regime as a legitimate record of the past and the resistance, albeit weak, posed to their dismissal: Always base your answers on the bakhar that has been given to him. It is what contains all previous knowledge. . . . Do not insist on anything. There is no

History, Print, and Education 79 point in insisting under pressure and that isn’t going to help. And if he asks for more documents, then decline. Always give these two answers.21

Recent scholarship has pointed to the tremendous role played by “native informants” and assistants of British officials in collecting manuscripts, documents, and inscriptions from the later eighteenth century and in giving shape to the modern, European histories produced from the early nineteenth century.22 As Nicholas Dirks has argued in the context of the Mackenzie archive, James Grant Duff ’s “history workshop” too tells “the tale of the loss of the old-regime political world itself, along with the voices that struggled to translate that world in the tumultuous encounters of early colonial rule.” Pratapsingh’s diary records briefly that Grant Duff ’s questions also stimulated debate among the Marathi clerks themselves regarding the demise of the Maratha kingdom and its causes and effects.23 Despite the heavy reliance on Marathi men and histories, however, as he arrogated to himself the task of creating a proper, modern history out of what were now seen as mere materials, the manuscripts as well as the opinions of their collectors and interpreters were used “to very different ends, making the collection speak to the absence of Indian history, rather than its efflorescence.”24 Thus, as later nationalist historians would point out, in its details Grant Duff ’s work was no different from the bakhars that he used; he too based his arguments on what he had access to and what he tended to trust. It also narrated the same sequence of events and battles, but its principal difference lay in its scope and confidence. It aimed to account not only for particular events or actions, which it did in mind-numbing detail, but also for the philosophy and cultural rationale behind all Maratha actions, to explain the people as a whole. Grant Duff ’s correspondence with Elphinstone records his deep self-doubt and frustration about his ability to fulfill this aim, but as Kulkarni notes, when unfamiliar names, manuscripts, and events literally gave him a headache, it was precisely the deep sense of being a historiographical pioneer that sustained his efforts.25 Given the many self-doubts that he entertained about the quality of his work, it is ironic that Grant Duff ’s book should have become so important and controversial. The first publisher he contacted suggested he change the title to The Downfall of the Mughals and the Rise of the English in order to find both a publisher and a readership. Colonial histories, it appears, had to legitimize British colonial conquests and fit into very specific

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perceptions of the conquerors’ role back home in order to be saleable. As it turned out, the book hardly attracted any attention when it was finally published. Its first edition did not receive any major reviews, and even the East India Company did not buy very many copies. Grant Duff lost three quarters of the 2,000 pounds he had invested in its publication, and revenue officers of the Company assigned to western India were initially its only English readers. The book’s circulation and importance, however, increased significantly with the expansion of Western education in western India, and later editions were issued in 1863, 1873, 1878, and 1912. It was also adapted into a shorter Marathi version in 1830 by Captain David Capen and Baba Sane as the Grant Duff krut Marathyanchi bakhar and used widely as the principal historical work on the Marathas in schools and colleges across the Presidency.26 The Marathi version itself went into several editions, issued in 1852–53, 1857, 1892, and 1916.27 Surprisingly, despite British officials’ penchant for history writing throughout the colonial period, no survey or detailed work on the Marathas followed this early effort throughout the nineteenth century. This lack of serious alternatives certainly contributed to the continued circulation of Grant Duff ’s work and its status as the standard work on the subject.28

Colonial Education: New Classes, Communities, and Readers grant duff’s magnum opus inaugurated the deep-seated changes that were to take place in Marathi historiographic practice over the late nineteenth century. Western liberal education was one of the most important motors underlying this transformation in history writing because, first, it drastically changed the scope and importance of history. No longer restricted to scribes with a graceful hand sought after by notables, its practice became part of a pedagogical process that every aspirant to a job in the colonial administration and a middle-class existence had to undergo. Second, history became not only a powerful instrument for emphasizing Western superiority and triumph over the Orient and an integral part of colonial discourse on Indian society but also a means of refuting this discourse and expressing collective identities of different kinds, and a site of contestation for competing Indian social and political visions. Of course, many of these visions of the past were

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deeply influenced by the very dominant colonial frameworks they contested from nationalist or communitarian platforms.29 This broad relationship of Western education and colonial discourses to nationalist narratives apart, I believe the emergence of modern Marathi historiography also has to be set against a more regional story of intellectual, political, and structural change. This modern historiography was intimately linked to the broader changes that the colonial encounter engendered in western Indian society: the emergence of a modern Marathi public sphere; its upper-caste social composition; the restructuring and reevaluation of Marathi cultural practice; new communication technologies such as print; and the implications of such technologies, along with colonial classrooms, for access to and circulation of new history books and ideas. One of the most striking aspects of colonial education policy in western India was the linguistic division of educational levels: Marathi schools for primary and lower secondary classes, followed by exclusively English education at the matriculation, college, and university levels. In an important, detailed study of the pedagogical and ideological aspects of this language policy in colonial education, Veena Naregal has argued that it created a linguistic split within the new Western-educated middle class over the nineteenth century, where a small university-educated elite acquired a broad English knowledge base with very few expressive or translation skills in Marathi and a majority lower-middle class acquired some ability in Marathi expression but hardly any access to English texts. English— and by extension those who could command a knowledge of it—certainly came to enjoy authority under colonial rule, but as a language of public and intellectual discourse it remained confined to the upper echelons of the intelligentsia and interactions with the colonial state. Marathi had greater potential as a vehicle for forging wider community or national links, and it was the “colonial literate underclass,” Western-educated youth with primarily Marathi knowledge, many of whom were not part of the professional elite of lawyers, judges, and civil servants but occupied much lower rungs of the colonial administration and small town government schools and offices, that formed the backbone of the Marathi public sphere by the late nineteenth century.30 This world of lower middle-class Marathi readers and audiences would be crucial both to new forms of intellectual production in the language, including historiography, and to new claims of social and political leadership.

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Of course, as several scholars have noted, the new middle class in Maharashtra came to be disproportionately and overwhelmingly dominated by Brahman jatis, despite an enthusiasm for Western education and new avenues of business such as media among several upper- and middle-caste groups. By the mid-nineteenth century, Brahmans, especially Chitpavans, outnumbered all other groups in schools and government offices not just in the Bombay Presidency but also in the Marathi districts of the Central Provinces and the administrations of the princely states of Gwalior, Baroda, Indore, and Dhar.31 Far from being merely a continuation of precolonial Peshwai dominance, Brahman power was consolidated in the nineteenth century within the new institutional structures of colonialism. Naregal rightly argues that this dominance was enabled through access to and control over the languages and technologies of modernity, such as print. Although various castes entered the industry, Brahmans came to control the content of the new medium and its dissemination as editors, educators, and critics, thus gaining an unequal advantage over other caste groups to shape new public debates over society, culture, and politics.32 This lopsided social composition of the modern Marathi public sphere was to have far-reaching implications for Marathi cultural discourses over the colonial period and into the postcolonial period. The consciousness among newly urbanized and Western-educated middle-caste groups of Brahman dominance in all walks of life gave rise to critiques, beginning in the 1860s, by radical thinkers and writers like Jotirao Phule. Non-Brahman groups presented enduring political and cultural contestations over the next several decades. These involved bitter conflicts between Brahmans and non-Brahmans over not only formal political institutions but also the Marathi cultural landscape, including historical figures, episodes, and interpretations.

History and Marathi Print an important part of Elphinstone’s education policy following the British conquest of western India was the introduction of printed reading materials.33 In keeping with his conviction that literature with sound morals was especially necessary for the edification of his new subjects, the first few Marathi texts prepared in Serampore at low cost and distributed by the

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government in the Bombay Presidency were adaptations of popular old fables and tales that were intended to simultaneously uplift and entertain: Panchopakhyan (1822), Vidurniti (1823), Simhasanbattishi (1824), and Bodhvachane (1833). Of course, other Marathi texts had been in print since 1802: along with Reverend William Carey’s rudimentary Marathi grammar and translation of the New Testament in 1805 from Serampore, there also appeared a genealogical narrative on the Bhosale family of Nagpur, Raghuji Bhosalyanchi Vamshavali. It was prepared circa 1815 by Vaijnath Sharma, the chief Marathi scholar at Fort William College, who also assisted Reverend Carey and adapted the moral fables.34 The choice of a genealogical narrative as one of the earliest Marathi creative texts to be printed makes it intriguing that following its appearance, no other historical bakhar was picked up for printing till the late nineteenth century. There is some evidence that the fables that did get printed and circulated were also occasionally referred to as “bukkurs,” but these were vastly different in content from the dense historical narratives considered in earlier chapters.35 Elphinstone, as discussed above, was certainly familiar with the latter, and the reasons for their exclusion from the early decades of print are twofold. The first has to do with the anxieties of the recently established colonial regime about maintaining peace in western India. Elphinstone’s eagerness for Marathi printed matter was tempered by a pragmatic concern to control its content, which had to be carefully vetted as being “unobjectionable.” While this ruled out anything that might provoke religious controversy and Christian missionary tracts that might ruffle conservative Hindu feathers, it also meant avoiding material that could hark back to the immediate precolonial period. For this reason, Elphinstone also rejected the early establishment of a Marathi newspaper as a channel of communication between the subdued Maratha chiefs and the new colonial government, lest it serve as a platform for expressing discontent.36 It is not surprising, then, that the narratives that did appear in print for the next couple of decades were universalized and bland moral tales shorn of geographic specificity; they certainly made no reference to the political or cultural landscape of early nineteenth-century Maharashtra. Apart from the immediate political considerations, there was perhaps another reason the bakhars were not picked up. This has to do with the very conception of what constituted a proper Marathi book suitable for printing under early colonial policy. Early European officials were familiar with two

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Marathi scripts, the Balbodh (Nagari) and the Modi, the former typically used for classical poetic works and the latter for daily correspondence, business, accounts, etc. They were also aware that many classical works were available as well in Modi, which more people could read. Given its wider prevalence, accordingly, the earliest printed Marathi works, including the Bible and Sharma’s genealogical narrative, were in Modi.37 Elphinstone’s administration in Bombay, however, came to favor Balbodh for all its books. This was partly due to the convenience and availability of Balbodh type, but also, I suspect, due to the classification of all Modi material as not “books” or “creative” works, but merely accounts produced in the order of business. From this perspective, it is likely that the Marathi bakhar narratives too did not qualify as “books.” Not only were they in Modi, but they also figured in quite different contexts of colonial policy: Elphinstone first used them to negotiate land grants and concessions with subdued chiefs, and later supplied them as “gossipy” sources for Grant Duff ’s history of the Marathas. Neither literary text nor proper historical evidence, the bakhars did not qualify for printing despite their narrative pattern, substantial size, and circulation, but instead became summary “Mahratta Mss.” in English histories, and were stored away in Pune in the Peshwa Daftar (principal record office) for use in future land disputes. Moreover, according to A. K. Priolkar, the preference of Parsi readers for Mahajani (the Gujarati equivalent of Modi) ensured the adoption of that script for modern Gujarati print, while the mostly Brahman Marathi readership, already familiar with Nagari through Sanskrit texts, readily took to it for printed Marathi texts.38 In the decades following the establishment of colonial rule, the world of Marathi print soon became populated with translations from English works on a variety of educational, literary, and modern topics. Encouraged by the colonial administration through commissioned translations, prizes, and adoption in government schools, such translations also included books on history. Grant Duff ’s work served as the principal source for smaller history textbooks and catechisms prepared for use in Marathi and English classrooms.39 Short Marathi adaptations from well-known English histories of England, Europe, and India followed in the next couple of decades. The most famous were England Deshachi Bakhar (1846), adapted from, among others, Goldsmith’s famous work, and Hindustancha Itihasa (1850), adapted from Elphinstone’s History of India by Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar (1812–1846), the pioneer of Marathi print journalism in the 1830s. Also

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used in schools were Nana Narayan’s A Description of England (1853) and Khanderao Phadke’s Information About England (1860).40 These Marathi “translations,” it is important to keep in mind, were abridged adaptations, sometimes of one, but often of several English tomes into smaller—and cheaper—Marathi schoolbooks. It is not surprising, in this regard, that there was initially very little agreement over nomenclature: the terms itihasa (such as it was), vruttanta (account), varnan (description) and bakhar (narrative) all jostled for status as the Marathi equivalent of the new English term “history.”41 The content, as the titles above reveal, was largely focused on chronological, factual information about England and introducing students to the reality and extent of British power in India. Naturally, this also involved introducing the new category of “India” itself through classroom exercises. As Jambhekar’s lament about the lack of a good, cheap history of India suggests, to explain the regional British presence and the recent events in the Deccan comprehensively to students, it was necessary to combine narratives on Maratha history and on the East India Company into a wider, subcontinental (and of course, global) framework in space and time.42 What these new history books sought to do, in effect, was reorder a new generation’s historical imagination by giving the new political and geographical realities in the subcontinent deep roots in antiquity. In doing so, they simultaneously sought to erase older, existing imaginations and conceptual frameworks about the past as illegitimate, as indicative of a lack of historical consciousness.

History in the University the establishment of Bombay University in 1857 and the emergence of Marathi journals such as Marathi Dnyan Prasarak and Vividh Dnyan Vistaar during the 1850s and 1860s were crucial to the spread of Western ideas of history and the growth of historical debate within the Marathi intelligentsia over the rest of the nineteenth century. The decision to conduct college education exclusively in English and the introduction of history as initially a compulsory and later an optional subject for the B.A. gradually introduced students to contemporary historical works on ancient and modern Europe, the constitutional and political history of England, and the history of India.43

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Although we do not have evidence of what was actually taught in class, syllabi and examination questions available in the annual calendars of Bombay University hint at the ways the past was now being looked at and conveyed to college students. For the history of India, the course structure drew heavily on Indological frameworks for the early periods and the rise of British power in India for the later ones. Questions for the B.A. final examinations for this subject, therefore, usually focused on Sanskrit texts and law, such as the code of Manu; commerce between India and Europe; and British treaty stipulations with various native powers, such as the Nizam of Hyderabad. Maratha history was introduced as a separate subject into the B.A. curriculum in 1870, and the works of James Grant Duff and John Malcolm were the principal texts assigned. The questions for the B.A. intermediate examination in 1873 on this topic, and the repetitive nature of such questions throughout the examinations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, suggest that colonial classrooms and syllabi were in good step with Grant Duff ’s aim quoted at the beginning of this chapter, of providing a “complete history of . . . the Mahrattas” that would also explain “the means by which our own vast empire in that quarter was acquired”: 1. What portions of this Presidency were in the Maratha dominions and under what circumstances were they transferred to the British? 2. To what qualities in the people and in their leader would you ascribe the rise of Maratha power under Shivaji and its decline at Kirkee?44

A sampling of syllabi and question papers for college history courses over the late nineteenth century leaves no doubt that the colonial education system was critical to the introduction and endurance of the teleological view of history as a nation’s political saga from antiquity to modernity, and indeed, of the nation as the natural unit of historical study. The optional paper for the B.A. final year was “Transition from Ancient to Modern History,” this trajectory now identified as simultaneously European and universal. The disproportionate emphasis on the constitutional, political, and economic history of England projected it as the preeminent example. The primary emphasis in this new history curriculum was not on practicing history but on knowing it factually. The few conceptual questions that figured in these examinations had to do less with details of method than with fixed definitions of “the subject matter and uses of History,” “Chronology,” and

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“Aera” [sic].45 Even though history books at the college level were prescribed and taught in English, these were rarely the full works of great European historians; more often than not, they were school-level abridged “students’ versions” or manuals. Thus, for ancient Rome, the prescribed text was not Gibbon’s magnum opus but The Student’s Gibbon in two volumes; for English history, it was the popular school manual Bright’s History of England; and for Indian history, Meadows Taylor’s Student’s Manual of the History of India from the Earliest Times to the Present. For the M.A. level, original works by famous historians were prescribed, either fully or in part, such as F. W. Maitland, William Stubbs, and Thomas Macaulay on English history, and John Kaye and James Mill on Indian history. Examination questions for the postgraduate level also tested students’ factual knowledge, asking for summaries, details, and accounts of battles, dynasties, and political or military conflicts among the Great Powers.46 From the 1850s, some historical works outside prescribed syllabi were also available in urban centers, in reading rooms and libraries such as those of the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society (SLSS). Serial translations also appeared in early Marathi journals established for the “diffusion of knowledge,” such as the Marathi Dnyanprasak and the long-running, enormously popular and influential “magazine of Marathi literature for educated Ladies and Gentlemen,” the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar. The Vistaar’s publication of S. S. Wagle’s Marathi translation enabled Buckle’s History of Civilization to circulate outside the curriculum.47 Among the books available at the SLSS library were McCulloch’s Account of the British Empire, John Briggs’s Mohamedan Power in India, Russell’s Modern Europe, Tytler’s Elements of General History, Guizot’s Civilization of France, Arnold’s Lectures on History, and Koch’s Revolutions in Europe.48 Of course, this is at best an indicator of what books were available; as any teacher knows, the availability or prescription of a text can guarantee neither that it will be read by all students nor that it will serve as their principal authoritative source. Even though the university curriculum showed a tendency toward disciplinary specialization, therefore, history was projected in the new education system primarily as a vehicle for gathering general knowledge about what happened in the past. Despite the special position in colonial discourses of a rational historical consciousness as an archetypal feature of modernity, the “usefulness” of history was conceptualized in colonial classrooms and syllabi primarily as providing the empirical knowledge of

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specific details of past episodes, especially prominent European episodes. Historical analysis focused primarily on forming critical judgment about the actions and contributions of leading personalities of the past. Historical method came to constitute the chronological narration of events and the creation of a singular narrative from a body of acceptable sources, rather than an in-depth, conceptual discussion of literary evocation, source criticism, narrative, or even positivism.49 The ideological importance of history in colonial discourse meant that this chronological method was also simplistically, and emphatically, conveyed as “Western/modern,” as opposed and superior to “Indian/myth.” Recurrent questions on Maratha history even at the master’s level in the early twentieth century, long after thousands of Maratha documents had been published, focused not on critical source analysis but on the importance of forming an “estimate” of past historical personalities and their policies, wisdom, and contributions in the context of the larger passage of events.50 As we shall see in the next chapter, some scholars like Rajwade and Phule were able to think expansively and write about the philosophy of history or recognize its symbolic power. To the majority of Marathi students and writers, however, the ideological “Western/modern” positioning of history, the exclusion of any discussion of critical method, and the focus on judging the actions and wisdom of past personalities meant that historiography overwhelmingly meant the gathering of available documents; the creation of a singular, empiricist, political narrative of facts, dates, and events; and the biographical assessments of prominent figures in that political narrative. The assessments of specific men (Sadashivrao Bhau, Mahadji Shinde, Nana Phadnavis, Bajirao, Nanasaheb) could well be contested within nationalist as well as non-Brahman discourse, but as a historiographical exercise, the framework of contributions and judgment remained central to the way past events and personalities were approached. In thinking about Indians learning new ways of doing history through the colonial education system in the nineteenth century, therefore, it is important to keep this pattern in mind, where “doing” history figured very little in the broader education structure itself. Most colleges affiliated with Bombay University were teaching institutions that used a common syllabus, and of these only a handful, such as Elphinstone and Wilson Colleges in Bombay and the Deccan College in Pune, actually taught B.A. and M.A. classes. Most colleges across the Presidency usually had a single professor

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for history and political economy and another for Oriental languages and civilizations.51 The university remained an examining and accrediting body for schools and colleges until the early twentieth century, and postgraduate teaching in history at the university itself began only in 1913. Historical research was concentrated primarily at the Deccan College, which went on to become the principal institution for Indological research in western India.52 As we shall see in the next chapter, research on ancient India was made possible through the college’s collaboration with the colonial government’s search for and collection of Sanskrit manuscripts from the 1860s onward, which greatly helped its professional, library, and financial resources.

Bakhars in the Colonial Period what of the older bakhar tradition in the course of these changes? Grant Duff ’s assumption of an authoritative historical voice and the increased circulation of new English and Marathi history texts through print and the colonial education system by the late nineteenth century ensured that for a small group of Western-educated elites, a historical narrative came to mean something quite different from what it had meant among Marathi-speaking knowledgeable people just a few decades earlier. However, this conceptual shift by no means sounded the death knell for the older tradition, which continued almost as a shadow form of the new history, as it were, and was adapted to the new technologies of circulation and the public sphere in very interesting ways. The next couple of chapters will examine the critical and ideological approaches of the new Marathi historians and littérateurs to the bakhar form and its content; here let us look in some detail at its continued production and availability after the world that gave it shape had vanished. In the first decades of colonial rule, even though bakhars did not figure in colonial printing or education projects, they continued to be produced at the behest of the state. In the negotiation of overlapping and disputed concessions and land rights with the new colonial administration, several Maratha chiefs and families were asked to provide bakhars and kaifiyats. The bulk of these texts written in the early British period were genealogical narratives that documented the family fortunes of the Peshwas, the Bhosales of Satara and Nagpur, the Holkars, the Angres, the Dabhades, etc. These narratives appear to have been an attempt by the erstwhile chiefs,

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facing military subjugation, to protect as many rights and concessions as possible through recourse to a tool of negotiation familiar to an earlier, rapidly fading era. Not surprisingly, most of the works invoked past military and family heroics to press for pensions from the British. Such texts were produced not just in the immediate years following the British conquest but also well into the colonial period. The history of the Ghorpade family was produced as late as 1851, but its narrative style and its claim to authority, as “a description based on the information narrated and handed down by elders,” revealed its firm roots in the older tradition. Its seamless continuation of the genealogical narrative from the early Maratha state to after the colonial takeover in 1818 is remarkable: Our original ancestors got the amirul umrav title from the Satara and Karvir maharajas on the permission of the Emperor. The Peshwa recognized their abilities and promoted them, gave them high status and spread their reputation within the administration. Their exploits in the Karnatak are well-known. . . . Elphinstone sahib [and other officers] were well aware of our abilities and recently too the Governor and Agent have recognized our family’s status and kindly extended their friendship to us.53

At the end, along with the Shaka and Fasli year and dates, the narrative added the Christian date, 20 November 1851. The adoption of Company parlance and categories in some of these later narratives—one of which styled itself the Deccanchya Sardaranchi Bakhar, using the colonial designation of Maratha chiefs as “Sardars of the Deccan”—reveals, however, that despite this apparent seamlessness, the narratives were now shaped by a new political map. Just as Maratha political fortunes and contexts had shaped bakhar narratives a century earlier, they were now adapted to a new political environment, complete with a new dating system. The middle decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the production of several texts that bore the narrative and linguistic mark of the older bakhar tradition but had moved away from it in important ways. Older narratives also continued to be used in manuscript form outside the small framework of Western education in the first few decades. Access to new colonial texts, even Marathi ones, remained extremely limited, and despite attempts to prepare cheap abridged editions, printed books were expensive and hard to come by outside urban centers such as Bombay and Pune. In

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mofussil and village schools, as Jambhekar noted in 1840, “histories of the Peshwas” and other manuscript bakhars continued to be staples, used for reading and practicing Modi.54 The prominence of Balbodh in print did not cause Modi to immediately disappear, and its use was not restricted to “traditional” schools and scholars. Despite the choice of Balbodh for printed textbooks, students learning Marathi at the matriculation level in government schools were required to know how to write in Modi, and were also tested on it in the matriculate examinations well into the 1890s.55 Modi continued to be the script of choice for hand writing by Marathi clerks in government offices, as well as for personal correspondence, manuscripts, etc. Only from the early twentieth century onward, with the growing preference for Balbodh in school curricula and textbooks and an official decision in 1909 to ban the use of Modi in all public offices,56 did the prevalence of Modi gradually wane. The Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, which emerged in this period as an organized platform for promoting the interests of Marathi language and literature, made periodic efforts to slow the script’s decline. In 1915, in a petition protesting the ban on its use in government offices, the Parishad invoked not just the beauty and the convenience of the cursive script but also the fact that “Bakhars and State documents of the Maratha period [had been] . . . written in Modi” and that it continued to be “the script used by the Maratha Nation for writing letters and business documents and keeping accounts.”57 Remarkably, as we shall see in chapter 5, however, these attempts to resuscitate Modi and its invocation as the vehicle of regional heritage went hand in hand with the growing demand for Balbodh/Devnagari as the script of choice for India’s Sanskrit-derived languages, and as the crucible for national integration. Surveying the state of Marathi printed matter in 1864, M. G. Ranade lamented the lack of good historical translations into Marathi and the preference for printing Puranic stories instead of “historical bakhars,” which he believed were of a more “healthy character.”58 Only three years after Ranade’s lament, the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar was established to provide a beneficial as well as entertaining source of writings on topics ranging from history to “morally uplifting stories for women” to poetry, book reviews, and classical subjects for middle-class readers. Besides the Marathi translations of Sanskrit and English plays and discussions on contemporary social questions, such as child marriage, it also began to serially print lavanis,

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powadas, and bakhars from the eighteenth century, including the Chitnis Bakhar.59 Although the Vistaar over the next few decades would become a prominent site for debating the practice and meaning of history, in its initial years it served as the principal source for Marathi literature old and new. Along with the Kavyetihas Sangraha, started in 1878, it was instrumental in bringing older bakhars into the Marathi public sphere, now in Balbodh print, as prose samples of Marathi literature. Following their initial serial appearance in journals, these narratives were in sufficient demand that many continued to be printed in several editions in book form well into the early twentieth century. It is also important to consider how this renewed circulation and transmission of bakhars in the colonial period was tied to the university’s language study policy. First, although Persian was introduced in the curriculum as one of the classical languages in 1871, its association with Marathi declined over the nineteenth century, as Sanskrit was increasingly identified in Indological discourses and educational policy as Marathi’s ancestor and became the choice for students needing to take one classical language along with English.60 Moreover, despite some lip service on the part of colonial administrators about the importance of promoting Marathi as a second language at the college level, it was excluded, along with Gujarati and Kannada, from the compulsory B.A. curriculum of Bombay University in 1870 and made an optional subject; one of the reasons cited at the time was the lack of good prose texts to be assigned.61 Standard texts for the optional Marathi course were in verse, such as Mahipati’s Bhakta Vijaya and sections of Ramdas’s Dasbodh. By the 1890s, however, these had been replaced by the Peshwyanchi bakhar, and in subsequent decades, by the Bhausahebanchi bakhar and the Panipatchi bakhar as well. These narratives thus reappeared in the colonial education system in their print forms as examples of precolonial Marathi prose literature, and their narrative structure came to be discussed largely in terms of literary style at the secondary school and B.A. levels. For example, here is a question on the Peshwyanchi bakhar for the Marathi matriculation exam for 1894–95: “Give (in Marathi) a description of the battle of Kharda, writing in current (Modi) hand and imitating the style of the Bakhar.”62 Interestingly, at the M.A. level of Marathi literature, the bakhars appear to have been occasionally discussed in terms of their historical qualities, but possibly with a view to negate them. A question in the 1925 final

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examination, for instance, asked students to estimate Malhar Ramrao Chitnis’s qualities as a biographer and the extent to which his narrative could be considered “authentic history.”63 This situation reflects the detachment of history in the colonial education system as a discipline distinct from literature. Recall that Maratha history, which was introduced as part of an optional history paper on the Mughal centuries in India in 1870, now relied exclusively on the English works of Grant Duff and Malcolm and their Marathi adaptations; the bakhars, on the other hand, found a home within Marathi literature. The establishment of colonial rule in western India in the early nineteenth century and the dramatic transformations it wrought in class structure, political economy, and cultural production over the next century, therefore, signaled the dusk of the political world that had produced the representations and compulsions of bakhar historiography. Although bakhars and kaifiyats continued to be composed by families and lineages in order to negotiate with the new colonial state, James Grant Duff ’s History of the Mahrattas inaugurated the arrival of a new Maratha social. This self-consciously pioneering history first fused the older multiple, contesting narratives into an overarching political and military synthesis of the Maratha state, then grafted this political history onto a civilizational analysis of the “Maratha people” as a whole. The “Marathas” themselves, of course, now formed part of a larger colonial “Indian” historiography from antiquity to modernity, transmitted to the new Western-educated middle classes from the mid-nineteenth century through the channels of colonial education. As this chapter has shown, however, bakhar narratives did not disappear but were relocated in the modern Marathi public sphere through the twin channels of education and print. The absorption of printed bakhars into the curriculum of Marathi literature certainly ensured their continued circulation among the new educated middle classes. However, their exclusion from colonial history syllabi by no means resolved the tension between bakhar and history and the debates among Marathi writers and readers over what constituted history and literature, or “modern” and “premodern” history. Despite the disciplinary split between history and literature within the university system, this older narrative form served as a meeting point and continued to deeply influence both modern nonfictional historical narratives and the new fictional genres of novels and plays that represented the Maratha past.

 4  Historiography and Nationalism

This chapter considers the debates among Marathi writers and scholars in the late nineteenth century over the idea of history, its content and suitable objects of inquiry, and its proper form and practice. These debates were fueled by the need to combat colonial discourses on Indian society and culture and an emerging nationalist need for India to “write for itself the account of its past.” An important outcome of these debates in Maharashtra was the constitution of “Maratha history” as the preeminent field of study for Marathi historians, and as the prime resource to fuel Marathi national and regional imaginations. Conventional nationalist wisdom has traced a smooth causal line from the introduction of history in colonial education to the nationalist critiques of Grant Duff ’s work. Laudatory biographies on pioneering scholars have usually celebrated this overwhelming interest in Maratha themes among historians in the colonial period as part of the natural and long overdue “awakening” to the “glorious Maratha past.”1 Most commentators have automatically assumed Marathi historiography to mean only research and writing on the Maratha period; one survey has even given the emergence of this historiography its own time scale: the Age of Grant Duff, the Age of Bakhars, the Age of Documents, etc.2 But instead of assuming the Maratha past to be an expected by-product of nationalism or the natural “golden

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age” of history that was out there, waiting for Marathi nationalist historians to discover it, it is necessary to consider the different research possibilities that were open to and taken up by Marathi historians in the late nineteenth century. This chapter probes the discursive and material factors that constituted “Maratha history” as not just a viable field of inquiry but also central to the Marathi historical imagination.

Early Writings Under British Rule the first generation of Western-educated Marathi intellectuals eagerly approached history as an important pedagogical tool for becoming a modern, progressive individual; their writings betray an acute sense of the “lack” of a historical tradition in India. Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar described history as itihasa vruttanta, a subject essential to the advancement of mankind, along with other “sciences” such as logic, mathematics, grammar, and ethics.3 A Brahman from Ratnagiri, Jambhekar had a short but brilliant career. Starting out as a secretary in the Bombay Educational Society, he went on to become professor of mathematics and astronomy at Elphinstone College, and introduced Marathi terms for the new concepts in these subjects. He wrote extensively in Marathi as well, and started the first bilingual English/Marathi newspaper, the Darpan, in 1832. As discussed in the last chapter, Jambhekar, along with others, also adapted a number of English history texts into Marathi for use in schools. These authors consciously distanced themselves from the bakhars and decried the lack of a historical tradition in India, but it is remarkable how similar in form the early Marathi adaptations remained to the older narratives. As a breathless fragment on Saxon history from Jambhekar’s two-volume work suggests, its title, England deshachi bakhar, was not entirely inappropriate: King Alfred had climbed to great heights of respect. Nobody had acquired a kingdom as large as him until then. The Welsh kings all began to send him tribute; the people of Northumberland appointed his man as king. There was no enemy to fear even slightly. This wealth and stability lasted for twelve years. He undertook a lot of measures to ensure this stability . . . he determined in his mind that “the way I protected my country with physical

Historiography and Nationalism 96 strength, so also shall I dress it with different kinds of arts and abilities.”. . . In the past, the country was always in confusion, and the Danes always came to raid it. He said that “when I began ruling not one man south of the Thames spoke any Latin.” So he then brought all the learned men from Europe and built that great university which is now in the city of Oxford.4

Jambhekar also candidly pointed out in the preface to his adaptation of Elphinstone’s History of India that history was key to overcoming the “shame and embarrassment” that people frequently experienced when faced with the ignorance of their country’s past kings and events.5 The very first issue of his monthly magazine, Digdurshun, started in 1840, accordingly included an essay on Itihasa and its uses; Jambhekar discussed Shivaji’s administrative policy, arguing that it was useful since the current government had retained aspects of it.6 In spite of his belief that history had less to do with dry fact than with judgment and reasoning, therefore, the emphasis on “practical knowledge” led Jambhekar’s Marathi writings to be preoccupied with introducing as much information as possible on diverse topics, always locating historical events in their appropriate geographical setting, dating them, and reiterating the importance of knowing about them. To convey such general information as well as entertain, the reformist writer Gopal Hari Deshmukh (1823–1892), a.k.a. Lokahitawadi, adopted a mixture of anecdotes and information about customs, festivals, physical landscape, and legends from different parts of India, culled from English as well as older Indian sources, in his Aitihasik Goshti (Historical Stories).7 As part of his call for social and religious reform, especially within Brahman society, Lokahitawadi also pondered the causes of the decline of Maratha power, and wrote about the uniqueness of Shivaji’s revolutionary capabilities in his famous Shatapatre (Hundred Letters) to the journal Prabhakar in the 1840s. This template of entertaining stories-cum-information also informed Moroba Kanhoba Vijaykar’s Ghashiram Kotwal, “a historical tale in catechismal format” published in 1864. While Kanhoba’s question-and-answer style bore the mark of the new English textbooks as well as formulaic oral folktales, Shankar Tatya Phadke’s densely informative Shindeshahicha Itihasa (A History of the Shinde Kingdom), published the same year, borrowed heavily from Grant Duff and Malcolm and drew on his own memory of the immediately preceding decades. Adding to the variety of narrative styles in this period, Vishnubhat Godse’s remarkable 1884 narrative about

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his travels to central India during the 1857 Rebellion, Maza Pravaas athva 1857 Chya Bandachi Hakikat (My Travels or An Account of the 1857 Rebellion), remained firmly ensconced in bakhar mode, even as it displayed a sharp awareness of, and analyzed, the radically altered political landscape in the subcontinent.8 Some of these early writings soon began to take on board criticism of British rule, but this was still a far cry from the conception of history’s usefulness from the 1870s onward as a general plank against colonial rule or the perception of history as a powerful tool for nationalism. In a landmark essay read before the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society in 1867, Neelkanth Janardan Kirtane, one of the first graduates of Bombay University, criticized Grant Duff ’s history for not doing justice to its sources.9 Kirtane’s essay marked the beginning of fresh debates among the Western-educated intelligentsia over the nature and practice of history in the late nineteenth century. Let us look at some of the major interventions in these debates that were to prove critical in shaping modern Marathi historiography.

History, Literature, and Method given the colonial government’s patronage of classical languages in the university and the prominence given Orientalist research through institutions such as the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, the earliest field of inquiry to be taken up in western India was Indology and the critical analysis of Sanskrit manuscripts of varying age. Early writers such as Jambhekar not only wrote generally about the virtues of acquiring historical knowledge but also dabbled in some Indological inquiries themselves.10 In the 1860s, Indological research was systematized and made much more rigorous under the direction of Martin Haug and Franz Kielhorn at the Deccan College in Poona. Kielhorn’s indictment of the available editions of Sanskrit texts in 1864 suggests the kind of textual methods he wished to inculcate in his Indian students: We cannot be satisfied with [a text] so long as we are not told how the text has been constituted, what manuscripts have been compared, whether they all contain the same text, or [are] from groups of manuscripts representing different recensions of the same text; which recension has been chosen, and for

Historiography and Nationalism 98 what reasons the editor has thought it necessary to reject the readings of his manuscript and in which particular case he has done so. We also desire to know whether the quotations from the work which he edits have been collected as far as possible, and compared with the text given by the manuscript[;] whether imitations, if there are any, have been compared. . . . We are afraid critical accuracy has never been the strong point of Indian scholars, not even the best of them.11

Kielhorn and other Sanskrit teachers sought to break with older scribal practices of “purifying” or “modernizing” texts in the course of transmission. Instead, they inculcated new critical techniques that underlined the idea of an “original” manuscript and author and its unity; the importance of fidelity to this original through quotations, citations, and the careful mapping of individual, separate versions of manuscripts and their specific dates and copyists in editing and commentary.12 Over the next few decades, achieving this “critical accuracy” became the focus of the new group of Marathi Indologists who worked with him, such as Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (1837–1925). Born in Ratnagiri district, Bhandarkar was among the first four graduates of Bombay University, and became professor of Sanskrit at the Elphinstone and Deccan Colleges before taking over as the Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University in 1892. He became a member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council in 1903, represented the university in the Provincial Legislative Council between 1904 and 1908, and was knighted in 1911. Besides two popular Sanskrit textbooks, his works included Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems, A Peep Into Early Indian History, and A Short Sketch of the History of the Deccan. Bhandarkar’s extensive writings were deeply influential in shaping the field of ancient Indian history in the early twentieth century and he enjoyed tremendous professional success in the colonial educational system.13 Although fondly referred to as the pitamaha (grand old man) of Indian Indologists in keeping with the older guru-shishya-parampara system, Bhandarkar represented the Indian break with earlier forms of Sanskritic learning. He spearheaded the Bombay government’s search for Sanskrit manuscripts from 1879 to 1895, and his voluminous Reports on this material, apart from his numerous research articles and books, were firmly couched within critical philological analysis and empiricism.14 His most urgent task

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was to accurately date the manuscripts, first corroborating information in them with external evidence from inscriptions or foreign travelers’ accounts and then converting the samvat and vikram eras to the Christian era. Even though he recognized the many layers of Sanskrit texts produced through multiple copies made at different times, he worked toward as much singular fixity as possible with regard to dates and authors. Bhandarkar’s strong espousal of objectivity and the search for truth had its roots in Rankean positivism and its conceptualization of history as an unbiased, chronological narrative of facts, accessible through a rigorous, critical analysis of original sources. He laid out the parameters of this method for Indian historians in an 1888 lecture, “The Critical, Comparative and Historical Method of Inquiry,” discussing criteria for testing the reliability of all existing textual evidence as source material for a modern history. The test was to be one of ordinary probability, and of whether the writer’s objective had been “to please . . . the reader and excite the feeling of wonder” or “to record events as they occurred.”15 With the firm belief that these could indeed be treated as separate goals, Bhandarkar judged that fantastic descriptions, legends, and hyperbolic statements in general, and therefore the texts that embodied them, had to be discounted as sources by the application of ordinary probability. It was a text’s attention to chronology and dates that qualified it as historical. His litmus test disqualified charitas, puranas, the epics, and other Sanskrit literature as historical, and also as viable sources. Not discounting literary texts entirely, Bhandarkar identified them as sources for understanding “the thoughts and feelings, the aims and aspirations, and the manners and customs of the people . . . [and] the life and civilization of the period.”16 The sharp separation of history and literature and by extension, of “politics” and “culture” in the search for legitimate sources for early Indian history led Bhandarkar to reiterate the colonialist argument that “India unfortunately [had] no written history . . . [besides] some chronicles written by Jains and . . . genealogies of certain dynasties.”17 Impartiality and the use of “critical power” could yield some information, he argued, but the titles of his works on early India suggest his disappointment that this evidence yielded no more than a “short sketch” of or “peep” into ancient Indian history. Nevertheless, his historical surveys were instrumental in identifying for generations of later historians and students a hierarchy of reliable sources for ancient India: gold, silver, and copper coins of ancient rulers;

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rock and metal inscriptions; and the accounts of foreign travelers.18 This hierarchy, the framing of the Sanskrit material in “cultural” terms, and the conceptualization of political history in narrow terms of battles, kings, and chronology underscored the foggy picture of ancient Indian history. Bhandarkar also resorted to an empiricist method and objectivity to contest the frequently sweeping, derogatory remarks made by European Indologists about Indian civilization, employing the insights of comparative philology to instead highlight the linguistic connections between classical languages like Greek and Sanskrit and claim parity with Western civilization.19 The Indian scholars’ writings are replete with extremely polite, yet painstaking refutations of European Indologists’ conclusions even as they seek to establish a “brotherhood” of European and Indian scholars on an equal footing.20 In these frequently adversarial debates, the Marathi scholars insisted on neutrality and impartiality not only to point out European prejudices but also to legitimize their own arguments in defense of Indian civilization as modern and rational. This championing of the scientific spirit thus involved many nationalist slippages. In spite of his insistence on critical power, Bhandarkar remained ambivalent about a completely impartial view. Outlining fresh areas of research in Indian history in a 1905 lecture, he argued that with the critical method of inquiry, Indians could “throw more light on [Indian history] in some respects than European and American scholars.”21 A rather different intervention into the nature of history and a much more strident critique of European historians and colonialist arguments about Indian history was mounted in the 1870s by Vishnushastri Chiplunkar (1850–1883). Son of the famous translator Krishnashastri Chiplunkar, Vishnushastri began his writing career with short critical tracts on Marathi poetry in a journal for the education department and worked as a schoolteacher in Pune and Ratnagiri before devoting the rest of his short life of thirty-three years to the Nibandhamala (Garland of Essays), which he started in 1874.22 His ideas about history informed his writings on a number of different subjects in this journal, but he also wrote some essays specifically on the concept and practice of history that would become very influential in shaping Marathi historical discourse over the next few decades. Although Chiplunkar rehearsed colonialist arguments about the lack of historical traditions in India and welcomed the contact with the modern West for its introduction of history to Indians, his approach went

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beyond Bhandarkar’s ambivalence about the importance of a national empathy to the writing of history. He came to represent what Partha Chatterjee has identified as a classic “sign of the nationalist consciousness,” which rejects foreign interpretations and “sets out to write its own history.”23 Chiplunkar declared history to be an expression of affinity and closeness with a culture that could be properly written only by a nation’s own people, and demanded an Indian history of India. The core of Chiplunkar’s critique of colonialist histories was the sense of powerlessness they engendered among the colonized, which only self-representation and pride could effectively combat. Instead of critical strength, therefore, he extolled the virtues of pride as a powerful, positive tool of self-esteem to combat colonialist historiography. To inculcate this pride, he called for a “complete history” of Maharashtra that would reveal the “special qualities” of the Maratha people that had enabled them to reach “glorious heights” under Shivaji. In a programmatic essay delineating the contours of this complete history, Chiplunkar called for an account of political, administrative, social, and religious developments within a broad rise-and-fall framework,24 but his insistence on the crucial ingredient, pride, naturally led him to emphasize the rise, especially of Maratha political and military power, as central to this new Marathi historiography.25 Chiplunkar’s vision of a proper history oscillated between the political, chronological narrative of wars and kings that was projected in colonial education and his nationalist urge to recapture the sum of all cultural experiences and bring his countrymen in touch with their past “glory” through a modern, “truthful” narrative. However, he located the pride necessary to combat powerlessness not in artistic and literary achievements but in the successful establishment of political and military power. This meant that in spite of advocating the exploration of developments outside a narrow political chronology, he believed the only subject of this complete history was the desh, or collectivity; the regular slippage between the Indian nation and the Marathi region in the imagination of this collectivity is only one of the many contradictions within Chiplunkar’s writing.26 His plea for including attitudes, beliefs, and cultural trends in addition to political events was for an empirical history that provided information about these aspects of the national culture, because they were glorious, worth celebrating and hence in need of “discovery.” Chiplunkar’s programmatic writings, therefore, took up the question of history as an idea and practice primarily as a means

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to illuminate the “reality” of the nation’s past. In this sense, they were concerned more with the expressive and emotive power of history than with its place within the disciplines of knowledge or its practical details of method. For this reason, unlike Bhandarkar, Chiplunkar also remained ambivalent about the differences between history and literature. Despite his belief in the “truth” of the past, he approached history not as a science but as a prose form within the many genres of Marathi literature that was to be cultivated as part of a broader self-awareness produced through contact with the modern West. His primary interest, therefore, was in the development of critical and aesthetic norms for modern Marathi. Unlike contemporary writers like Jotirao Phule or Mahadev Moreshwar Kunte, who rejected “high” Sanskrit conventions and vocabulary in favor of a more earthy and colloquial Marathi idiom,27 Chiplunkar argued for a modern Marathi idiom squarely based on its Sanskrit roots. Only by anchoring themselves to their heritage of Sanskrit conventions, grammar, and vocabulary, he argued, could Marathi writers survive and absorb English knowledge without being asphyxiated by it.28 Although convinced that the revival of Indian languages and a broader Indian cultural regeneration were inextricable, Chiplunkar firmly believed, somewhat naïvely, that the English language could be separated from its broader cultural roots and used as a vehicle to translate universal knowledge into modern Indian prose. Even as he sought to “classicize” Marathi expression, he also passionately argued for a greater absorption of “modern” English forms such as history into its modern prose repertoire. This argument in favor of Sanskrit, combined with the abundant disparagement of the reformist arguments of Lokahitawadi, Phule, and even Dayanand Saraswati in his writings has often led scholars—supporters as well as critics—to take Chiplunkar as the starting point for the “revivalist,” extremist Hindu nationalism in western India. His defiance and defense of religion are certainly indicative of the arrival of nationalist, in particular Brahman, identity and the shift away from reform efforts in the 1880s. However, Chiplunkar’s position on Sanskrit vis-à-vis English was not revivalist: it clearly rejected traditional Sanskritic learning and sought specifically to utilize its linguistic heritage to anchor Marathi expression as it adopted English genres. At several points, interestingly, Chiplunkar wrote of Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic as the three foundations of Marathi and of the importance of continuing all three in colonial education:

Historiography and Nationalism 103 The roots of our language lie in our own vernacular, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic; to develop its writing style it is necessary to be well versed in all four. I don’t think anyone has really achieved this. In recent times the inclusion of Sanskrit in the University examinations has certainly contributed to at least one of these being available. But very few people have any knowledge of the other three. Molesworth’s dictionary, in providing the etymologies of words, illustrates their original roots from these languages. But in the past fifty years, I don’t think anyone has even thought about this issue.29

In this regard, Chiplunkar’s position was significantly different from later Hindutva ideologues such as Savarkar, who explicitly advocated Sanskrit as a means of “purifying” the Indian languages of Persian and Arabic influences. While the emergence of modern Marathi literary criticism, beginning in the 1850s, had given rise to the modern Marathi essay as an important form of realist prose, Chiplunkar’s own writings were crucial to its development into a form well suited to polemical expression.30 He can be credited with popularizing a style in Marathi nonfictional prose—it came to be called the Chiplunkari walan—that was often unrestrained in its passion for putting forward its point of view and denouncing its opponents. Indeed, the aggressive tone in much anticolonial expression from the 1880s onward demonstrating a new nationalist confidence, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s editorials in the Kesari and Mahratta, owed much to its articulation by Chiplunkar in the Nibandhamala. A comment on Henry Morris’s textbook History of India makes clear the contrast between this nationalist tone and the polite admonitions of European Indologists by scholars like Bhandarkar: Look at Morris saheb’s history. The history from the beginning to 1739 has been cramped into thirty pages, the rest filled with English activities. The Peshwas aren’t even mentioned, and those Muslim kingdoms that enjoyed so much power in India for years are narrated in two or four lines . . . fifty years of Akbar’s rule filled into one page. And about our Shivaji, don’t even ask! Beginning with calling him a thief, the murder he committed is described in detail and the rest left to the reader’s imagination. But in two and a half pages, hundreds of mistakes! Shivaji Maharaj’s coronation has been yanked into an earlier decade, Afzul Khan has been killed three years too early, and Sambhaji finished off while Shivaji was still alive! Where was [Morris] saheb off to that he was in such a tearing hurry?31

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Chiplunkar, however, did not specify the critical essay as the principal, or even only, form of writing history. Despite venomous railings against Thomas Macaulay’s writings on India, his concept of history drew heavily on Macaulay’s views. As Mark Phillips has argued, Macaulay did not wish to cede the task of vividly re-creating the past to historical novelists, but believed that “to make the past present, to make the distant near, . . . to call up our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manner and garb,” history had to reclaim this terrain of expressive detail and evocation.32 Chiplunkar elaborated on this idea of history as “a compound of poetry and philosophy” that not only truthfully narrated the past but also evoked it in the reader’s imagination. Although his own discussion of the contours of history was through polemical essays, therefore, Chiplunkar’s call for such an all-encompassing evocation of the Indian/Maratha past left open how exactly this was to be achieved, and he remained unsure about the ability of an empiricist political narrative to generate the combination of patriotism, didacticism, and entertainment that he wished history to provide. He frowned severely on novels as permissive, racy fiction that threatened the morals of young men, and somewhat unrealistically favored well-written, inspiring biographies as worthy competitors to fiction that would simultaneously instruct and entertain.33 Also, while he dismissed the bakhars for their poor grammar, he found himself admiring their content and lively narrative style as critical to the rejuvenation of a new evocative history of valor and bravery. Thus, Chiplunkar’s other journal, the Kavyetihas sangraha, started in 1878 with his three friends Kashinath Sane, Janardan Modak, and Shankar Shaligram, published several Marathi bakhars along with fragments of precolonial Marathi and Sanskrit poetry, to inspire the modern incarnations of these genres in Marathi literature.34 His appeal for the regeneration of the Marathi language and a creative, vivid history proved to be inspirational not only to an entire generation of historians and essayists but also to historical novelists like Hari Narayan Apte. One important effect of this call for a history of power, national pride, and military valor was to direct greater attention among Marathi nationalist scholars and students toward the immediate precolonial history of Maharashtra, toward the history of the Marathas. One such scholar deeply inspired by Chiplunkar’s writings was Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade (1863–1926). Born into a poor Brahman family in Pune district, Rajwade was not able to complete his formal education

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until 1890. Although he never held a formal academic position, Rajwade devoted his entire life to writing about history and developing it as a viable field of study in Maharashtra. He began his scholarly excursions by editing a journal called Bhashantar (Translation) from 1894 to 1897; it featured Marathi translations of important English works. Rajwade himself translated Plato’s Republic in this journal before it folded. Throughout his life he also wrote extensively on the history and social structure of Maharashtra and the Marathi language. His greatest contribution to the field of Maratha history involved the collection, annotation, and publication of thousands of documents from the precolonial centuries in twenty-two volumes of the Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhanen (Sources of Maratha History) between 1898 and 1922. In scholarly introductions to these volumes and articles in Marathi periodicals, he also wrote widely on the theory of history and strove to give Marathi historiography a modern philosophical basis and method. His collected works comprise an impressive thirteen volumes of writings on the nature and practice of history; the evolution and features of Sanskrit and Marathi grammar; medieval Marathi religious texts, orders, and poetry; and reflections on contemporary Marathi politics, society, and literature. Rajwade towered over the Marathi literary-cultural sphere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was deeply influential in establishing Maratha history as the dominant field of historical inquiry for Marathi intellectuals and also shaping, in many ways, the specific direction that this inquiry took in the early twentieth century.35 Rajwade did not share Chiplunkar’s ambivalence about the literary dimension of history and the importance of imagination or creativity in evoking and re-creating the past.36 He was interested in history as a philosophical principle and as a universal approach to understanding human behavior. To him, the creative evocation or the literal conjuring of the past was therefore less important than an overarching framework within which to analyze the evolution and progress of human society.37 He also had little patience for Chiplunkar’s idea of history as a rousing source of entertainment.38 Instead, like Bhandarkar, he was interested, and instrumental, in defining a system of source criticism and a hierarchy of reliable sources for Maratha history. He too sought a “complete” history, both on a theoretical level and on an empirical level of Maratha or Indian history. In empirical terms, Rajwade conceived of an all-encompassing narrative and analytical history of society and culture: one that would be not simply descriptive (in

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his words, bhoutik) of all the religious and social beliefs, cultural practices, and political developments in a society but also an analytical (aatmik) narrative of such practices.39 Although he favored analytical narratives as a more proper way of writing about the past, he also argued that they could only be written after adequate description had first been achieved. One of the principal threads throughout Rajwade’s career, therefore, was the creation of an archive to enable this progressive realization of history, and the firm conviction that the “real” history of the Marathas would have to remain in abeyance until such reliable sources had been gathered. At a theoretical level, Rajwade sought his complete history in a generalized, universal explanation for historical development. Of all the scholars to influence modern Marathi historiography, he was the most positivist in his thinking, which was certainly in Rankean terms, through his insistence on a rigid and thorough empiricist practice and criticism of sources, but more importantly, it was also in Comtean terms of identifying an overarching framework of laws that would help in analyzing human history. He was deeply inspired by Hegel’s notion of the history of human thought, but was more drawn to the positivist notion of history as the study of the evolution of human institutions. Positivism, to him, was not simply a framework of analysis but part of a worldview that rejected any divine hand in shaping human history and acknowledged natural, external influences on human behavior and organization. His approach to language was also evolutionary, tracing its emergence in primitive communication to more complex expression among human beings over time.40 In this sense, his understanding of history was wholly secular and modern, and he had little patience with spirituality or mysticism, or even belief in God. He firmly believed that a systematic shastriya (scientific) historical approach and consciousness was essential for and would lead to the debunking of superstition and myth.41 Although some of his early writings characterized the rashtra (nation) as the primary unit of historical analysis, following Chiplunkar, Rajwade gradually veered around to the point of view that both religion and nation were transient concepts; social institutions set up by social groups both predated and survived political and religious formations. Society was therefore the primary unit of his analysis. Kalanukramik itihasa (simple chronological history), he argued, was uneven and inadequate for a comprehensive understanding of human activity; similarly, daishik itihasa (geographically

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focused history) was also inadequate, for it failed to acknowledge the underlying impermanence of the regional political units that framed its perspective. For a truly global history of humankind (manavetihasa) over time, a generalized analysis of the rise and fall of societies and of the health and stability of their social institutions, Rajwade argued for a kaulik perspective that considered social or ethnic groups as a whole over time, and went on to specify a hierarchical typology of such social units. History, or historical process and events, he argued, was produced at the juncture of these three perspectives of time, space, and social unit. From before the times of the Great Flood, it is clear that human society has different ethnic groups, and these groups have more or less different customs, practices, languages, religions, purposes. In order to understand how these groups grew, developed culture, died out or lived, remained stable, and remained pure or became mixed, either through their own impulses or through contact with others, we have to narrate the history of these ethnic groups from the beginning to now. . . . If the entire human race is divided into ethnic groups, subethnic groups, nations, peoples, classes, individuals, etc., then history acquires a certain neatness and thoroughness. The idea one had all this time about the human populations creating disorderly confusion among themselves disappears, and one gets the feeling that something systematic is happening.42

In this hierarchical typology, the Aryans constituted a kula or ethnic group and England and her colonies a subethnic group. The history of England, France, or the independent Maratha state was typical of national histories, while the Marathas, Bengal, Punjab, and others under colonial rule served as examples of people’s history. Individuals, interestingly, appeared at the bottom of this hierarchy. Sadanand More has rightly argued that there remained a tension in Rajwade’s thought between the importance of leading individuals within society and in the social institutions that shaped individual action. As will be discussed in the next chapter, this tension was displayed most strongly in his analysis of the poet-saint Ramdas’s contribution to Maratha nationalism. Eventually, Rajwade sought to resolve this tension by identifying leading individuals as those who successfully harnessed the zeitgeist and the strength of social institutions to political progress.43

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There also remained throughout Rajwade’s writings a tension between his focus on social institutions and his apparent rejection of national units as transient. Imbricated in his insistence on objectivity and positivism were his nationalism and his identity as a Brahman, and all too often, “civilization” as expressed in social institutions and the “nation” were fused. His colonized position enabled him to interrogate the assumptions of cultural superiority in European histories of the world, but his relationship with European historiography and his position on the universal nature of history remained deeply ambivalent. He insisted that since societies and cultural universes were products of natural environments, no two societies across space and time could have the same perspective on history or on right and wrong.44 At the same time, he repeatedly sought to fit the course of Indian national/civilizational history into nineteenth-century European historiographical frameworks. The emphasis on society and institutions, in Rajwade’s view, also helped explain the rise and fall of their political fortunes and prevented the lack of sovereign political status from determining a group’s historical worth. The history of groups (such as the Indian people under colonialism), then, would not remain shackled to the rajya or the state, but instead could focus on the enduring social institutions they had developed, such as the system of caste or chaturvarnya that had enabled Aryan society to survive for “thousands” of years.45 He repeatedly championed the system as proof of the ability of Indians to develop a body of laws that would not only keep Indian society stable but also enable it to progress through centuries of migration and political upheaval.46 Rajwade’s positivism, therefore, emerged not only as a systematic approach to the past but also as a perspective that underwrote his nationalist imagination of an ancient Aryan past, and his firm belief in the natural leadership of Brahmans in Hindu society.47 Over the course of his career, his research interests grew outward from matters of Maratha society to those concerning the wider Hindu social framework, and went further back in time from the eighteenth century to the ancient period of Aryan migration and settlement in the subcontinent, and the system of varna and jati remained his principal analytical framework. Of course, this differentiation among rashtra (nation), kula/samaj (social group), and lok (people) was inconsistent; even as Rajwade strategically celebrated the samaj as an enduring entity transcending political power and boundaries, the achievement of political sovereignty as a rashtra, especially as seen in the eighteenth-century Maratha state, remained the silent touchstone of progress throughout his writings.

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Nationalist contradictions also informed Rajwade’s appeal for a more rigorous empiricism and nonjudgmental approach in the writing of Maratha history. He was not abandoning Chiplunkar’s plea for a history of pride; he was, in effect, displaying the same nationalist confidence that there did exist a historical truth that was worthy of pride and patriotism. In his detailed discussion of viable sources and the necessary facts for a thorough narration of such a truth, Rajwade angrily set aside the bakhars as being too unreliable with respect to chronology and objectivity, although he became less critical of them in later life. He looked to other kinds of historical documents, such as letters, lists, accounts, diaries, etc. from the Maratha administrative record, as more reliable. He called for those interested in history to make such papers their primary focus, and identified 113 locations across Maharashtra and Central India where private document collections of chieftains and princely rulers could yield a wealth of historical information.48 Rajwade’s historical program, therefore, was to go out and collect these documents, and collect them he did, with a single-mindedness that has captured the attention of many a biographer. He traveled the length and breadth of India from 1893 until his death in 1926, often on foot, visiting sites that he thought would prove useful. Stories of Rajwade’s indefatigable search for these documents have now become legendary, and tales abound of how he snatched papers from a reluctant chieftain here and lost his famous Durvasa rishi-like temper at a recalcitrant and suspicious chief there.49 There is no doubt that this was a tremendous, arduous, and selfless task, undertaken almost entirely on Rajwade’s own financial steam and at great personal sacrifice. Having published all the volumes himself and lost a great deal of money, he lived frugally on the proceeds of fifty copies of each volume forwarded to him by the printer and piled up a huge debt through his travels. As Jadunath Sarkar put it, he was “a penniless collector . . . like a man possessed. . . . His actual performance, in spite of the severe handicaps of his poverty, temper and environment, was wonderful. He was our pioneer par excellence.”50

History and Imagined Communities these deliberations on the nature and legitimate practice of history and the programmatic writings for a new history of India and Maharashtra

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were intimately linked to wider, ongoing debates in Marathi society about social and religious reform, an emerging anticolonial politics, and the attempt to legitimize different political positions through a recourse to history. Bhandarkar, like Mahadev Govind Ranade and Kashinath Trimbak Telang, was not only a political moderate who viewed British rule as a “divine dispensation” but also a member of the Prarthana Samaj (Prayer society). He was instrumental in shaping its reformist philosophy and agenda of advocating the ideal of monotheism, decrying idolatry, and emphasizing individual spirituality and devotion to God. The Samaj’s invocation of the Bhagavat dharma or the Marathi Bhakti philosophy and the Moderate constitutional politics of its members represented the attempts of the Westerneducated Brahman elite to find a middle ground between embracing the traditional, ritualistic Sanatan dharma and completely rejecting all Sanskritic traditions through Western, legal reforms.51 Bhandarkar’s attempts to harness ancient Indian history to the reformist project were clearly within this middle ground, seeking textual evidence and support for widow remarriage in various texts like the eleventh-century Dharmapariksha.52 Bhandarkar was buttressing the need for accepting widow remarriage, but by reinforcing the idea of an ancient, classical period that needed reform precisely to return to its pristine state. He also sought to historically understand and explain the development of the caste system, but as has often been noted about the Brahman-led reformist efforts in Maharashtra in general, his sincere critique of priestly ritual remained considerably shy of a direct criticism of the concept of caste itself.53 It is interesting that—given this “classical” invocation of the Indian past, the domination of Brahmans within the pool of Western-educated scholars, and the avowedly moderate political and social reform program that criticized excessive priestly control and ritual but nevertheless celebrated the Sanskritic philosophical and cultural traditions—Indology did not become the prime resource for a nationalist imagination and the new Marathi historiography among the predominantly Brahman middle class in the late nineteenth century. With exclusive linguistic access to the corpus of Sanskrit texts and dominance in the new middle class, the reformist Brahman elite was arguably in a position to highlight a glorious ancient past that also underwrote its claims to social and political leadership. And yet, Indology and ancient India remained the preserve of a small group of scholars and did not fire the popular nationalist imagination in western India.

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The very judgment and division of the ancient Sanskrit corpus into sources for political history and cultural information, I believe, was an important deciding factor marginalizing Indology as a popular subject of nationalist historiography. Recall that Chiplunkar identified an autonomous history with the essential ingredient of pride as the antidote to the debilitating European perspectives on India. He recognized that cultural power could definitely be evoked through a vibrant civilization that expressed itself through a classical language, religion, and ritual, but it was ultimately political and military power that suggested a glorious nationalist past.54 Indological discourse itself characterized much of the available information about the ancient past as “cultural” and presented a sketchy political history of ancient India that did not include military and political success. Chiplunkar bemoaned this lack of battles and campaigns in the ancient period as evidence of too much spirituality and otherworldliness, and instead advocated a history that tapped into more recent political and military success abundantly available in the centuries of Maratha rule.55 Here, it is interesting to consider precisely such an autonomous history of pride envisioned by the radical humanist thinker and low-caste activist Jotirao Phule (1827–1890), which presented a popular alternative to Indology but also did not fire the Marathi nationalist imagination. As is well known, in critiquing the overwhelming dominance of the Brahman minority in Marathi society, Phule’s polemical writings sought to historically highlight it as alien from Indian society. Like Rajwade, he partook of the Aryan race theory and viewed the social institution of caste as an ancient system framed by Brahmans, but in order to highlight their foreignness to the subcontinent and their illegitimacy in speaking for the bulk of the Indian masses.56 In his 1873 tract Gulamgiri (Slavery), Phule wrote: Recent researches have demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that the Brahmans were not the aborigines of India. At some remote period of antiquity, probably more than 3,000 years ago, the Aryan progenitors of the present Brahmin race descended upon the plain of Hindoostan from regions lying beyond the Indus. . . . The affinity existing between the Zend, the Persian, and the Sanskrit languages unmistakably points to a common source or origin. . . . The proverbial wealth of [India] . . . which has more recently tempted the cupidity of the Western nations, no doubt attracted the Aryans who came . . . as conquerors. . . . The aborigines whom the Aryans subjugated . . . appear

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Elaborating on this “determined front,” Phule reinterpreted several myths, including that of Parshuram and the ten incarnations of Vishnu, to mark the Brahmans as illegitimate, and the non-Brahman agricultural Hindu masses as the proud and authentic aboriginal inhabitants of India.58 This example of old legends aside, Phule’s well-known dexterity with language and his unusual sensitivity to the political power of the symbols of popular culture also led him to invoke pride in this agricultural identity by casting Shivaji as a kulavadi bhushan, or proud peasant king, in the form of a powada. He highlighted Shivaji’s military successes in protecting the Maratha lands from the Yavanas (Muslims), blaming Muslim conquest on Brahman misrule and mismanagement. Besides harnessing the ingredients of heroism and determination, the form of the powada invoked a politics of resistance through a popular idiom and tradition; Phule clarified in the preface that since the poem was meant for the oppressed and uneducated, he had deliberately avoided complicated Sanskrit words to make it more accessible to a wider audience.59 Phule’s vision of the past thus does not appear to have suffered from the drawbacks of the Indologists’ views. It was sensitive to a wider audience, it evoked a celebratory history in a popular idiom and form, and most importantly, it recognized the significance of a history of political and military assertion as opposed to a mere cultural efflorescence. Despite this potential, it did not become the basis for the Marathi nationalist imagination, as it radically and pointedly highlighted the Brahman social groups dominating the new public sphere as illegitimate. The literary journal Vividh Dnyan Vistaar dismissed the powada as being unhistorical, and a “sheer disgrace.”60 Another review in the journal Dnyanodaya doubted Phule’s ability as a historian. Ironically, even Phule’s friend and fellow radical Baba Padmanji, whom Phule had thanked for help with the piece in the introduction, wrote to the Dnyanodaya and disclaimed responsibility for the ballad, commenting that it went against “the evidence of history.”61 Vishnushastri Chiplunkar’s Nibandhamala struck a deeper chord with the swelling Western-educated lower-middle classes. Its low annual subscription rates of Rs. 2 and 4 annas per issue and its angry defiance of colonial writers and missionaries made it immensely attractive to poorer

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upper-caste men who worked the lower rungs of the colonial administration and experienced the humiliations of racial difference and drudgery. This class’s views of British rule were significantly different from the “divine dispensation” idea of the professional elite of lawyers, judges, professors, and civil servants.62 Chiplunkar’s declaration that Hindu society was hale and hearty and did not need any reform matched his unrestrained and colorful prose; the approach to social reform as an admission of national weakness and the appeal of this defiant attitude to a younger generation in an environment of heightened missionary criticism set the stage for the conservative, antireform turn in nationalist politics under Bal Gangadhar Tilak, starting in the late 1880s. For the largely lowermiddle class, but upper-caste Marathi readership of the Nibandhamala, Chiplunkar’s agenda of self-representation squarely tackled the question of political power through Maratha battles and figures like Shivaji and Bajirao while sidestepping entirely the question of social hierarchy and reform. It was more immediate and attractive than Indological analyses of Sanskrit texts as well as Phule ’s radical polemics, which struck at the very roots of Brahmanical power. V. K. Rajwade ’s writings on chaturvarnya as an ancient social institution worthy of national pride and celebration rather than shame and reform only served to buttress this focus on Maratha history among middle-class readers as a desirable narrative of political independence. Rajwade ’s practical efforts in furthering research on the Maratha period and identifying the availability across the Maratha country of a wealth of documents and sources now deemed essential to any historiographic practice also made this desirable narrative possible on a much larger scale. While the publication of Modi handwritten documents in Balbodh print made them more easily accessible to a wider readership, the preparation of jantris (historical calendars) such as the Modak jantri, that enabled easier cross-checking between the Shaka, Arabic, and Christian dating systems also made it easier, from the early twentieth century, for the Maratha archive to be used more systematically by a larger number of researchers.63 Rajwade, for his part, debated the merits of these different dating systems and finally settled in 1904 on the Shalivahana Shaka era, on nationalist grounds. Arguing that it was a date selected by the Satavahanas of Paithan after defeating the Shakas, he chose it as a marker of Marathi historical pride.64

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Creating an Archive by the turn of the twentieth century, therefore, young Marathi nationalist writers and publicists responded vigorously to Rajwade and Chiplunkar’s program for a new Maratha history. It is unfortunate that despite the breadth of Rajwade’s philosophical writings about history, especially his deeply secular and evolutionary approach to language and social formation, it was his narrowly positivist call for authentic documents and, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters, his Brahmanical arrogance that resonated most with his followers.65 However, this emphasis on a narrow positivism was in step with the projection in colonial education of modern history as essentially the building of a fact-based chronological narrative. “Discovering” the Maratha archive for such a modern Maratha history along Western lines became the principal historical as well as patriotic activity, and all manner of documents were perused and published. Much of the historiography during the colonial period, then, involved a literal search for material, and the patriotic researchers served primarily as editors and compilers, applying their skills to annotating the materials and placing them in the appropriate chronological context and within the larger story of Maratha rule. This search was framed by the twin motivations of contesting Grant Duff and of stitching together the larger Maratha story; these also influenced the kind of documents that were selected and published. Stewart Gordon has noted that the conception of a typical Maratha “system” in the approach of these scholars frequently caused deviating, yet equally interesting, materials relating to smaller families to be left out.66 This, no doubt, was also related to the emphasis placed on identifying and learning about such a “system” in administrative, judicial, and military matters in the Maratha history syllabi of the time.67 Equally important, however, was the search for authentic and reliable documents that would enable the writing of the Shivacharitra (Shivaji’s biography): the urge to find as many details as possible also drove the collection, analysis, and editing of many document collections. While some editors sought to distill one original narrative of Shivaji’s life from a variety of sources, or even from different copies of the same bakhar,68 others selectively translated and printed older texts with a view to highlighting those portions that referred to Shivaji himself, or aspects of his reign.69

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Although Rajwade himself deplored them until the very end of his career, bakhars were among the earliest documents to enter this new archive. Several other scholars continued to eagerly dig out a large number from family archives and publish them well into the twentieth century, their facts and authority by no means extinguished among the wider readership. Whatever the kind of materials being published and annotated, their editors and compilers certainly viewed their task as being as much historiographical as nationalist. The early approving declaration by the Indu Prakash, the liberal Marathi newspaper, in 1896 is typical evidence of the continued authority of the bakhars well into the early twentieth century: Half a century ago, Shivaji’s name was shrouded in obscurity and those of us who knew him took him to be a daring rebel and a mountain free-booter. But this ignorance and prejudice melted away before a true appreciation of Mahratta history, and after so many years we have at last learnt to judge Shivaji rightly. We know, not from the works of biased English historians who delight in distorting the facts of our history, but from authoritative records, such as bakhars, etc., that Shivaji fought in the cause of our national independence and freed us from the alien yoke.70

Rajwade worked hard to establish a hierarchy of reliable sources from the Maratha administrative record. Sharply critical of scholars who printed documents as they were found or often made changes in them without providing adequate explanations, he attempted to develop a proper, systematized editorial method and guide for Maratha documents and their researchers.71 The editing process, however, remained quite diverse well into the twentieth century. Some texts, such as the Shedgaonkar Bakhar, were published with legal affidavits attached, the editor and the source of the manuscript testifying that they had been published exactly as they had been found.72 Many editors, however, continued to use older bakhar scribal practices of “updating” manuscripts in the course of annotating and publishing them: some modernized the language and expression in the course of transcribing from Modi to Balbodh; others divided manuscripts into chapters with titles and subheadings, frequently adding Sanskrit epigraphs to the originals to enhance their meaning. In some cases, this “updating” of older texts was consciously undertaken to “correct” what were seen as discrepancies and mistakes in their spelling and grammar, even as these documents were now

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being viewed as reliable and authentic “sources” for a modern history.73 In editing and publishing Maza Pravaas (My Travels), an 1884 memoir of the 1857 Revolt by his family priest, Vishnubhat Godse, for instance, the researcher Chintaman Vaidya made several changes to the text, including modernizing the language and adding and deleting certain sections, in an effort to present it as an error-free and reliable source of information about the rebellion. In doing so, he used the bakhar scribe’s method of “updating” to suit the present circumstances, even though his rationale came from a new historical consciousness.74 Although the importance of these documents had changed in the new, positivist environment, many of the methods of handling and “reading” them continued from an older period, contributing to a complex, modern historiographic practice. The government’s decision to keep the principal record office, the Peshwa Daftar, closed to Indian researchers to limit seditious writing ironically enhanced the importance and publication of documents. Once negotiations with native chiefs and revenue assessments had been completed, the high costs of maintaining and cataloguing an estimated 3,500 bullock-cart loads’ worth of “labyrinth and chaos” led the government to close the Daftar, except for settling land disputes.75 Following Chiplunkar’s writings, several political associations and organizations, like the Deccan Vernacular Society, petitioned the government to allow access; in 1886, it finally sanctioned a project for transcribing and printing the more “valuable” parts of the Peshwas’ diaries, with any annotation to be “approved by Government as an accurate and authoritative exposition.” Despite the urging of liberal-minded officials that “every civilized government” was obliged to admit students of history to its archives, caution was advised in colonial policy with the view that there was really no historical public in India, only “political pamphleteers.”76 When M.G. Ranade perceptively noted that these materials “shed a flood of light upon the real movements and the hopes and fears, the strength and weakness of the people for over a century,” he captured the importance of the Peshwa Daftar in the minds of Marathi writers.77 With the main Daftar out of bounds, Rajwade called upon the Deccan chieftains to throw open their private family collections to historians. The initial response of many princely rulers to the young nationalists who began scouring the countryside in search of documents was not enthusiastic. Some, like the Patwardhans, were open to researchers publishing their

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records but did not offer financial support, earning Rajwade’s wrath and scorn. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the increased interest in Maratha history led some houses to commission family genealogies and histories of their principalities.78 Many princely rulers also began dabbling in colonial politics in the early twentieth century, providing financial and symbolic patronage in particular to the non-Brahman movement, and supported its aggressive use of Maratha historical symbols. Liberal princes like Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda also patronized works on the history of other countries of the world,79 but this trend was clearly an exception. Most chiefs encouraged the publication of their records and financed a history of their own domains, thus ensuring through their patronage an increased production of Maratha history. Chiplunkar’s pioneering Kavyetihas Sangraha published 22 bakhars and 501 historical letters and other documents by the end of its 12-year run, and several other efforts followed. The number of small volumes and individual scholars is too large to list here, but most notable among them was Dattatraya Balavant Parasnis, who published material in the Bharatvarsha (1898–99) and the longer-running Itihasa Sangraha (1908–15), and the Miraj-based scholar Vasudeo Vamanshastri Khare, who undertook the publication of documents of the Patwardhans of Sangli and other southern chiefs’ daftars in the financially ruinous but extremely valuable Aitihasik Lekhasangraha (1897–1924). All this material was culled from private collections of smaller chiefs and landlords, and schoolteachers from the hinterlands of Pune and other district towns such as Krishnaji Vishnu Acharya, a teacher in Satara district, and Bhagwantrao Todewale of Paithan formed the principal link to publishers in Pune. The teachers hunted out and provided interesting material for publication as well as financial support to the Kavyetihas Sangraha.

Institutional Support and History in 1910, rajwade established the Bharati Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal (BISM) in Pune, to provide a forum for researchers to present their material through conferences and a quarterly journal. The BISM went on to acquire the sobriquet of the “Poona School” of nationalist historians and survived, remarkably, solely on private donations for the first few decades

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and counted more than 900 members by 1924. Rajwade’s plan was to form such historical societies in every major town in Maharashtra, and they did develop in Dhule, Yeotmal, and Nagpur, but the Pune institute remained the most active. Besides contributing to the BISM Traimasik (Quarterly), these scholars of Maratha history usually published their books themselves and conducted their debates in periodicals such as the Itihasa ani Aitihasik, Vividh Dnyan Vistaar, and the nationalist newspaper Kesari. It is interesting to contrast these dispersed, private initiatives with the institutional resources Indological researchers enjoyed in the colonial period, both through government funding of the search for Sanskrit manuscripts and scholarships and professorships at institutions such as the Deccan College, and through a network and community of peers, journals, and conferences. In spite of the disparaging by European scholars, Indian practitioners of Indology came to enjoy considerable respect, visibility, and opportunities to publicize their work through journals and conferences all over India and abroad.80 The Deccan College closed abruptly in 1934 due to lack of government funds, but a court case filed by its influential alumni in Pune and elsewhere forced the government to reopen it in 1939.81 The Bulletin of the reorganized Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute and the Annals of the Bhandarkar Institute also served as important institutional outlets for publishing scholars’ research, and they were circulated to and exchanged with similar publications of Indological institutions across India and Europe.82 Almost entirely in English and circulated mainly to European and Indian Orientalists rather than the wider Marathi-speaking community, the work of scholars like Bhandarkar had less potential for regional popularization than the writings of Rajwade, but Indological research remained institutionally more rooted and enjoyed greater authority during the colonial period in Maharashtra.83 The historiographic endeavor of the scholar-publicists of Maratha history, by contrast, was carried on outside the purview of the colonial state, and through its strong nationalist stance, also came to be conceived as being in opposition to it. Despite its popularity among the wider middle classes through the channels of Marathi print, public arenas, and nationalist politics, this discourse was essentially outside the academy and found almost no expression in the established English outlets of the emerging historical discipline in India, such as the Modern Review, The Journal of Indian History, and the Indian Historical Quarterly. In this sense, the emergence of a

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reputed scholarly voice of history in institutions such as the Deccan College or universities across the country was not divorced from the labeling of writing outside these disciplinary, academic structures as opinionated and motivated, and therefore not proper history. The famous conflict in the 1920s and ’30s between the doyen of Maratha history at the time, Sir Jadunath Sarkar and his close friend and colleague Govind Sakharam Sardesai, and the “Poona School” of historians at the BISM, represented by Datto Vaman Potdar and G. N. Muzumdar, is a case in point. Although this conflict involved personal rancor, competitiveness, and suspicion on both sides, it also reflects the institutional structures of authority and exclusion that operated among scholars working on the Maratha period. Sarkar’s academic reputation, government employment with the Indian Educational Service, and influence within the Indian Historical Records Commission enabled him to persuade the Bombay government in 1929 to allow Sardesai into the Peshwa Daftar as the compiler and editor of a fresh batch of documents. The BISM, having demanded greater access to the archives for nearly two decades during which Potdar himself was refused entry, took umbrage, and Indian members in the Bombay Legislative Council protested the government’s unilateral decision to appoint Sardesai in 1930.84 Matters became worse when Sarkar acquired exclusive access in the 1930s to the Poona Residency Records and not one of his assistants was a scholar from the Deccan.85 That these structures of authority and marginalization also went along linguistic lines, with English becoming the most visible and desirable language of research and writing in other Indian languages remaining “regional” or “vernacular,” is a feature all too familiar even today. Nearly all of Rajwade’s English critics of his decision to write only in Marathi have rued the fact that this made his work inaccessible to scholars in other parts of India, but this begs the question of how his English writing would have been accessible to the large number of readers who had only had a Marathi education. Aside from the institutional constraints, such as the concentration of meager research resources in a few sites such as Deccan College and Sanskrit studies well into the 1940s, emerging ideas of scholarship and research and the broader critique of the colonial education system by the Marathi intelligentsia also contributed to the positioning of researchers of Maratha history outside the established academy. Chiplunkar regularly scorned university graduates for their deracinated existence; while this was partly polemics

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against liberal reformers, it also stemmed from his vision of the ideal researcher as not a narrowly trained history graduate but a gentleman-scholar, whose literary interests were wide-ranging and who supported himself by his writing alone.86 This idea stemmed partly from Chiplunkar’s somewhat rosy imagination of contemporary England as a fully literate society abuzz with knowledge where everyone read, and intellectuals not only shaped debates on literature, history, and politics but were also able to make a living from them. It also grew from his own discomfort at college with the rigid structure of examination-oriented classes, readings, and assignments. In several reviews in the Nibandhamala of books ranging from history to chemistry by authors who aspired to this breadth of knowledge, Chiplunkar invoked the ideal of an erudite gentleman-scholar such as Samuel Johnson with an impressive intellectual reach and interest in knowledge as a whole,87 rather than of a specialized university-trained professional. Indeed, Chiplunkar viewed himself as an Indian Johnson, shaping the contours and tastes of Marathi literature.88 Combined with nationalist pride and duty, his call for a general, interested exploration of history could and did throw the field open to a wide range of writers outside the domain of “professional” history. Bitterly critical of the “clerk-producing factories” that in his view passed for colonial schools and the university system,89 Rajwade remained deeply iconoclastic and steeped in respectable poverty all his life. He supported decentralized, individual research efforts like the one he himself was engaged in and also refused to take government help on nationalist grounds. With the exception of M. G. Ranade briefly at Elphinstone College in the late nineteenth century and Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar at the Deccan College in the 1940s, none of the major researchers of Maratha history, nor indeed any of the minor ones, was institutionally affiliated with Bombay University or any of its colleges. Described universally as a man of “sweet tongue and winning manners,” D. B. Parasnis moved among wealthy princes and philanthropic and interested businessmen such as Purshotam Mawjee and acquired access to daftars as well as financial patronage.90 V. V. Khare was a Sanskrit teacher in Miraj, but he managed to make ends meet not through his biographies and collections of documents, but through the popular musical plays he also wrote.91 Sardesai had to make time for his historical writings from his job as an officer of the Baroda court.92 However, Rajwade ’s candid, overwhelming description of the financial challenges he faced, his debts to patrons and printers, and the extreme

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frugality with which he conducted his life and travels93 reveal the hardships this historiographic endeavor presented. Its position outside institutional structures was certainly not without resentment. When Bhandarkar recommended a centralized archive in Pune for preserving the source materials that had been collected thus far, Rajwade chided him for being out of touch with the financial constraints of Maratha history researchers.94 Rajwade ’s own writings frequently came under fire for being too long, rambling, and imprecise, but this is not surprising given the lack of any infrastructure of editors and publishers in the environment in which his work was produced. He yearned for a closer network of researchers and a community of encouragement through conferences and book reviews. The BISM was established to provide precisely such a community.95 During the 1940s, Ganesh Hari Khare, one of the leading and long-standing researchers at the Mandal who had also mastered Persian, put together Sanshodhakacha Mitra (The Researcher’s Friend), a manual that brought together all the cross-dating systems, genealogical tables, and guidelines for reading and accessing the vast material of Persian and Marathi sources that had been gathered over the past few decades. The manual represented the advances in the positivist method made by the second generation of Maratha researchers to which Khare belonged; his long introduction also painstakingly made clear that it filled a sorely felt gap in the financially and institutionally strapped research apparatus available to him and his colleagues.96 I would venture to suggest that along with the strong patriotic sentiments underlying this historical discourse, it is in this position, both real and perceived, of marginality vis-à-vis the established institutions, and in the explicitly political importance of history writing that we have to locate the persistence of the Chiplunkari walan, or the strongly polemical style of language, in the Marathi historiographic discourse on the Marathas.97 The politicization of this intellectual exercise had to do not only with the imagery and story of Maratha heroes and the harnessing of this symbolism to underwrite a variety of political projects, but also with the very process of history writing: access to and control over the sources and the structures that enabled the production of a legitimate historical narrative. Rajwade spurned government help not out of theoretical opposition to state patronage of research institutions but from a nationalist stance against the colonial state. Indeed, from the 1920s, other historians and writers identified state resources as crucial, and harnessing the educational and institutional apparatus for greater

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patronage of regional culture became an important priority for associations such as the Marathi Sahitya Parishad (Marathi Literary Conference).98 After several years’ campaigning by the Parishad and the Maharashtra University Association (of which Datto Vaman Potdar was a prominent member) for a new institutional space for specifically regional concerns, the Maharashtra University Committee was set up. Following its recommendation in 1943 that a new university at Pune would “keep in view the special needs, interests and traditions of Maharashtra and its people,” Poona University was established in 1949.99 The committee argued that one of its priorities would be to bring together existing research institutions such as the BISM and “isolated scholars,” and “establish contacts with [them] to encourage the further progress of systematic research in all branches of knowledge throughout the area of its jurisdiction.”100 Following independence and the states’ reorganization, state patronage and interest, in both institutional and explicitly political terms, has been instrumental in shaping research in Maratha history. Of course, in this emerging structure of authoritative and marginalized ideas and institutional components in the colonial period, radical thinkers like Jotirao Phule who belonged neither in the emerging English-language academy nor in the upper-caste circles of nationalist historians writing in Marathi were doubly excluded. It is ironic, but not altogether surprising that in his 1935 survey of Marathi historical writing, Datto Vaman Potdar described non-Brahman critiques of Brahman historians in the same words colonialist writers had used for Brahman nationalists a few decades earlier: “political pamphleteers.”101

Shejwalkar’s Critique one scholar who was attentive to the political and symbolic importance of history, but sought all his life to establish the study of the past as primarily an intellectual, academic exercise was Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar (1895–1963). Shejwalkar deeply admired Rajwade,102 and his work fell within the broad patriotic tradition of Marathi historiography—in his final years he undertook a biography of Shivaji and viewed this project as a “national duty”—but he also came to represent an interesting counterpoint to it.103 He was one of the earliest scholars of Maratha history to find a space within the formal institutional structures in the early twentieth

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century, but throughout his career he published in both the academic English journals and the popular Marathi periodicals.104 He also became one of the most eloquent critics in the colonial and early postcolonial period of the nationalist overtones in the broader Maratha historiography, seeking to bring greater professional rigor to it. From within the very tradition of “critical judgment” of actors in the past that was nurtured in the colonial education system, Shejwalkar argued for a more dispassionate and detached analysis of the Maratha past. Shejwalkar’s critique of Rajwade’s generation of nationalist historians, beginning with his bold, dissenting introduction to G. S. Sardesai’s 1926 biography of Nanasaheb Peshwa, did not question the premise of nationalism itself;105 indeed, his own classic work Panipat: 1761 is deeply imbued with the patriotic quest for the true reasons for the Maratha debacle. Instead, he strongly criticized the nationalist impulse toward excessive generalization across the Maratha period based on meager sources, and the urge within this anticolonial historiography to uncritically celebrate or assiduously defend all past actions and actors. Rejecting Rajwade’s search for the inadequacies of specific individuals to blame for Panipat, for instance, Shejwalkar pointed instead to the systemic failure of the overstretched Maratha ambitions in central India. Although his positivist approach led him to largely dismiss the historicity of the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, he reached the same conclusion as this eighteenth-century narrative: that the Marathas were themselves responsible. Shejwalkar’s overall critique of the eighteenth-century expanding Maratha state, against the grain of the nationalist scholarship of his contemporaries, was not only that it was distinct from the values and objectives of the Maratha state under Shivaji but also that, over time, it reduced its insistence on independence and progressive change. He argued against the conceptualization of the entire Maratha period as one continuous and coherent historical era of patriotic or Hindu upsurge.106 Instead, through several micro-level, strictly positivist, and descriptive empirical studies based on fresh documents from smaller archives, he presented the eighteenth century as a much more complex era of struggle for domination among competing Indian powers on the subcontinent such as the Mughals, Peshwas, Maratha sardars, Rajputs, etc. His analyses, especially his denouncement of what he viewed as a whitewashing of Peshwa history by Brahman historians infatuated with Chiplunkar and extremist nationalism,107 earned him considerable

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scorn as well as critical acclaim from the intelligentsia.108 He remained deeply iconoclastic all his life, resisting classification into ideological or communitarian categories, but his work served as the bridge to a fresh, professional examination of the Maratha archives and increased interest in more decentralized, socioeconomic analyses of Maratha history among a new generation of scholars such as Vitthal T. Gune, A. G. Pawar, A. R. Kulkarni, and many others that began in the early postcolonial period.109 Marathi debates about the nature and practice of modern history and the search for an “autonomous” nationalist history in the late nineteenth century, therefore, constructed the field of “Maratha history” as the prime resource. The emphasis on reliable evidence as the foundation for a modern historiography ensured the creation, through nationalist efforts, of an archive of readily available documents from the region, and thereby a greater emphasis on the Maratha period. As this chapter and the last have shown, Maratha history was produced as a viable field of study through a process of debate informed by both intellectual shifts in prose writing and perceptions of literature and history and regional political and social imperatives. This transformation to modern historiography also involved the complex survival of earlier forms and their content in the new archive. Far from being a rapid and smooth shift to Western positivist methods through colonial education and professional scholarship in educational institutions, this transformation occurred within social, intellectual, and political contexts that ensured the overall narrative of the past produced by modern Marathi historiography would be a complex blend of literary narrative, factual detail, and political polemic. Moreover, its production took place in rather more dispersed sites in society, even as a centralized, state-led initiative was increasingly sought in the twentieth century. In this blurring of boundaries between evocative and factual genres as well as between “academic” and “popular” scholarship, we can understand the emergence of the broader historical memory of the Marathas. It involved considerable negotiation between the Indian nation and the Marathi region, but throughout, explicitly and implicitly, the desh or national collectivity emerged as the sole subject, the sole organizing principle of historical imagination. This middle-class scholarly discourse on the Marathas in print was overwhelmingly dominated by Brahman nationalists from the Bombay Presidency, but the imagined space of Maharashtra that it produced was complex. On the one hand, its reach and participation extended across

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Marathi-speaking areas and spilled over into princely states outside them, like Indore, Gwalior, and Baroda. On the other hand, it came to be dominated by and centered very firmly in the western city of Pune, with eastern regions like Vidarbha relegated to the status of “subregions.” Potdar’s survey of Marathi historiography reveals how the different areas within the Marathi region were, in the early twentieth century, divided up according to specialized research fields. Vidarbha increasingly became typecast for its importance in the ancient history of Maharashtra and thereby for “religious” and “literary” studies of cults like the Mahanubhavas. Western Maharashtra, with its symbolic importance as the heart of the Maratha state and Pune, the erstwhile Peshwa capital, took the lead in political history, now synonymous with Maratha history. This “hegemony” of Pune-based scholarship, with its attendant symbolism of Peshwa dominance, would also become, in later decades, an enduring symbol of Brahman control of historiography and the production of knowledge.

 5  Region, Nation, and Maratha History

We saw in the last chapter that one of the earliest responses to the programmatic writings of Chiplunkar and Rajwade was a frenetic search for documents: letters, treaties, and bakhars from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Armed with this new archive, Marathi writers produced scores of biographies, monographs, articles in newspapers and literary journals, and speeches at conferences on the Maratha period. Many of these were biographies of individual figures; others were studies of military campaigns and diplomatic tactics; still others were explorations of socioreligious life.1 This body of nationalist interpretations emphasized the idea that the Marathas were not a bunch of marauders inspired by the love of booty but represented a popular movement rooted in a religious and cultural tradition, and also a noble nationalist effort at liberating the region and the nation from foreign rule. This chapter examines these representations in print, as well as in nationalist public arenas, as the anticolonial movement gained strength from the late nineteenth century onward. Much has already been written about the use of Shivaji as a nationalist icon in colonial and postcolonial times.2 My intention is not to focus on the details of these nationalist representations or to reiterate the endurance of the Shivaji symbol in particular. Instead, it is to consider how this invocation of a variety of Maratha themes

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and figures within a broad nationalist framework also produced a modern regional Marathi identity, and a space for negotiating the relationship between the Marathi region and the Indian nation. Scholarship on Indian nationalist expression has generally tended to paper over the frequent slippages between region and nation, and the ambivalences inherent in the interchangeable use of regional and national categories in nineteenth-century nationalist discourse. However, Chiplunkar’s call for a history of “Maharashtra desh” in a nationalist idiom and his repeated use of examples from his specific regional history for a nationalist project raise the important question of how we interpret the liberal, but often ambiguous use of words such as desh, bhoomi,and rashtra in nationalist writings. For example: It is not even a hundred years since our country witnessed great warriors. We can still remember how even at the very end we dazzled all of Hindustan with our royal brilliance, even as the whole world watched, bewitched by our glory!3

Key in this quotation is the ambiguity in his usage of “we” and “our country.” The latter could conceivably include the broader Indian nation as such, and frequently did when Chiplunkar referred to the rashtra that was under colonial rule, but it is clear that the great warriors who “dazzled all of Hindustan with [their] royal brilliance” were the Marathas, whose exploits he was invoking for a much smaller, regionally focused audience as “our glory.” This ambiguous but repeated usage of the collective terms of rashtra, desh, and lok suggests that the exact “national” or “regional” nature of the modern conceptions of belonging that crystallized along cultural, religious, linguistic, and territorial lines was by no means fixed in the 1870s. Rather, the relationship between such conceptions was evolving, constantly being negotiated both in formal political arenas and in discursive terms.4 The growing interest in Maratha history as a resource for anticolonial nationalism following Chiplunkar went hand in hand with the creation of a Marathi regional consciousness that clearly demarcated itself from the larger Indian nation, but also sought to occupy a unique space within it. Moreover, the nationalist interpretations of Maratha history bolstered the idea of this larger nation as synonymous with the Hindu community. Let us look at two sites where this negotiation between region and nation took place: in

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debates among scholars over the meaning of the concept of Maharashtra dharma, and in the emerging public arenas of anticolonial protest.

Maharashtra Dharma in the large body of nationalist writings on the Marathas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a key concept became the focus for Marathi historians as they searched for the moral underpinnings of Maratha rule. This was “Maharashtra dharma.” As discussed in chapter 2, Maharashtra dharma in the eighteenth century was a contested term that signified a range of meanings from a military code of conduct to an adherence to religious ritual and Brahmanical hierarchy. Marathi historians in the colonial period, however, came to focus on a specific definition, as used by the seventeenth-century poet and contemporary of Shivaji, Ramdas: Maratha tituka melavava, Maharashtra dharma vadhavava (Bring all the Marathas together and spread the Maharashtra dharma). With its attractive religious and political-geographic inflections now harnessed to new configurations of community, the term became the prime site upon which to debate the meanings of the Maratha struggle.5 M. G. Ranade (1842–1901) was the first to quote Ramdas on the matter in 1895 in an essay, “The Saints and Poets of Maharashtra,” in the Sarvajanik Sabha Quarterly, later included in his famous work The Rise of the Maratha Power: Saint Ramdas, the spiritual adviser of the great Shivaji, is reported to have exhorted Shivaji’s son, Sambhaji, to follow the footsteps of his father and the advice he gave on this occasion was tersely summed up in two sentences— “Unite all who are Marathas together,” and “Propagate the dharma (religion) of Maharashtra.”6

Ranade combined sentences from two separate letters in verse written by Ramdas to Sambhaji shortly after Shivaji’s death in 1680.7 Rajaramshastri Bhagvat (1851–1908), the Bombay-based prolific essayist in Vividh Dnyan Vistaar, built on this initial interpretation through his 1895 essay, “Maharashtra Dharma.” Bhagvat’s 1887 work, A Few Words About the Marathas, had already set the tone for a reformist or Moderate interpretation of

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Maratha history. Both men were prominent intellectuals active in the reform circles of the Bombay Presidency and wrote widely about Hindu religious thought and society, and their approaches to the history of Maharashtra were not only similar but also strongly reflected their politics. Bhagvat and Ranade interpreted Bhakti as a vibrant and peculiar set of religious values and practice that had developed in the medieval period in Maharashtra through a blending of traditional Hinduism and the monotheism of Islam. This was a regional culture, they argued, that began with Dnyaneshwar’s Marathi commentary on the Bhagavat Gita in the thirteenth century and flourished for 500 years, culminating in the poetry of Tukaram and Ramdas. What made this tradition distinctive was its rejection of Brahmanical values and tenets; the contribution of poets, men and women, from different caste groups, including Muslims; and the establishment of devotional spirituality as superior to the ritual-driven traditions of Hinduism. It produced a popular literature in Marathi that enabled the entire population to participate, denied the importance of caste difference, and “made the nation more humane, at the same time more prone to hold together by mutual toleration.”8 This regional culture, according to the reformist view, underlay Ramdas’s reference to Maharashtra dharma. As Ranade put it: What was there so particular and distinct in the religious belief of his contemporary countrymen which so strikingly attracted Ramdas’ notice, and was deemed by him to be a sure remedy for securing the salvation of his people . . . ? The close connection between the religious and political upheaval in Maharashtra is a fact of such importance, that to those who, without the help of this clue, have tried to follow the winding course of the growth of Maratha power, the purely political struggle becomes either a puzzle, or dwindles down into a story of adventures, without any abiding moral interest.9

This combination of religious and political unity and upsurge successfully established Maratha power as not the accidental accomplishment of a lone charismatic leader such as Shivaji, but created through “a foundation that was laid broad and deep in the hearts of the whole people . . . a national movement or upheaval in which all classes cooperated,” which Ranade likened to patriotism.10 As part of his broader attempt to cast Maratha history in the framework and historical categories of Western civilization, he saw the Bhakti movement too as similar to the European Reformation of

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the sixteenth century; in both places, he argued, a heterodox spirit of religious devotion had protested against the excesses of a corrupt, ritualistic priesthood, breathing new life into the religion and the nation. Ranade also, interestingly, slipped between region and nation in his discussion of the Marathas. Both Ranade and Bhagvat insisted on the social or caste inclusiveness of the Bhakti movement, but Bhagvat was emphatic that it was the disruption of caste hierarchy that enabled the establishment of a community of Maharashtrians, or a Maharashtramandal. Being a Maratha, he argued, meant rebelling against the idea of social divisions and a religiously sanctioned hierarchy, and it was this special character of the Maharashtramandal that underlay Maharashtra dharma. In his words, “The climate of the Marathi lands simply did not suit the health of conservatives.”11 Bhagvat was an early proponent of the idea that Ramdas and Shivaji represented the two sides, spiritual and political, of the traditions of Maharashtra and that it was impossible to understand one without the other. Later researchers of Maratha history drew considerably upon the work and personality of Ramdas in their attempt to recover the morality of Maratha rule and strengthened the idea that it was underpinned by a Hindu religious identity, but with a quite different emphasis. In his introduction to the first volume of the Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhanen, V. K. Rajwade drew on the lines quoted by Ranade, but added a few others: Bring together the Marathas, spread the Maharashtra Dharma Survive even in war, accept death only after you have killed They desecrated places of pilgrimage and polluted Brahman spaces The entire earth was in doldrums and Dharma was lost. . . . Bring all the people together, infuse them with one thought Descend upon the foreigners with all your might and effort. . . . Protect what is already yours and seek to acquire more Establish the rule of Maharashtra everywhere.12

Rajwade was deeply fascinated by Ramdas and his ideas, and devoted a lot of space to an exploration of the poet’s philosophy, his writings on an ideal spiritual and political life, and his commentary on the conditions of late seventeenth-century Maharashtra as he saw them. Ramdas’s writings, although broadly within the corpus of the long Bhakti tradition, are

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a significant departure from the devotional writings of many other poets, notably Tukaram. Ramdas advocates both a deep spirituality and devotion to the divine and a disciplined, earthy practical lifestyle; quite apart from specific discussions of conduct and behavior and comments on the merits of an aware, political life, Ramdas also differed from the other Marathi poets in his devotion to Rama rather than Vithoba and his foundation of the Ramdasi sampradaya (order) distinct from the popular Pandharpur-focused Varkari panth (sect).13 This distinctiveness, especially his interest in, commentary on, and prescriptions for the contemporary world attracted Rajwade the most. In appreciating what he called Ramdas’s “active philosophy,” Rajwade angrily rejected the “otherworldly spirituality” of the other Bhakti poets. He fused his interpretation of Ramdas with his deep fascination for Hegel, arguing that Maharashtra dharma represented the zeitgeist of seventeenth-century Maharashtra, and thus the explanation for the Maratha upsurge.14 Recent scholars of Ramdas have taken Rajwade to task for putting together stray phrases from the poet’s works in his search for such a political philosophy and even fabricating the italicized lines of the couplets above.15 Aphorisms ascribed to Ramdas, however, form part of the popular and oftquoted oral repertoire of moral sayings in the Marathi language and are regularly quoted in nationalist texts—frequently in the prefaces, mastheads, and epigraphs of books and articles, but also in the main body of articles, novels, and plays on the Marathas from the late nineteenth century onward. While Ramdas’s works were among the earliest to find their way into print in the nineteenth century, tracking the “authenticity” of these utterances and quotations, most of which are without exact references to his works, is nigh impossible, given the numerous interpolations and changes that the manuscripts and early printed editions have undergone. Rajwade ’s use and interpretation of these aphorisms certainly influenced their repeated invocation in following decades, but their presence in the modern, nationalist narrative of Maratha history underscores, once again, the complex oral and written channels by which ideas and “facts” found their way into this narrative and its archive and acquired authoritative status as the “truth” about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In interpreting Ramdas’s philosophy as the Maratha zeitgeist, Rajwade did not merely explore the shift toward a more earthy Bhakti philosophy along with the emergence of the Maratha state. He drew from it a specific political program that placed the ousting of Muslim invaders and the

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spread of Maharashtra dharma across all of India at the heart of the Maratha struggle. Only when this program and motive for military action was taken into account, he argued, did the depiction in foreign historians’ writings of Maratha soldiers “scampering aimlessly across the subcontinent” acquire a different, clearer meaning. Giving the scampering a specific purpose, Rajwade defined Maharashtra dharma as a regional, but special variant of Hinduism enhanced by some definite qualities. He even provided a formula: Maharashtra dharma (Hinduism in Maharashtra) = Hinduism in other parts of India + establishment of righteous rule + protection of cows and Brahmans + freedom + unity + leadership.16

Muslims had long oppressed Hinduism in other regions of the country, Rajwade argued, but these regions had meekly continued to follow their religion throughout the medieval period. Maharashtra was special because Muslim oppression there had been counterbalanced by significant political concessions to its elite. The Marathas therefore developed the urge, backed by the ability, to oust the Muslims; it had reached a peak by the time Shivaji came on the scene. Unlike Ranade, then, who described this growing urge as the groundwork laid by all the Bhakti poets over centuries, Rajwade focused on the combination of Shivaji and Ramdas. Hinduism itself had come to mean the twin sentiments of anti-Muslim fervor and the drive to establish righteous rule that protected cows and Brahmans: freedom was the very essence of Hinduism in Maharashtra, and it was an active, militant Hinduism compared to the rather passive traditions in other parts of the country. If truth be told, during Aurangzeb’s reign . . . like the Marathas, other regions of Hindustan too should have rebelled, established Swarajya and protected cows and Brahmans. But this did not happen because these people did not embody the necessary and exalted qualities of unity and leadership. It is true that Chhatrasal sought to emulate Shivaji, but the Bundelas didn’t have the Marathas’ staying power . . . so the leaders in Maharashtra sought to liberate [other regions of India] from Muslim clutches. . . . This was the principal motive underlying the Maratha expansion across India after 1720.17

The Maratha project, therefore, was to spread this idea of Hinduism embodied in Maharashtra dharma all over the country and unite the nation.

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Rajwade’s interpretation of Maharashtra dharma thus differed significantly from the reformist position. He cast it more overtly in relationship with conventional Hinduism in other parts of the country, and focused exclusively on Ramdas as a Brahman, delinking him from the popular Bhakti tradition. The passivity of Bhakti ideology propagated by poets from different castes, he argued, was responsible for Maharashtra’s defeat to the Muslims in the first place; Ramdas’s Maharashtra dharma inaugurated a militant Brahman-led revival.18 The uniqueness of this Marathi cultural tradition for him, therefore, lay not in the religious practice itself but in the political project that it inspired and the prospects for Indian unity that it raised. Other writers such as Bhaskar Vaman Bhat and S. S. Deo, writing in the early twentieth century, following Rajwade, emphasized further this militant Hindu interpretation, focusing almost exclusively on the protection of cows and Brahmans and the expulsion of Muslims as the core of Maharashtra dharma. Bhat, in particular, argued that Ramdas was not part of the Bhakti tradition but represented the revival of Sanatan Hindu values in Maharashtra, adding for good measure that a culture’s vibrancy depended on a healthy balance between Bhakti and Sanatan values.19 Deo grafted Ramdas’s message advocating the cultivation of “God’s story, politics, and awareness, all the time” onto a political program for Maharashtra in the current colonial situation: spiritual regeneration, political struggle, and a nationalist awareness of the past through historical research.20 These interpretations of the Maratha past thus threw up different perspectives on religion, region, and nation. One result of the identification of Bhakti as Maharashtra dharma, and therefore a religious source for Maratha inspiration, was the overdetermination of a complex and diverse set of spiritual interventions into a generalized and politicized ideology of religious community. Poets like Tukaram and Ramdas, especially the latter, were too often reduced to overt political stances—advocating either the rejection or the maintenance of caste identity and nationalism—which obfuscated their complex contributions to the devotional and philosophical tradition as a whole.21 In this connection between Bhakti poetry and the Maratha struggle, religion became less a matter of spiritual contemplation and everyday practice and more the expression of the political philosophy of the Marathas. Moreover, the Marathas were understood not in terms of state power but as an undifferentiated population, a people. Bhakti now became a variant of a modern Hindu religion, not so much a spiritual worldview or

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an expression of ritual difference and belief, but the glue that held together an enumerated political “Hindu” community. This community could be plural, inclusive, and tolerant, as put forward in the writings of Ranade and Bhagvat, but it was still conceived of in political “patriotic” terms. In the 1920s, the famous Gandhian Vinoba Bhave cast this integrative approach to Bhakti in an overtly Gandhian program of Hindu–Muslim unity, interpreting Ramdas’s teachings as prescriptions for a modern universalism of brotherhood and social service. In the opening article of an eponymous journal started in 1928, Bhave argued that Maharashtra dharma did not represent regionalism at all, but universal Bhakti values of devotion, respect, and tolerance that were relevant not only to Maharashtra but also to India and the whole world: Judging from Maharashtra’s historical legacy, nobody can, or should, insist that [Ramdas’s] conception of Maharashtra dharma was limited [only to Maharashtra]. Maharashtra will always feel deeply proud of Shivaji and who could have understood Samartha’s phrase better than him? “Bring together the Marathas” is at the heart of Maharashtra dharma, but to Shivaji at least it didn’t mean excluding everyone else. He did not want to establish a Marathi empire but a “Hindavi swarajya.” He was proud of his religion but respected Muslim pilgrims to Mecca and instructed his soldiers not to harass them. Muslim officials worked for him in high positions. . . . It is clear that his views on nation, religion, and language were very inclusive. . . . If we consider the [Bhakti] tradition carefully, the Maharashtra dharma that appears so narrow at first sight can actually embrace the entire world.22

Rajwade’s interpretation and that of several others following him, however, superseded Bhave’s universalism and emphasized Maharashtra dharma as an overtly political ideology nurtured to protect the Hindu nation from Muslim invasions. This position ignored the philosophical roots of Bhakti completely in favor of a militant religious community. The reformist position, despite its politicized understanding of Hinduism, still allowed for space to imagine a multireligious Indian nation: if Maratha patriotism and politics were rooted in a culture of tolerance and plurality, interpreting the Maratha project as nationalist naturally meant that the nation was also composed, and tolerant of, different religions and castes. The militant position, however, with its emphasis on a Brahman-led Hindu community

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pitted against Muslim invaders, compelled the imagination of the Indian nation as essentially Hindu, nurtured and led by Brahmans. Also crucial in these interpretations is the identification of the relationship between region and nation, a feature that is overlooked in most analyses of the nationalist approach to Maratha history, and in analyses of Indian nationalist imagination in general. Marathi writers did construct their ancestors as the pioneers of Indian nationalism, but also as emblems of their own regional identity and significance in the contemporary national community.23 Indeed, despite their differences over the character of Maharashtra dharma, Marathi historians were unanimous in invoking the “uniqueness” of the Maratha experience in the subcontinent’s history and citing its importance as a lesson for those in the colonial situation. To writers like Rajwade and Bhat, hitching the Maratha wagon to a larger Indian cart was a means of expressing Maharashtra’s role as the militant leader and protector of the Hindu/Indian nation. As Rajwade argued, the Marathas were not the only leaders who realized the responsibility of protecting the nation from Muslim rulers in the eighteenth century, but they were the only ones who had the daring, resolve, and qualities of leadership needed to succeed.24 Even Ranade’s comparatively catholic and integrative approach, however, could not escape this idea of leadership and control: The feeling of [Maratha] patriotism illustrates most forcibly the characteristic result of the formation of a Nation in the best sense of the word, and constitutes another reason why the History of the Marathas deserves special study. It is the history of the formation of a true Indian Nationality, raising its head high above the troubled waters of Mohamedan confusion. It was this force . . . which . . . enabled them to dream as a possibility the establishment of a central Hindu padshahi or Empire at Delhi, uniting and controlling all other Native Powers.25

The centrality of interpretations of the Maratha past to the characterization of the modern region, religion, and nation makes these historical debates crucial to an understanding of identity formation in colonial western India. The reformist, plural approach became an increasingly discordant note as the nationalist movement progressed under the leadership of Tilak into the twentieth century, and lost out to more muscular and triumphalist visions of the past. As we shall see below, this vision of religion, region,

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and nation was overwhelmingly invoked in nationalist public arenas of festivals and rallies, contributing to its consolidation within the broader historical memory of the Marathas. Before proceeding, however, let us briefly contrast the approaches of Marathi writers discussed above with that of Jadunath Sarkar. Sarkar wrote widely on Maratha history in English, and his 1919 biography, Shivaji and His Times, was widely regarded as the authoritative follow-up to Grant Duff. An erudite, painstaking Rankean scholar, Sarkar was also able to access a wide variety of sources through his mastery of Persian, Marathi, and Arabic, but as explained in the last chapter, he earned considerable hostility from the Poona school for his sharp criticism of the “chauvinism” he saw in Marathi historians’ appraisals of the Marathas. Sarkar’s appraisal of Shivaji was also nationalist, but its differences with the appraisal of the writers discussed above is obvious: [Shivaji] has proved by his example that the Hindu race can build a nation, found a state, defeat enemies; they can conduct their own defence; they can protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry . . . maintain navies and ocean-trading fleets of their own and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth . . . [and] . . . proved that the Hindu race can still produce not only jamaitdars (noncommissioned officers) and chitnises (clerks) but also rulers of men and even a king of kings (Chhatrapati).26

In his search for evidence of a broader Hindu modernity in Shivaji and celebration of the proof of political and civilizational power of “the Hindu race,” it is not surprising that Sarkar found no place for Maharashtra dharma in his analysis. Bhaskar Vaman Bhat, in turn, sharply criticized Sarkar even as he reiterated their common belonging in a Hindu nation: We do feel a sense of respect [for Jadunath Sarkar and other Bengali historians] for writing [on Maratha history] using newly unearthed materials, but no Maharashtrian can avoid a sense of dismay at their generally prejudicial approach. Instead of trying to explain the ideals that inspired Maharashtrian political leaders in the seventeenth century, they have merely subscribed to the notion of Marathas as robbers. The Bengalis are closer to us than the British. Our culture and religion is one. We are therefore disappointed that they have participated in the spread of this untruth. . . . Maharashtrians have been

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 137 writing about their history well before Sarkar and other Bengali historians . . . their discussions have established Maharashtra dharma as the basis for the Maratha struggle.27

To Marathi writers and activists of different ideological persuasions, Maharashtra dharma became verily impossible to ignore: if the term and the history it embodied were key to the cultural heritage of Maharashtra, it was imperative to stake a claim to this history in their own ideological frameworks. In the twentieth century, Marxist activists and thinkers in the region also appropriated Shivaji’s project for their own political ends. In a debate on “Shivaji: Protector of Religion or Revolutionary?” in the journal Kirloskar in 1941 among several writers, including G. S. Sardesai, the communist leader of Bombay, Lalji Pendse, argued that Shivaji’s principal project was to protect the poor Maratha peasantry from the clutches of big landed chiefs, both Hindu and Muslim. In Pendse’s view, religious protection was peripheral, since the main exploiters of this peasantry were upper-caste Hindu chiefs themselves. It was against this feudal class that Shivaji led the popular upsurge, establishing a more humane and equitable government and policies such as the substitution of cash payments for hereditary fiefs.28 Pendse argued that the religious nature of Shivaji’s project was only the cultural superstructure of what was really an economic farmers’ movement, and it was only by understanding this true history of their ancestors that “the naïve Maratha-Kunbi peasantry, which shouted ‘Shivaji Maharaj ki jai’ in blind adulation would understand what it was that really he did for them.”29 If Pendse looked to the Maratha warrior-peasantry of the seventeenth century for the militancy and politicization he so eagerly sought in the Maratha kunbi peasantry of the twentieth century, Shivaji was the ideal leader able to channel this militancy into a mass revolution. Interestingly, however, Pendse also looked to Ramdas as a poet who was able to creatively inspire Shivaji and as the intellectual force behind this political revolution. To him, Ramdas’s lament, “The Brahmans have lost their senses, devoid of their morality; they have lost their leadership of society and become disciples instead,” was not a comment on the sorry condition of Brahmans under Muslim rule as Rajwade might have interpreted it, but a critique of the exploitation by the feudal upper-caste Hindus in Maratha society.30 Although Pendse does not mention the term “Maharashtra dharma,” it is

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clear that he was also placing the left-led farmers’ movement within the broad framework of Maratha history and claiming its legacy for his own political program.

Region and Nation in the Shivaji Festival through the ingenious Ganpati and Shivaji festivals, started in 1893 and 1895 respectively, the nationalist leader B. G. Tilak was able to harness the growing popularity and evolving historical memory of the Marathas among the middle classes for the growing anticolonial movement. Tilak’s festivals included the politicization of already existing cultural forms such as the mela, a public activity consisting of songs, colorful parades, and plays. The Indu Prakash of April 6, 1896 reported that Anna Martand Joshi’s Victory to Shiva Chattrapati was performed “with specially reduced rates” in Bombay, alongside the anticolonial speeches, and was one of the chief attractions of the festival.31 It was preceded by a kirtan by the playwright himself. As will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, the festival in turn greatly boosted playwriting and production at the turn of the twentieth century. Through such activities, themes and symbols from Maratha history were transmitted from books and journal and newspaper articles into an even more “public” arena of meetings, festivals, and parades. The following analysis of the invocation of history in the public arena considers two important developments: the debates that the Shivaji festival generated about the “regional” versus the “national” nature of the Maratha legacy, and the development of the powada form into a powerful tool of mobilization during the mass phase of nationalist politics. Tilak’s astuteness as a political leader, as is well known, lay in his recognition of history as an important, emotive issue with which to extend anticolonial protest beyond the confines of constitutional agitation and moderate protest. He thus created a platform for anticolonial politics to be expressed in a popular idiom and language unfettered by the restrictions of formal English and etiquette required in communications with the colonial masters. Most importantly, he struck a chord with the younger generation of the Marathi middle classes, increasingly discontented with colonial policies and Moderate politics. Most observers of the nationalist upsurge in Maharashtra have credited Tilak with initiating the popular fascination

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with the Maratha legacy through his identification of Shivaji as a nationalist hero. Tilak’s Shivaji festival, however, was successful in mobilizing people for the nationalist cause precisely because of the already ongoing debate about and production of Maratha history from the 1880s onward. Richard Cashman has written of the decentralized nature of the Ganpati and Shivaji festivals, where the melas operated relatively independently through neighborhood subscriptions and youth committees, the pattern varying from town to town across the region.32 The Ganpati festival, inaugurated a couple of years before the Shivaji festival took off, had already signaled the entry of historical images and symbols into this public arena. A song from the 1894 Ganpati festival, for instance, went like this: Dauntless were the Maratha sepoys and horsemen, O Maratha brethren They carried their victorious arms beyond the Indus But you have become so passive now Why don’t you understand the vital point that religion is our duty? You, who are skilful at work and who are brave, demonstrate your courage. Why have you abandoned Ganpati and followed the tabuts in procession? Don’t you feel ashamed? The cow, our mother is being slaughtered The fool follows the easy path Give up this evil habit and establish right thinking Let us sing the virtues of the Aryans and follow our obligations.33

Some interest in a “public” activity related to Maratha history had already begun in the late 1880s, with Ranade ’s petitions to the British government to allocate funds to refurbish Shivaji’s tomb at the erstwhile capital fort of Raigad, and establish a memorial there. Nothing was done beyond some lip service from the government, but Ranade ’s effort occasioned some discussion among nationalists in Poona about the need to organize people around the issue. Tilak took it up in 1895 and formed a committee of Sardars from the Maratha princely states and prominent citizens to raise funds and organize the memorial project. In the following months, similar meetings were held across the Presidency. Tilak effectively used the Kesari to popularize the issue and published the names of donors in the paper every week; in a few months the contributors neared 60,000, with close to Rs. 15,000 raised for the Shivaji Fund. The Shivaji festival itself

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began, therefore, as a fund-raising campaign among nationalist-minded elites in various towns of Maharashtra. Even in this initial phase, there were some attempts from mofussil quarters to use the occasion for more than just fund-raising for a memorial. Tilak’s detailed program for a “proper celebration” at the Kesari-led festival at Raigad on April 15, 1896, was certainly an attempt to regulate spontaneous celebrations and channel them into the nationalist cause. In an article titled “Shivaji Jayanti Celebrations” in the Kesari of March 3, 1896, he wrote: The Images of Shivaji and Ramdas will figure most prominently in the celebration . . . during the three days that it will last, lectures, sermons, dramatic representation (not of the sensual or obscene type), singing of historical ballads . . . will form the chief items on the programme. . . . Things produced or manufactured in foreign countries, such as petroleum, candles, glassware . . . will be strictly eschewed at the celebration and only home-made articles will be brought . . . even at the possible sacrifice of some aesthetic attraction. Readings of the Dasbodh and Shivavijaya will be given during the three days. . . . A specially composed ode in honor of Shivaji will be sung on the last day with Shivaji’s standard floating overhead. The guests, staff and volunteers will remain standing while the ode is being sung and will greet its close with shouts of Har Har Mahadev! The singing of the ode will be the most important function in the whole celebration.

The article included details about the preferential seating allotted to representatives of princely families and other descendants of important historical lineages, and those who had donated large sums of money. Visitors could bring “only elderly and respectable ladies”; “courtesans and other low-class women [were] not . . . allowed” into the celebrations. The power of using historical themes for anticolonial protest was dramatically demonstrated in 1897. In a speech on the Afzul Khan episode at Fergusson College in Pune, Professor C. G. Bhanu praised Shivaji’s killing of the Bijapur general as justifiable for the greater cause of Maratha freedom. Tilak elaborated on this argument in the Kesari of June 15, 1897: [Shivaji’s actions] should not be viewed from the standpoint of the Penal Code or even of the Smritis of Manu or Yajnyavalkya or from the principles of morality prescribed in Western or Eastern ethical systems. . . . Krishna preached

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 141 in the Gita that we have a right even to kill our own guru and our kinsmen. No blame attaches to any person if he is doing his deeds without being actuated by a desire to reap the fruit of his deeds.

On June 22, 1897, the young Damodar Chapekar, deeply impressed by the arguments in the festival and the paper, assassinated the hated plague officers of Pune, Colonel Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst. The government sent Tilak to prison for inciting the murder through his articles on Shivaji, and Chapekar was certainly influenced by them, but he also disagreed strongly with the deification of Shivaji in the festival and what he perceived to be mere talk about the leader’s achievements. In his prison memoirs written while waiting for the noose, he wrote of his exasperation at the lack of action in the festival, finally leading to his decision to emulate Shivaji. Chapekar quoted a song that his brother composed during the festival to convey this resolve: Listen! Our lives we risk on the battlefield for a national war Do not think of our utterances in public as farcical talk We will shed the blood of the enemies who destroy our religion We will die, but after killing them first and you will only listen like women.34

Although writers in different parts of the country had begun to focus on Shivaji in the later nineteenth century, Tilak’s attempts to strengthen ties between nationalist politics in Bengal and those in Maharashtra through the Shivaji festival enabled Maratha symbols and images to travel to public arenas outside the region as explicit political tools for mobilizing anticolonial sentiment. These fresh attempts to “nationalize” the Maratha legacy and the diverse responses to them provide interesting examples of the tensions between ideas of region and nation at the turn of the twentieth century. Opposition to the conceptualization of Shivaji as a hero for all Indians arose early in the reformist press, which used the festival as a stick to beat the Tilakites with, terming it a calculated attempt to split the Indian population along lines of geography as well as religion. The Subodh Patrika of June 9, 1895 warned that celebrations of the Maratha upsurge would “revive the old animosities between the two communities [of Hindus and Muslims]” and doubted “whether the enthusiasm roused by th[e] movement [was] common even to the whole of the [Bombay] Presidency,

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let alone the whole of India.”35 The very idea of India as one nation, it added, was a product of British rule. The Marathi paper Sudharak, edited by Tilak’s ideological opponent, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, was foremost in opposing this use of the Marathas for nationalist purposes, insisting that their appeal was extremely local. To Agarkar, the symbol of a monarch who was not able to unite the country against foreign rule was inappropriate, especially at the present time when national unity was crucial. The Sudharak of May 29, 1899 asked: “Under what obligations are the Muhammadans or the Bengalees or the Rajputs to remember Shivaji? It is . . . clear that the festival has in it nothing that can make it national even among the Hindus.” Other Moderate newspapers cautiously supported Tilak’s program but also commented on its special regional appeal, for example the Indu Prakash of April 25, 1898: “Wherever there is Hinduism, Shivaji’s name will be reverenced [sic] and we should not wonder if we hear of Shivaji’s birthday celebrations in Madras next year. He is essentially a national hero for all Hindus, and the Marathas may well rejoice that he was born among them. It is but natural that among the Marathas more than ordinary enthusiasm should be evoked by these celebrations” (94). Protests also arose early in Gujarat; local newspapers such as the Deshi Mitra of Surat expressed dismay on June 13, 1895 at this “flare up of local patriotism . . . [for] a freebooter king,” adding that “we in Surat at least cannot be moved to much admiration for the man who was this city’s scourge” (13). The Hitecchu wrote on November 7 that “the conviction of the people of Gujarat on this point is too strong to be overthrown by any amount of Maratha rhetoric. The Marathas are quite welcome to worship Shivaji as a hero . . . but the Gujaratis have a keen memory of the Maratha raids up to the present day” (26). Tilak was aware of the problems of stretching the rather tight skin of the Maratha legacy across the body of the subcontinent, but he also realized the Shivaji icon’s tremendous potential for mass mobilization. Acknowledging the simultaneous and uneasy process of bringing into being both “region” and “nation,” Tilak assiduously defended the benefits of such subcontinentwide programs against their drawbacks. In the Kesari of April 9, 1901 he painstakingly argued: It does not matter if in different parts of India such celebrations are held in honor of different national heroes. Although the main object is to unite the

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 143 whole of India as one nation, it cannot be denied that the whole Indian nation is made up of different smaller nations and that the solidarity of different parts taken by themselves is indispensable for, and by no means inconsistent with the general unity of the nation.

He made strong attempts to popularize the festival in Calcutta in the early twentieth century; a Shivaji Utsav Samiti (festival committee) was formed in 1902. The festival was not the success Tilak had hoped for; the Swadeshi wave probably was what carried it as far as it went. The small Marathi community in Calcutta led by Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar led the celebrations.36 It was perhaps unavoidable that the attempt to yoke Shivaji into a subcontinentwide anticolonial movement would underscore the Maratha struggle as one of the Hindu community. Shivaji had to become “a hero for all Hindus” to have any supraregional relevance, and indeed, this was the image that traveled and endured outside Maharashtra. There was an enormous body of literature produced on Shivaji in many different languages of the country, highlighting him as the preeminent example of Hindu racial and masculine glory.37 This phenomenon certainly grew with the spread of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Hindu Mahasabha in different parts of the country from the 1920s onward, including in Surat.38

The Powada in Nationalist Mobilization in the early twentieth century, Marathi powadas were not only mined for their content but also honed into a fine instrument of mobilization. Powada singing early on became an important part of the Shivaji festival celebrations. In these popular songs, composed and published by ordinary people for the express purposes of political mobilization, we can see some of the most fascinating ideological uses of Maratha history, in form as well as content. In the early 1920s, a small group of young Gandhian nationalists, mainly Brahmans from Pune, organized a satyagraha to protest the forcible transfer of peasant lands in Mulshi, outside Pune, for a hydroelectric power project mounted by the Tata Electric Company. Mulshi lies within the region known as Maval, whence Shivaji is believed to have drawn his earliest and most trusted soldiers and followers, the Mavalas. Rhetoric urging support for the satyagraha in the local press accordingly focused on this historic heritage and

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the role of the broader public in supporting the cause just as they had once protected the rest of Maharashtra from invasion. Pamphlets that circulated on the peasants’ grievances boldly carried Shivaji’s picture on the cover, urging “Shivaji’s Maharashtrians” to save the Mulshi area. One of the pamphlets gave three reasons for the satyagraha: “one, the proposed dam will submerge fifty-two villages of Shivaji Maharaj’s Mavlas. Two, three hundred years ago, these very Mavlas had given their lives to protect the Hindu religion. Three, it is, therefore, the duty of every Hindu to help them.”39 In the 1930s, Civil Disobedience protests expanded on these attempts to invoke Maratha narratives in popular mobilization; in this period of mass Gandhian anticolonial activity, invocations of the nation were foregrounded. Although the form of this invocation remained regional, its content in the Civil Disobedience and Quit India struggles was considerably more concerned with the wider Indian nation. Powada singing during this period was incorporated most successfully into a mobilizational strategy that scholars have traced to Bhakti practices of communal, devotional singing in western India: the prabhat pheri (morning rounds). Prabhat pheris involved bands of people getting together at the crack of dawn and walking around neighborhoods singing songs, exhorting people to “wake up” not just from a night’s sleep, but also to the reality of colonial oppression and servility. Jim Masselos has described in detail the spontaneity that characterized these pheris, their inclusion of different caste groups and men and women, and their immense popularity in Bombay. The colonial government moved from mere annoyance at the loss of sleep in early 1930 to effective repression and banning of the pheris by 1931, but these remained an important neighborhood political activity even in the 1940s.40 The cheap pamphlets that contained the songs were seized and banned, and many survive today only in the colonial archives.41 To make India independent, Shivaraya came to this earth The Yavanas are a nuisance, harassing our faith To rid us of them Shivaji set out Got an army of Mavalas for the rout. . . . The big emperor of Delhi, called Shivaji a little rat Tricked him into visiting him, pretending to be a friend. . . . Shivaji escaped his treachery, the Emperor was stunned His horsemen dashed everywhere, looking for him

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 145 Find him! Find him! They yelled, trying to trap the Maratha lion. . . . He spread Swaraj everywhere, broke the Yavanas’ back He protected the Hindu religion, the poet Narayan salutes him.42

All six ballads in this pamphlet are narratives of Shivaji’s life, reiterating all the important episodes in his career. One is on the ever-popular Tanaji, who appears as a full-blown Indian nationalist: Shivaji’s lion has left him, Shivaji is shattered My right hand man you were, my guarantee of freedom You gave your life to free your nation You were the bravest of them all. . . . You deserve the garland of victory from the Hind goddess herself. . . . Hindustan is lucky to have brave men like you. . . . The poet Narayan asks you to emulate his qualities Look! Tanaji gave his life for the good of his nation.43

It is noteworthy that the Tanaji poem now includes a subcontinentwide vision of Hindustan with the goddess Hind as the patron deity, reflecting the ways regional historical symbols of the patron deity and the faithful soldier of an emergent power were mapped onto larger collective imaginations. These songs were written to already popular tunes, most of which are mentioned below the title; these appear to be popular devotional or love songs in Marathi and Hindi, suggesting that people were able to easily pick them up and sing along in the pheris. Masselos has suggested that the Congress structure, Gandhi included, gradually came to control the spontaneity of the pheris, trying to impress upon them the themes of satyagraha and nonviolence. Accordingly, there are several songs on temperance, the importance of Khadi, and ballads about Gandhi himself, the latter often appearing as a mere stand-in for Shivaji. A powada on Gandhi went like this: To make this land of Bharat independent The nationalist brave Gandhi was born To frighten the foundations of this foreign power The brave Gandhi lets out a loud roar. . . . Gandhi Nehru fight on the battlefield for freedom The enemy frustrates their efforts. . . .

Region, Nation, and Maratha History 146 How can you sleep, my brothers? Wake up! See what has happened to your land The peaceful war has now begun, Bring out the flag and come on! Enough of slumbering in your beds, Wake up to your freedom!44

The similarity to the poem about Shivaji quoted above is obvious. There were efforts to graft these narratives of battlefield glory onto new nationalist heroes and programs such as nonviolence, but no doubt fraught with difficulties. The pamphlet in which this poem about nonviolent war appeared was remarkably, and rather ironically, titled “Bhariv Thoshache Gudde” (Fully Loaded Fisticuffs)! In time, powadas appeared on nationalist martyrs like Bhagat Singh and more local heroes like the “Satyagrahi Babu Genucha Navin Powada” (New powada on the satyagrahi Babu Genu), a Solapur man who lay on the ground during a protest in Bombay and died under a truck: Bombay city became aware, Satyagraha everywhere The year 1930, the date December 12, This event occurred at eleven a.m. From the old Hanuman alley a trader brought in some police Soon a truckload of foreign goods followed Bhima Dhondu Satyagrahi was the first to stop the lorry An enraged sergeant shoved him aside as a crowd gathered Tukaram Nathu was next, people started picketing. . . . A third and fourth Satyagrahi came forward The brave Parba had to be dragged away by his feet Then they took Nathuram away too Soon a conflict arose, and Babu Genu came forward The hefty, well built man performed the real Satyagraha He lay down in front of the truck; the driver stopped But the sergeant was furious, yelled at the driver. . . . The satyagrahi’s body was drenched in blood He gave his life for freedom, Mother India’s heart is broken. . . . He is now in heaven, the freedom fighter and his deeds will be sung forever. . . . O listen to Babu Genu’s ballad, the oceans too will tremble at this story.45

I have quoted this powada at length because of the dense informative style. The episode is simply dressed up in Marathi verse; such songs on

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contemporary local heroes and martyrs, I submit, must have been the principal means of communicating actions and deeds to a wider audience than newspapers could, and one can only guess at the interpolations that would accumulate as the story traveled.46 The colonial state proscribed and seized several such songs and pamphlets on Bhagat Singh and, in the 1940s, on the hero of the Satara parallel government, Nana Patil.47 The latter, styled in his biographies as the “Lion of Satara,” was the bane of the police for his underground activities throughout the Quit India movement. In speeches and campaigns during his period of hiding and after his release, other Congress leaders frequently referred to Patil as a modern incarnation of Shivaji, invoking the latter’s guerrilla methods of warfare and daring raids.48 A fascinating powada describes a Robin Hood–like figure called Nana Pharari (literally, “Nana at Large”) who was active in the Civil Disobedience movement and had eluded the police for months in the Khandesh region around 1930. This powada, also proscribed, was titled “Nana at Large: The New Shivaji”: Nana’s coming! Nana’s coming! Look, the policeman is afraid His face is suddenly pale and he ’s full of dread Twirling his moustache lording it over the poor Today he is rooted to the spot because of his fear. . . . Roaring like a tiger because of his authority Look his pants are torn today and his mouth’s all frothy O policeman! just how did this come about Look here’s our Nana from Nashik, without a doubt! . . . Some say he’s an avatar of Tatya Tope, others say of Tantya Bhil Some compare him to Vasudeo Phadke raiding a British fort. . . . Some say he’s Bhau Sadashiv returning from Panipat. . . . Still others say he ’s Shivaji raja himself!49

Powadas were also integrated into kirtans that were performed during meetings and campaigns in rural areas. Tilak had effectively developed the “political” or “nationalist” kirtan in the early twentieth century, roping in some of the most entertaining and popular kirtankaars to the extremist cause. These kirtans were still performed within a religious environment in local temples, but with increasing political overtones.50 It is perhaps not surprising that themes from Maratha history, such as the Tanaji narrative and the capture of Sinhagad, found their way into such politicized forms

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of entertainment.51 The activities of one itinerant campaigner, a Congress worker named Haribhau Bhandare, hint at these strategies and the ideas invoked through them. Bhandare does not figure in standard narratives of “the freedom movement in Maharashtra,” and the question penciled into the margin of the official report of his activities in Solapur district in mid-1937 is telling: “do we know him?” Bhandare appears to have been an ordinary worker who was not from the top Congress leadership in the region: someone for whom the colonial state did not have an intelligence file.52 He was part of several youth organizations of Pune, including the Bharat Seva Dal, and had been active in the prabhat pheri circuits of the city throughout the 1920s. Bhandare’s activities are described as “minstrelling” and “ballad-singing” interspersed with nationalist propagandizing, and it is clear that he was good at this job, drawing large audiences and contributions to his cause. Colonial officials were uneasy at his popularity and dexterity in using fairs and other religious occasions to attract crowds. He traveled from village to village, singing songs on Babu Genu, Bhagat Singh, and Mallappa Dhanshetti (a Solapur man convicted and hanged for sedition during the Civil Disobedience movement and the inspiration for much folklore in the region), interspersed with speeches such as: “India is in slavery under the tyrannical British rule. A Shivaji should arise and free the people. . . . The British take money from the country yet interfere with religion. British rule will end in 1940 and Congress is the only institution which can overthrow it.”53 Such activities and representations offer a glimpse into the popular consciousness of Maratha exploits. At a time of severe police repression, the military guerrilla successes of the Marathas, of which Shivaji was the most popular but by no means the only symbol, could simply represent the ability of an ordinary man to snub and humble authority. Shivaji represented the ordinary man’s David to the powerful Goliath of the colonial state, and it was in such an interpretation that his symbolism proved to be the most potent for rousing support and enthusiasm for the anticolonial struggle.

Language and Region what of language in this regional imagination? The conceptualization of the Marathi region’s uniqueness in terms of its historical legacy had a complex relationship with the idea of Maharashtra as a linguistic region,

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the area where the Marathi language was spoken. As we have seen in the last chapter, Chiplunkar in the 1870s was aware of and comfortable with the Perso-Arabic linguistic heritage of Marathi, and it did not figure negatively in his reflections on the neglected state of Marathi language and literature. Some demands to rid Marathi of Persian and Arabic vocabulary as yavani (Muslim) influences were voiced in the 1880s, but there were also protests from researchers like V. V. Khare, who wished instead to have Persian medieval texts translated into Marathi to enable a clearer understanding of Maratha history.54 Rajwade, however, was uncomfortable with the tremendous presence of Persian and Arabic in the vast documents that he edited; in a lengthy essay he carefully sought to show that this influence was coterminous with Muslim rule in the Deccan from the fourteenth century, and that it was introduced into Marathi under duress. The only reason Persian remained prominent during the period of Peshwa rule in the eighteenth century, he reflected, was the expansion of the Maratha empire and the consequent need to communicate with other regions of the subcontinent. Rajwade’s analysis of the Persian influence on Marathi grammar, vocabulary, orthography, and idiomatic usage was detailed and learned, but it was colored by his broader argument that the Marathi language became bhrashta or contaminated by the long contact with Persian. Thus, despite his subtle understanding and detailed discussions of the evolutionary nature of Marathi language and grammar, Rajwade’s underlying assumption was that these languages were part of separate and clashing spheres of Hindu and Muslim speakers and cultures.55 Invoking the more contemporary influence of English, he argued that the Maratha encounter with Persian was an example, and a lesson, of how foreign rule asphyxiated native languages. Rajwade concluded that the Maratha success against the Mughals had prevented Marathi from evolving into a form of Urdu, as had happened to Hindi. Remarkably, he argued that it was the success of the Maratha political upsurge that had allowed not only Marathi and Hindi but all of Hindustan’s languages to survive. “Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi, Marwadi, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Rangdi, Gujarati, Maithili, Oriya would all have been at death’s door if Muslim rule had continued. In sum, the Marathas ousted the oppressive Persian and Urdu, and Hindustan’s native languages got a new lease of life.”56 Language and linguistic pride, then, formed part of the regional historical legacy itself, which was in turn conceived of within its broader national

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importance. This understanding of the Marathi region helps explain the apparent paradox of the Marathi Sahitya Parishad’s championing of the Modi script for use in Bombay Presidency offices, while simultaneously passing resolutions for the adoption of Devanagari as a common script for all of India’s Sanskrit-derived languages throughout the 1920s: while Modi was invoked as the script in which the “Maratha Nation” had produced its historical material and continued to conduct its business, Devanagari was the symbol of this nation’s belonging in a larger national, Hindu family of Sanskrit-derived languages.57 In the 1930s and ’40s, the move to purge Marathi of Persian and Arabic words was aggressively undertaken by the Hindu Mahasabha and its leader, V. D. Savarkar, who simultaneously championed the cause of Hindi as the national language for India.58 Savarkar’s writings, of course, became the most well-known expressions of the Hindu nationalist vision of the Maratha past, especially his Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra.59 Thus, from the late nineteenth century, colorful invocations of themes and symbols from Maratha history were put forward in print and the public arenas of religious festivals and anticolonial protest. I have sought to identify the contestations among nationalist writers to root the Maratha legacy in the religio-cultural traditions of Maharashtra, as well as the many shared assumptions and idioms in their attempts. These shared idioms involved the imagination of a regional Maharashtrian identity and reflected, in particular, an assumption of the “uniqueness” of the Maratha legacy and its historical as well as continued importance to the attainment and maintenance of the freedom of the larger Indian nation, increasingly identified with the Hindu community. These shared idioms and the articulations of a relationship between the imaginations of region and nation also figure in the vast corpus of Marathi historical fiction. The next chapter shall examine such representations, especially their deeply gendered nature. In the twentieth century, the Marathas, especially Shivaji, were repeatedly invoked in public arenas as the perfect symbol of resistance to authority. Also, as we shall see in chapter 7, this understanding of the Maratha legacy was promoted as a source of pride and strength not against anticolonial authority, but against Brahman dominance.

 6  Maratha History and Historical Fiction

Alongside the polemical tracts, monographs, newspaper articles, speeches, and festivals that represented the Maratha past in the colonial period emerged a large and popular corpus of Marathi historical fiction, comprising novels, plays and, from the 1930s onward, the cinema. Together, this body of texts generated lively debates among Marathi historians, writers, and critics about the differences between reality and fiction, fact and imagination, and the boundaries and overlap between historiographic and literary practice. Besides serving as a vehicle for expressing anticolonial nationalism and Marathi regional identity, the representations in these texts also served as an important site for ongoing social and cultural negotiations over tradition and modernity in Marathi society. Only through this longer perspective on the diverse cultural uses to which Maratha historical themes were put can we historicize and account for Tilak’s tremendous success in using the symbolism of Shivaji as a tool of anticolonial protest. This chapter is not by any means a comprehensive survey of everything that was written or elaborated on Maratha history in different media over the colonial period. Indeed, the sheer vastness of this material not only precludes such an enterprise but also is itself an object worthy of inquiry.

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“The Discovery of a Goldmine” english novels and their Marathi adaptations became increasingly popular among Western-educated readers in the late nineteenth century. Although there was some disquiet over the novel’s power to both attract and distract the reader from other responsibilities,1 the appearance of original Marathi novels only enhanced the popularity of the genre, which gradually shifted toward social realism. As literary critics began to emphasize the need for a move away from fantastic romances toward stories rooted in ordinary life, with more believable characters and plot lines, they also turned to historical topics. Kashinath Marathe argued in 1872: The entertaining but fantastic Arabian stories don’t satisfy intellectuals, because there is no faith in their veracity . . . but we don’t insist on completely new stories. . . . If anyone were to write a novel on Shivaji people would jump at it. For we are proud of the heroes of our country . . . is there any shortage of such topics here? There were many such in the Muslim kingdoms, the Satara kings, Pune ’s Peshwas, the chiefs Savant, Pawar, Holkar, Shinde . . . are these of any less descriptive value? If these aren’t enough, more are available from older times. Why can’t their biographies be researched and novels written on them? All the current novels with their weak topics will then fade away . . . because we have no pride in them at all.2

R. B. Gunjikar had already published the first Marathi historical novel, Mochangad, a delightful depiction of daily life in the eponymous fort in the time of Shivaji, in 1867. Following Chiplunkar’s call for an evocation of the Maratha past, critics’ demands for more novels based on real, historical characters, and the dramatic entry into print of older bakhars and powadas, the 1880s and ’90s witnessed a spurt in the production of historical novels, many first serialized in popular Marathi literary journals.3 Hari Narayan Apte ’s Ushahkaal (Dawn), serialized between 1895 and 1897, was the first of the most successful novels consciously modeled on the work of Walter Scott. Indeed, Apte, many of whose novels are still in print today, earned the epithet of the Marathi Walter Scott.4 In the early twentieth century, besides a sizeable number of individual novels by the prolific Vitthal Vaman Bhide and Shantaram Gopal Gupte,5 there appeared at least two series: the seven Swarajya volumes by D. M. Pitale, a.k.a. Nathmadhav, and

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V. V. Hadap’s ambitious twenty-volume Kadambarimaya Peshwai (The Peshwai Through Novels) and Kadambarimaya Shivashahi (Shivaji’s Rule Through Novels).6 The genre of Marathi historical plays was not only more prolific than the novels but also much more widely circulated among the population in urban and semiurban areas across Maharashtra. Nearly 60 historical plays were written in Marathi between 1860 and 1900; over 100 more were written by 1930, and by 1960, nearly 170 more plays had been added.7 There was also considerable borrowing between novels and plays; the same writers often dabbled in both styles, and popular novels were sometimes adapted as plays. From the 1930s, this enormous material fueled the early Marathi film industry based in Kolhapur, where between 1932 and 1960 at least 24 films were made about events and personalities from Maratha history.8 The specific form that Marathi drama took by the late nineteenth century was influenced by European literature, sensibilities, and conventions, especially the work of Shakespeare, as well as by indigenous performative traditions.9 It gradually transformed into prose, blending older verse styles into the peculiarly Marathi and enormously popular form of the sangeet natak (musical play). Early historical plays around the 1870s were written mainly as Shakespeare-inspired experiments with tragedy focusing on the latter years of the Peshwai, such as Madhavrao Peshwa’s early death due to tuberculosis or his younger brother Narayanrao’s murder at the instigation of his uncle Raghunathrao and aunt Anandibai.10 Produced before the influx of bakhars, documents, and powadas into the public sphere via print, these drew mainly on material from Duff and James Tod, although they did display some patriotic stirrings.11 The publication of documents and the rise of nationalist politics under Tilak from the 1880s gave a tremendous boost to historical plays. Several playwrights associated with Tilakite politics, such as N. B. Kanitkar and S. N. Dhavale, who wrote plays on “social” themes using traditional Puranic farces to lampoon social reformers and their ideas, also began writing plays on Shivaji.12 Dhavale got both his inspiration and his material for two plays on Shivaji’s childhood and youth from bakhars published in the Kavyetihas Sangraha. His intention to “re-create the conditions of society, country, and religion” of the Maratha period and his debt to the bakhars were echoed by many other playwrights in the prefaces of their works.13 Many of these plays, often written earlier, began to be popularized and performed

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as Tilak’s Shivaji festival got off the ground after the turn of the twentieth century. Vinayak Bhilawadikar’s Tanaji Malusare, for instance, published in 1898, was enthusiastically received all over Maharashtra, and was just one of scores of such plays written over the next few decades.14 Besides Shivaji, Panipat, and various Peshwa episodes, a very popular subject was the Bajirao–Mastani romance.15 Writers also drew heavily on the imagery in shahiri poetry to describe the everyday world, the lived experience of ordinary Maratha folk beyond court procedures and treaties, detailing the dress and coarse language of the Maratha warriors and the landscape of the rugged country. Kulkarni has rightly described the new accessibility of historical narratives and legends through print as “the discovery of a goldmine.”16

Reality and Fiction marathi writers and critics energetically debated the relationship between history and historical fiction, their respective uses and purposes, benefits and limits. One of the most important points was the treatment of “truth” and “reality” in both history and historical fiction and their respective abilities to arrive at this truth regarding the past. As Hari Narayan Apte put it: Truth is always a consideration for the reader of both history and literature, but while one watches out for how little the former strays from the truth, it is how close the latter can get to the truth that is important. . . . The historian is nonjudgmental, he has to approach the past for the truth, keeping his imagination firmly in check. The littérateur, on the other hand, has to let his imagination run riot in order to creatively uncover the truth. The former presents what he digs out of the past; the latter describes the imprint on his mind of what he sees around him; he simply has to be careful that he is not presenting the inverted picture of a mirror image!17

Apte clearly was aware of the pitfalls of imagination, but in his nationalist position, he sincerely believed he was representing the truth as he saw it around him. The Baroda-based critic G. S. Bhate strongly disagreed with Apte. In a 1913 essay, he drew a firm line between history and historical novels, arguing that the latter had to be firmly rooted in fact to be considered seriously at all:

Maratha History and Historical Fiction 155 There is a difference between the biography and the historical novel. The first tells—or ought to tell—the detailed story of the hero exactly as it happened. The second highlights the principal events of the hero’s life and shows his deep relationship with other characters, classes, and the general condition of the time. The primary duty of the historical novel is to paint an accurate picture [hubehoob chitrapat] of the times in which the story is set, and although the writer may add small bits of his own to complete this picture, he has to remain faithful to the history of the times. This is a primary consideration when judging the worth of a novel.18

Bhate’s position on historical novels, interestingly, came close to Chiplunkar’s idea of history itself; both wanted truthful, yet evocative narrations of history. Both also believed that novels (historical novels, in Bhate’s case), were a transitory phenomenon that would fade away after people’s appetite for their history had been whetted and after well-researched histories that painted the “accurate picture” of the past had been written. Vasudev Govind Apte, in turn, pointed out that an excessive fidelity of historical novels to fact was unnecessary, since history too changed as new evidence was discovered. Describing history and imagination as siblings that had only recently got into a family feud, Apte called for a greater role of the novelist’s imagination in conveying the “general truth” about a particular period of history. In his opinion, in order to do this they had to depart from the “specific truth.”19 In this debate, we see different interpretations of imagination and creativity: while Bhate viewed imagination as the literary power or linguistic ability of a writer to re-create a bygone era strictly as it had been, the two Aptes interpreted it as the liberty with plot structure and factual detail that novelists could, and had to, take for this re-creation. For the majority of Marathi historical novels in this period, writers invoked the latter position of “creative license” to complete their picture of the Maratha past. Despite obeisance to and dependence on historical sources, playwrights and novelists made clear that they inevitably and necessarily departed from them to truly evoke the reality of the past and to overcome gaps in narrow and overtly political and administrative documents. Vitthal Vaman Hadap, for instance, wrote at the outset that his stories were not history, but that he had simply used his imagination “wherever historical evidence had failed to fulfill its task.”20 In the introduction to the second volume of his Peshwai

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series, he wrote, “The available historical sources [on the Marathas] display so much bias, prejudice, superstition, lack of pride, and contradiction that anyone who seeks the real historical truth in them has to use a fine-tuned and conscientious intelligence. This is what I have tried to do in my Peshwai series.”21 At least two historians who edited and compiled sources and wrote analytical tracts and historical surveys, Chintaman Vaidya and Dhanurdhari, also turned to fiction.22 Chintaman Vaidya’s 1914 novel Durdaivi Rangu (The Unfortunate Rangu), chronicling the life of an imaginary character, a young virgin widow during the time of the Panipat battle, sought “to tie up some loose threads in history, and provide explanations for unsolved questions” regarding the Maratha debacle at Panipat: The root source for this novel is the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, the excellent old text. To it have been added the narratives from Muslim historians given by Elliot’s Historians of India [sic]. I have also taken the help of the invaluable correspondence collected by Rajwade. In sum, the historical content here is nearly complete and, barring one small point, has been presented as it was. I believe it will yield a good understanding of the battle of Panipat.23

Vaidya’s novel did not attract acclaim. Critics decried its poor literary style, its inability to blend together historical commentary and the imagined characters, and above all, the bizarre underlying “solution” it presented for the Maratha debacle: throughout the novel, the widow Rangu’s ill-fated presence serves as the trigger for the downfall of various historical figures and those who set eyes on her or come into contact with her eventually face death. The novel, however, went into a third edition in 1958, and for a while, appears to have been a prescribed text in abridged form alongside the Bhausahebanchi bakhar for the matriculation level at Bombay University, and at the B.A. level at Nagpur University.24 The creativity of historical novelists like Hadap, Vaidya, and Nathmadhav lay not simply in effectively narrating historical facts already in evidence through emplotment, style, and emphasis, as Chiplunkar or Bhate had argued, but also in filling the explanatory gaps in the historical record through their imagined plots and characters, and thereby enriching the record itself. Despite their stated declarations of difference from history proper, they operated within the wider positivist understanding of the past

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as an objectively preexisting reality that could be, and needed to be, truthfully illuminated. Accordingly, these writers believed their task to be as much historiographic as literary; they sought to occupy the space of the historical as well as the imaginative and fictional. To emphasize the reality of their narratives, they invoked both bakhar and positivist historiographical conventions, even as they consciously transcended them. Nathmadhav peppered his novels with footnotes and references to Rajwade’s works when writing about a well-known campaign or figure. Such devices, interspersed with imaginary characters and events, had the effect of imparting to the entire text a greater authenticity, even though most of it differed widely from these sources. As Vaidya put it while describing Nanasaheb Peshwa’s wife, Gopikabai: One encounters a lot of negative writing about Gopikabai’s character in history. But in reality Gopikabai was the most intelligent, radiant, and religious woman to have come into the Peshwas’ family. . . . Her religiosity is well known everywhere. After her husband’s death she spent the rest of her life in spiritual contemplation on the banks of the Godavari near Nashik. The banks, temples, and other spots remind us of her, and old folks still tell stories of her devotion. . . . The very fact that the poet Moropant dedicated his Vedantic poem to her may be taken as proof from history of her good character and intelligence.25

It is noteworthy that in the introduction to his novel, Vaidya defended his departure from older sources (including the Bhausahebanchi bakhar) in his characterization of Gopikabai not by arguing for its creative merit, but by insisting on its veracity and its rootedness in a popular, general knowledge of the past.

Nation and Region let us consider in some detail the content of the “general truth” that novelists and playwrights sought to evoke. The quotidian world of the Marathas was depicted as being under a direct and constant threat from Muslims. In all the novels that I have looked at, Muslims and Hindus are shown to be in continuous conflict; it is the main thread that binds the

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racy narratives together. A typical historical play is structured around a prominent figure such as Shivaji and an important campaign, with the actual battle usually as the denouement. Dialogue is regularly interspersed with songs and breathless statements about the need to reestablish moral rule that would rid the land of foreigners and reestablish the glory that had been Maharashtra. For instance, Shivaji’s opening declaration in Vasudev P. Sathe’s 1904 play Shree Shiva Chhatrapati: O Bhavani, I will send the Yavanas packing from this subcontinent; I will destroy these evil enemies of religion and morality; I will fight a bloody battle against these oppressors of the very deities of the Kshatriyas—the holy cows and Brahmans—and offer them as a peace-making sacrifice to this sacred Aryabhumi; I will wash off the stain on this land, sound the horn of victory everywhere, and rekindle Kshatriya glory!26

Shivaji’s complicated military maneuvers are entwined with another formula in the play: the romance between a young Maratha woman and an ordinary soldier in Shivaji’s army, with the latter usually saving her at some point from the clutches of a lecherous Muslim official. These formulas of fervid battle cries and romantic interludes are the staple of most plays. Hari Narayan Apte’s first novel Ushahkaal (Dawn) has at its center a youth, referred to in much of the narrative only as “our young man,” who wishes to escape his father’s oppressive servitude to the Muslim rulers at Sultangad and join Shivaji’s movement for a more meaningful and proud existence.27 Throughout the novel, a Ramdas-like figure called Narharswami, who operates out of a secret hideout beneath a Hanuman temple, guides the young man and finally brings him to Shivaji. The novel ends with the successful storming of the fort and the establishment of a shrine to independence. As a novel serialized over two years, it is naturally repetitive and tedious in parts, but Apte brilliantly manages to involve his readers in the narration of the story: he repeatedly invites the reader to accompany him to a fort, to leave the warrior to his devices and join him in appreciating the heroine’s beauty, or to express his disgust at the sight of Muslims oppressing poor Brahmans. This deft textual device was certainly an important part of Apte’s success in bringing the world of the past home to the reader. The trope of “our young man,” identifying a close relationship between the ordinary Maratha

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warrior and contemporary readers, not only linked the past with the present into a seamless “us” time frame but also drove home the point that Maratha power rose from a broad-based patriotism among the common people and not simply the military genius of a single figure such as Shivaji.28 Apte’s Gad Aala Pan Sinha Gela! (I Won the Fort but Lost My Lion!) was based on the Tanaji powada narrating the capture of the Kondana fort and Tanaji’s subsequent martyrdom. The title of the novel was Shivaji’s grief-stricken declaration upon hearing the news. This text is a fascinating example of the ways Marathi writers in the colonial period recast older representations of Maratha events to suit a different set of ideological needs, thus ensuring the continued, albeit modified, presence of such narratives and images in the public imagination: in 1923, it traveled from the printed page onto the silver screen as “India’s first full-scale historical” silent film in the runaway success, Sinhagad. The film was remade in 1933 as a talkie.29 Apte begins his story with the abduction of a beautiful Rajput widow, Kamalkumari, by a Rajput sardar, Udebhanu, who has not only declared allegiance to Aurangzeb but also converted to Islam. Subjecting the character to much ridicule and disgust, the text gives the impression that this transfer of political and religious allegiance brought out the worst in Udebhanu. Following his appointment as commander of the Kondana fort and a shift in the Deccan balance of power, Shivaji asks Tanaji to recapture it. Tanaji not only recovers it for his nation but also simultaneously rescues the honor of the Hindu widow, who commits sati in a grand ceremony at the end. In the older powada, Tanaji served as the template for the ideal lieutenant, ready to sacrifice personal loyalties in order to do his chief ’s bidding. In Apte’s novel, he is just as loyal, but to an entity higher than Shivaji himself: his first loyalty is to the Hindu community and nation. Nathmadhav and Hadap elaborated on Apte’s formula of brave Maratha warriors charging through the countryside chanting songs and periodically rescuing a bathing damsel in distress, a lowing cow, or a helpless Brahman from the clutches of evil-eyed, bearded Muslim officials.30 Nathmadhav’s Swarajyacha Sriganesha (The Inauguration of Freedom) opens with Shivaji’s conversation with a cowherd about his cows rapidly disappearing due to the Muslim presence.31 Throughout the text, Shivaji and his friends protect the honor of several women, a prominent activity of the Maratha warriors in V. V. Hadap’s opening volume on the Peshwai as well. The Muslim general in the latter text, an official of the Siddi rulers of Janjira on the west

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coast, literally licks his lips at the sight of Maratha women.32 Here, it is the duty of the first Peshwa, Balaji Vishwanath, to protect Hindu women, cows, and Brahmans. Hadap portrays the young Peshwa-to-be as an intellectual continuously deliberating on the plight of his land, his thoughts punctuated and spurred on by the periodic cries and lows for help he hears all over the countryside. After a particularly loud cry he finally declares: As thinkers we have to consider how long we can tolerate such injustice. . . . We ignore such indignities from the Siddi’s officers for the sake of our estates and privileges and become eunuchs, but if the violation of our Hindu sisters in front of our very eyes should be extended to our own wives and daughters . . .

He then charges in the direction of the plea for help.33 Written in the 1920s, when the issues of shuddhi-sanghatan and tablightanzim (purification-organization) marked communitarian politics, Hadap’s narrative is particularly significant for the character Mohammed. He is a Hindu forcibly converted to Islam at a young age after his father, a servant of the Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath, is murdered and his mother commits suicide to save her honor. Mohammed agrees to help the Maratha soldiers save the captured Peshwa from the Siddi’s clutches. During the deliberations over the strategy for the Peshwa’s rescue, he reassures a swami who, as usual, is directing the campaign from a secret cave, that he is not a spy: Swami, I can understand that you are suspicious of me because I am a Musalman. Musalmans are committing unspeakable acts on Hindus and have lost their sense of honor, but I was neither born a Musalman, nor did I become one by choice. I am still a Hindu in heart and blood. How can I convince you of the respect I have for my old leader?34

Following much berating by the Maratha chiefs for his conversion, Mohammed is finally redeemed in the text in two ways: he atones for his sin by killing the evil Siddi officer, and the Swami arranges for his shuddhi and reconversion back to Hinduism. The repeated trope of the violated Hindu/Maratha woman, certainly, was a gendered representation of the Hindu/Indian nation itself; the Maratha warrior was the son who had to free this woman—mother, daughter, wife,

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sister—from the “rapacious” Muslim invader. Detailed physical descriptions of the women, mildly pornographic scenes, and love stories intended to titillate the largely young male readership of such novels happily coincided with political imperatives. The female characters in this fiction were unabashed depictions of an idealized Hindu womanhood; Apte’s Kamalkumari in the Tanaji novel is the extreme representation of this type, a Hindu widow deeply distressed not just at being kidnapped by a Muslim but also at being prevented from fulfilling her dharmic duty of committing sati after her husband’s death. What is also interesting is the depiction of women as conscience bearers of the Maratha struggle: in many of the texts, the young Maratha women remind their servile husbands to throw off the Muslim yoke and rise above material benefits to support Shivaji. Through such characters, India herself speaks to her sons, reminding them of their nationalist duty. This speech by the young Sumitra in front of the Bijapur sardar Baji Pasalkar in Nathmadhav’s text is typical: “You ask me what Shivaji will be able to do [to protect the honor of our wives and sisters]? Now I ask you what you can possibly achieve. Tell me, what can you really do beyond singing the praises of the Badshah? If anyone can do something, it is Shivaji.” Sumitra’s fervent speech stunned Bajisaheb into silence, and her father’s jaw dropped open as he stared at her. It seemed that the mother nation herself was giving them a glimpse into the future.35

Women characters do go against their husbands’ or fathers’ wishes in secretly supporting the Maratha warriors working for Shivaji, but their independent actions are in the service of the larger nation and society, depicted as the honorable and only viable course of action for them.36 This gendered imagery of India has echoes in the representations of nation in other parts of the country, but what is fascinating in the Marathi fiction is the simultaneous regional construction of Maharashtra as the male protector of this feminine nation. If the violated woman serves as a trope for the nation, I would argue that the masculine Maratha warrior, always alert, always ready to protect the woman’s honor, in fact represents the region. A relationship between the two imagined communities is articulated here too as one of leadership and protection. Indeed, the Marathi case is an interesting contrast to the regional imaginations witnessed in Bengal and Tamil Nadu,

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where the region, in addition to the nation, is iconized and idolized in feminine form, as Mother Bengal or Mother Tamil. Maharashtra is always a male entity, embodied in the intensely masculine Maratha warriors.37 How do we make sense of this lack of variety, this tremendous outpouring of formulaic fiction? Going through script after script of Marathi historical plays and novels, one is struck by their overwhelming sameness. Indeed, it is difficult to find a text that deviates significantly from the norm in the period under study. Of course, the reliance on formula was part of the logic of print capitalism, market demands and conditions determining the choice of themes and narratives once a particular type of play or novel had established its popularity. There is no doubt that the demands of the audience did affect the portrayal of characters; this was particularly the case with plays that had to be not only published but also picked up by a company and performed in order for the playwright to find a foothold in the growing Marathi theater. As the interest in Maratha history deepened in the early twentieth century, a nationalist play with powadas, lavanis, fiery patriotic speeches, and the odd sword fight guaranteed at least some returns through performances during the Shivaji festival or in other nationalist arenas, but at least some reviewers were clearly frustrated: Anybody without a sense of drama can write today’s plays . . . [to be successful], the name of a historical figure or fort must appear in the title. Words like “Independence” or “Swarajya” must frequently appear in the script. Gods, cows, and Brahmans must be shown as revered (meaning everybody else must be condemned). Not being able to criticize the British, the Muslims must instead be ridiculed . . . the historical figure must be supported by a spiritual one . . . someone who turns mud into a flower or flowers into a fruit . . . swordfights out of tin swords must remind us of kabaddi . . . the heroine must beg [the warrior] to take her with him on the campaign and he must hold her chin gently and refuse. . . . This is the formula seen in most plays churned out today.38

Sudipta Kaviraj has argued that for the colonized Bengali middle classes in the nineteenth century, historical fiction served as an arena where imagination could have free rein and the potential and possibilities of history could be explored.39 It is important, however, to also consider the limits on such a fictional consciousness, which steered and molded it into specific kinds of imagination. Far from freeing colonized intellectuals from the shackles of

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positivist history, historical fiction went hand in hand with positivist methods in producing representations of the past that were shackled by the demands of collective identity. Marathi novelists and playwrights enthusiastically broke free from the prevailing chronological, factual, nonfictional prose form of narrating the past. At the same time, this creative license to depart from the available evidence enabled them to erase elements from the historical sources that told a story different from the one that fit the new imagined communities of Maharashtrians and Hindu Indians, such as the mutually beneficial relationship between the Muslim kingdoms and Maratha sardars from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries and the deep PersoArabic linguistic and cultural influence on Maratha culture. Judging from the several editions that novels ran into, Marathi historical fiction was very popular, at least among the middle classes, and plays were enthusiastically received across urban and semiurban Maharashtra by a wider public. The gendered imagery of community and nation was extremely important in highlighting “Hindu” and “Muslim” as historically separate and antagonistic categories, Hindu–Muslim conflict as the principal feature of the Maratha past, and the moral purpose of Maratha independence as freedom from not just foreign rule, but specifically Muslim rule. Indeed, the importance of this representation of conflict and of the Muslims as the perennial, foreign Other to Maratha identity and by extension, to national identity, cannot be overemphasized. The triumphalist overtones make it impossible to unambiguously celebrate the liberating, anticolonial possibilities of this fictional consciousness. G. S. Bhate criticized Hari Narayan Apte’s Ushahkaal for depicting the Muslims uniformly as barbaric, arrogant, and cruel, and warned that this could have dangerous consequences, inciting “the minds of Maharashtrians against Muslims.” He believed that novelists’ strict footnoting and providing evidence of sources would steer the historical novel toward truth, but clearly, in this debate on fiction and history, it was Bhate’s conception of “truth” that became marginalized.40

Morality and Modernity let us consider the pigeonholing of characters in Marathi historical fiction in the context of wider social and cultural debates among the middle classes about the changes that came with colonialism. The loosening of

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traditional structures of social authority was the most striking of these, and increased legal and educational rights for women were high priorities of reform movements. Patriarchal anxieties in reaction to the limited, but nevertheless expanded, rights women came to enjoy sharpened considerably. Indeed, two of the major issues that split the elite middle class in Maharashtra in the late nineteenth century were widow remarriage and the age of sexual consent for women. The vocal and growing critique of Brahman dominance by lower-caste intellectuals also contributed to this crisis in Brahman social authority.41 Even within the predominantly Brahman middle class, popular culture, urbanization, and the new public arenas of colleges where youth could mix in unprecedented ways pointed to new social and sexual mores. Enterprising printing presses churned out cheap and lurid romances and penny dreadfuls for a new generation of youth that craved entertainment and pleasurable reading, further provoking the growing clamor for “moral guidance” in nationalist rhetoric.42 In the 1920s, Vitthal Vaman Hadap was a passionate advocate for such moral education in the face of increased education and freedom for middle-class women.43 An important didactic tool in such education, of course, was the genre of historical biography. The Marathi term for biography, charitra, refers to both life history and character or behavior, and both meanings were employed in an enthusiastic adoption of life stories of great men for the inculcation of morality. Chiplunkar had identified the charitra as providing an ideal mix of moral education and entertainment for youth and a desirable alternative to novels and romances. Through his own essay on Samuel Johnson, he sought to lay out the parameters of a modern historical biography, placing the individual within his broader environment before highlighting his unique qualities and celebrating his contributions, peppered with a generous dose of advice to readers to learn from his experiences and follow his example.44 Several writers in the early twentieth century echoed Chiplunkar’s views about this usefulness of history-as-biography in molding young male minds. The ideal age at which boys ought to be introduced to history and how it could be made interesting and important to them was debated in educational journals like the Marathi Shikshak (Marathi Teacher). For instance, G. G. Joshi, headmaster of the school at Vinchur, highlighted the importance of great men’s lives as a base for further history, but also the necessity of presenting facts to ten- and twelve-year-old boys in the form of stories.

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He gave Chiplunkar’s general theme of morality and good behavior a definite civic perspective, arguing that history had to teach students the tenets of good citizenship: decision making, love and respect for justice, and a sense of duty.45 Joshi’s discussion of classroom technique was echoed in the guidelines given by G. B. Borwankar, the author of one of the most popular Marathi textbooks on Maratha history in the early twentieth century. Borwankar’s text included stories on familiar themes and tales of Maratha exploits, and he described in detail the importance of narrating without a break, with gestures and actions to capture the students’ attention.46 Most scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries wrote biographies of Maratha personalities. While the majority were on Shivaji, several were published on Nana Phadnavis, Nanasaheb Peshwa, Tanaji Malusare, Mahadji Shinde, and Bajirao I that advocated their life stories and qualities for emulation. Ramdas’s didactic poetry, especially the Manache Shloka (Verses for Contemplation), was already a popular tool for inculcating good conduct among children; his incorporation into the pantheon of Maratha political heroes fit neatly with his treatises on morality and correct behavior. Although many of these biographical narratives, such as V. V. Khare’s biography of Nana Phadnavis, were densely informative and made extensive use of the Maratha documents being published, the primary impulse for their production was that their subjects were worthy of respect, remembrance, and emulation. Most biographies, therefore, were intended less as critical evaluations than as didactic tools and modern sacred offerings of respect; in this sense, they were not divorced from the older tradition of charitras that combined devotion to the person being described with the elevation of their life as an idealized template. In this context, we can understand the debates among Marathi writers about whether negative qualities of great individuals ought to be included along with the positive ones in biographical narratives.47 Biographies emerged as the popular genre par excellence for the affirmation of prominent leaders and individuals and their consecration in history. Also, while references to sources and newly available documents underpinned some narratives, such as Khare’s, others continued to invoke unspecified memories of older “knowledgeable people” and a diffuse popular knowledge in authenticating tales and anecdotes about various figures.48 In these narratives about men written by men for young boys, a few biographical essays on the ruler of Indore Ahilyabai Holkar (1725–1795) stand

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out. At first sight, the inclusion of this female Holkar sovereign in the club of successful rulers and sagacious statesmen appears to be a nod to the political abilities of Maratha women, and the invocation of a role model for young early twentieth-century Marathi women and girls. While there is no doubt that Ahilyabai’s successful public life was celebrated by nationalists combating colonialist criticism of the sorry condition of Indian women, a closer look reveals the ways these essays also invoked her life to reify traditional gender roles for women. To cite just one example, B. B. Deo pointed out that while capable, Ahilyabai was not a ruler of Shivaji’s vision, and her greatness lay not in her abilities as an administrator but in her piety and charity. Although powerful, she was never power-hungry but instead the epitome of sobriety and firmness. Deo concludes with the moral that despite being deified, Ahilyabai had her feet firmly planted on the ground. In identifying her as a role model for women, thus, he emphasized not Ahilyabai’s independence but her modesty, curbing of ambition and religiosity.49 There also appeared in the 1930s a few biographies of Maratha women written by women, which subtly but surely differed from the perspective of male writers and sought to bring into sharper relief women like Jijabai, Ahilyabai, and Tarabai and even lesser-known women such as Shivaji’s second wife, Soyrabai. Yashodabai Bhat’s Aitihasik Stree Ratne (Women Gems in History), in its second edition in 1932, is a good example of how Marathi women wrote such female characters into the larger narrative of Maratha rule and emphasized their importance.50 In Bhat’s depiction, Shivaji’s mother, Jijabai, goes beyond being the usual supportive mother51 to appear as a woman who learned statecraft as a young girl on her father’s lap and was therefore as much a political counsel to her son as a moral one. As a virapatni or brave wife, she valiantly defended her husband Shahaji’s actions to her skeptical father, and brought up her son alone in the face of considerable adversity. Certainly, such narratives by women did not stray very far from the female qualities of honor, dignity, and piety celebrated in male writings, but I would argue that a subtle feminism nevertheless underlay their invocation. Bhat advocated Jijabai’s independence as an example to young contemporary women who were too scared to board a train “even in these reformed and improved times” without an escort and as proof that women could, if they wanted, do anything.52 Similarly, Muktabai Lele’s biography of Ahilyabai Holkar presents her as an ideal for modern, educated women: her innate strength and forbearance enabled her to tolerate an unhappy marriage while serving her

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in-laws well. She didn’t neglect her in-laws and her duties at home when her father-in-law benevolently decided to educate her. Although eager to commit sati, Ahilyabai preferred to suffer the taunts of society to go on living for the sake of administering her kingdom. Throughout this detailing of Ahilyabai’s family devotion, Lele also emphasizes her faith in her own abilities, her ability to command respect from her family, and her eagerness to learn about the world outside the home.53 Many writers, however, chose the genres of novels and plays over biographies to provide a healthy mix of entertainment, moral guidance, and social debate. It is not a coincidence that many of the novelists and playwrights who turned to historical subjects also wrote on matters of social and religious reform, either advocating it or pointing out its pitfalls.54 Moving away from the suspicion of novels harbored by an earlier generation, Hari Narayan Apte’s “social” novels sought to bring reformist issues to the forefront from the 1890s onward, especially female education and the exploitation of women within joint family structures. As we have seen above, Tilakite politicians countering reformist ideas also turned to plays to put forward their objections to women’s education and legal rights. While traditionalist opposition to social and religious reform was of course strident, even reformist discourses were shot through with concerns about the “management” of women in the new modern conditions. For reformists and traditionalists alike, presenting contemporary social debates and concerns through historical themes that were becoming increasingly popular was a means of discussing complex issues in a familiar idiom, without rejecting tradition in toto. Apte, for instance, started his journal Karmanuk (Entertainment) with the explicit purpose of finding a friendly, endearing form in which the need for social reform could be advocated and the acrimonious political debates among Moderates and Extremists avoided. Accordingly, its first issue made clear that While the Kesari and the Sudharak order society to behave in a particular manner and rain stinging verbal blows rather like a strict, disciplinarian father when society does not comply, the Karmanuk will do the same job as a loving, cajoling mother would, through sweet words and good stories.55

Apte also added that the Karmanuk was intended as a family journal that could be left anywhere in the house without endangering the morals of women and children.56

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The imagination of an ideal, nationalist past with demure women who valorized the concepts of sati and pativratya (wifely devotion) and masculine, successful men who protected them from outsiders and invaders, then, provided an excellent escape for the upper-caste Marathi middle classes at a time when these traditional structures were under increasing pressure. It is fascinating to see explorations of modern, companionate marriages of Maratha women and men in these stories, with both husband and wife in their twenties and their devotion to the political struggle the basis for their bond. There is no doubt that the question of gender relations was central to this historical representation: the women characters in particular, depicted as confident and conscientious yet devoted to their families and nation, suggest the common middle ground that these fictional renderings provided both reformers and traditionalists.57 A remarkable advertisement for Khadilkar’s 1898 play Mohana of Kanchangad reveals the multiple—and separate—social and moral registers that this discourse on the past consciously attempted to develop. To prosperous householders, the play was advertised as “pure entertainment”; to (presumably male) students, it promised “the combination of historical information and a moral lesson”; to women, it promised “the opportunity to imbibe values of wifely devotion and view dazzling bravery without disturbing and vulgar love scenes”; to sneaks and tattlers, it provided “a chance to see the pitfalls of their bad habits and reform”; and finally, to servants, it claimed to be “the perfect introduction to values of nationalism.”58 Shivaji’s remarkable career made him the perfect idealized male character for emulation: by all contemporary and later accounts, he appears to have been a charismatic man who proved his prowess early in life and overcame severe political, social, and military odds to transform the seventeenth-century political scene in the subcontinent. Fictional works also focused on other aspects of Shivaji’s life, which suggests the social and cultural importance of Maratha narratives in the colonial period. A theme that recurs in many historical novels is that of the relationship between Shivaji and his father, Shahaji, who was a senior official in Bijapur. Consider this war of words between a father and son in Bijapur from Nathmadhav’s first novel: “He called me the young prince!” “So what’s wrong with that? Why did you slap the servant when he called you that?”

Maratha History and Historical Fiction 169 “I am not a young prince. I don’t want a kingdom bestowed on me by Muslims. Those who see greatness in it can merrily attach it to themselves. I don’t think it’s anything to be proud about. . . . I want to go back to Pune.” “So get lost. Right now! . . . Don’t you know my power here? What power are you going to demonstrate in Pune? You’ll come back with your tail between your legs!” “Time will tell if I will bend or prove myself.”59

Following an intervention by the mother, the young man storms out to prove his father wrong, and the rest, as the novelist later reminds us after revealing his identity, is history. In Apte’s novels, too, we witness several young men seething with the urge to rebel against tradition and oppression by charting an independent future. The “young man” of Ushahkaal is a typical character: throughout the novel, he encounters various opinions from the older generation advising him of the need to bow to the status quo. This status quo is often expressed in terms of submission to foreign rule, which the young man rejects in favor of following his own path, joining Shivaji’s movement for freedom. Apte’s authorial voice, however, imparts to such conversations a more universal tone, often entering the narrative to sympathize with the individual and the youth rather than tradition or the older generation. A minor character who recurs in many of his novels is a precocious young boy who is quick of tongue and swift of foot, sees more than meets the eye, and often takes daring initiatives that save the day, and the readers are continuously reminded of the benefits of such initiative and boldness and the need to encourage it.60 Such male characters who set out to prove themselves and fought obscurantism and tradition in the name of dignity and nationalism were part of debates among the Marathi middle classes about tradition and modernity, and questions of individualism and social authority. In this sense, the fact that many of the characters were unnamed was a deliberate textual strategy, a way of generalizing this very contemporary debate to ordinary readers. Of course, Shivaji has continued to be idealized in this historical discourse as a bold, male leader who was infallible and quite simply, beyond reproach; scholars who seek to probe Shivaji’s history as a historical human being with ordinary foibles have faced aggressive and frequently violent responses in Maharashtra. Without condoning them in any way, I suggest that in analyzing these responses, it is important to keep this social

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and moral dimension of Shivaji’s memorialization in mind. He was lionized as an important political figure, and his life story was constructed as the ideal blend of tradition and modernity. In these representations, he embodied a moderate individualism that preached the necessity of individual action and enterprise but also maintained a healthy respect for religious and social tradition. It is also important to recognize that this urge to imagine idealized templates of male and female behavior was not restricted to Shivaji. Characters such as Bahirji Naik, Tanaji, Ramabai, and Anandibai also jostled for space in this fiction. Indeed, market considerations aside, readers’ notions and expectations of prominent characters in plays and novels contributed to the predictable, formulaic nature of Marathi historical fiction, and were tied to their moral and didactic importance. In his first play, The Death of Sawai Madhavrao, serialized in the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar in 1895, the famous nationalist playwright and Tilakite editor Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar explored the amorous life of Nana Phadnavis, based mainly on Grant Duff ’s musings on Nana’s alleged illicit relations with the Peshwa’s wife, Gangabai. By then, V. V. Khare’s biography of Nana had already dismissed these musings as bazaar gossip.61 Khadilkar, interestingly, ignored Khare’s arguments in favor of Grant Duff ’s, probably because it made for a more interesting play. However, he had to rewrite it thrice, as the editors and his nationalist circle found Nana’s character too negative. The response to his final script turned out to be rather hostile, one reviewer so horrified at the depiction of Nana that he prayed for Khadilkar’s “speedy demise.”62 This reaction to Khadilkar’s amorous and immoral Nana Phadnavis is understandable when we consider that for the Brahman middle classes, Nana Phadnavis was not only a brilliant statesman but also the model of moral rectitude, a pillar of strength and wisdom in the final years of the Peshwai, the last beacon of stability who held the empire together despite the rapid British advancement. The response of one of Hari Narayan Apte’s earliest biographers also provides a clue to readers’ expectations of such literature: Haribhau’s characters think and speak like they ought to, which is precisely why his novels are so beautiful. Shivaji, Tanaji . . . Rajaram, etc. speak eloquently of patriotism. Their thought is lofty, mature and serious. The natural

Maratha History and Historical Fiction 171 arrogance of Afzal Khan, Aurangzeb, etc. makes their vanity believable. Jijabai . . . Yesubai . . . etc. speak beautifully and their speech conveys their natural beauty, seriousness, poise, and generosity.63

Writers like Apte were repeatedly successful because their imagination of the Maratha world was just as their readers wanted it to be: Shivaji had to be patriotic, Aurangzeb had to appear arrogant, and Jijabai could not but be poised. In this regard, the most fascinating character is Sambhaji, Shivaji’s son. The bakhar narratives largely portray Sambhaji as an errant heir who was unable to hold his father’s kingdom together.64 Recent scholarship, based on freshly published contemporary documents, has highlighted “extant administrative orders right up to the month of his execution” and pointed instead to the growing success of Mughal conquest strategies against the Marathas in the Deccan.65 Sambhaji is generally accorded very little space in standard histories of the Marathas other than in descriptions of the succession conflict that erupted in Shivaji’s family after his death, but he looms large in the fictional corpus on Maratha history. Twenty-five plays were written on Sambhaji between 1880 and 1960, and two films, Chhatrapati Sambhaji (1934) and Thoratanchi Kamala (Kamala of the Thorat Family, 1941), were produced. These narratives built on the colorful descriptions of Sambhaji’s angry temper and his father’s inability to discipline him primarily in the Chitnis Bakhar, and his eventual decision to disinherit Sambhaji in favor of Rajaram. Atmaram Moreshwar Pathare was the first to develop these bakhar stories, in his immensely popular play Chhatrapati Sambhaji, first performed in 1891.66 Creating a bewildering web of intrigue and treachery, Pathare describes the many bad habits and friends with whom Sambhaji got involved, the enemies he made due to his temper and hotheaded decisions, and his gradual downfall and final betrayal to the Mughals. The play ends with Sambhaji’s brave refusal to convert to Islam in Aurangzeb’s captivity and his tortured, painful death at the hands of the Mughal emperor. Most plays about him until the 1930s diligently reiterated this image of a badly behaved, ill-fated Maratha scion who was ultimately martyred, the most well known being Ram Ganesh Gadkari’s incomplete Rajyasanyasa (1922) and V. H. Aundhkar’s Bebandshahi (1924).

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Sambhaji’s character also served a didactic purpose. It represented an important counterpoint to the individualism that was celebrated through the character of Shivaji and the ubiquitous, unnamed Maratha young man. Sambhaji symbolized, in this popular fiction, the limits and pitfalls of individual freedom and the continued need for social controls and mores. Remarkably, a fifteen-year-old-girl named Sonabai Kerkar first took up Sambhaji’s life story to discuss the problems of excessive discipline and alienation of children.67 In an addendum to the play, Kerkar discussed the benefits of studying Sambhaji’s character, portraying him as a young man whose initial bad behavior invited considerable discipline from his parents and consequently alienated him from his family. Underappreciated and unable to prove his worth to his illustrious father, Sambhaji took up bad company and habits. Gadkari’s play too approached the subject of Sambhaji’s life as a means to discuss the tragic consequences of an individual’s misuse of the powers at his disposal, and the tremendous social cost of such actions.68 Several other plays written in the 1920s reiterated this theme. All of them, however, ended with horrific scenes of his murder in Mughal captivity; his finest hour, then, was unfortunately his last, where he resisted the temptations of the Mughal princess Zebunnisa and Aurangzeb’s challenge to convert to Islam in order to win her. Thus he was redeemed in death and reclaimed for the nation as a true patriot and honorable man, despite his rather willful life. As Nathmadhav put it in the preface to his play: “Seeing or reading this play should alter the prevalent opinion about Sambhaji to some extent; at least, his refusal to bow down to the enemy through unparalleled bravery, courage, and death should make him worthy of being called Shivaji’s son.”69 The dialogue between Shivaji and Sambhaji as father and son facing off over the latter’s indiscretions in V. N. Tipnis’s 1933 play A Threat to Shivaji also hints at the different positions of character-building these two figures had come to represent, signifying what sort of rebellion against tradition was permissible and what wasn’t: “I, too, rebelled against my father,” says Shivaji, “but it was for a higher cause: it was for truth, freedom, and fighting for Maratha independence.”70 Although slightly later, it is worth considering briefly the best example of this exploration of Sambhaji’s character to debate modern, middle-class family dynamics, generation gaps, and child-rearing, Vasant Kanetkar’s runaway success, Raygadala Jevha Jag Yete (When Raigad Fort Comes Alive). First performed in 1962, the play continues to be staged today.

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Kanetkar, consciously attempting a “psychological” play, depicted Sambhaji’s childhood as particularly unhappy after his mother’s death when he was two, and his upbringing first by his grandmother and later by an ambitious stepmother, while his father was busy with an important political career elsewhere. He placed particular emphasis on the young Sambhaji’s sense of abandonment when Shivaji left him back in north India for safety reasons after the escape from Agra. Kanetkar also drew on a long tradition within Marathi historical fiction when he depicted Sambhaji’s stepmother, Soyrabai, as the principal culprit for this unhappiness, painting her as a shrew who did not understand her husband’s greatness and, like Anandibai was to do a century later, wrought havoc through her ambition and annoying personality.71 What is important, however, is his casting of Sambhaji’s story as a generalized question of adolescent behavior and psychology that concerned contemporary families as well: When we creatively appreciate that in adolescence, a stubborn mind can interpret the simplest things crookedly, and that a stepmotherly environment can twist an intelligent boy’s rebellious and vulnerable tendencies into bad habits, we can understand the true nature of Sambhaji’s pain. . . . Family members and others are often unfair to the independent-minded sons of visionary and high-achieving fathers. They are compared to their fathers from childhood, very often unfairly. They are often reluctant to accept the son’s independent personality or his need to have one.72

While B. B. Kulkarni found Kanetkar’s play too “middle class” in flavor, D. G. Godse took exception to the depiction of Raigad as a lower middle-class Girgaum chawl in Bombay.73 However, as the different articles in Deshpande’s survey on Kanetkar’s play make clear, Raygadala Jevha Jag Yete was successful and struck a chord with middle-class viewers precisely because it resonated with common, ordinary family concerns and anxieties.74

Hubehoob Chitrapat visual representation also contributed in important ways to the consolidation of this “general truth” in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Images and icons of history traveled from the printed page into performative

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spaces, reaching a much wider section of the population beyond the literate middle class. Although the novel has usually been privileged as the preeminent literary vehicle for narrating the nation, in societies with limited literacy it is also important to consider forms such as plays and poetry, which form a bridge between the written and performative spheres in shaping community identities. Scholars have stressed the immediacy of theater, with its combined impact of visuality and action, in conveying political messages75 and recent work points to interesting ways visual vocabularies of community might not have simply served as accompanying illustrations to print but actively forged a sense of imagined community themselves.76 The sharp rise of historical plays on Maratha themes in the colonial period and beyond is testimony to the power and popularity of this genre, and Chintamanrao Kolhatkar, one of the most sought-after Marathi actors of the early twentieth century, records in his memoirs that the audience would start clapping the minute the Shivaji character appeared on the stage, even before he uttered a word, making clear how potent the sheer imagery of this historical figure was.77 As we have seen, the Marathi play became an important vehicle of political expression in the early twentieth century— Kulkarni refers to playwriting as a “craze” at the time—and the fact that plays suffered greater censorship at the hands of the colonial state than novels is also an indication of their power in influencing public opinion.78 Apte’s novel Ushahkaal, for instance, was actually certified by the government as a book for prize distribution in government schools, but the censor’s rap fell on its adaptation for the stage.79 N. C. Kelkar’s learned study of the reasons for Maratha decline, Marathas and the British, appeared in 1918, to mark the hundred years since the Peshwai’s demise. The book received good reviews, but its popularity soared when K. H. Dixit adapted it as a musical play that very year. The response of a writer in the Satarabased weekly Shree Shahu is a clue to the importance of historical plays in shaping a popular understanding of history: An excellent play can bring home a moral lesson to you in a way that no book can. This is the power of the visual art. There is no doubt that the play outdoes Kelkar’s own book. Both show us the faults of the last [Peshwa], which led our people to favor the Company instead. While this is not the place to review Kelkar’s book, there is no doubt that the play managed to convey this idea much more strongly.80

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The importance of visual representations, especially performative genres such as drama, in conveying the literalness of the imagined community and of course, in consolidating the historical memory of the past also cannot be underestimated. Apart from the literary debates over reality and fiction, the actual plays and performances contributed to making this “truth” about the Maratha past part of a shared historical memory. While an article in the Rangabhoomi defined a historical play as the “exact enactment of stories from history,” advertisements for such plays repeatedly used the term hubehoob (accurate, precise) and their extraction from history as a major selling point. As the advertisement for Vasudeo Ranganath Shirvalkar’s 1892 play Rana Bhimadeva claimed: To revive nationalist, patriotic values, we have only one option—to read the histories of that period and, importantly, to render the events just as they had been on the stage. Therefore, we request the enlightened audiences to definitely see this play.81

In the 1930s, the task of bringing home this literalness of the past was also taken up by films. Led by the most prolific and well-known maker of Marathi historicals, Bhalji Pendharkar, several films brought to the screen legends and stories related to several major and minor figures from the Maratha past, such as Ramshastri, Umaji Naik, Chandrarao More, Bahirji Naik, Tanaji, and Baji Prabhu Deshpande.82 Despite the disciplinary split in educational institutions between history and literature of the colonial period, there remained deep interconnections and an ambivalence among Marathi writers and readers about the similarities and differences between historical and fictional narratives. Intertwined with a positivist commitment to the idea of an objective past recoverable through documents and evidence was an essentialist idea of the “general truth” about the Maratha nationalist project, the evocation of which was deemed, above all, as central to both kinds of narratives. Historical novelists and playwrights enthusiastically elaborated on Chiplunkar’s call for a vivid, descriptive history that would render the past real in the present, and popular genres of plays, novels, and the cinema were deeply influential in rendering the Maratha past’s “reality” in the colonial present. By the early twentieth century, this “reality” had increasingly come to mean the gendered imagination of the Maratha upsurge as a Hindu struggle against

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Muslim invasion. These gendered representations served, particularly via the genre of biography, as sites for articulating the social mores and contours of Marathi tradition and modernity. It was in this shadowy space of truth/fiction, or to borrow V. G. Apte’s phrase, in the ongoing family feud between history and imagination in print, on screen, and in the public arenas, that Marathi historical fiction contributed to the enduring historical memory of real and imaginary characters and events, and to the “general truth” of a glorious and nationalist Maharashtra that successfully survived the constant threat of Muslim invasion.

 7  Caste, Identity, and Difference

Maratha history was widely invoked in the expression of caste identity and protest against Brahman dominance during the “non-Brahman movement” of the early twentieth century. Writers and activists from various middlecaste groups seeking to root the political position of “non-Brahman” in regional history and culture sharply interrogated many of the tacit assumptions and elisions about social hierarchy and Brahman leadership in nationalist historiography and generated lively, often acrimonious debates over Maratha history. As one of the most well-known of these writers, Keshav Sitaram, a.k.a. “Prabodhankar” Thackeray, observed: When a community performs a commendable task such as writing its nation’s history and wins accolades not only from its own people but also from Western historians, there is understandably a wish to research its origins and history. Our scarce historical sources and the consequent black hole of our ancient past certainly hinders this process and leads to conjecture, suspicion, and allegations. However, when only one particular group emerges as glorious and self-reliant from this ancient history at the expense of all other groups in society, its partisan nature is sharply revealed.1

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Thackeray, of course, was aware that the “discovery” of Maratha history was not just the natural search for Maharashtra’s origins but simultaneously the production of the larger nation’s history. Like many other scholars we have been studying throughout this book, he took great pride in this task as an anticolonial response and as the articulation of Maharashtra’s special position in the Indian nation through its contribution to history. However, he also sought to lay bare the narrow social agendas underlying this articulation. Indeed, the elasticity of the collective pronoun “our” in the quotation above, spanning region and nation as well as caste, is remarkable, and indicates the ease with which individuals inhabited identities and the contrasting difficulty this poses for historians’ attempts to compartmentalize them. In referring to “partisan” histories that privileged the contributions of only one social group in Maharashtra, the Brahmans, Thackeray joined a chorus of voices in the early twentieth century that sought to create an alternative community of “non-Brahmans” through a recourse to history. This contestation of historical and cultural meanings took place not only in the sphere of print but also in the more charged and popular public arenas of the Ganpati and Shivaji festivals. Some scholars tried to emphasize the contributions of specific non-Brahman jatis to the Maratha legacy, while others took issue with Brahman interpretations of figures from the Maratha past such as Ramdas. Still others sought successfully to claim the category “Maratha” itself for non-Brahman politics and identity, excluding Brahmans altogether. Indeed, by the mid-twentieth century, this broad, historical, regional category was transformed into the marker of an upper-caste peasant elite. This chapter examines the representations of Maratha history in these discourses of caste and their complex relationship to the collective identities of nation and region. It considers the ways historical themes and symbols were yoked to the creation of an alternative community of non-Brahmans as well as the articulation of a renewed Brahman jati identity. It not only highlights departures from Brahman-led nationalist arguments but also probes the contestations within non-Brahman discourse. At the same time, it also highlights the many shared idioms about the Maratha past that emerged between non-Brahman and Brahman discourses, idioms that were central to the consolidation by the mid-twentieth century of a dominant regional Marathi identity founded on pride in Maratha history.

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The “Contributions” Approach as discussed in preceding chapters, Brahman dominance permeated all of Marathi life: jobs and professions as well as channels of public discourse and political activity. Brahmans also towered over the sphere of history writing and the new nationalist agenda, both within and outside educational institutions. The core of non-Brahman protest highlighted this consolidation of traditional Brahman ritual power into secular terms under the new regime and the naturalization of Brahman perspectives on the past as authoritative knowledge.2 Jotirao Phule’s critique of caste was revolutionary in this context because it struck at the very roots of the concept from a universal humanitarian and egalitarian basis; it was wholly modern and represented a radical break from earlier, religiously inclined reformist critiques of caste. Other radicals, like Tukaram Tatya Padval, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Baba Padmanji in the later nineteenth century, also sought to attack caste difference and engage with social inequality in more fundamental ways than before. They, especially Phule, also recognized the importance of rooting their politics in popular cultural symbols much earlier than their Brahman nationalist counterparts. Through a variety of writings that foregrounded symbols like the hardy cultivator and the brave warrior, Phule recast Maharashtra’s myths, history, and tradition into a low-caste identity rooted in pride and struggle, and an alternative community of culture that was not dependent on Brahman-mediated ritual. Writings such as the Shetkaryacha Asud (Cultivator’s Whipcord) powerfully expressed the hardships of peasant life even as they celebrated its dignity and intimate connection to the land. In Gulamgiri (Slavery), as we have seen, Phule interpreted popular Hindu myths to simultaneously emphasize an aboriginal link between rural peasant groups and the Deccan lands and the peasants’ continuous subjugation by Brahmans through an “Aryan invasion.” He also invoked Shivaji as the Kulavadi Bhushan of this aboriginal community, as a brave and just peasant lord.3 The immediate success of Tilak’s Shivaji festival prompted several protests against a Brahman appropriation of the Maratha legacy. Dhondiram Namdev Kumbhar published a powada in Phule’s newspaper Din Bandhu in June 1895, shortly after Tilak’s launch of the festival: How can these faithless ones cherish respect for the Chatrapati? They do not even pass on the gift of knowledge to others

Caste, Identity, and Difference 180 They even kept the Chatrapati in ignorance. . . . They brought Shivaji’s descendants to ruin. . . . It is the Kshatriyas who should feel honor for Shivaji The Brahmans should be singing the virtues of the Peshwas.4

A letter in the same newspaper that month protested that Shivaji could be rightfully memorialized not by Brahmans but by his “descendants, those whose sweat and toil today provide for the luxuries of kings, princes, and other rulers.”5 Another article in the Din Bandhu of July 1895 resisted the deification of Shivaji and his absorption into a pantheon of Hindu gods and advocated his memorialization along secular, Western models of brave men like Napoleon or Washington.6 Underlying non-Brahman critiques of a Brahman-led nationalist historiography was the important recognition that this apparently neutral, inclusive discourse was shot through with ideologies of caste and hierarchy. Thus, while writers like Chiplunkar and Rajwade were explicit in expressing the superior role of Brahmans in Maratha history, even the liberal interpretations of Ranade and Bhagvat and the historical novels of reformers like Apte, which emphasized social harmony and cooperation within the entire Maratha population, could not resist giving Brahmans a central position. Through these tropes of “contribution” of various Brahman personages, nationalist narratives could be mapped onto the modern, enumerated, and consolidated Brahman community and yoked to the celebration of its collective dominance and “natural” social leadership of the Indian nation. It was this realization, first, of the importance of historical narratives to political activity and community formation and second, of its narrow application by conservative Brahman ideologues in the guise of a vaguely inclusive nationalism that made the historical debates over the Marathas so urgent to regional politics and social conflict in the colonial period.7 Some non-Brahman writings adopted precisely this trope of “contributions.” A series of histories from the turn of the twentieth century argued that the Maratha struggle was made possible not just by a few Brahman leaders but also by the labors of other castes. The response from writers of the scribal Prabhu caste groups was significant. Prabhu chiefs and officials had clashed with the later Peshwas in the eighteenth century over the Shudra status given them during Sawai Madhavaro’s reign.8 Prabhu jati groups, however, fared well under the colonial administration and, as part of the

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new middle class, soon began to forge community links. Such community organization, like the myriad caste associations formed across the subcontinent in the early twentieth century, involved not only lobbying for jobs and educational opportunities but also a renewed claim to history and ritual status. This Prabhu community was called Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP). A CKP Historical Association was formed in the 1910s to research the ancient history of the caste, and there Prabhu historians locked horns with Brahman interpretations, most specifically the writings of Rajwade. In a 1916 essay, Rajwade cast doubts on the upper-caste Kshatriya status claimed by the Prabhu jatis.9 This prompted strong responses. One was K. T. Gupte’s 1919 tract titled Rajwadyanchi Gagabhatti (Rajwade’s Pedantry). Gupte greatly resented the charge of illegitimacy and impurity that underlay Rajwade’s arguments. Another response was from Prabodhankar Thackeray, who, unlike Gupte, was not as concerned with ritual status. Throughout his writings, he was strongly opposed to any kind of revivalist—or in his words, “Puranic”—politics. He in fact shared many of Rajwade’s views about Bhakti values as backward looking, quietist, and useless in modern times, but became one of his fiercest critics, denouncing his historical research as partisan and casteist.10 Thackeray’s 1919 work Gramanyacha Sadyant Itihasa Arthat Nokarshahiche Banda (A Comprehensive History of Rebellion, Or the Revolt of the Bureaucrats) thus sought to prove that many other “prominent communities” besides Brahmans had participated in the Maratha project and to reveal “the true intentions of those who are now preaching the philosophy of nationalism to us.”11 His principal argument was that if Maharashtra had been able to excel in the field of historical research, it was because Prabhu scribes over the entire Maratha period had painstakingly maintained records. If Shivaji laid the foundation for freedom, the CKP men and women provided the cement for it with their blood. This community stood behind it even before the brave Maratha youth responded to his call. With its swordsmanship, it not only surprised the young Maratha Kshatriya heroes, who had oceans of brave Rajput blood in their veins, but also impressed them with its writing and diplomatic skills.12

The CKP community’s track record under Shivaji meant that its ancient history simply had to be glorious, no matter what Brahman sociologists

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said. Most importantly, the community had earned Shivaji’s respect: “Shivaji’s astute judgment of character [was] legendary. His farsightedness in depending on the CKP community for his administration [was] proof of its worth!” Thackeray went on to detail various episodes in Maratha history where the Prabhu community had excelled. Thackeray’s arguments reveal a crucial reason for the centrality of Maratha narratives to contemporary Marathi politics. He claimed dignity and high status for the Prabhus in the present time based exclusively on their historical contribution to the Maratha legacy. Whatever a community’s ancient history or origins, its participation in the Maratha struggle allowed it to claim rightful status in contemporary Marathi society. Indeed, non-Brahman writings developed this approach into a strong anti-Brahman weapon by repeatedly describing the Peshwas as deceitful rulers responsible for the loss of sovereignty; by extension, this meant that contemporary Brahmans had no right to the socially superior status they claimed. Moreover, the conflict between the Bhosales and the Peshwas over control of the Maratha state now entered non-Brahman discourse as a historical example of the essential cleavages between whole, bounded, and clearly demarcated caste communities in Marathi society. This critique of Brahman dominance aside, many middle-class nonBrahmans shared in the broader nationalist critique of colonial historiography and the celebration of the special position of the Maratha legacy. Indeed, there remained important points of consensus among non-Brahmans and Brahmans regarding the uniqueness of Maharashtra’s contributions to Indian nationalism that transcended the conflicts over Maratha history. As one S.N.K. put it in an article entitled “Where Do We Go Wrong?” in the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar, non-Brahmans found nationalist writings and the need to reinvigorate language and history in the face of colonial domination extremely appealing; it was the insistence on Brahman superiority by writers like Chiplunkar and Rajwade that they found alienating.13 The stance of non-Brahman writers like Krishnarao Keluskar, Bhagwantrao Palekar, and Thackeray, then, was similar to the one that Brahman nationalists had adopted vis-à-vis the colonialist position of James Grant Duff. They placed themselves within positivist and nationalist historiography, firmly believing in the possibility of recovering through proper research methods a truthful, coherent historical narrative of pride, while questioning the underlying assumptions and the legitimacy of Brahman writers to

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appropriately contribute to it. Despite the overlap and points of agreement, the field of conflicting interpretations of the Maratha past came to be divided into broad “Brahman” and “non-Brahman” categories. Individual historians and writers, however much they deviated from these caste positions in details, also came to be associated with them via their own individual names and backgrounds and to be received as their representatives, thus simultaneously reproducing and reifying this division.

The Importance of Ramdas by far the thorniest historiographical debate between Brahman and nonBrahman writers in the early twentieth century was over the figure of Ramdas. We have already discussed the tremendous attraction of Ramdas’s teachings for Marathi nationalists highlighting the moral roots of the Maratha struggle. The emphasis historians like Rajwade and Bhat placed on Ramdas’s Brahman background in interpreting his teachings for a nationalist program was a perfect example of the links Thackeray had pointed out between an apparently inclusive nationalism and a narrower Brahman caste agenda. Accordingly, the question of the importance of Ramdas to Shivaji’s project became the center of this debate over the past. The heightened interest in Ramdas in the early decades of the twentieth century among Brahman writers is not at all a coincidence; it overlapped with the peak period of the non-Brahman movement and Ramdas became, in effect, a symbol of Brahman caste identity. As usual, Rajwade set the tone for much of the Brahman polemic: Ramdas’s vision was much broader than that of earlier saints. Earlier saints restricted themselves to criticizing Brahmans and destroying the very basis of the four varnas upon which our society in Maharashtra is based. It is not wrong to criticize one ’s own people, but critics are also responsible for showing the right path. Not realizing this responsibility [the Bhakti poets] brought about social chaos by merely criticizing this organization. Ramdas’s national vision not only pointed out our faults but also avoided chaos by sympathetically preaching social behavior based on the caste system.14

Other Brahman polemicists were not as dismissive of the Bhakti poets but still wove this idea of caste order and social stability into the general

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importance that Ramdas gave to discipline. For instance, L. R. Pangarkar, a noted Marathi commentator on medieval Marathi poetry, disagreed with the overtly political interpretation of Ramdas, but highlighted his writings on spirituality and discipline. In his 1908 tract, Ramdasibuwa (The Ramdasi Ascetic), Pangarkar interpreted couplets from the Dasbodh such as “the Brahmans have taken leave of their senses, their judgment has been corrupted” to criticize the “corruption of traditional values” brought about by the “shameless adoption of foreign religious and social practices by the non-Brahman castes” in contemporary Hindu society and reiterated the need for social order.15 This could only be achieved by maintaining discipline in political activity through the formation of caste associations to preserve Hindu tradition and work according to their own ability in a larger, federal framework. Brahmans would do what they were best at, following Ramdas’s principle: “Educate the people; strive for a sacred land; raise the saffron standard and spread it in the universe.” As modern Ramdasis, the Brahman community would educate the masses about nationalism and ensure that political change did not lead to social chaos.16 Aba Chandorkar reiterated in 1926 that the very essence of Maharashtra dharma was not simply freedom from foreign rule but also the protection of gods, cows, and Brahmans. In such arguments, Maharashtra dharma became equated with Brahmanya (the Brahman way of life and thought), and the very essence of Marathi culture, history, and society.17 The interest in Ramdas found institutional expression with the establishment of the Satkaryottejak Sabha (Society for the Promotion of Good Deeds) in 1893 in Dhule. Bhaskar Vaman Bhat and S. S. Deo founded the society to promote historical research and publish original documents pertaining to Ramdas’s teachings; both wrote extensively on Ramdas and soon became the main publishers of material relating to him.18 The society also issued a Marathi journal called Ramdas ani Ramdasi in the 1920s and ’30s. Along with Rajwade ’s Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal, the society became the principal institutional center of conservative Brahman opinion in the early twentieth century. The Jagruti of February 19, 1923 reported that some enthusiasts had begun celebrating Dasnavami, Ramdas’s birthday, along lines similar to the Shivaji festival in different towns across Maharashtra. In much of this discourse, Brahman writers began to argue that Ramdas was the chief force behind Maratha freedom; without his guidance,

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Shivaji would never have been successful. The question of who exactly deserved maximum credit fueled this debate. The exact date of the first meeting between Ramdas and Shivaji became central and led to seemingly absurd arguments. Brahman writers began to insist on an earlier date of meeting, a steady interaction between the two figures, and the considerable influence of Ramdas on Shivaji’s career; in the process they juggled a number of facts. The narrative in a 1930 tract by J. S. Karandikar, included in the collection of essays on Shivaji, is typical of this approach. Ramdas, according to Karandikar’s narrative, worried greatly about the plight of his country even as a child. He secretly met and consulted with Shivaji’s father, Shahaji, about his son’s bright future as early as 1631, when Shivaji was a toddler. He then followed Shivaji’s every move, instructed him about the Vedas, pointed him toward hidden treasure for finances, helped him escape from Aurangzeb’s clutches at Agra, certified him as a Kshatriya of Rajput ancestry, and enabled him to be crowned as a Chhatrapati. Finally, when Shivaji honored his guru by offering him his entire kingdom, Ramdas wisely settled for the fort of Sajjangad!19 The similarity of this narrative, part of a series of research essays on the sources of Shivaji’s life history, to the fictional narrative of Narharswami and “our young man” in Hari Narayan Apte’s historical novel Ushahkaal, discussed in the last chapter, is remarkable. It also moves almost seamlessly between a careful empiricism about the available sources and an invocation of a generalized popular knowledge and legends in buttressing its argument: It is well known that Narayan, i.e., Samartha Ramdas, was born in the Thosar family . . . at Jamb on the banks of the Godavari in the Chaitra month of Shake 1530 on Ramnavami, at the exact moment of the birth of Rama himself. His first twelve years were spent at his birthplace, in Jamb. We have no information about how much education he had in this period. But according to the practice of those times, he must have had enough to manage the office of the Kulkarni. . . . There is a legend that Ramachandra appeared to him and named him Ramdas and told him, “Go to the banks of the Krishna and save the world. The Lord Shiva is going to be born into the Sisodia family. . . . Guide him and establish religion.” This happened in Shake 1538, on the 9th day of Shravan at Jamb. So it is clear what a responsibility Samarth acquired when he was only nine years old.20

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Karandikar certainly wished to emphasize Ramdas’s political contribution more than his spiritual or religious teachings, but his objective in stressing the influence over Shivaji was similar to that of more religiousminded conservatives like Pangarkar: to reiterate the idea of Brahman social leadership. While not all Brahman arguments were this sweeping, most did claim Ramdas’s overwhelming influence on Shivaji, not just as a spiritual guide but as a moving force in his success. Rajwade ’s argument that it was Ramdas who introduced the Brahman Gagabhatt to Shivaji and thus facilitated his coronation as a Kshatriya was a none-too-subtle reiteration of the traditional caste hierarchy. More importantly, it was a statement that no matter how gifted the ruler, Brahmans controlled social and political destinies.21 Non-Brahman writers and polemicists reacted vigorously to this interpretation of Ramdas. One of the earliest responses was in Krishnarao Keluskar’s 1907 biography of Shivaji. Keluskar’s principal argument was that Ramdas was certainly an important religious figure; Shivaji decided to meet him upon hearing of his learning and wisdom. This was in 1675, late in Shivaji’s career, well after he had had himself crowned. As part of Shivaji’s general respect for religious men and orders, he patronized the poet with the generous grant of the fort of Sajjangad.22 This argument indicated Shivaji’s independent initiative and signified his ability as a Kshatriya to succeed without any Brahman guidance or leadership. This position was, in essence, a rejection of any Brahman contribution to the Maratha struggle, reiterated through scores of articles and songs in a variety of non-Brahman publications. In the more extreme statements, Ramdas often became the caricature of a typical Brahman polemicist himself, refusing to acknowledge the worth of any other caste group. In a 1923 editorial of the Baroda-based Marathi non-Brahman newspaper Jagruti entitled “The Contributions of Ramdas Swami,” Bhagwantrao Palekar applauded Ramdas’s teachings as relevant for a simple, healthy life, even in the present uncertain times, but protested against the unfair comparisons Brahman devotees of Ramdas made with Shivaji and other Bhakti poets who were not Brahmans, such as Tukaram and Namdev. Palekar singled out Rajwade for inaugurating “an unhealthy and unnecessary trend [of casteist analysis] in historical research.”23 Worse, he wrote, “in bending over backward to prove that Ramdas was Shivaji’s guru, his modern devotees pay no attention at all to what his philosophical teachings really

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were”; the Dasbodh, in his view, had much to teach Indian society about the dangers of obscurantism, superstition, and blind belief.24 Another tract argued that if Shivaji had needed a guru at all, it was his mother, Jijabai, who guided him, not the Brahman Ramdas.25 A long poem, “Ramdasi Politics,” by one “Satyashodhak” in the Jagruti of June 5, 1919 highlighted the hypocrisy of Brahman nationalists, who purported to represent the entire country but instead indulged in socially reactionary activities. It began with an astute recognition of how the invocations of Ramdas were not inspired by his spiritual teachings but were essential to Brahman identity. Ramdas the great man, we pay him our respects We tell this tale with great solemnity. . . . This tale was inspired by the politics around us To understand the confusing web of words People inspired by Ramdas use his name nowadays To blow their own trumpet. . . . To all these Brahmans we have one thing to say Do keep in mind what other saints have also said . . . This “Ramdasi politics” is a big farce The denigration of others for self-glorification.

The poem, forty-five stanzas long, went on to discuss in detail the politics of the Tilakite Congress, led by socially conservative Brahmans, but also lamented the use of history to express a narrow social agenda: Digging up the dirt of the past, flogging dead horses Bogged down in obscure debates, they try to parcel out our Swarajya. . . . At a speech on Shivaji’s coronation, they sing Ramdas’s praises They sing Tukaram’s praises, but it’s all talk They ignore Ramdas’s failures and fail to understand Tuka’s message They perform ceremonies at Shivaji’s statue And call themselves satyagrahis.

In the 1930s the writings of scholars such as Govind C. Bhate, G. S. Sardesai, and Jadunath Sarkar, drawing on newly available original documents, confirmed a first meeting between the two historical personages in

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1675.26 The issue, however, continued be a vexed one in periodicals and the public arena and remained a prime site of the expression of caste difference.

Colonial Discourse, History, and Masculinity the importance of Ramdas to the articulation of Brahman caste identity cannot be fully understood unless we also view it from another perspective, in the context of masculinity and nationalism. Regeneration and revival after colonial conquest in nineteenth-century India was sought not only in terms of religious and social institutions and practices but also through a literal focus on building physical strength.27 Bodybuilding and nation building went hand in hand as nationalist youth in late nineteenth-century Maharashtra sought to reinvigorate the body politic through public activities that emphasized individual physical and mental discipline. These included the formation of talim mandals and akharas where nationalist youth would congregate and participate in appropriately Indian sports; such gymnasiums mushroomed in various towns across western India in the late nineteenth century and were among the earliest public arenas of nationalist politics.28 Accordingly, one of the most popular suggestions during fund-raising meetings was to make the Shivaji festival an arena for physical activity; this was enthusiastically reported and endorsed by the press. A letter writer called “Gangya” in the Native Opinion of June 2, 1895 considered the planned palanquin processions for Shivaji a mockery when his descendants were unable to stand on their own two legs. Pleading for a memorial more fitting to Shivaji’s dignity, Gangya suggested the establishment of “athletic clubs at Poona, Bombay, and elsewhere with celebrated gymnasts to teach fencing, wrestling, sword exercise, and other manly sports free of charge,” with appropriate athletic tournaments and prizes. Gangya was not alone in identifying the potential of Shivaji’s military legacy for a masculine regeneration of society. Several other responses advocated the use of Shivaji’s symbolism to rid the Hindus of the “impotence and emasculation” that had afflicted them since the coming of colonial rule.29 The Ganpati and Shivaji festivals gave a good boost to the akharas and talim mandals; very often, neighborhood celebrations were centered around a local outfit, as they are even today all around Maharashtra, with the same youth who congregated in the exercise school performing in the

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festival melas and competitions.30 The practice of conducting athletic tournaments with prizes during the festival commenced in Belgaum in 1895 and spread to other towns and cities over the next decade.31 In an overview of the festival and its purposes on April 9, 1901, the Kesari commented on this growing relationship between bodybuilding and nation building: A national festival is one of the means of maintaining national vigor, and anniversaries in connection with national heroes can be classed as national festivals. . . . To take a metaphor from medicine, celebrations like the one under consideration are intended rather as a tonic for the advancement of the general health and strength of the body politic than as medicine for any specific disease.

In recent years, a growing body of scholarship has explored the redefinition of concepts of renunciation, asceticism, and physical exercise as part of responses across the subcontinent to the deployment of gendered, essentialist stereotypes of masculine or “manly,” “martial,” and “effeminate” communities in colonial discourse.32 In Maharashtra, this combination of spirituality and masculinity was sought in the twin figures of Ramdas and Shivaji and mirrored the developments in eastern and northern India, but with a regional peculiarity. In the early twentieth century, the Marathas were identified as a “martial race” fit for the imperial army, and recruitment of Marathas increased after World War I.33 Moreover, the category “Maratha” remained contested within non-Brahman discourse, but there was no doubt that both there and in colonial discourse, these martial attributes were not to be extended to the Marathi Brahmans. British policy toward Marathi Brahmans grew from cautious conciliation into fear and suspicion by the late nineteenth century as the Brahman-led middle class in Maharashtra enthusiastically took to anticolonial protest.34 The military-political past of the Brahmans was thus invoked in colonial discourse only as a warning about their propensity to political sedition. The emphasis on physical discipline and spiritual regeneration and the focus on rebuilding the individual and national body reflected attempts by Brahman nationalist youth to reclaim this martial history. These attempts were also prompted by non-Brahman critiques of Peshwa decadence and exclusion from a history of political and military glory that nationalist

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Brahman youth also claimed. It is in this intersection of the demands of caste and national discourses that we can understand the prominent presence of the poet Ramdas next to the intensely masculine figure of Shivaji. Ramdas is popularly credited with establishing the eleven shrines to Hanuman that dot Maharashtra, as part of his spiritual-political message of atmashakti (spiritual strength) and combining mental and physical discipline. Many of the talim mandals established in the colonial period consciously modeled themselves on Ramdas’s congregations and Hanuman shrines, invoking his teachings as the ideal nationalist formula in another period of foreign rule.35 Shortly after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, G. N. Sahasrabuddhe wrote of Maharashtra dharma in the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar as the Marathi equivalent of the Japanese martial code, bushido. Interpreting this “way of the warrior” as a combination of physical courage and a strict adherence to a moral code, Sahasrabuddhe compared it to Ramdas’s teachings of the values of simplicity, correct behavior, and patriotism. In his view, the Japanese had shown in the late nineteenth century how ancient codes of conduct limited to Kshatriya or warrior classes could be extended to the broader population and inculcated as nationalism, where “each one of [the Japanese was] ready to fight for his nation.”36 The Japanese victory over Russia, of course, resonated all over the colonial world as the first major military victory of Asians over European powers, but Sahasrabuddhe’s invocation of bushido as warrior code-turned-general masculine nationalism, explicitly connected to Ramdas’s Maharashtra dharma, was also an attempt on the part of Brahman nationalist youth to assert a place in the martial history of the Marathas. Several scholars have argued that the emergence of Hindutva and organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has to be seen against the background of critiques of Brahman dominance. In the early twentieth century, these public arenas of akharas and talim mandals, with significant participation of young Brahman youth, became a prime site for the inculcation of Hindu communitarianism through the emphasis on physical defense against enemies and the representation of the Maratha legacy as a Hindu struggle against Muslim invasions. Colonial censorship and the repression of revolutionary “terrorist” organizations that had sprung up from the akharas and festivals following the Swadeshi movement brought a lull in most nationalist activity. The revival of interest in physical fitness

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from the 1920s displayed not only a more centralized and bureaucratic nature than the earlier neighborhood akharas but also a much stronger interest in Hindu communitarian politics. Organizations such as the Maharashtriya Mandal, the Maharashtra Vyayam Shala, the Hanuman Prasarak Vyayam Mandal, and similar associations appeared in many towns across the region; most were patronized and run by Tilakites such as Pune leader L. B. Bhopatkar and Nagpur leaders B. S. Moonje and Dr. Hedgewar, who went on to become prominent in the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sangh. The stated objective of most of these large organizations was promoting Indian sports and inculcating the love of physical fitness in young men (and increasingly women), but they became increasingly occupied with, as the Maharashtriya Mandal’s objective plainly put it, “the physical development of Hindu boys and youth.” An overtly militaristic interest, especially the use of rifles and pistols, emerged in the 1930s with organizations such as the CP & Berar Provincial Rifle Association, Patwardhan’s Military School in Nagpur, the Shree Shivaji Preparatory Military School at Pune, and the Bhosla Military School in Nasik, started by Hindu Mahasabha leader B. S. Moonje. Interestingly, there is some evidence of tension between the earlier nationalist akharas and the new, more organized ones under the RSS and Mahasabha patronage as the latter sought to take over this public arena; many older akharas gradually declined as the more organized Sangh outfits drained public donations and membership away from them.37 Combining the physical training of the akhara with the “cultural” training of the local shakha (branch) clubs, Sangh activists created well-organized centers for Hindu communitarian politics.38

The Chhatrapati Mela in the 1920s, young non-Brahman radicals also entered this public arena to participate in the Ganpati and Shivaji festivals, with their own Chhatrapati mela. Through different forms of expression such as songs, pictures, even dress, young non-Brahmans put forward their own meanings of Maratha history. Indeed, if Tilak’s festival had demonstrated the potential of these symbols for expressing collective identity, non-Brahman discourse colorfully displayed their potential for expressing difference and conflict. The songs, written by emerging leaders like Keshavrao Jedhe and

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Dinkarrao Javalkar, became extremely popular and were not just sung during the festival but also published and circulated later in newspapers and cheap pamphlets. The dominant tone in these songs was scorn for the Peshwas. By holding them responsible for losing Maratha sovereignty to the British through strong, unrestrained language, the songs depict Brahman attempts to be a part of the Maratha past as essentially illegitimate. Brahman claims to nationalist leadership and the protection of the Hindu religion, therefore, were portrayed as part of a long history of treachery and dominance. The Marathas needed to realize this injustice and reclaim what was rightfully theirs. For instance: Awaken O Marathas, this is a time of freedom, awaken to your glory! Shiva-ba, who protected our faith is called Shudra by the beggar priests And yet we stand silent with our heads bowed! . . . Having fanned these flames the priesthood watches the fun Here is a traitor and you feel nothing? The beggar priests robbed you of freedom . . . And brought the glory of Satara to dust Shivaji is our source of joy and spirit Come and prove to the world your grit Remember Shiva-ba and embrace your courage Sing for your freedom, Har Har Mahadev.39

Skillfully embellishing the songs by dressing up as Shivaji’s loyal troops, the Mavalas, and brandishing saffron flags and staffs, non-Brahmans performed in Ganpati and Shivaji festivals all over Maharashtra but were most effective in Poona, the Brahman nationalist stronghold. Mela participants from the Brahman-dominated Tilakite Congress and the non-Brahmans, using the very spears and sticks brandished in the performances, frequently clashed in the streets; many of the songs were banned as a result and the festivals received a good deal of police surveillance in the years that followed.40 It is important to recall that in this discourse, the contemporary, manly “Marathas” who were being called upon were all non-Brahmans, but not all Marathi speakers. The exact meaning and social composition of this “Maratha” category remained a subject of intense debate among colonial

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ethnographers as well as non-Brahman activists in the early twentieth century. While colonial officials debated whether the Marathas ought to be classified as a tribe or a caste, non-Brahman writers and activists debated whether it ought to include the entire non-Brahman community or only a smaller section of the rural peasant elite that successfully claimed Kshatriya status.41 The elite social status that being a Maratha represented did attract Kunbi and other lower-caste aspirants to non-Brahman politics, despite the ritualistic—and therefore conservative—agenda. To more radical-minded activists, however, the potential an ambiguous definition of “Maratha” presented for more egalitarian community formation was offset by this agenda: excessive concern with ritual status signified not inclusion, but the hegemony of elite Marathas and richer peasants over the larger agricultural community. This tension between radical polemicists seeking to include all non-Brahmans in the ambit of Maratha and more conservative activists either permitting some broadening or seeking to limit it to a small group of elite families was to remain a characteristic feature of non-Brahman ideology.42 As I have argued elsewhere, the identification of the Maratha category as a Kshatriya upper caste composed of influential elites within the non-Brahman movement was consolidated in the early twentieth century within institutional structures of representation and army recruitment. Rural groups best placed to establish this elite Maratha pedigree went on to become dominant in the Congress party from the 1940s onward and in regional politics more generally in the decades following independence.43 Central to this foregrounding of “Maratha” was the reiteration of the historical Maratha legacy as the struggle of a Hindu community against Muslims while seeking to displace Brahman claims to leadership of this community. The focus was on exploring Maratha history in order to insist on legitimate upper-caste status for the Maratha caste group; proof of this heritage ranged from ancient histories of the Kshatriyas in general to genealogies and surname lists of “legitimate” Kshatriya families among the Marathas and analyses of Puranic texts. The rhetoric in such narratives was often indistinguishable from that of Brahman conservatives and Hindu nationalists in their defense of Vedic traditions and claims of upper-caste difference against the Dalits. The Vijayi Maratha of April 7, 1930 advertised an almanac published by Chhatrapati Shahu’s Shree Shivaji Kshatriya Vedic School, announcing it as attractive not only because all the major non-Brahman leaders had certified it but also

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because it had beautiful pictures of Shivaji and Shahu on the cover. Also prominently advertised, in the Jagruti of October 13, 1934, were publications of elite Maratha family histories, such as that of the Jadhav, a.k.a. Satham, family. The advertisement went on to detail the various Maratha families whose exploits had been included in the book: the Jadhavs, Sawants, Pawars, Chavans, etc.: Based on historical and accurate documents, [this history is] full of information about the ancestors of the Marathas, their ancient dynasties, the Deccani Muslim kings, the Satara and Karvir chhatrapatis, the Peshwas. . . . Every Maratha must have this book in his collection in order to obtain true information about Maratha families.44

The Amravati-based K. B. Deshmukh’s tracts A History of the Maratha Kshatriyas, A New Sacred Thread for the Kshatriyas, and The Kshatriyas and Vaishyas Face off with the Brahmans, among others, became quite popular in this regard. In a 1921 tract, Deshmukh argued that Brahmans were actually Muslim immigrants from Egypt who had subsequently tampered with Vedic texts to place themselves in a position of power. He also added that comparing the Marathas to Shudra castes such as Mahars, Mangs, Gonds, and Dhors was atmaghaataki, or a blow to the Kshatriya Marathas’ very soul. The tract went on to describe Shivaji’s exploits, his protection of Hindus, and his Vedic coronation.45 Deshmukh’s use of Muslim immigrants to claim Brahman illegitimacy echoed many Hindu nationalist assumptions about the “foreignness” of Muslims in India. These ideas also permeated the popular songs and tracts produced in the festivals and public celebrations. Jedhe’s description of the Chhatrapati mela as having a “truly masculine appeal” with its flashy warrior costumes and javelins also hints at its intensely masculinist visual statement.46 As one of the songs of the 1924 Chhatrapati mela went: Shivaji our king, Marathi our pride Shiva protected dharma, defeated our enemies Saved the life of Hindu dharma, saved the life of the motherland We worshipped the feet of Brahmans, and have become slaves Remember the honor of Shivaji; see the shame of his people Live your life with honor, cherish your honor.47

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Another song titled “The Protector of Cows” celebrated not only Shivaji’s protection of the Hindus but also the support he got from his people and trusted lieutenants: The war hero Shivaji, the protector of cows When the irreligious attacked and enslaved India The Hindus scattered in fear and Shivaji came to their rescue. . . . The brave Tanaji gave his life for Sinhagad With young brave men around him, Shivaji became king Baji Prabhu saved Pavankhind, his blood made it sacred Mavalas from all over helped Shiva in his cause Practiced the faith of the cow, helped the poor and defenseless He established the Maratha empire, the blessed Shri Shivaji.48

Samyukta Maharashtra there emerged over time, therefore, significant points of consensus between Brahman nationalists and non-Brahman activists regarding the “Hindu” nature of Shivaji’s project and the interpretation of the Marathas as protectors of the wider Hindu community and Indian nation. From the 1930s, non-Brahman activists increasingly moved toward nationalist politics, and as noted above, elite Marathas went on to become the dominant social group within the Congress.49 Although social conflict along the lines of caste and its articulation through historical themes continued in one form or another throughout the twentieth century, there nevertheless emerged a consensus on Marathi regional identity as founded on pride in the Maratha past. In spite of continuing contestations over regional social leadership, Brahman and Maratha groups participated together in the demand from the late 1940s onward for a separate Maharashtra state within the newly independent Indian union. Although ostensibly for unification of all the Marathi speakers across the Bombay Presidency (Maharashtra), CP-Berar (Vidarbha), and the Hyderabad State (Marathwada) into one regional political unit, the “emotive resources” of this “Samyukta Maharashtra” movement drew strongly on the historical memory of the Marathas and the projection of a Maharashtrian uniqueness. Given the participation of parties across the political spectrum, there emerged different points of emphasis in the articulation of this legacy,

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with Shivaji’s story appearing in some representations as a Hindu struggle and in others as an attempt to achieve socialist utopia. Articulating the “special” relationship of the Marathi region to the Indian nation, however, remained central to the rhetoric of the movement. This rhetoric was enthusiastically put forward in a range of media by a diverse group of people, including Vidarbhan novelists like G. T. Madholkar and Maratha lawyers like Ramrao Deshmukh; Bombay-based Communist leaders like Lalji Pendse and economists such as Dhananjay Gadgil; historians like Datto Vaman Potdar and veteran congressmen like P. M., a.k.a. Senapati Bapat; rural Maratha congressmen from western Maharashtra like Keshavrao Jedhe; non-Brahman leaders like Prabodhankar Thackeray and the famous Communist poet Amar Sheikh.50 Arguably the strongest and most effective champion of unification, however, was the journalist, playwright, filmmaker, and teacher Prahlad Keshav, a.k.a. Acharya Atre. One of the reasons for his long and successful public career was certainly his ability to incorporate quotidian life and experiences into literary representations, often with a twist of humor.51 He also edited the flagship daily Maratha, which he started in 1956 specifically to provide a popular forum for unification, after the States Reorganization Commission rejected the demand for a separate Maharashtra in 1955.52 Rather predictably, Atre described the paper as reinfusing Shivashakti or “Shivaji’s power” into the unification movement.53 In his speeches and writings, he pilloried Nehru’s judgment in the Glimpses of World History about Shivaji’s “treacherous” killing of Afzal Khan and Gandhi’s comments about Shivaji being a misguided patriot to huge cheers from the audience; in such milieux, Nehru appeared as the modern incarnation of Aurangzeb, bent on quashing Maharashtra’s spirit.54 Y. B. Chavan, perceived as hindering the cause of unification through his insistence on cooperation with Nehru and the center, was frequently referred to as an incarnation of Suryaji Pisal, the “traitor” who gave up Sambhaji to the Mughals in 1689. S. K. Patil, who was possibly the only prominent Marathi leader to oppose Bombay’s inclusion in Maharashtra on account of its cosmopolitan composition, was also famously referred to in pamphlets as Raghobadada, after the Peshwa Raghunathrao who had his twelve-yearold nephew Narayanrao murdered to capture power.55 Atre was not alone in invoking the memory of the Maratha debacle at Panipat in 1761 after the States Reorganization Commission rejected the demand for unification.56

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Conflicts between the Brahman and Maratha leadership in the Congress as well as in various Left parties continued, and anti-Brahman violence surged across the towns of western Maharashtra after Nathuram Godse’s assassination of Gandhi in 1948. There nevertheless emerged by the time of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement a common regional identity. It is in this context that we can approach the increasing deployment in this period, especially in Atre’s writings, of the “Marathi manus” or Marathi man, the modern incarnation of the historical Maratha. The Marathi man embodied distinct values and beliefs: fearlessness and leadership, in Atre’s construction, were central. In an exposition on “What is this Marathi-ness?” in his memoirs that built on M. G. Ranade’s Rise of the Maratha Power, Atre cast the “Marathi people” as the modern equivalents of the Marathas Ranade had written about: The Marathi man is proud and upright. He is ready to sacrifice anything for the sake of his ideology and goal. It’s as if his very existence is for independence and his country. He is unusually fond of bearding the lion in his den. He simply does not know the fear of enemy or death. This is exactly what Maharashtra’s identity or Marathi-ness means. It can be seen as seamlessly flowing through the life of every great man who has lived among us.57

This transition from “Maratha” to “Marathi,” I suggest, represented the shared terrain that the Marathi-speaking elite across caste groups, Brahman and non-Brahman, had come to inhabit by the early postcolonial period. If the non-Brahman elite had successfully managed to wrest the term “Maratha” away as a demarcator of a Kshatriya caste group, “Marathiness” or “Marathi asmita,” as laid out above by Atre, represented a meeting ground for these social groups.

Other Voices outside this broadly middle-class, urban and semiurban Marathi regional identity and Maratha historical memory were other narratives that also reproduced the exploits of heroes and events from Maratha history. Significant here is the poetry of Amar Shaikh, one of the most popular activists of the Communist party and successful campaigners for unification

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in the 1950s. A poor Muslim with very little formal education whose verse and musical mobilizational skills brought him to the forefront of the Communist party in Bombay, Shaikh struck a discordant note among the largely Brahman, middle-class Communist leadership and the elite Marathas in the other Left parties supporting unification, and he relentlessly interrogated elite visions of the Maratha past, yoking it instead to the lives and concerns of the laboring classes. One of his most popular songs, “Socialist Shivaji or Undying Hope,” portrayed Shivaji’s struggle as one of poor farmers against an elite triumvirate of Muslim and upper-caste Maratha chiefs and the foreign English and Portuguese traders. His rule brought relief to poor farmers whose lands were no longer devastated by warfare and whose cows were left alone for the plow: Shivaji always rewarded the toiling laborer He worshipped hard work, the perfect examplar With no concern for weather he criss-crossed the countryside. . . . He conquered Fate and proved the worth of one ’s own deeds. . . . He was the rich green crop that Shahaji had sown A veritable golden corn like the pearls Jijabai had worn. . . . He became king and gave the landless lands and seeds Barren tracts blossomed, moderate and proper revenue He punished moneylenders and made the people happy. . . . He rejected Inamdars and Zamindars in favor of the toiling farmer He kept his word to the poor Respected other religions and dispensed justice all around.58

Although Shaikh has been assimilated into the wider pantheon of statesponsored heroes of the unification movement, his poetry attempted to retain the popular roots of the powada form at a time when it was being reproduced as a unique, suitably aestheticized, “Maharashtrian” tradition for middle-class consumption.59 The oral traditions of pastoral communities such as the Dhangars collected by Gunther Sontheimer from the 1960s onward also provide a tantalizing glimpse into a “subaltern” historical memory of the Marathas. They hint at the strikingly divergent ways popular stories and memories of Maratha heroes and their exploits continued to be reproduced in oral narrations in spite of nationalist attempts to collect and harness them to a

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more synthesized, patriotic narrative. In their choice of heroes, narration of episodes, underlying values, and imagery, they both intersect with and depart significantly from elite historical narratives.60 Shivaji and Ramdas are prominent in many of the stories about the Dhangars and their devotion to the folk deity Khandoba; much like Mahipati’s yoking of Shivaji’s political successes and the figure of Ramdas to the wider Varkari Bhakti tradition in the eighteenth century, the figures of Shivaji and Ramdas are merged with the traditions and gods of the Dhangars, Khandoba, Bhairoba, and Mhaskoba, with particular emphasis on Shivaji’s devotion to Khandoba. In one story, for instance, a devout Dhangar man manages, through his sheer dedication to Ramdas, to bring back Shivaji’s favorite horse from the jaws of death.61 In another, Shivaji appears as the protector as well as a staunch devotee of the Jejuri temple of Khandoba.62 In a third, Ramdas sharply criticizes the deity Bhairoba for sanctioning the killing of innocent animals for sacrifices by his devotees. Ultimately, however, Ramdas has to beg Bhairoba to save one of his beloved disciples from a snake bite.63 Another story has Ramdas and the deity Mhasoba in an argument, the latter upset but ultimately forgiving at being displaced by the new Maruti temple that Ramdas wished to establish in his abode.64 A large number of heroic stories in Sontheimer’s collection are about Umaji Naik, the daring Ramoshi brigand and rebel in the Sahyadri hills outside Pune who fought against the early colonial government intermittently for over a decade until he was finally captured and executed in 1832. In colonial documents, he was made a typical example of the predatory behavior ascribed to “criminal tribes” like the Ramoshis. The subject of two popular films before independence, Umaji too is now in the official regional pantheon of Marathi “freedom fighters” spanning Shivaji and Savarkar. Recent scholarly analyses by Sumit Guha and Sadashiv Athavale have highlighted a personality with more complex personal and political ambitions.65 The story told by Pandurang Anant Jadhav coincides with other historical accounts in the broad narrative of Umaji’s clash with the Peshwa and colonial administrations, but with significant differences in emphasis. In this retelling, the brigand is first and foremost a devotee of Khandoba, and the deity not only grants him his special qualities of courage and daredevilry but also reins him in and channels his aggression in the right direction, toward charity and fighting injustice and inequality. The narrative depicts Umaji as the last scion in a long, illustrious list of Naiks who

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performed honorable service under the Satara kings and the Peshwas, back in “those times,” “a very long time ago,” or “when things cost a lot less.” In the beginning Baji Naik, an ancestor who is a petty guard at the Satara court and is scorned for wanting to go along on a hunt—“this job should be left to those who are meant for it”—bravely saves the king from being mauled to death by a tiger. The unnamed king of Satara thinks he is a good shot, but regrettably is not; he cowers in fear before Baji Naik rushes to the rescue. Instead of a personal reward, Naik secures for his Ramoshi clan the right to serve as rakhwaldars (protectors) of the Satara and Pune regions. The narrative has Umaji fiercely protecting his patrimonial rights whenever threatened, and throughout, his demand is for the rightful salary that he is owed; it is not he, but a few bad eggs in his group who resort to robbery. To characters in the story who regard the Ramoshis as prone to cruelty, he repeatedly protests that “the Ramoshi people do not attack people without reason.” All his detractors, especially the Brahman Pant Sachiv of Bhor, appear feeble and greedy and are able to get the better of him only through treachery. When the Peshwa and the Pant Sachiv finally tire of Umaji and ask for help to capture him from many of the principal Maratha chiefs, they refuse on the grounds that he is a rashtracha pailwan (national strongman) and one of their own. Finally, the Pant invites the English to intervene, promising them riches. They, in turn, “excited at the sight of this country and believing that destiny granted them this opportunity,” agree, but instead of riches demand the land of Pune itself: So how did the sahib work it out? That if he threw a few grains on the ground the two cocks would fight while he stepped aside and watched, the British would rule Maharashtra. . . . Brothers began fighting each other . . . nobody realized this British plot. Those European sahibs weren’t after money. What were they lured by? By Maharashtra. And for what? To catch the manly subedar Umaji Naik. And God himself must have written the first note, for why else would the sahib from England even glance this way? They came all the way to catch Umaji Naik.

Umaji appears in this story as an explicit inheritor of Shivaji’s exploits and banner; he fights the foreigners because as a devotee of Khandoba he cares for the poor, is “proud of Maharashtra, and want[s] to always keep it happy.” At one point, Jadhav has another of the characters describe Umaji

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as “the pride of Maharashtra,” but at another, it is Khandoba himself who takes Umaji Naik’s avatar and fights the colonial army. The presence of English words like “time,” “fire,” and “report” and the prominence, albeit uneven, of the abstract entity of Maharashtra make it difficult to ascribe a totally pristine status to this popular memory of Umaji. Rather than emphasize it as untouched by more dominant narratives of the Maratha past, however, I would instead like to draw attention to the ways it consciously departs from elite histories of the Marathas even as it invokes for a marginalized community the same qualities of masculinity, honor, and courage that informed more elite, Brahman as well as non-Brahman, interpretations of Marathi dharma. The ancestor Baji Naik’s declarations of loyalty to the Satara king are strongly reminiscent of Tanaji’s pledges to his lord Shivaji, but Jadhav also foregrounds the folk deity Khandoba and, by extension, his lower-caste devotees. He peppers the story with minor characters from a variety of lower castes and Dalit communities, who rarely figure in the more elite narratives of the Maratha past. Most importantly, they are aware of the unequal power relations between themselves and the upper-caste administrators, but also of the need to stand up to them, as Umaji puts it to his father, who warns him of the Peshwa’s power: Let me tell you one thing, Baba. I do not have the resources to face the Maharaj, but I have the Mallari of Jejuri [Khandoba] on my side. . . . If only they pay me what I’m owed, I have no quarrel with them, but if they do not, then it’s obvious the conflict is upon us.

narratives of maratha history emerged as a site of social conflict in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Maharashtra, consolidating their importance to the distribution and organization of power in Marathi society. Competing interpretations and emphases on different figures in prominent events had been a feature of the bakhar world; in the modern histories, however, these figures came to represent not just rival families and chiefs in Maratha politics, but entire communities. Although they were constructed in essentialist, oppositional terms, Brahman and non-Brahman discourses came to occupy, over time, an important, shared terrain. The conflicts over Ramdas notwithstanding, both came to emphasize Shivaji as a Hindu who fought Muslim invaders, the idea of Maharashtra dharma as a

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religious-cultural upsurge, and the vision of a Maharashtra destined to lead and protect India because of its past glory. For all the derision of the Peshwas, non-Brahmans who claimed Kshatriya status for Shivaji came to share with Brahman Hindu nationalists a sense of pride in the Peshwas’ expansion of Maratha rule across the subcontinent as “a Hindu empire.” Although conflicts over social leadership between Brahmans and non-Brahmans or Marathas continued, a consensus emerged across the middle classes over a shared “Marathi” identity. These contradictions made B. R. Ambedkar, arguably the most fundamental critic of caste in modern India, deeply ambivalent toward nonBrahman discourse. Ambedkar consistently drew attention to the difference between anti-Brahman politics and the politics of anti-Brahmanism where the concept of caste itself was attacked, and emphatically endorsed the latter. Dalit politics were faced with a choice between Marathas, who paid lip service to anticaste protest but represented the immediate rural exploitation, and the Brahman nationalists, who were important political allies but had a poor record of social reform.66 A united Maharashtra, he feared, would bring together the rural Maratha elites across Vidarbha, Bombay, and Marathwada as one large bloc and make them even more dominant in regional politics and society. Arguing that this would mean greater exploitation of rural Dalit groups despite the developmental and democratic possibilities, Ambedkar remained conflicted about the demand for Maharashtra as a separate state.67 Eventually, he rejected both sets of elites and steered an independent course for the Dalit movement. Early Dalit activists such as Gopal Baba Walangkar seeking to increase military recruitment for Mahars had invoked the prominent Mahar military presence in Shivaji’s army as spies and runners and their own units and special duties under the Peshwas in a manner similar to the “contributions” approach within non-Brahman discourse outlined above.68 Although Ambedkar was aware of the symbolic and polemical power of history, he engaged with it primarily to seek an explanation for contemporary social inequality and economic exploitation and firmly steered away from romantic explorations of the past.

Conclusion

Historical consciousness and historiographic practice in India were transformed radically under the conditions of colonial modernity. One of the central aims of this work has been to chart the specific features of this transformation, and explore the ways these features can illuminate the particular experience of modernity itself in its western Indian, Marathi context. I have traced the shifts from precolonial history-writing conventions of the eighteenth century to the modern historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and identified the changing political and social contexts within which the past was produced and reproduced over these centuries. Finally, I have conceived of the emergence of modern historiography within a broader range of creative genres that were deployed to narrate the past, and examined the interplay of notions of history and literature in the construction of an enduring, modern historical memory. Much was similar between the bakhars and modern historiography. Both produced linear, factual prose narratives conforming to accepted conventions of dating and the citing of authoritative sources, and contested interpretations borne out of immediate political and social considerations. What changed in the colonial period was, of course, the scale and the deeper importance of these conventions as well as the political and social contexts. Conceptually as well as methodologically, the very

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idea of history acquired a much greater significance in the nineteenth century as an estimate of overall civilizational progress. The standardization of conventions such as strictly chronological narration explicitly rooted in dates acquired importance not only for a more scientific and rational engagement with the past but also for establishing the very worth of Indian civilization. One of the critical features of the bakhars was that they acknowledged the existence of multiple perspectives on the past. Moreover, although some narratives invoked the idea of a centralized and idealized political authority, the bakhars were organized around multiple locations of power. Underlying all the differing interpretations of Maratha history in the colonial period, however, was the idea of a unitary, truthful narrative of the past. This unitary narrative was deemed to exist outside the text, but also fully locatable in reliable documents through suitable research methods. Moreover, the nation emerged as its singular organizing principle. Even where the Marathi region or particular caste groups were the apparent subjects of analysis, the Indian nation remained the silent touchstone no matter what the time period or the particular topic under study.1 The urge to establish a new historical consciousness and scientific method also transformed the nature of the historical archive. Rather than viewing older texts as generalized repositories of ancient knowledge or politically aware engagements with the past, the approach was now geared specifically toward retrieving and preserving the proof of an unchanging, eternal truth of history. An essentialist, antihistoricist, and nationalist conviction about the past emerged alongside the new historicist method that sought to fully retrieve it through reliable sources and methods. The search for such authentic and accurate documents as part of a commitment to Rankean positivism went hand in hand with a search for “desirable” documents that nationalist historians and researchers were convinced had simply to be “discovered.” The search for authentic sources also generated impatience when the results didn’t conform to the imagined ideal narrative, and underlined the argument that the proper document needed only to be “discovered.” Aspects of bakhar historiography continued to contribute to and influence these practices. Although otherwise derided as faulty history and assimilated as a primarily literary form in the modern discipline of Marathi literature, the bakhars continued to retain an authoritative status as truthful

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and more real sources of the past within the wider public sphere. Moreover, although a commitment to Rankean positivism and a changed political landscape prompted the search for documents, many aspiring historians and editors of the new discoveries, in dispersed sites outside the formal, institutional structure of the colonial academy, continued to use editing methods and invocations of authoritative bakhar sources in their self-consciously modern histories at the turn of the twentieth century. Rather than indicating an incomplete or somehow deficient transition to professional methods, this process was an important part of the overall setting—institutional and intellectual—within which modern historiography took shape over the colonial period. The temporal proximity of Maratha history and the bakhars themselves no doubt contributed to this continued authoritativeness in the colonial period, in comparison to hoary, Sanskrit texts or Puranic legends. From the late nineteenth century, the new genres of historical novels and plays became a middle ground between the bakhars of the previous century and modern prose histories. They straddled the spheres of the historical as well as the literary as they sought to evoke a more meaningful and real past, with flesh-and-blood characters whose historicity was not at all in question. Through their narrative techniques, emphasis on evocation, atmosphere, and linkage of historical themes and figures with contemporary social anxieties, they constructed a creative and evocative Maratha past. Popular writers were therefore far more successful than scholarly analyses in making this Maratha past familiar and tangible in the colonial present. The emergence of modern Marathi historiography was not a smooth and complete transition to standardized Western methods and frameworks, but was interrupted and influenced by older, precolonial forms and methods and other literary and creative genres. Although the categories and identities represented in these historical narratives underwent radical changes under colonialism, the complex modern historiography enabled a powerful and productive harnessing of older representations and materials to a new set of political and social projects. In probing the emergence of modern historiography and a shared historical memory, this study has pointed to the need to consider the interaction between scholarly and popular representations of the past, rather than analytically separating memory and history as totally opposed spheres. Such sharp divides reproduce tired old Orientalist binaries of Western history and

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non-Western myth and separate domains of “Hindu” and “Muslim” literary and cultural production. Leapfrogging over the medieval and early modern centuries, they fly in the face of recent research pointing to the tremendous cross-pollination among Perso-Arabic historiography and narrative forms in a variety of South Asian languages. Placing the bakhars within this wider polyglot world, I have sought to highlight the importance of studying these early modern narrative traditions in greater detail both during the centuries of their efflorescence and during the transition to modern historiography, rather than bracketing them within a “Puranic” or “ahistorical” mode of all precolonial historical consciousness. Of course, the domain of memory as an authentic site of recollection has proved useful in highlighting the diversity of representations of the past and the need for professional scholars to critique the certitudes and epistemological authority with which history, as the classic artifact of modernity, fortifies itself.2 One of the problems of using memory as a theoretical plank for this critique, however, is that it puts scholars in the awkward and inconsistent position of valorizing those memories that are marginalized and condemning those that become dominant and threaten the authority of a progressive, professional history. The embedding of these dominant, frequently divisive and majoritarian, memories in the language of positivism and the tools of historical scholarship has led some scholars to reject history itself. However, before hastily abandoning the field, it is necessary for scholars to probe further the social, institutional, and political conditions of the emergence and practice of modern historiography in different parts of the subcontinent. A deeper, critical awareness of these conditions can enable professional historiography to debate more consequential ways of participating in and contributing to popular historical memory. This study is a modest step in that direction. Such a critical awareness includes a more serious dialogue with popular genres of biography and historical fiction, their practitioners, and their reception. Although history and literature were conceived as separate disciplines within colonial educational structures, they remained deeply interconnected, and writers as well as readers across the literary sphere were uncertain about the boundaries between historical and fictional narratives. This dialogue will have to examine the similarities and differences in the objectives of history and historical fiction in generating creative pasts and, most importantly, the ways they respond to different needs of

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readers and consumers of history.3 This study shares many of the concerns of Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s important, recent study on the emergence of modern archaeology and art history in colonial India, especially the need to consider how emergent institutional apparatuses in the nineteenth century molded academic disciplines and their intellectual trajectories.4 While Guha-Thakurta’s work explores the unequal relations between Indian and British scholars within institutional structures such as the Archaeological Survey of India and the effects on nationalist scholarship, this book has focused on the body of amateur researchers and writers outside the formal academic structures. The location of the regional intelligentsia outside the colonial institutional domain—in terms of formal research appointments and in the field of English-language research and publication—played a critical role in shaping the polemical nature of Marathi historiography and its negotiation of a larger Indian nationalist imagination. How are we to view these writers and researchers who were amateurs in a dispersed public domain, and who drew upon a mix of Western and precolonial methods and literary evocations to create a modern historiographic practice? Although outside “professional,” institutional history, they significantly shaped the idioms, categories, and archives of modern historiography and its nationalist underpinnings. Moreover, their location enhanced the importance of state institutional structures to the continued production of historical knowledge and a “correct” reading of national and regional pasts. Following independence and the reorganization of state boundaries, these very idioms, categories, archives, and assumptions of “marginal” regional historiographies underpinned official histories in state-level schoolbooks and universities. They continue to negotiate a troubled relationship with the overarching national narratives produced in metropolitan centers of learning. Moreover, social, especially caste conflicts and identities continue to underpin regional politics, historiography, and the reproduction of historical memory.5 It is critical to further probe beyond the metropolitan centers and privileged English-language departments in leading universities, especially in the decades following independence, if we are to engage more meaningfully with the ongoing reproduction of historical memory in contemporary India. The pedagogical transmission of history has received increased attention, especially after the recent conflicts over secondary-school textbooks.6 However, the institutional settings to be investigated also include,

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in the long term, the conditions and constraints of research in regional universities and languages, access to archives, and the ways these impinge on the production and reproduction of South Asian history. Finally, one of the aims of this book has been to qualify the flat treatment in South Asian historiography of the category of the region and its relationship to the nation. Overall, regions have been approached either as local linguistic flavors of an essentially homogeneous Indian/Hindu nationalist discourse or as separatist and oppositional platforms to the homogenizing and overcentralized Indian nation-state. Theorists of Indian nationalism have frequently sidestepped the question of regional specificity in favor of highlighting the shared anticolonial stance in both regional and national identities. Partha Chatterjee’s argument that the slippage among Bengali, Hindu, and Indian identities in the language of nineteenth-century nationalists like Bankimchandra Chatterjee did not matter since all were conceived of in opposition to colonialism has remained, with some exceptions, dominant in the conception of regions within nationalist discourse.7 A discursive understanding of regions as imagined communities that sought to identify their space within the broader Indian national community in various ways has only recently begun to replace the tired framework of “regionalism” as primarily a thorn in the side of Indian “national integration.”8 Sanjib Baruah’s study of the evolution of a regional consciousness in Assam and its tangled negotiation with a larger Indian one during the colonial and postcolonial period strongly underlines regional consciousness as a “dialogic relationship with pan-Indian politics.”9 Approaching the relationship between region and nation in modern South Asia as an evolving process rather than fixed in linguistic differences opens up a theoretical space to explore the many attachments to cultural memories, religion, and ethnicity across the subcontinent that did not achieve political “success” in the current Indian federal arrangement (princely Hyderabad is a good example), but either found expression—or were subsumed—in a linguistically determined federation. The privileging of language, both by the Congress before independence and by the central Indian government afterward, played an important role in determining the viability of regional units.10 Marathi regional identity, far from opposing Mother India, was constructed through Maratha historical narratives as her ideal protector and dutiful son. While the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of the 1950s aimed to unite all Marathi speakers, this historical importance was the strongest ingredient in

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the political rhetoric underlying Maharashtra’s uniqueness and right to be a separate political unit. Recent work has detailed how the categories of “Hindi,” “Hindu,” and “Hindustan” coalesced in the late nineteenth century, gradually “nationalizing” the aspirations of an emerging linguistic Hindi community in the Gangetic plain. Crucial to this Hindi identity were its geographic location, its seamless blending into the larger Hindu and Indian categories through the foregrounding of its Sanskrit heritage and its difference from Urdu and Persian.11 The “imperial ambitions” of the Hindi region were strongly resisted, particularly in Tamil Nadu, in the early postcolonial decades.12 It is interesting to view the emergence of Marathi regional consciousness and its bolstering of the Indian nation alongside the “Hindi heartland’s” assumption of the national core over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the early twentieth century, “imperial ambitions” attributed to the Marathas in the eighteenth century ultimately fell into step with the “naturalization” of the modern nation as Hindu, with a Hindi core. Although the intricacies of this Marathi negotiation with the Hindi region as the core of the nation surely merit further exploration, it would seem that the very emphasis on the Hindu nature of the Maratha project, while enabling modern Maharashtra’s contributions as “national,” also compelled its very production in “regional” terms. Just as Maharashtra’s historical importance to the Indian nation came to be conceived in terms of devout service, the Nagari script, widely adopted for Marathi print by the early twentieth century, became a common platform for Marathi to claim belonging within the larger Hindu national community comprised of Sanskrit-derived languages. This common ground of script, linguistic heritage, and the historical memory of struggle against Muslims was crucial to welding the Marathi and Hindi-speaking areas into a Hindu nationalist politics, and the championing of Hindi and Devanagari as nationalist symbols in Maharashtra. Regional imaginations, then, need to be considered as contingent communities that emerged alongside, and in negotiation with, national imaginations in South Asia. Rather than viewing them uniformly as apparent affirmations of primordial linguistic communities, modernized versions of preexisting patriotic affiliations, or opponents of nations, we have to take into account their diverse outcomes across the subcontinent to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of South Asian nationalisms.

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Since the establishment of the formal state of Maharashtra in 1960, Shivaji has continued to be memorialized with gusto by the Shiv Sena, which came into existence a mere seven years later in Bombay city, the nerve center of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. The Sena’s successful appropriation of the Maratha legacy initially for a nativist Marathi politics and later for buttressing Hindu nationalism is one of the most important reasons to revisit the making of this historical corpus. The historical memory not just of the Marathas but of the South Asian past in general has been important in the rise of Hindu nationalism in recent decades. This broader, panIndian growth has no doubt ensured the continued presence of Maratha themes in political rhetoric in contemporary Maharashtra, but these symbolic resources continue to be invoked for other collective projects that overlap with as well as depart from Hindu nationalist engagements with Maratha history. These include the efforts in recent years of the Maratha Seva Sangh (and the Sambhaji Brigade) to aggressively reclaim Shivaji, Jijabai, and Sambhaji for a Maratha caste-led political and social solidarity by foregrounding Shivaji’s concern for cultivators and his secularism, instead of a Hindu agenda.13 It is important to consider current appropriations of the past within immediate political and social contexts without reducing them to mere continuations of conflicts and representations of earlier decades. However, it is also critical to historicize these appropriations by teasing out the complex configurations of community from which they emerged and the conceptions of history and truth on which they have drawn over the past century. They provided a vocabulary, then as now, for negotiating the changing meanings of these imagined communities, and their cultural horizons. Only through a serious engagement with this wider history of historical memory can scholarly historiography engage creative pasts for more egalitarian and inclusive political futures.

Notes

Introduction 1. Shejwalkar, “Maharashtrachya Manguticha Samandha,” in Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar: Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, ed. H. V. Mote, introduction by G. D. Khanolkar (Mumbai: Mote, 1977), 276. English translations of Marathi texts cited in the notes are provided in the bibliography. 2. Y. D. Phadke, Visavya Shatakatila Maharashtra, 5 vols. (Sasvad, Pune: Srividya Prakashan/Sasvad Ashrama Vishvasta Mandala, 1989), I:v. 3. The book in question is James W. Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). For brief coverage of this attack and its aftermath, see Anupama Katakam, “Ban, After Protest,” Frontline 21, no. 3 (January 31–February 3, 2004), http://www.flonnet.com/ (accessed March 28, 2006). See also below, note 50. 4. As Thomas Blom Hansen has put it, “The Shivaji mythology is a nodal point, the historical fiction at the heart of state practices, political rhetoric and historical imagination in this part of India” (Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002], 21). For analyses of the political iconization of Shivaji, see also Richard Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Malavika Vartak, “Shivaji Maharaj: Growth of a Symbol,” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 19 (1999): 1126–1134; Rosalind

Introduction 212 O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); James W. Laine, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India (New York, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Daniel Jasper, “Commemorating Shivaji: Regional and Religious Identity in Maharashtra, India,” Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, New York, 2002. 5. Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, trans. F. J. Ditter and V. Y. Ditter (1950; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1980) is the classic statement on the divergence of memory and history under modernity. For a recent statement of this view and a useful survey and principal arguments of the literature, see Patrick Hutton, History as an Art of Memory (Hanover: University of New Hampshire Press, 1989). 6. The classic work here is Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). The anthropologist Jack Goody’s works have also been deeply influential. See The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); Jack Goody and Ian Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5, no. 3 (1963): 304–345; and Hutton, History as an Art of Memory, 13–20. 7. These binaries and the idea of memory as a casualty of modernity, while shared by many, are perhaps sharpest in the work of Pierre Nora, where history appears almost as memory’s evil, usurping twin, trampling underfoot a living and continuous, hazy yet sacred process of remembrance and “phenomenon of emotion and magic.” Nora differentiates between this older, spontaneous memory and a new, artificial memory that was produced by commemorative practices, attempting to recover in his ambitious project “places” where traces of this older memory survive. Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), I:1–20. The idea that, for better or worse, the West has history and the non-West has memory is a thread running through both Nora’s and Goody’s arguments. 8. A large body of literature in the past decade on World War II, especially the Holocaust, in monographs as well as the journal History and Memory, has employed the category of Memory to explore lived experiences of survivors of traumatic events that conventional historical methods cannot capture. The South Asian literature in this genre has produced some excellent explorations of Memory in the context of the partition of India in 1947. See Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1995; reprint, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders

Introduction 213 and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India, ed. Suvir Kaul (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 9. Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Shail Mayaram, Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922–1991 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Saurabh Dube, Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity and Power Among a Central Indian Community (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998). 10. See Maurice Agulhon, Marianne Into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1770–1880, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of the Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jon Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), among many others. The extensive literature on U.S. historiography, ranging from the reenactments of the Civil War to the commemorations of momentous twentieth-century events, has drawn heavily on this “public” understanding of memory. 11. Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (December 1997): 1386–1403; Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41, no. 2 (2002): 179–197. 12. Confino, “Collective Memory,” 1387. 13. As a number of works have shown, professionalization within the discipline of history involved the privileging of the nation over other collectivities as the only legitimate site of history, of overtly political statist narratives over social or cultural explorations, of male writers as professional historians over women writers as “amateurs,” and of Europe as the silent referent of all universal history. See Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Reba Soffer, Discipline

Introduction 214 and Power: The University, History and the Making of an English Elite (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity” Question and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Anthony Gorman, Historians, State and Politics in TwentiethCentury Egypt (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003). 14. For a long review of Menzies’s work, see Robert Finlay, “How Not to (Re)write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America,” Journal of World History 15, no. 2,(June 2004): 229–242. For a survey of the debate among professional historians in the discussion list “H-Asia” over Menzies and questions his work raises, see Charles Hayford, “Popular History, Academic History and Bunkum (Gavin Menzies 1421 on H-Asia),” http://hnn. us/articles/18698.html (accessed March 22, 2006). 15. The Hindu nationalist BJP government’s attempts to rewrite secondary school history textbooks issued by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) along the lines of a narrow, sectarian agenda prompted furious protests from professional historians. For a collection of essays on this controversy, see Delhi Historians’ Group, Communalisation of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy (New Delhi: Delhi Historians Group, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2001). Recently, the board of education of the state of California in the United States rejected demands from various groups representing “Hindu” interests to rewrite sections on ancient Indian history in its high school textbooks. See Vinay Lal, “Palpable Falsehoods [text of letter to the President, California State Board of Education dated 27 January 2006],” Outlook, www.outlookindia.com (accessed March 24, 2006). 16. The most vociferous advocate of this view has been the leading historian Romila Thapar. See Romila Thapar, “Knowledge and Education,” Frontline, January 15–28, 2005, http://www.flonnet.com (accessed March 24, 2006). 17. Vinay Lal, The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 12–19, 141–185. 18. Shahid Amin, “On Retelling the Muslim Conquest of North India,” in History and the Present, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Anjan Ghosh (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), 24–43. 19. Ibid., 42. 20. Sumit Sarkar, “The Many Worlds of Indian History,” in Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1–2.

Introduction 215 21. Popular history, in this sense, is intended to signal not specifically to nonelite contexts but to the multiple cultural sites outside the academy, among both middle-class and nonelite social groups, where historical representations are generated. It is also intended to underscore, as we will see throughout the book, the wider circulation these forms enjoy within the public sphere in shaping common-sense visions of the past. I thank Manan Ahmed for helping me clarify my thoughts on this issue. 22. This sharp polarity is visible in Romila Thapar’s recent study of the historiography of the Turkish conqueror Mahmud of Ghazna’s raid on the Somnath temple in 1026 a.d. Thapar is attentive to the “many voices” in this historiography. In reiterating the importance of historicity in countering popular, divisive memories of Somnath, however, she also posits a sharp difference between history and popular memory. Although her point about the need to explore the historicity of controversial events is undeniable, it is also equally important to examine the imbrication of the domains of history and memory in the construction of such widely shared, divisive, and majoritarian historical memories. Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History (London, New York: Verso, 2005). 23. Partha Chatterjee, “Introduction,” in Chatterjee and Ghosh, eds. History and the Present, 6–7. 24. Ibid., 17. 25. See Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Partha Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Sarkar, Writing Social History; Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Nationalist Consciousness in Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Vasudha Dalmia, “Vernacular Histories in Late-Nineteenth Century Banaras: Folklore, Puranas and the New Antiquarianism,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, no. 1 (2001): 59–79. 26. Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” History and Theory 34, no. 2 (1995): 44–66. See also Lal, History of History, 27–78. 27. Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 28. Philip Wagoner, Tidings of the King: A Translation and Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Rayavacakamu (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993).

Introduction 216 29. V. N. Rao, David Shulman, and S. Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: History Writing in South India, 1600–1800 (New York: The Other Press, 2003). See also Cynthia Talbot, “Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India,” Society for Comparative Study of Society and History 37, no. 4 (1995): 692–722; Cynthia Talbot, Pre-Colonial India in Practice: Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 30. An exception in this regard is Ramya Sreenivasan’s fascinating and detailed study of the transformations of the Padmini legend from the seventeenth century into colonial times, in a variety of genres and linguistic and social contexts. See The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in Indian History c. 1500–1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, forthcoming). 31. Dirks, The Hollow Crown; Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 61–124. 32. Although the term “Maharashtrian” is frequently used today, and gained currency by the mid-twentieth century in Marathi usage as well (as “Maharashtriya”), I have retained “Marathi” throughout instead, in keeping with the dominant usage of the time period under study. 33. An excellent introduction to the Marathas that brings together many of the threads in this body of research is Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 1600–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 34. The work of A. R. Kulkarni from the late 1960s inaugurated a fresh socioeconomic history of seventeenth-century Maharashtra. See Kulkarni, Maharashtra in the Age of Shivaji (Pune: Deshmukh, 1969). Detailed examinations of social and economic relations and institutions include Hiroshi Fukazawa, The Medieval Deccan: Peasants, Social Systems and States, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991); Hiroyuki Kotani, Western India in Historical Transition: Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries (Delhi: Manohar, 2002); Sumit Guha, “An Indian Penal Regime: Maharashtra in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 147 (May 1995): 101–126; Guha, “Rights and Wrongs in the Maratha Country: Antiquity, Custom and Power in Eighteenth-Century India,” in Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia, ed. M. R. Anderson and S. Guha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). 35. The path-breaking work here was Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India: Agrarian Society and Politics Under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarajya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). See also Frank Perlin,

Introduction 217 “State Formation Reconsidered,” Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 3 (1985): 415–480; Stewart Gordon, Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998). 36. R. C. Dhere, Nath Sampradayacha Itihasa (Pune: Padmagandha Prakashan, 2001); Dhere, Lokadaivatanche Vishwa (Pune: Padmagandha Prakashan, 1996); Anne Feldhaus, Water and Womanhood: The Religious Meaning of Rivers in Maharashtra (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer, Biroba, Mhaskoba and Khandoba: Pastoral Deities in Western India, trans. Anne Feldhaus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 37. Yusuf M. Pathan, Marathi Bakharitil Pharsiche Swaroop (Aurangabad: Maratha Vidyapeeth Prakashan, 1973). 38. Hiroshi Fukazawa, “State and Caste System (Jati) in the EighteenthCentury Maratha Kingdom,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics 9, no. 1 (1968): 32–44; Sudha V. Desai, Social Life in Maharashtra Under the Peshwas (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1980); V. S. Kadam, “The Institution of Marriage and Position of Women in Eighteenth-Century Maharashtra,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 25, no. 3 (1988): 341–370. 39. These emphases in current historiography on diversity, complexity, and contradictory forces in Maratha politics, society, and identity may be seen as responses to an earlier generation of nationalist historiography and its attendant emphases on uniformity, exclusivity, and coherence. 40. Wink, Land and Sovereignty, 157–250. 41. Gordon, The Marathas, 76–77, 82–83. 42. Kamal Gokhale, Chhatrapati Sambhaji (Pune: Navkamal Publications, 1978). 43. While histories produced from the Mughal and Maratha centers, therefore, insist on a smooth and stable progression against the other, a wealth of family documents published from the 1960s onward has enabled the construction of a much more complex and layered power structure and turn of events. Gordon, The Marathas, 93–113. 44. This was also a last-ditch attempt by Aurangzeb to further destabilize the Maratha state. Gordon, The Marathas, 103. 45. The migration of Chitpavan Brahmans from the Konkan, following Balaji Vishwanath, increased the availability of a literate clerical elite of tax collectors, administrators, and record-keepers crucial to the stabilization of the state under Shahu’s nominal leadership, and also made available banking and credit resources that the state needed following decades of warfare and depredation in Maharashtra. Wink, Land and Sovereignty, 68–77; Gordon, The Marathas, 112–113.

Introduction 218 46. This overlap between Mughal and Maratha claims to revenue within the same territory is at the core of Andre Wink’s argument about the de-territorial nature of the Maratha “svarajya” (self-rule) and the de-territorial conception of the notion of sovereignty in precolonial India. Wink, Land and Sovereignty, 34–51. 47. The most detailed study of Panipat, its background and consequences, is still T. S. Shejwalkar, Panipat, 1761 (Pune: Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute, 1946). 48. See note 32, above. 49. All these leaders died between 1795 and 1800, ending a period of stable leadership. Gordon, The Marathas, 172. 50. Sumit Guha, “Speaking Historically: the Changing Voices of Historical Narration in Western India,” American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (October 2004): 1084–2004. 51. James Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, ed. J. P. Guha. 2 vols. (1826; reprint, New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1971). 52. Caste conflicts, particularly protests against Brahman domination of educational institutions and the production of knowledge, have marked university politics in postcolonial Maharashtra, and the Sambhaji Brigade, the youth wing of the Maratha Seva Sangh, a Maratha caste organization, attacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute in January 2004 as a symbol of Brahman dominance and “fabrication” of the past and Shivaji’s legacy. For an interesting study of caste dynamics in university politics in postcolonial Maharashtra, see Donald V. Kurtz, Contradictions and Conflict: A Dialectical Political Anthropology of a University in Western India (Leiden, New York: E. J. Brill, 1994). While most commentators in the national press condemned the Sambhaji Brigade’s attack and characterized it incorrectly as part of “Hindutva” politics, its caste and antiBrahman dimensions went largely ignored. For an exception, see Asghar Ali Engineer, “The Politics Behind the Vandalism of Bhandarkar Institute,” People’s Union of Civil Liberties Journal, March 2004, ww.pucl.org (accessed March 27, 2006). For an incisive critique of the political contexts and the media coverage of this event, see Spencer Leonard, “The James Laine Affair Within and Besides Indian Election 2004,” conference paper, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, 2005. I am grateful to Leonard for several insightful discussions on this issue and for sharing his paper and ideas with me, and to all the participants of the discussion on the controversy at the AAS. 53. Within South Asian historiography, see Saurabh Dube, Stitches on Time: Colonial Textures and Postcolonial Tangles (Durham: Duke University Press,

1. Bakhar Historiography 219 2004); Douglas Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 54. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 17–18, 33–37. Chakrabarty critiques the notion of a “hyperreal Europe,” which elevates the European experience as the principal, silent referent in analyzing global categories such as History and Modernity, leading to an interpretation of experiences of other societies in terms of either their failure to live up to or their transition over time to these European-derived categories. Instead, he argues, these societies’ experiences have to be read as a deeper problem of “translation” and “difference.” In other words, departures from the European standard have to be seen as variations on a universalist theme on their own terms.

1. Bakhar Historiography 1. V. K. Rajwade, “Introduction [to vol. 1 of the Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhanen, hereafter MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samagra Sahitya, ed. Muralidhar B. Shah, 13 vols. (Dhule: Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Sansodhan Mandal, 1995–1998), 10:4. The Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhane (MIS) were twenty-two volumes of sources, edited and printed by Rajwade. See chapter 4 for a detailed discussion of Rajwade and these volumes. 2. Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1966), 2:265. 3. R. V. Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1975), Bapuji Sankpal, Bakharvangmaya, Udgama ani Vikasa (Pune: Ramacandra Dastane, 1982), and G. B. Gramopadhye, Marathi Bakhar Gadya (Pune: Mehta Publishing House, 1988), provide overviews of the bakhars. Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar, 79–174 also provides brief summaries of several of these narratives. 4. The latest such edited collections are A. R. Kulkarni, ed., Jedhe ShakavaliKarina (Pune: Manasanman Prakashan, 2000) and Avinash Sohoni, ed., Aitihasik Bakhari, 2 vols. (Pune: Shabdhavedh Press, 1998). 5. These literary qualities, however, have been studied in considerable detail, ranging from the style of description, personality sketches, and novelistic

1. Bakhar Historiography 220 qualities (Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar, 175–233) to grammar, proverbs, and the influence of Persian and Arabic vocabulary and usage. See Yusuf M. Pathan, Marathi Bakharitil Pharsiche Swaroop (Aurangabad: Maratha Vidyapeeth Prakashan, 1973); also Sankpal, Bakharvangmaya. 6. These texts are important to my argument in several ways. The multiple copies of each of the narratives and their interpolation into other contemporaneous and later texts suggest that they were in wide circulation in the eighteenth century and beyond. At least two of the texts informed British representations of the Marathas. All of them were among the earliest works to enter the sphere of print, and deeply influenced nationalist representations of the Maratha past. 7. Although the text mentions the date as Shake 1616, some scholars, including Rajwade and Herwadkar, have pointed out that the Ishwar samvatsar fell on Shake 1619, which would make the date of completion 1697. See Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar, 41. All citations from this bakhar in this chapter are from Yusufkhan M. Pathan, ed., Krishnaji Ananta Sabhasada Virachit Sri Sivaprabhunche Charitra, Sabhasada Bakhar (Aurangabad: Samartha Prakasana, 1974). 8. The Kavyetihas Sangraha, which published another edition in 1924 with extensive notes, mentioned six extant copies. This 1924 edition modernized the language and spelling of the Modi originals, but also provided extensive details about the differences in words and usage among the available manuscript copies. Although R. V. Herwadkar, editor of the 1967 edition, described the physical conditions of these copies, he cited them as being “difficult to obtain” and reproduced the 1924 edition with all its notes. All the citations and references in this chapter are drawn from this 1967 edition. See R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Shakakarte Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj yanche Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, Malhar Ramrao Chitnis Virachit (Pune: Venus Prakashan,1967), ix–xxiv. 9. This bakhar was first serialized in the Kavyetihas Sangraha in 1878. Three extant manuscript copies were available to the editor, Kashinath V. Sane. One of them bears the name Naro Meghshyam, possibly that of the copyist. Book editions of this narrative appeared in 1879, 1890, 1903, 1925. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Krishnaji Vinayaka Sohoni Virachit Peshwyanchi Bakhar (Pune: Venus Prakashan 1975), 20–21. 10. The authorship of this narrative is a matter of some confusion, as different copies bear the names of different copyists, but Kashinath Sane, who first published this bakhar as well, referred to a copy dated to 1791, with the writer’s name as Chintaman Govind. M. S. Kanade ’s detailed notes to the edition from which all the references in this chapter are drawn mention at least four other

1. Bakhar Historiography 221 copies. M. S. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar (Pune: Snehavardhan Publishing House, 1993), 15, 79. 11. Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar. 12. Shankar N. Joshi and L. M. Bhingare, eds., Adnyapatra ani Rajaniti (Pune: Continental Prakashan, 1960). 13. Sankpal, Bakharvangmaya. Indeed, the term bakhar was also occasionally applied to collections of mythological, Puranic stories, and sometimes to histories of religious orders and biographies of their leaders as well. 14. Sumit Guha, “Speaking Historically: The Changing Voices of Historical Narration in Western India,” American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (October 2004): 1084–2004. 15. Sumit Guha, “Rights and Wrongs in the Maratha Country: Antiquity, Custom and Power in Eighteenth Century India,” in Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia, ed. M. R. Anderson and S. Guha (New York: Oxford University Press 1998), 14–29; Guha, “Speaking Historically,” 1093–1096. 16. Ibid., 1096. 17. Guha rightly points out that this “community” was religiously and socially diverse, and that “contestants could not, therefore, appeal to esoteric or sectarian knowledge, but turned rather to the ‘common knowledge ’ or ‘common sense’ of a diverse local community, narrated in a language that everyone could understand.” Ibid., 1096. 18. Ibid., 1093. 19. James W. Laine and S. S. Bahulkar, The Epic of Shivaji: A Study and Translation of Kavindra Paramananda’s Sivabharata (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2001). For shahiri poetry, see chapter 2. 20. Maratha sardars under the Deccan sultanates had Persian writers in their service. Writers in the Maratha bureaucracy also remained familiar with Persian until the early nineteenth century through the office of the Parasnis, and some genealogies and histories of Maratha families were also written in Persian, although the bulk of them were composed in Marathi. See Sumit Guha, “Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dakhan, 1500–1800,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 23–31. 21. C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 10–44. 22. Herwadkar, ed., Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, 109.

1. Bakhar Historiography 222 23. Sohoni, ed., Aitihasik Bakhari, 1:242. 24. Ibid., 43. 25. Pathan, ed., Sabhasada Bakhar, 1. 26. Herwadkar, ed., Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, 1–2. 27. As we shall see in the next chapter, one of its central conclusions is that the Marathas were themselves responsible for the defeat at Panipat. 28. This, of course, is the underlying idea in Hayden White ’s argument that “the encodation of events in terms of . . . plot structures is one of the ways that a culture has of making sense of both personal and public pasts.” Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). It is important to note that this emplotting of historical events as a charitra to emphasize the extraordinariness of Shivaji’s actions or the proverbial vinashakale vipareeta buddhi to convey the colossal mistakes at Panipat is within literary frames that would have been recognizable within the cultural world of the upper-caste Marathispeaking bureaucracy; the choice of the specific frame derives from, and in turn informs, the authors’ analysis of the events and their outcome. Here, my argument also differs from that in Textures of Time, where the authors foreground the literary nature of the karanam histories and the choice of literary genre according to its dominance within the community, but also insist on the internal differentiation between the literary and the historical within the texts, recognizable to both the writer and the native reader/listeners through “textures” within the narrative. V. N. Rao, David Shulman, and S. Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: History Writing in South India, 1600–1800 (New York: The Other Press, 2003), 3–4, 10–12, 253–254. 29. Guha, “Speaking Historically,” 1096. This simultaneous, multiple dating, Guha argues, underscores the conception of a linear, eternal time that could have multiple measuring systems. 30. The authors posit a tension in the texts within the kalajnana time frame, where the future has already been predicted but “recursive loops” in these predictions accord space and freedom to individual protagonists; it is in this space, through a “distinctive conception of constrained causality,” that history is identified and narrated by the karanam historians. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 17, 121–222. 31. Pathan, Sabhasad Bakhar, 23, 28, 38, 70. Herwadkar, Saptaprakanatmak Charitra, 136–137, 190–191. 32. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 141, 209.

1. Bakhar Historiography 223 33. Herwadkar, ed., Peshwyanchi Bakhar, 240. 34. Ranajit Guha, “An Indian Historiography of India: Hegemonic Implications of a Nineteenth-Century Agenda,” in Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 181. 35. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 238–239. 36. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 263. 37. Herwadkar, ed., Peshwyanchi Bakhar, 26. 38. Herwadkar, ed., Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, 1–2. 39. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 96. 40. Rajwade, “Introduction [to vol. 4 of the MIS],” in Shah, ed., Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:205–206. 41. T. S. Shejwalkar, Panipat, 1761 (Pune: Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute, 1946), 131. 42. For extensive details of interpolation and borrowing among a wide range of bakhars, see Herwadkar, Marathi Bakhar, 79–168. 43. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 84, 126, 186, 221. 44. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Malhar Ramrao Chitnis Virachit Thorale Shahu Maharaja Yanche Charitra (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1976); Bhimrao B. Kulkarni, ed., Srimanmaharaj Sambhajiraje Ani Thorle Rajaram Yanchi Charitre (Pune: Suvichar Prakashan Mandal, 1973). 45. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 100. 46. See Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 95–101 for details of Rajaram’s precarious position vis-à-vis the Mughals in this period. 47. Pathan, ed., Sabhasad Bakhar, 7. 48. Ibid., 56. 49. Ibid., 74, 85–86. 50. This privileging of Balaji Avji is also prominent in another early nineteenth-century Shivaji biography, the Shivadigvijaya, the anonymous author of which probably had the Chitnis narrative at hand. See Rajwade, “Introduction [to vol. 4 of the MIS],” in Shah, ed., Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:205–209. The Chitragupta bakhar, a late eighteenth-century elaboration of Sabhasad written by Raghunath Yadav Chitragupta, another descendant of Avji, also includes details on Avji and the Chitnis family’s fortunes. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Panipatachi Bakhar (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1972), xvii. 51. This bakhar can be contrasted, thus, with the Holkaranchi Thaili, which puts forward a very favorable account of Malharrao Holkar’s activities at Panipat. The central argument of this account is that Holkar was not able to help

1. Bakhar Historiography 224 Bhausaheb during the crucial battle, because he was following Bhau’s own orders to first take the camp followers, including the women, to safety. For excerpts from this narrative, see Avinash Sohoni, ed., Aitihasik Bakhari, 1:210–217. 52. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 151. 53. Herwadkar, ed., Peshwyanchi Bakhar, 1. Emphasis added. 54. Ibid., 4–12. 55. For a recent overview of Brahmanization across the subcontinent, especially the Peshwai’s “Brahman Raj,” see Susan Bayly, Caste Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 64–96. For other examples in this bakhar, see 52–55, 79–80. 56. Herwadkar, ed., Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, 227–229. 57. Ibid., 163–164. 58. Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 111. 59. Perlin, “State Formation Reconsidered,” 435. 60. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “The Making of a Munshi,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 61–72. Rajeev Kinra’s ongoing study, “Secretary-Poets in Mughal India and the Ethos of Persian: The Case of Chandar Bhan ‘Brahman’” argues that within the adab and akhlaq literature, the nasihatnamas (Mirrors for Princes) in particular elaborated the necessary creative skills of a good secretary through anecdotal retellings of the wit and quick thinking of great secretaries of the past. I am grateful to Kinra for allowing me to read and cite from his ongoing work. Although the influence of the akhbar form and the prominence of Persian and Arabic vocabulary on the bakhars has received scholarly attention, much work remains to be done on the similarities and differences of literary expression, idioms, and argument between insha’ prose and the bakhars. 61. See chapter 2 for some examples of such awareness and borrowing among contemporaneous histories of different languages. See also Rao, Shulman, and Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time, 184–251.

2. Representing Maratha Power 1. Some of these are larger explorations of the nature of the Maratha state as a whole, such as André Wink, Land and Sovereignty: Agrarian Society and Politics Under the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Svarajya (Cambridge: Cambridge

2. Representing Maratha Power 225 University Press, 1986) and Frank Perlin, “State Formation Reconsidered,” Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 3 (1985): 415–480. Others are smaller, detailed case studies, such as the essays in Hiroshi Fukazawa, The Medieval Deccan: Peasants, Social Systems and States, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Hiroyuki Kotani, Western India in Historical Transition: Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries (Delhi: Manohar, 2002). 2. Perlin, “State Formation Reconsidered,” 415–424. Perlin argues against seeing different levels of administration and official positions within precolonial states in South Asia as simply performing clearly demarcated duties, instead emphasizes their active involvement in the shaping of the state system itself. 3. Y. M. Pathan, ed., Krishnaji Ananta Sabhasada Virachit Sri Sivaprabhunche Charitra, Sabhasad Bakhar (A Biography of the Lord Shivaji by Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad, the Sabhasad Bakhar) (Aurangabad: Samartha Prakashan, 1974), 87. See also 14–17, 61. 4. Several of Rajaram’s letters to various Maratha chiefs invoked these idioms of a sacred Maharashtrarajya under attack from Muslims. See Sumit Guha, “Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dakhan, 1500–1800,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 29; Kotani, Western India, 257–258. 5. D. B. Parasnis, ed., “Jawalikar More Yanchi Chhoti Bakhar,” Itihasa Sangraha 1, nos. 10–11 (1909): 21–29. This narrative begins mid-sentence in its printed form. It is not clear when it was composed, but the heavily Persianized Marathi and the references to the continuing aura of Chandrarao More in the Jawali region suggest that it was composed sometime in the later seventeenth century, not long after the More–Shivaji confrontation. 6. Ibid., 25–26. 7. Ibid., 29. 8. This narrative was acquired from the Ghorpade family records in 1934 and published as a Marathi translation with other letters, proclamations, and deeds relating to the family and a lengthy introduction. See Dattatraya V. Apte, Mudhol Sansthanchya Ghorpade Gharanyacha Itihasa: Mudhol Sansthanchya Daptarkhanyatil Pharsi Bakhariche Marathi Bhashantar Va Pharmane Vagaire (Pune: Aryabhushan Press, 1934). Apte does not mention when this translation was made or by whom, but the modernity of the Marathi register suggests that it was likely soon after he acquired it. The citations are from this Marathi translation. Internal evidence from the text suggests that it was composed sometime around the turn of the eighteenth century, roughly the same time as Sabhasad.

2. Representing Maratha Power 226 9. Ibid., 246–247. 10. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Krishnaji Vinayaka Sohoni Virachit Peshwyanchi Bakhar (Pune: Venus Prakashan 1975), 54–57, 78–80. 11. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Shakakarte Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj yanche Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, Malhar Ramrao Chitnis Virachit (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1967). 56. 12. Ibid., 60–61.Chitnis has the poet Tukaram urge Shivaji to seek counsel from Ramdas, and recommends him as a much more appropriate guru for his political ambitions. 13. Irina Glushkova, “A Philological Approach to Regional Ideologies,” in Region, Culture and Politics in India, ed. Rajendra Vora and Anne Feldhaus (Delhi: Manohar, 2006), 53–55. The Mahikavatichi Bakhar, one of the oldest narratives, sections of which are datable to the mid-fifteenth century, describes the area where Maharashtra dharma, as the proper observance of daily rituals and prayer, was disseminated by Shankaracharya as bounded by “Shvetambaradharameshvar in the south, Kashi in the north, Dwarka in the west, and Tuljapur in the east.” The Gurucharitra, a sixteenth-century text, similarly describes Maharashtra dharma as involving respect for Vedic texts, following a strict varna hierarchy and regular ritual, and urges the king to respect Brahmans and ensure that these principles underlie his rule. 14. James W. Laine, Hindu King in Islamic India (New York, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 60. Laine argues that Mahipati not only emphasized Shivaji’s devotion to Ramdas but also sought to assimilate both of them into a coherent narrative of the wider Bhakti tradition centered on Pandharpur, and “constructed a portrait of a monolithic Hinduism opposed to a monolithic Islam, with the seventeenth century seen as the story of Shivaji and Ramdas contending with Aurangzeb for cultural supremacy.” 15. R. V. Herwadkar, ed., Malhara Ramarao Chitnis virachit Thorale Shahu Maharaja Yanche Charitra (A Biography of Tthe Elder Shahu Maharaj by Malhar Ramrao Chitnis) (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1976), 67–71. 16. Guha, “Speaking Historically,” 1100. 17. Herwadkar, ed., Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, 215. 18. Herwadkar, ed., Peshwyanchi Bakhar, 59, 125. 19. I am following here Stewart Gordon’s exploration of the development of distinct military cultures among the Rajputs, Marathas, and Nayakas roughly between 1500 and 1700 in the subcontinent. Gordon argues that these cultures

2. Representing Maratha Power 227 resulted through different military styles and patterns of service and shaped distinct codes of loyalty and honor among the elite. Stewart Gordon, “Zones of Military Entrepreneurship in India, 1500–1700,” in Marathas, Marauders and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 182–208. 20. M. S. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar (Bhausaheb’s Bakhar) (Pune: Snehavardhan Publishing House, 1993), 84. 21. T. S. Shejwalkar also discusses evidence of this conflicted relationship in Maratha–Rajput letters and other documents in the mid-eighteenth century, but traces it specifically to the question of Kshatriya jati identity. T. S. Shejwalkar, Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, ed. H. V. Mote, introduction by G. D. Khanolkar (Mumbai: Mouj Prakashan, 1977), 158–162. 22. Preparing for the northern campaign, the Gardi commander Ibrahim Khan Gardi warns Bhausaheb: “You Marathas, you show yourself and then run, but we Gardis are foot soldiers. Our legs are not made for running away. But we now have to engage with Durranis and Rohillas, so what is your command?” Bhausaheb then gave his assurance, saying, “Even if the final moment should come, we will never abandon you. Wherever you fixedly take your stand, there will I remain. Nothing shall come between us.” Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 198. 23. This is the central argument in S. S. Varade, Marathi Kavitecha Ushahkala: Marathi Shahir (Mumbai: Author, 1930), 9–16. Eager to locate this poetry in a popular nationalist upsurge, he is particularly at pains to downplay its erotic aspects, laying the blame for this “immorality” squarely on the last Peshwa, Bajirao II. 24. R. C. Dhere, Lokasanskrutiche Upasak (Pune: Padmagandha Prakashan, 1996), 187–189. 25. D. A. Kulkarni, Marathi Lokakathagita: Svarupa Lakshane (Aurangabad: Godavari Prakashan), 161–162. 26. A. M. Shah and R. G. Shroff, “The Vahivanca Barots of Gujarat: A Caste of Genealogists and Mythographers,” The Journal of American Folklore 71, no. 281 (July–Sept. 1958): 246–276; Norman P. Ziegler, “The Seventeenth-Century Chronicles of Marvara: A Study in the Evolution and Use of Oral Traditions in Western India,” History in Africa 3 (1976): 127–153. See also Ramya Sreenivasan, The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in Indian History c. 1500–1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, forthcoming). 27. Ibid., 137; Richard Fox, Kin, Clan, Raja, and Rule: State-Hinterland Relations in Pre-Industrial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).

2. Representing Maratha Power 228 28. Harry A. Acworth, Ballads of Marathas, Translated from the Original Marathi (London, 1894), 5. 29. The ballad ends thus: “And so the brave Shivaji bestowed on me a fine steed as a prize,/A bracelet heavy in gold, he placed on my wrist.” Y. N. Kelkar, ed., Aitihasik Powade, arthat, Marathyancha Kavyamay Itihasa, 3 vols. (Pune: Author, 1928–1969), 1:128–130. 30. Vinayak L. Bhave, Maharashtra Sarasvat (The Literature of Maharashtra) (1924; reprint, Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1963), 45. 31. Varade, Marathi Shahir, 74. 32. See Kelkar’s discussion of powadas with differing conclusions on the same topics. Kelkar, Aitihasik Powade, 1:25. 33. Kelkar, Aitihasik Powade, 1:128–130. 34. Quoted in Varade, Marathi Shahir, 42–43. 35. Quoted in ibid., 126. 36. Bhave, Maharashtra Sarasvat, 547–550. Although this aspect of Bhave ’s argument about shahiri poetry was sound, his approach to the poetry was also heavily tinged by a masculinist, nationalist approach. He argued that such poetry could only develop in an imperial, muscular culture like that of the Marathas. 37. Quoted in Varade, Marathi Shahir, 108. 38. Quoted in ibid., 32. 39. Ibid., 28. 40. Sharmila Rege, “The Hegemonic Appropriation of Sexuality: The Case of the Lavani Performers of Maharashtra,” in Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, ed. Patricia Uberoi (New Delhi: Sage, 1996), 23–38. 41. Varade, Marathi Shahir, 15. 42. Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict, and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 44; Rege, “Hegemonic Appropriation,” 28–30. 43. Quoted in Guha, “Speaking Historically,” 1096. 44. Herwadkar, ed., Peshwyanchi Bakhar, 55–56. 45. Ibid., 23. 46. Ibid., 16–17. 47. Pathan, ed., Sabhasad Bakhar, 68. 48. Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 93. 49. V. N. Rao, David Shulman, and S. Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: History Writing in South India, 1600–1800 (New York: The Other Press, 2003), 156.

3. History, Print, and Education 229 50. Kelkar, Aitihasik Powade, 1:22; Pathan, Sabhasad Bakhar, 11. 51. Kelkar, Aitihasik Powade, 2:28; Kanade, ed., Bhausahebanchi Bakhar, 166. 52. C. A. Bayly, The Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 19–31. 53. Ibid., 21. 54. Laine, Shivaji, 49. 55. Laine differentiates this “Hinduism” from the modern understanding of Hindu community and nation, and at least for the seventeenth century, clarifies the wide range of meanings and contexts that Hindu symbols of royalty and kingship represented. For the eighteenth century, he restricts himself to a delineation of the emphasis on a “universalistic, devotional Hinduism steeped in the values of the renouncer” as represented by the writings of Chitnis and Mahipati and does not examine the social or political dissemination of this conception or the implications of these writings for gleaning a generalized “Hindu identity” among the Marathas. He invokes the universalism contained in them as a philosophical precursor to the ideology of nationalism, but does not make clear whether this also indicates the reflection of these philosophies in a popular “identity” that fed into this nationalism. Ibid., 7–62. 56. Bayly, The Origins of Nationality, 23.

3. History, Print, and Education 1. James Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, 1826, ed. J. P. Guha, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1971), I:vii. 2. Some of these were James Kerr, A Short Historical Narrative of the Rise and Rapid Advancement of the Mahrattah State, to the Present Strength and Consequence It Has Acquired in the East (London, 1782), and two anonymous pamphlets, Origins of the Present Mahratta and the Late Rohilla War (London, 1781) and the Retrospective View and Consideration of Indian Affairs, Particularly of the Mahratta War (London, 1783). 3. Robert Orme, Historical Fragments of the Moghul Empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan from the Year M.DC.LIX, 1782, ed. J. P. Guha (New Delhi: Associated Publishing House, 1974), 5–62, 118–134. 4. C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

3. History, Print, and Education 230 5. Cf. Ranajit Guha, “An Indian Historiography of India,” in Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 158–162. 6. G. W. Forrest, ed., Selections from the Minutes and Other Official Writings of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, Governor of Bombay (London, 1884), 253–444. 7. Jane Rendall, “Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill,” Historical Journal 25, no. 1 (March 1982): 49. 8. This view of James Grant Duff ’s historical project on the Marathas was Elphinstone’s, expressed in a letter to Grant Duff dated April 20, 1922, quoted in A. R. Kulkarni, James Cuninghame Grant Duff (Pune: Pune Vidyapeeth, 1971), 159. 9. These biographical details are from ibid., 1–61. I am indebted, in this entire section, to Kulkarni’s excellent biographical study of Grant Duff and his times. 10. When Grant Duff first expressed his wish to undertake such a project, Elphinstone indicated to him that a desirable “Maratta history would embrace the downfall of the Mughal Empire and the rise of our own as well as that, which is its professed object to treat.” Quoted in Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 117. For several such examples of Elphinstone ’s advice, see 155–172. 11. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 130. 12. Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, I:14–15. 13. “The name Mahratta is applicable in some degree to all of them, when spoken of in contradistinction to men of other countries; but amongst themselves a Mahratta Bramin will carefully distinguish himself from a Mahratta. That term, though extended to the Koonbees, or cultivators, is, in strictness, confined to the military families of the country, many of whom claim a doubtful but not improbable descent from the Rajpoots.” Ibid., 8. 14. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 180. 15. Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, I:64. 16. Quoted in Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 171. Emphasis mine. 17. Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, I:viii–ix. 18. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 152. 19. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 134–140. 20. Pratapsingh’s diary, regularly updated by his scribe, records many such conversations between Grant Duff and Chitnis, especially over the interpretations of Shivaji’s actions, such as the killing of Chandrarao More. Grant’s suspicion of his informants led him to regularly complain to Chitnis, much to the latter’s annoyance, that the Shivaji story in particular was exaggerated. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 137–143.

3. History, Print, and Education 231 21. Quoted in Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 144. 22. For a recent overview of this literature, see Phillip B. Wagoner, “Precolonial Intellectuals and the Production of Colonial Knowledge,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, No. 4 (October 2003): 783–814. 23. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 141–142. 24. Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 83. 25. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 131. 26. Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, “Preparation of Class Books for English and Vernacular Schools [1842],” in Memoirs and Writings of Acharya Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 1812–1846: Pioneer of the Renaissance in Western India and Father of Modern Maharashtra, ed. Ganesh G. Jambhekar, 4 vols. (Poona: G. G. Jambhekar, 1950), II:162. 27. Kulkarni, Grant Duff, 204–205. 28. Some other works by Dennis Kincaid and H. G. Rawlinson were published in the early twentieth century, but these did not in any way dislodge the authoritative position of Grant Duff ’s narrative. 29. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); see also Vasudha Dalmia, “Vernacular Histories in Late-Nineteenth Century Banaras: Folklore, Puranas and the New Antiquarianism,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, no. 1 (2001): 59–79. 30. Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites, and the Public Sphere: Western India Under Colonialism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001). 31. For details of this overwhelming Brahman dominance in the professions, government service, newspapers, land, industry, and banking in Bombay and the Nagpur areas, see Gordon Johnson, “Chitpavan Brahmans and Politics in Western India,” in Elites in South Asia, ed. E. R. Leach and S. N. Mukherjee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 105; Gail Omvedt, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 1873 to 1930 (Bombay: Scientific Socialist Education Trust, 1976), 76–78; and D.E.U. Baker, Changing Political Leadership in an Indian Province: The Central Provinces and Berar, 1919–1939 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), 15. 32. At the turn of the twentieth century, more than 80 percent of the Marathi newspaper editors were Brahmans. Johnson, “Chitpavan Brahmans,” 107. 33. For an overview of Elphinstone ’s policy, especially his well-known attempt at effecting maximum change with a minimum of cost and interference

3. History, Print, and Education 232 into native social and religious practice, the latter intended primarily to placate the recently deposed Brahman elite in Pune, see Kenneth Ballhatchet, Social Policy and Social Change in Western India, 1817–1830 ( London: Oxford University Press, 1957). 34. Naregal, Language Politics, 162–166. 35. Jambhekar, “Report on Indigenous Village Schools [1840],” in Jambhekar, ed., Memoirs and Writings of Acharya Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 1812–1846: Pioneer of the Renaissance in Western India and Father of Modern Maharashtra, 4 vols. (Poona: G. G. Jambhekar, 1950), II:154. 36. Anant K. Priolkar, The Printing Press in India: Its Beginning and Early Development (Bombay: Marathi Samshodhan Mandal, 1958), 118–124. 37. Ibid., 75. 38. Ibid., 76. 39. Jambhekar, “Preparation of Class Books,” 162. 40. Ramchandra V. Parulekar and C. L. Bakshi, eds., Selections from the Records of the Government of Bombay, 2 vols. (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1957), I:55–59. 41. See the examples in A. Grant, ed., Catalogue of Native Publications in the Bombay Presidency up to 31st December 1864 (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1867), 28–29. 42. Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, “Preparation of Class Books for English and Vernacular Schools, No. V [1841],” in Jambhekar, ed., Memoirs and Writings of Acharya Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 1812–1846: Pioneer of the Renaissance in Western India and Father of Modern Maharashtra, 4 vols. (Poona: G. G. Jambhekar, 1950), II:162. 43. S. R. Dongerkery, A History of the University of Bombay, 1857–1957 (Bombay: Bombay University, 1957), 28–29. 44. Calendar, Bombay University, 1873–74. 45. “Questions for Elementary History and Geography,” Calendar, Bombay University, 1859, 114. 46. Calendar, Bombay University, 1908–09, 68–69. 47. Usha M. Deshmukh, Vividh Dnyan Vistaar: Sahitya ani Sahityavichaar (Pune: Snehavardhan Publishing House, 1995), 21. 48. “List of Books Presented to the Society (from Various Englishmen) and the Bombay Board of Education, in July 1850,” Appendix 13, Third Report of the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society and Its Vernacular Branch Societies (Bombay, 1852), 54–56.

3. History, Print, and Education 233 49. Research on the teaching of history as a modern discipline in English universities in the later nineteenth century has also suggested that pedagogical differences existed between those who favored a focus on critical examination of sources and method and those who emphasized texts of synthesis and history as didactic tools for inculcating values of patriotism, truth, and Britishness. Reba Soffer has argued that at Oxford, until after World War I, there was “little encouragement of . . . critical thinking either in the prescribed course of study or the examinations. Both the curriculum and the examinations, controlled entirely by the tutors, excluded contemporary scholarship, historiography and evaluations of historical method and meaning.” Reba Soffer, “Nation, Duty, Character and Confidence: History at Oxford, 1850–1914,” Historical Journal 30, no. 1 (March 1987): 78. See also Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History, and the Making of an English Elite, 1870–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 50. A majority of questions for the M.A.-level examinations in the early twentieth century ask students to “form an estimate of the policy of ” one Maratha leader or another. For example, from the year 1926, see “Paper II for the M.A. History examination,” Calendar, Bombay University, 1927, 332–334. 51. Calendar, Bombay University, 1895–96, 224–253. 52. Philological and “antiquarian” research in Bombay had begun even before the formal colonial conquest, through Europeans-only societies such as the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the colonial government after 1818—in keeping with its initial policy of placating the region’s Brahman elite as well as Elphinstone ’s own interests—also patronized Sanskrit learning. In the 1850s, however, Western philological methods and Orientalist approaches replaced the older system of shastris and pathshalas at the Poona Sanskrit College, which was renamed the Deccan College in 1868. Irach J. S. Taraporewala, “The Deccan College: Its Past and Future Hopes,” Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute 2, no. 1–2 (1941): 1–8. 53. Ganesh C. Vad, Purshotam V. Mawjee, and D. B. Parasnis, eds., Selections from the Government Records in the Alienation Office, Poona: Kaifiyats, Yadis & C. Containing Accounts of Certain Families of Renown in the Deccan and S.M. Country Under the Mohammedan and Maratha Governments (Poona: Purshotam Vishram Mawjee, 1908), 47. 54. Jambhekar, “Report on Indigenous Village Schools [1840],” II:154. 55. “School Final Examination, Marathi Voluntary Paper I,” Calendar, Bombay University, 1894–95, xxv.

3. History, Print, and Education 234 56. This was Resolution No. 11277 of December 9, 1912 issued by the Government of Bombay, ordering that Balbodh should be adopted in all districts of the Central Division (the Marathi-speaking districts) of the Bombay Presidency, presumably in all public offices and in regard to all public records. Datto V. Potdar and Shripad Shankar Navare, Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad Itihasa (Pune: Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, 1971), 252–256. 57. Ibid., 254–255. 58. M. G. Ranade, “Comments on the Marathi Portion of the Catalogue,” in Grant, ed., Catalogue of Native Publications, 28. 59. Deshmukh, Vividh Dnyan Vistaar, 5. 60. Dongerkery, History of the University of Bombay, 215. See also the section on Vishnushastri Chiplunkar in chapter 4. Of course, the decline of Persian across the subcontinent had to do with its replacement by English as the language of administration, and also with its identification by the late nineteenth century as a language primarily of Muslim culture, distinct from Sanskrit (and its modern vernaculars) as a language primarily of Hindu culture. With a view to preserving and promoting Muslim culture and learning, Persian was reintroduced in 1871 in Bombay University. See Report of the Maharashtra University Committee Appointed by Government, 1942–43 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1944), 87. 61. R. B. Patankar, Apoorna Kranti (Bombay: Mouj Prakashan, 1999), 182. 62. “School Final Examination, Marathi Voluntary Paper I,” Calendar, Bombay University, 1894–95, xxvi. 63. Calendar, Bombay University, 1926, 307. Some of the Marathi historical documents discovered and published by nationalists like Rajwade began to figure in the syllabus at this time, such as the first volume of the Marathyanchya Itihasaachi Sadhane, containing original letters from the Panipat battle, with questions asking students to identify the new light they shone on this period.

4. Historiography and Nationalism 1. S. R. Tikekar, On Historiography: A Study of Methods of Historical Research and Narration of J. N. Sarkar, G. S. Sardesai and P. K. Gode (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1964); Kiran Pawar, Sir Jadunath Sarkar: A Profile in Historiography (New Delhi: Books & Books, 1985); Bhaskar V. Bhat, Itihasacharya Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade Yanche Charitra va Rajwadyanchya Dona Tapancha

4. Historiography and Nationalism 235 Vidvatsahavasa (Dhule: Rajwa Sansodhan Mandal, 1946), Gangadhar D. Khanolkar, Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade: Vyakti, Vichara, va Karya (Pune: Ganesh Mahadeva & Co., 1933); Damodar M. Bhat, Prasiddha Itihasasanshodhaka Guruvarya Vasudev Vaman Shastri Khare: Charitra va Granthaparichaya (Miraj: Author, 1929); Datto V. Potdar, Marathi Itihasa va Itihasasanshodhana: Vihangama Nirikshana (Pune: Vishnu Panduranga Nene), 1935. 2. Potdar, Marathi Itihasa, 1–11. 3. Ganesh G. Jambhekar, ed., Memoirs and Writings of Acharya Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 1812–1846: Pioneer of the Renaissance in Western India and Father of Modern Maharashtra, 4 vols. (Poona: G. G. Jambhekar, 1950), II:192. 4. “England deshachi bakhar” in ibid., 271. 5. Jambhekar, Memoirs and Writings, 283. 6. “Itihasa,” Digdurshun 1, no.1 (1840): 21–22, included in Jambhekar, Memoirs and Writings, 197–198. 7. All of Lokahitawadi’s writings are now available in Govardhan Parikh and Indumati Parikh, eds., Lokahitawadi Samagra Sahitya, 2 vols. (Bombay: Maharashtra State Board for Literature and Culture, 1988). 8. Moroba Cannoba, Ghashiram Kotwal, 1864, ed. N. R. Phatak (Mumbai: Mumbai Marathi Granthasangrahalaya, 1961). Shankar T. Phadke, Shinde Gharanyacha Itihasa (Mumbai, 1864); Datto V. Potdar, ed., Maza Pravaas: 1857 Chya Bandachi Hakikat (1966; reprint, Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1990). For a more detailed analysis of these texts, especially Godse ’s Maza Pravaas, see Prachi Deshpande, “Textual Travels: Genre and Historiography in a Marathi Memoir of 1857,” unpublished ms., 2006. 9. Neelkanth J. Kirtane, Captain Grant Duff krut Marathyanche Bakharivar Tika athava Marathyanche Itihasaavishayi Thodese Nirupan (Pune, 1867). See also M. G. Ranade, “English Essay Beta,” Elphinstone School Paper, Bombay, 1858. 10. Jambhekar presented an essay on the Chalukyas to the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society through an European member, Professor Orlebar, and also published an essay, “A Copperplate Found at Kharepatan” in the society’s journal in 1843. Jambhekar, Memoirs and Writings, II:175–176. 11. Franz Kielhorn, “Comments on the Sanskrit Portion of the Catalogue,” in A. Grant, ed., Catalogue of Native Publications in the Bombay Presidency up to 31st December 1864 (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, 1867), 24–25. 12. An excellent survey of the literature on the shifting notions of authorship and textual criticism over the centuries in Europe and India, and the changes brought about by critical textual practices of Indologist scholars in the nineteenth

4. Historiography and Nationalism 236 century, is to be found in Christian Lee Novetzke, “Divining an Author: The Idea of Authorship in an Indian Religious Tradition,” History of Religions 42, no. 3 (Feb. 2003): 213–243. 13. Bhandarkar’s collected works are now available in N. B. Utgikar and V. G. Paranjpe, eds., Collected Works of Sir R. G. Bhandarkar, 4 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928–1933). This biographical information draws on A. D. Pusalkar, “R. G. Bhandarkar,” in Historians and Historiography in Modern India, ed. S. P. Sen (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1973). 14. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, II. 15. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, I:365. 16. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, I:366. 17. Bhandarkar, A Peep into the Early History of India, in Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, III:1–2. 18. In this context, Daud Ali has rightly argued that this hierarchy has tended to emphasize a greater authenticity for stone and metal inscriptions, and prevented scholars from treating them as textual narratives of power. Daud Ali, “Royal Eulogy as World History: Rethinking Copper-Plate Inscriptions in Cola India,” in Querying the Medieval: The History of Practice in South Asia, ed. R. Inden, D. Ali, and J. Walters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 19. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, I:363. 20. In “A Note on the Samvat Era,” for instance, Bhandarkar described Professor George Buhler as “influential over his brother scholars both in Europe and in India” but nevertheless went on to politely refute all of the latter’s criticisms of his date calculations. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, III:286. See also Kashinath Telang, Was the Ramayana Copied from Homer?: A Reply to Professor Weber (1873; reprint, Delhi: Publishers Parlour, 1976). 21. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, I:415. 22. This biographical information draws on Y. D. Phadke, V. K. Chiploonkar (New Delhi: National Book Trust India, 1982), 8–24. 23. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 77. 24. Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, “Kavyetihas sangraha,” in Nibandhamala, 2 vols. (1874–1881; reprint, Pune: Varada Books, 1993), I:467. 25. Chiplunkar, “Pride,” in ibid., 223–242. 26. For a more detailed discussion of this slippage between the desh as region and nation, see chapter 5.

4. Historiography and Nationalism 237 27. For a general discussion of Phule ’s dexterity with language, see Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Through an epic poem, “Shivaji Raja,” Kunte, who was a schoolteacher in Pune in the 1870s, argued strongly, but somewhat unsuccessfully, for the de-Sanskritization of Marathi poetry. R. B. Patankar, Apoorna Kranti (An Incomplete Revolution) (Bombay: Mouj, 1999), 204–208. 28. Chiplunkar, Nibandhamala, I:1–7. 29. Chiplunkar, Nibandhamala, I:112, 425, 604. 30. For an excellent, thoughtful recent analysis of the emergence of Marathi literary criticism, see Patankar, Apoorna Kranti, 191–261. 31. Chiplunkar, “History,” in Nibandhamala, I:89. 32. Indeed, the references to the enthusiastic discussions of Macaulay’s writings and ideas of history are too numerous in Chiplunkar’s essays to be individually cited here. Thomas Macaulay, “Hallam,” in Critical, Historical and Miscellaneous Essays and Poems (New York, 1880), I:310–312, quoted in Mark Phillips, “Macaulay, Scott and the Literary Challenge to Historiography,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50, no.1 (1989): 118. 33. Chiplunkar, “History,” in Nibandhamala, I:60–65. 34. “Kavyetihasa Sangraha,” in Nibandhamala, I:465–467. 35. All of these are now available together in Muralidhar B. Shah, ed., Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samagra Sahitya, 13 vols. (Dhule: Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Sansodhan Mandal, 1995–1998). The Rajwade Sanshodhan Mandal of Dhule was an organization that grew out of Rajwade ’s own organizational efforts in the 1920s. These collected works contain a treasure trove of Rajwade ’s writings and texts edited and annotated by him, with critical introductions to and reevaluations of his thinking on language, literature, and history by leading contemporary Marathi scholars. 36. Rajwade not only conceived of a fundamental split between history and literature but also favored a strictly realist, historicist mode of fiction itself. 37. Of all of Rajwade’s writings, his introductions to volumes I and VI of the Marathyanchya Itihasachi Sadhanen, written in 1898 and 1905 respectively, are the ones that explore the philosophical basis of history at length. See Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:1–118, 285–346. 38. Sadanand More, “Introduction,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:7. More’s brilliant, detailed analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of Rajwade’s

4. Historiography and Nationalism 238 works, especially his understanding of positivism, is the best study of this thinker to date in Marathi. 39. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:27–28. 40. Rajwade, “Bhashechi Utpatti va Vikas,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 3:1–39. 41. Rajwade’s usage of “philosophy” is somewhat inconsistent. Despite acknowledging philosophy as an overarching awareness of the evolution of human existence, he sought to separate science from philosophy, criticizing the latter for its mystical and religious bent, and arguing for a replacement of a philosophical approach with scientific historical consciousness. 42. The term kula has several glosses; Molesworth translates it as “family, race, tribe.” J. T. Molesworth, A Dictionary, Marathi and English (1831; reprint, Pune: Varada Books, 2001), 175. Rajwade used it here with reference to a large social formation, and the closest approximation would be the English word “race.” However, the English word he used himself to translate kaulik was “ethnographic.” Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. Six of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:302. 43. More, “Introduction,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:14–22. 44. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. Six of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:297–298. 45. Ibid., 327. 46. Ibid., 302. Also see Rajwade, “Bharatiya Itihasachi Moolatattve,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 11:77–85. 47. Sadanand More also points forcefully to the patriarchal and brahmanical underpinnings of Rajwade ’s approach to social reform, which called for sustained and strategic marriages of upper-caste men with lower-caste women over several generations in order to ensure the “uplift” of lower castes. More, “Introduction,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:33. For the Brahmanical bases of the reception of positivist ideas in nineteenth-century Bengal, see Geraldine H. Forbes, Positivism in Bengal: A Case Study in the Transmission and Assimilation of an Ideology (Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 1975). 48. Rajwade set forth this critique of the bakhars in the introductions to volumes One and Four of the MIS. Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:1–8, 201–242. 49. Jadunath Sarkar’s biographical piece on Rajwade has some of these interesting anecdotes. On one occasion, Sarkar writes, “when about to leave a village in disappointment, [Rajwade] turned fiercely upon the rustic owner of a bundle

4. Historiography and Nationalism 239 of historical letters who had refused to let him copy them, and cried out, ‘These papers are of no use to you, but important for my purpose. Give them to me. . . . You refuse! Well, I shall get them from your widow when she offers them for sale to some dry grocer as waste paper!’” On another occasion, it appears, Rajwade rescued a bundle of waste paper from a dry grocer’s shop in Paithan, which yielded twenty-three precious letters in the original, eventually published in the first edition of the Sadhanen. See Jadunath Sarkar, House of Shivaji (Studies and Documents of Maratha History: Royal Period) (1925; reprint, Calcutta: S. N. Sarkar, 1940), 262–278. 50. Ibid., 273. 51. For analyses of these reformist limits of the Samaj, see Matthew Lederle, Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1976) and O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology. 52. Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, 308–317. 53. See a series of essays on Indian social history and the history of caste in Utgikar and Paranjape, eds., Collected Works, I:443–526. 54. Cf. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments; Ranajit Guha, “An Indian Historiography of India: Hegemonic Implications of a Nineteenth-Century Agenda,” in Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 55. Chiplunkar “History,” in Nibandhamala, I:54. 56. The best introduction to, and analysis of, Phule ’s life and work is O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology. 57. Jotirao Phule, “Slavery,” in Mahatma Phule Samagra Vangmaya, ed. Y. D. Phadke, Dhananjay Keer, and S. G. Malshe (1969; reprint, Mumbai: Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya ani Sanskruti Mandal, 1991), 118. 58. O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 143–146. The Parshuram myth is particularly contentious and has been the subject of much caste-related controversy in Maharashtra throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this origin myth about the Chitpavan Brahman community, Parshuram, a Brahman, is described as destroying all the Kshatriyas in the world, leaving it with only Brahmans and Shudras. He is also described as bringing to life from a pile of ashes a group of people who became Chitpavan Brahmans, literally “purified from the ashes.” Brahman polemicists in the colonial period used this myth to argue that all non-Brahmans were Shudras. See chapter 7. 59. Phule, “The Ballad of Chhatrapati Shivaji Raja Bhosale” in Phadke, Keer, and Malshe, eds., Mahatma Phule, 42.

4. Historiography and Nationalism 240 60. O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 175. 61. Quoted in O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 175. 62. Cf. Sumit Sarkar, “Kaliyuga, Chakri and Bhakti: Ramakrishna and His Times,” in Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 282–357. 63. For a survey of such calendars, see Avinash Sahasrabuddhe, “Itihasa Sanshodhanatil Don Mahattvachi Sadhane,” in Durmil Akshardhan (Pune: Varada Books, 1993). 64. Rajwade, “Kalaganana,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 11:453–456. 65. Some scholars, however, have also blamed Rajwade ’s abrasive and iconoclastic personality for his inability to successfully impart the depth of his views on the philosophy of history to younger scholars and researchers, along the lines of Leopold von Ranke. See More, “Introduction,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:67. While this may well have been true, it is important to note that Rajwade had few of the institutional resources, either as a researcher or as a teacher, that Ranke had throughout his long career as professor of history at Berlin University. 66. Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 1600–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 5. 67. See, for instance, the questions for the Paper II of the M.A. History examination of 1926, Calendar, Bombay University, 1927, 332–334. 68. V. K. Wakaskar, 91 Qalami Bakhar (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1962). 69. For instance, G. H. Khare, K. V. Purandare, and S. V. Avalaskar, eds., Shivacharitrasahitya, 13 vols. (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal, 1926– 1965). See also Deshpande, “Textual Travels.” Over the 1940s, the BISM, under the editorship of Ganesh H. Khare, also published six volumes of Persian materials, including narrative histories and Mughal administrative documents from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with Marathi and English summaries and translations. Ganesh Khare, ed., Aitihasik Pharsi Sahitya, 6 vols. (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal, 1934–59); Shiva Charitra Vrutta Sangraha, 3 vols. (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhan Mandal, 1938–1941). The Marathi translations were probably the principal references for these Persian materials for most Marathi scholars. It is also important to investigate the differences in idiom and content that attended these translations, which are unlikely to have been free of the wider assumptions prevalent in the historiography of the time. Recent work has underscored how colonial attitudes toward Islam and its history in the subcontinent impinged on the translation of Perso-Arabic historical materials into

4. Historiography and Nationalism 241 English. A detailed study of how these materials entered Marathi discourse, either directly or via the English translations, remains to be done. 70. Sanjiv Desai, ed., Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj Coronation Tercentenary Commemoration Volumes: The Shivaji Commemoration Movement, Vols. 13–14, Maharashtra Archives Bulletins (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1984), 43. 71. Rajwade, “Marathyanchya Itihasachya Sanshodhanachi Sadhya Sthiti,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:196–208. 72. The Shrimant Maharaj Bhosalyanchi bakhar, also known as the Shedgaonkar bakhar, published by Vinayak Lakshman Bhave in 1924, had such an affidavit as part of its front matter. 73. This titling and division of the bakhars was done first by Kashinath Sane, who ushered most of the major bakhars into print, but was a common editorial practice. See chapters 1 and 2, notes 7–10. 74. I have argued elsewhere that Vaidya’s engagement with Godse ’s text was a nationalist engagement with the existing historiography of 1857. See Deshpande, “Textual Travels.” 75. A. R. Kulkarni, History in Practice: Historians and Sources of Medieval Deccan-Marathas (New Delhi: Books & Books, 1993), 130. 76. Ibid., 135. The academically inclined Collector of Nasik district, A. M. Jackson, commented, “Government is aware that a school of thought has grown up in the Presidency which looks back to the rule of the Peshwas as a sort of golden age and seeks evidence in support of this belief . . . a selection made by the adherents of this school of thought is likely to give too bright a picture of the period and therefore to encourage political dreams which can do no good either to the dreamers or to the Government.” 77. Kulkarni, History in Practice, 133. 78. Notable among these was the Durbar of Dhar, which patronized and financed a history of their domains by K. K. Lele, an official in the Dhar administration. The chief of Aundh too took a keen interest. Anant Narayan Bhagvat, an enthusiastic researcher, deeply disappointed after being refused permission to use the Peshwa Daftar, went to the princely courts of Bhor and Phaltan (south of Pune) and requested permission to use their collections and write their histories. Later, as an official of the Indore court, Bhagavat also published some material relating to the Holkars. Potdar, Marathi Itihasa, 28. 79. Sayajirao Gaekwad commissioned a Marathi series called Rashtrakathamala along the lines of the English “Story of the Nations” in 1892, and accordingly, histories of Iran, Carthage, Turkestan, ancient France, Spain and the

4. Historiography and Nationalism 242 Moors, Germany, Assyria, and Rome were contributed by different Marathi writers, some translated from English works, others original works. Potdar, Marathi Itihasa, 80. 80. Bhandarkar, for instance, sent papers to the International Congress of Orientalists in London in 1876, and attended its Vienna session in 1886. He was an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society, the German Oriental Society, the American Oriental Society, and the French Institute. 81. Irach J. S. Taraporevala, “The Deccan College: Its Past and Future Hopes,” Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute 2 (1–2) (1941): 1–8. 82. Some of these were the Journal of the Mythic Society, Bangalore; the Revue Historique de L’Inde Francaise; and The Arya, Pondicherry; The Philosophical Review, Baroda; The Journal of the U. P. Historical Society, Allahabad; The Journal of the Anthropological Society, Bombay; The Journal of the Indian Research Society, Calcutta; Indian Thought, Benares; and the Journal of the Philosophical Society, Amalner. 83. Indologists in Pune did maintain social links with traditional shastris and pathshalas and initial plans for the Bhandarkar Institute had envisioned an institution that would teach Sanskrit in both the traditional pathshala as well as the Western system to foster greater cooperation between the two, but this fell through. The BORI hosted the first Oriental Conference in Pune in 1919, and there is evidence that both traditional shastris and Western-educated Indologists participated. We certainly need more research on the connections between the old and new schools of Sanskrit research and the social history of these connections to fully understand the continued existence and responses of traditional Sanskrit schools of study to the new historiographic approaches. Vaijnath Kashinath Rajwade, “Report of the Executive Board of the BORI,” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 1, no. 1 (1919):1–15. 84. Sarkar’s opinion of the quality of the Marathi researchers’ work was low. In a bibliographical survey of materials for Maratha history, he described contemporary Marathi works on the subject as “mostly prolix, irrelevant and unconvincing to a detached observer.” Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar & Sons, 1961), 395. In his comparative, biographical study of Sarkar and Sardesai, S. R. Tikekar cites several instances of Sarkar’s impatience with and suspicion of the Poona School, referring to them variously as “rascals” and a “wicked curse on the streets of Poona.” Tikekar, Jadunath Sarkar Ani Riyasatkar Sardesai: Toulnik, Charitratmak Abhyas (Bombay: Popular

4. Historiography and Nationalism 243 Book Depot, 1961), 63. The Poona historians, for their part, protested vigorously against Sarkar’s repeated references to Shivaji as “Shiva” and his critical assessment of Maratha rule, and saw him as an Indian version of Grant Duff. Sardesai was frequently referred to in these circles as not a historian but a sankalankar, or compiler. Tikekar provides several instances of protests against Sarkar during his visits to Pune and the competitiveness between the camps with respect to new sources and archives (29–50). 85. Ibid., 42–44. 86. Chiplunkar, “Dr. Johnson,” in Nibandhamala, II:749. 87. One such scholar was Balaji Prabhakar Modak, who was professor of chemistry at Kolhapur’s Rajaram College and in 1875 wrote Rasayanshastra, an early Marathi treatise on chemistry, but also wrote extensively on the history of Kolhapur and Karnataka and produced in 1889 the Modak jantri or calendar of comparative dating systems of the Maratha period. See Chiplunkar, “Rasayanshastra,” in Nibandhamala, I:401–407. 88. “Book Reviews” and “Dr. Johnson,” in Nibandhamala, II:689–708. 89. See Rajwade ’s stinging critique of the colonial education system in “Personal Experiences in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education Schools,” a 1904 essay: “The English government’s intent in starting the education department has always been to create upper, middling and lower-level servants . . . those who successfully came out of these schools occupied the lower rungs of civil servants like munsifs, mamlatdars, deputy collectors, headmasters, assistant surgeons, assistant engineers, high court lawyers. Those who stumbled somewhere along the way and only passed matriculation or the public service examinations got jobs as English clerks, suboverseers, assistant teachers, hospital assistants, district lawyers, etc. Those who passed or did not pass the lower-level training exams and the Marathi sixth exams etc. became Marathi schoolteachers, native doctors, Marathi clerks, mokaddams.” Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 9:9–10. 90. V. G. Khobrekar, “Dattatray Balwant Parasnis,” in Sen, ed., Historians and Historiography, 207. 91. A. M. Vairat, “Vasudeo Vamanshastri Khare,” in Sen, ed., Historians and Historiography, 215–221. 92. Vasant D. Rao, “Govind Sakharam Sardesai,” in Sen, ed., Historians and Historiography, 222–234. 93. Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:167–168. 94. Rajwade, “Maharashtratil Granthakaranche Badode Yethe Bharalele Sammelan,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 9:49–60.

4. Historiography and Nationalism 244 95. Rajwade, “Marathyanchya Itihasachya Sanshodhanachi Sadhyasthiti,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 9:183–195. 96. G. H. Khare, Sanshodhakacha Mitra (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal, 1951). 97. Some of Chiplunkar’s essays on the Marathi language, it has to be noted, were prescribed in the early twentieth century at the masters’ level as required texts, with examination questions focusing specifically on the effectiveness and desirability of this polemical style. One question for the M.A. exam of 1910 asked students to compare and contrast Chiplunkar’s prose with that of the reformist writer Gopal Ganesh Agarkar’s essays in the Kesari, pointing out defects and merits of each style. See Calendar, Bombay University, 1911, 208. 98. The Parishad, with several historians like Datto Vaman Potdar among its leadership, was also in the forefront in the 1940s and ’50s in the demand for a separate Maharashtra state that would enshrine Marathi regional culture. 99. From 1926, the Parishad passed resolutions annually demanding such a university for Maharashtra. Datto V. Potdar and Shripad Shankar Navare, Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad Itihasa (Pune: Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, 1971), 100–103. 100. Report of the Maharashtra University Committee Appointed to Government, 1942–44 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1944), 16, 24–25, 46. Among the private institutes conducting historical research mentioned in the report were the BISM, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, and the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, all at Pune; the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner; and the Shree Samartha Vagdevata Mandir and the Rajwade Sanshodhan Mandal at Dhule. 101. Potdar, Marathi Itihasa, 36. Also see chapter 7 for a discussion of how “non-Brahman” groups sought to overcome this Brahman dominance of the Marathi public sphere and historiography. 102. T. S. Shejwalkar, “Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade,” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, ed. H. V. Mote, introduction by G. D. Khanolkar (Mumbai: H. V. Mote, 1977), 374–379. 103. G. D. Khanolkar, “Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar,” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, 26. 104. Shejwalkar worked in government service and also edited the journal Pragati before joining the Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute as a Reader in 1939. His M.A. thesis submitted to Bombay University, on the influence of Muslim culture on Hindu society, was rejected due to differences with

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 245 the examining committee, and the lack of a formal degree prevented him from supervising masters’ and doctoral candidates in Maratha history until 1945. Khanolkar, “Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar,” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, 19–24. 105. Shejwalkar, “Nanasaheb Peshwe,” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, 34–56. 106. Although this thread of argument is present in many of his works, including Panipat: 1761, the Marathi preface to his first volume of collected essays in 1940 stated it unambiguously, and was the most controversial in the Marathi periodical press. See Khanolkar, “Shejwalkar,” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, 23. 107. See in particular the Marathi essays “Panipat 1761 chi Aprakashit Prastavana,” “Peshwaichya Savalit,” “Marathyancha Itihasa Kitisa Paripurna Aahe?” and “Shayyevarun” in Nivadaka Lekhasangraha, 104–119, 132–143, 169–176, 404–413. 108. For a collection of critical essays on Shejwalkar’s scholarship, see Sarojini Vaidya, ed., Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar: Vyaktitva ani Kartutva, 1895–1963 (Mumbai: Kalanirnaya Saskrtika Prakashan), 1995. 109. Of course, this professionalization went hand in hand with increased institutional support at the newly established universities at Pune, Kolhapur, and Aurangabad and enhanced resources from the newly constituted Maharashtra state in 1960, which actively encouraged research in Maratha history. Examining this process of professionalization and its interaction with the broader political and social forces in recent decades in greater detail is urgently required for a deeper understanding of both continuity and change in Maratha historical memory in the postcolonial period.

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 1. It is impossible to give a comprehensive list here, but just for a representative sample, see: D. B. Parasnis, Marathyance Aramara (Mumbai: Nirnayasagar Press, 1904) and Marathyanche Parakrama: Bundelakhanda Prakaran (Mumbai: Nirnayasagar Press, 1895); C. G. Bhanu, Nana ani Mahadji Yanchi Tulana (Pune, 1895); Balshastri Hardas, Punyashloka Chhatrapati Shivaji (Pune: Kala Prakashan, 1906); K. A. Keluskar, Kshatriyakulavatansa Chhatrapati Shivajimaharaj yanche Charitra (Mumbai: Nirnaysagar Press, 1907); Purushottam, Devi Sri Ahalyabai Holkar Hiche Sachitra Charitra (Mumbai: Anant Atmaram Moramkar, 1913); N. K. Behere, Pahile Bajirava Peshwe (Mumbai: Bharat Gaurav Granthamala, 1930); and numerous others.

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 246 2. See introduction, note 3; see also Anil Samarth, Shivaji and the Indian National Movement: Saga of a Living Legend (Bombay: Somaiya Publications, 1975). 3. Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, Nibandhamala (A Garland of Essays), 2 vols. (1871–81; reprint, Pune: Varada Books, 1993), I:90–91. 4. Of course, this point has been exhaustively addressed in the literature on communalism and nationalism. 5. For a survey of the different uses of this term in this period, see Rajendra Vora, “Maharashtra Dharma and the Nationalist Movement in Maharashtra,” in Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, ed. N. K. Wagle (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999), 23–30. 6. This essay was later included in Ranade ’s famous treatise, Rise of the Maratha Power (1900; reprint, Bombay: Bombay University, 1951), 78. 7. V. R. Karandikar, ed., Samartha Ramdas: Vivekadarshan (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1982), 158. 8. Ranade, Rise of the Maratha Power, 92. 9. Ranade, Rise of the Maratha Power, 92. 10. Ranade, Rise of the Maratha Power, 3–4. 11. Rajaramshastri Bhagvat, “Marathi Dharmache Itihasanishi Swaroop,” in Rajaramshastri Bhagvat Yanche Nivadak Sahitya, ed. Durga Bhagvat, 6 vols. (Pune: Varada Books, 1979), V:220–221. 12. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samagra Sahitya (Collected Works of V. K. Rajwade), ed. Murlidhar B. Shah, 13 vols. (Dhule: Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samsodhan Mandal, 1995–1998), 10:32–33. 13. It is not possible to summarize the complexity of either the Bhakti poetic tradition or Ramdas’s own works, but for an excellent, detailed discussion, see N. R. Phatak, Ramdas: Vangmaya ani Karya (Mumbai: Mauj Prakashan, 1953). For a survey of the political historiography on Ramdas, see A. G. Pawar, ed., Maratha History Seminar, May 28–31, 1970; Papers (Kolhapur: Shivaji University, 1971). See also chapter 7. 14. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:316–317. As we shall see in chapter 7, Rajwade was severely taken to task for his rejection of other Bhakti poets and exclusive championing of Ramdas as an example of his Brahmanical arrogance. As we have already seen, his impatience with devotional poetry sprang not only from his Brahmanical pride but also from his positivist and deeply modernist rejection of religious philosophy and its explanation of society and the universe. See also G. P. Deshpande, “Rajwade’s

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 247 Weltanschauung and German Thought,” Economic and Political Weekly (Oct. 24–31, 1992):2361–2363. 15. For a particularly angry critique of Rajwade ’s writings on Ramdas, see Phatak, Ramdas, 289–303. 16. “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:32. 17. Ibid., 92. 18. This somewhat repetitive argument figures in many of Rajwade ’s essays. See “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:31–35, 91–94, 283–288, 335–336. 19. Bhaskar Vaman Bhat, Maharashtra Dharma arthat Marathyanchya Itihasache Atmika Svarupa (Dhule: Satkaryottejaka Sabha, 1925), 34, 39; Sri Samartha Ramdas Svami ani Sri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Yancha Anyonya Sambandh (Dhule: V. G. Javadekar, 1928). 20. S. S. Deo, ed., Shri Samarthanchi Don Juni Charitre (Dhule: Satkaryottejak Sabha, 1906). 21. B. H. Pandit, “Maharashtratil Santanchi Rashtriya Kaamgiri,” Vividh Dnyan Vistaar 44, no. 6 (1913): 233–242. N. R. Phatak has strongly argued against interpreting Ramdas’s teachings for political purposes. Phatak places Ramdas firmly within the Bhakti tradition, despite his differences with other poets like Tukaram in the specific method he advocated for devotion and spirituality. The main difference, he argues, lay in Ramdas’s emphasis on cultivating this world and body through discipline and morality in seeking absolution, in contrast to Tukaram’s emphasis on renunciation and otherworldly spirituality. See Phatak, Ramdas, 35–40. 22. Vinoba Bhave, untitled, Maharashtra Dharma 1, no. 1 (1928): 2. 23. Cf. Sugata Bose, “Nation as Mother: Representations of the Nation in Bengali Literature and Culture,” in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, ed. S. Bose and A. Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 69. Bose discusses Rabindranath Tagore ’s poem about Bengali strength and unity leading to the eventual strengthening of India, pointing out the gaps within imaginations of linguistic region and nation. 24. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. One of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:92. 25. Ranade, The Rise of Maratha Power, 4. 26. Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (1919; reprint, Calcutta: S. C. Sarkar and Sons, 1961), 389.

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 248 27. Bhat, Maharashtra Dharma, 6. 28. Lalji M. Pendse, “Dharmarakshak ki Krantikari? Shivajichya Karyache Khare Artha,” Kirloskar (June–July 1941):771–776, 821–827. 29. Ibid., 771. 30. Ibid., 775. 31. Y. B. Chavan notes in his memoirs that songs and plays were the main attraction during the festivals in the rural areas, noting V. V. Aundhkar’s 1924 play Bebandshahi as especially popular. Y. B. Chavan, Krishnakath: Atmacharitra (Pune: Prestige Publications, 1984), 54. 32. Richard I. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 81–86. The caste-based demographic distribution of most cities and towns meant that the melas were usually segregated along lines of caste, and Cashman suggests that the more stridently nationalist among these were largely the Brahman melas, such as the Sanmitra Samaj Mela of Pune ’s Brahman quarters. It was only in the early twentieth century that non-Brahman groups began to use the melas as a potent weapon for anti-Brahman protest. See chapter 7. 33. Quoted in ibid., 83–84. 34. V. G. Khobrekar, ed., Hutatma Damodar Hari Chapekar yanche Atmavrutta (Mumbai: Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya ani Sanskruti Mandal, 1974), 52. Translated excerpts from Chapekar’s autobiography are available in Source Material for a History of the Freedom Movement in India, 9 vols. (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1957), 2:955–1015. 35. Sanjiv Desai, ed., Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj Coronation Tercentenary Commemoration Volumes: The Shivaji Commemoration Movement, Vol. 13–14, Maharashtra Archives Bulletins (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1984), 9. This is a compilation by the Maharashtra State Archives of extracts on the Shivaji festival from the fortnightly “Reports from Native Newspapers” published by the colonial government from 1885 to 1926. 36. Samarth, Shivaji and the Indian National Movement, 93–105. 37. A project of the Department of Hindi, Shivaji University, Kolhapur supervised by Dr. Vasant More has collected many such representations in various Indian languages, including Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Kannada, and Gujarati. By far the largest number is in Hindi and Bengali. I am grateful to Dr. More for permission to consult his unpublished manuscript in Hindi, “Bharatiya Sahitya mein Shivaji ki Pratima” (The Image of Shivaji in Indian Literature). Although not theoretically outside the scope of this book, this incredibly vast material also

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 249 needs to be explored in greater detail within the particular linguistic and regional contexts in which the works were produced ahead of a comparative survey. 38. Douglas Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 282. 39. “Mulshi Newsletter T” in Mulshi Satyagraha File 2, Bapat, P. M. Private Papers, Archives of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 40. James Masselos, “Controlling the Prabhat Pheris, Bombay, 1930–31,” in Region, Nationality and Religion, ed. A. R. Kulkarni and N. K. Wagle (Poona: Popular Prakashan, 1999), 94–110. 41. Pamphlets were usually published as collections of songs produced by specific mela groups that participated in the festivals. The very names of these melas are indicative of the prominent presence of symbols of Maratha history in the public arena: Chhatrapati Sambhaji Mela, Mard (Manly) Maratha Mela, Shivaraja Mavala Mela, Juna (Old) Mavala Mela, and so on. Most pamphlets cost an anna or less, and some advertised that the proceeds from sales would be donated to the families of people imprisoned in the Civil Disobedience movement. 42. Maharashtra State Archives (hereafter MSA), Bombay 1931, Home (Political), File No. 190, 2. 43. Ibid., 5. 44. Ibid., 7–8. 45. Ibid., 3–4. 46. Indeed, many of these poems surely reflect the “rumors” about satyagrahis and nationalist activity. Cf. Shahid Amin, “Gandhi as Mahatma, Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921–22,” in Subaltern Studies III, ed. Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 1–61. 47. Several such powadas are available in ibid. 48. MSA Nagpur 1946, “Nana Patil’s activities,” CP & Berar Political & Military Dept., File No. 16–31. 49. The price of this pamphlet was one anna and the cover picture shows a man brandishing a sword in one hand and rifle in the other, with a policeman cowering for mercy at his feet. MSA Bombay 1930, Home (Political), File No. 376. 50. For a detailed study of the Marathi kirtan form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Yeshwant Pathak, Nachu Kirtanache Rangi: Marathi Kirtanasansthecha Chikitsaka Abhyas (Pune: Continental Prakashan, 1980). 51. MSA Bombay 1932, “January 11, Daily Confidential Report, Satara District,” Home (Spl) 800 (73) 14.

5. Region, Nation, and Maratha History 250 52. In response to the penciled question from the assistant secretary, Bhandare was later classified as “an unimportant Congress agitator from Poona.” MSA Bombay 1937, “June 10, Weekly Confidential Report Sholapur District,” Home (Spl), File No. 917, 3. 53. Ibid. Bhandare clearly had a sense of humor too, and in one speech told his listeners to look for his ballads in the collector’s office (where they would be kept after being banned) in case they forgot them. 54. Potdar and Navare, Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, 60–61. These demands were voiced at the second meeting of the Marathi Granthakar Mandalinchi Sabha (The Marathi Book Authors’ Conference) organized by M. G. Ranade in Pune in 1885. 55. Rajwade, “Introduction [to Vol. 8 of the MIS],” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 10:347–427. 56. Ibid., 391–392. 57. Potdar and Navare, Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, 106–107, 254–255. Such resolutions for the adoption of Devanagari were passed throughout the 1920s in the Parishad’s annual meetings. 58. Vinayak D. Savarkar, Hindu Rashtra Darshan (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1984). 59. Vinayak D. Savarkar, Hindu Pad-Padshahi or a Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra, 4th ed. (1925; reprint, New Delhi: Bharatiya Sahitya Sadan, 1971).

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 1. We have already seen Chiplunkar’s disapproval of novels. The eighteen-yearold Vinayak Kirtane wrote in 1858 in the Marathi Jnanaprasarak, “Reading [novels] expands the imagination. I feel as if I were sitting high up there with Rambha, chewing paan and having a funny conversation. One simply loses any sense of time or morals. These books are created with such cleverness that once you start reading a page, you keep wanting to read the second, and then the third, and the fourth. In short, stories of women and similar other subjects have been described with so much spice that you are completely drawn in and don’t feel like putting the book down. Then I keep reading and forget all other important tasks and all my work is spoilt.” Kirtane, “Reading,” in V. L. Kulkarni, Marathi Jnanaprasarak: Itihasa va Vangmayavichar (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1965), 90–91.

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 251 2. Kashinath B. Marathe, Novel wa Natak Yavishayi Nibandha (1872; reprint, Pune: Modern Book Depot, 1962), quoted in R. B. Patankar, Apoorna Kranti (An Incomplete Revolution) (Bombay: Mouj, 1999), 243–244. 3. Some of these journals were Masik Manoranjan, Karmanuk, Natyakathamala, Natyakala, Ranjitranjak Natakmala, Kavyanatakadarsh, Aitihasik Natyakathavali, Vidyavinod, and Natyasumanmala, among others. 4. Venubai Panase, Hari Narayan Apte: Charitra va Vangmayavivechan (Poona: Narayan Sakharam Panase, 1931), 230–231. 5. The titles of Vitthal Vaman Bhide’s works ran toward the alliterative. See Koralaicha Killedar, I & II (The Killedar of Koralai, 1924), Ganavantagadacha Gadkari (The Gadkari of Ganavantgad, 1926), Kenjalgadacha Kabja (The Capture of Kenjalgad, 1926), Murari, athava Shivajichi ek Prathamika Mohim (Murari or an Early Campaign of Shivaji, 1927), Pan Tisara Kon? (But Who Was the Third Man?, 1927), and the remarkable Tejasvi Satidharma arthat Jasvandiche Phula va Ambajiravachi Sadesati (Radiant Wifely Devotion or the Hibiscus Flower and Ambajirao’s Seven Years of Bad Luck, 1933). Shantaram Gopal Gupte’s works included Hira Harapala (The Gem Was Lost, 1921), Rakta Dhwaja (The Banner of Blood, 1930), Rana-Ragini (Battlefield Melodies, 1933), and two musical plays, Sangita Shivasamrat (1930) and Sangita Dakkhancha Mohara (The Deccan Jewel, 1949). 6. Nathmadhav’s series was particularly popular; his third volume, Swarajyachi Ghatana (The Establishment of Freedom), which was released only four months after the first two, had a larger print run, and all of them went into second editions within a few years. MSA Bombay 1922 Home (Political), Catalogue of Books and Publications, File No. 38. The 1999 edition is the series’s eighth. 7. This is a conservative estimate based only on plays for which I have been able to trace the original publication date. Also, it only includes plays on figures and events from Maratha history, excluding those on Rajput, south Indian, and ancient Indian history and fully imaginary historical romances. I am indebted to B. B. Kulkarni’s learned study in tracking some of this material, especially for its immense bibliographical and biographical information. Bhimrao B. Kulkarni, Marathi Aitihasik Natake (Pune: Lokhande Prakashan, 1971). 8. Some of these were: Marathyatil Duhi (The Maratha Split, 1932), Sinhagad based on Hari Narayan Apte ’s novel Gad Aala Pan Sinha Gela (I Won the Fort but Lost My Lion!, 1933), Chhatrapati Sambhaji (1934), Baji Prabhu Deshpande (1939), Bahirji Naik (1943), Sant Ramdas (1949). See below, note 82. 9. Modern Marathi theater drew strongly upon the traditions of the Yakshagana theater of Karnataka, and the local traditions of Tamasha and Gondhal

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 252 in Marathi folk culture. See Shanta Gokhale, Playwright at the Centre: Marathi Drama from 1843 to the Present (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000), 1–15. 10. The first known modern Marathi historical play was Vinayak J. Kirtane ’s Thorle Madhavrav Yanvar Natak (A Play on Madhavrao I, 1861). Another was V. M. Nashikkar, N. G. Damle, and V. H. Shinkar’s tragedy on the defeat and death of the Rani of Jhansi in the Revolt of 1857: A Play Pleasing to the Senses and Based on Recent History on the Divine Laxmibai (1870). These were followed by two plays on the latter days of the Peshwai: V. S. Chhatre’s Shree Narayanrao Peshwa (1870) and V. R. Katti’s Sawai Madhavravanche Natak (1871). Anandibai was often the most dramatic character, scheming and greedy for power to the extent that she sanctioned her nephew’s murder, and her depictions are testimony to the twin influences on Marathi drama: Lady Macbeth and Kaikeyi blend easily into her character. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 107–124. 11. Katti’s 1871 play on Sawai Madhavrao did use an early bakhar of Nana Phadnavis published in 1852. 12. Kanitkar wrote twelve plays putting forward the conservative Tilakite position on social reform, one of which was titled A Drama in Four Acts, Directed Against the Modern High-Class System of Female Education (1898). 13. See Shankar Bapuji Muzumdar, Maharashtriya Natakkara yanchi Charitre, 2 vols. (Poona: Bharatbhushan Chhapkhana, 1912), I:116. Several playwrights mentioned this debt. For example, Raisinghrao Narayan Deo’s play Narayanrao Peshwa (1890) was based on the eponymous bakhar published in the Kavyetihas Sangraha in 1887. Atmaram Moreshwar Pathare ’s 1891 play on Sambhaji drew on the Chitnis Bakhar. The battle scenes and dialogue in K. A. Guruji’s 1889 play on the conflict between the Marathas and Tipu Sultan derived much inspiration from the Bhausahebanchi bakhar and the Peshwyanchi bakhar. 14. Ibid., 160. 15. N. B. Kanitkar’s play Bajirao Mastani was a romantic trendsetter. Other plays followed: B. J. Natekar, Sangeet Bajirao Mastani (1896), A. B. Kolhatkar, Sangeet Mastani (1926), V.R. Hambarde, Bajirao Mastani (1956) among others. B. P. Joshi portrayed Bajirao in a different light and focused more on Bajirao’s military campaigns, in Sangeet Vijayi Maharashtra athava Shrimant Bajirao Ballal (Musical Victorious Maharashtra or Shrimant Bajirao Ballal, 1893). 16. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 176. 17. Quoted in Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 55. 18. Ganesh S. Bhate, “Vachan: Tyache Marga va Uddishta,” in G. S. Bhate: Ek Vangmayasamikshak (G. S. Bhate: A Literary Critic), ed. V. Patankar (Mumbai:

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 253 Pratima Prakashan, 1995), 40–43. See also “Aitihasik Kadambarya: Tikes uttar” in Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 213–217, his rebuttal to V. G. Apte’s article cited below. 19. Vasudeo G. Apte, “Aitihasik Kadambarya,” Maharashtra Sahitya Patrika 45, no. 5 (1914): 3. Vasudeo Apte wrote regularly for the Vividh Dnyan Vistaar and the Maharashtra Sahitya Patrika. See also his “Lekhanvyavasaya 5: Katha wa Kadambarya,” Vivdh Dnyan Vistaar 32, no. 1 (1901): 3. 20. Vitthal Vaman Hadap, Kadambarimaya Peshwai, 20 vols. (Pune: Ramyakatha Prakashan, 1969), II:4. Emphasis mine. 21. Ibid. 22. Dhanurdhari analyzed Maratha warfare in Marathyanchi Mardumki (Maratha Valor) and wrote biographies of two Brahman soldiers, Bapu Gokhale and Vitthal Vinchurkar, in Javanmard Brahmanbhai (The Youthful Brahman Brothers) and “heartrending historical tales” about famous Maratha women in Shoor Abala (The Brave but Helpless One). He also wrote the novels Panpatcha Mohar (The Jewel of Panipat, 1907) and Piraji Patil (1953). Another historian, V. V. Khare, who published voluminous records of the Ichalkaranjikar, Patwardhan, and Chavan chiefs, among other documents from southern Maharashtra, in the Aitihasik Lekhasangraha journal also published poetry and several musical plays as a means of financially supporting himself. 23. Vaidya, Durdaivi Rangu: Ek Aitihasik Kadambari (1914; reprint, Pune: Anant A. Moramkar, 1958), 2. 24. According to the publisher’s note, a second edition was issued in 1924, and a third in 1958. An abridged edition, edited by Vaidya himself, was available from the Modern Book Depot in 1935, and it was a Marathi textbook at the matriculation level that year. Vaidya, Durdaivi Rangu, n.p. Vilas Kolte notes that it was a text at the B.A. level for Marathi prose along with the Bhausahebanchi bakhar, as part of the syllabus for Nagpur University. Vilas Kolte, “Durdaivi Rangu: Aitihasik Kadambari,” in Bharatacharya: Bharatacharya Chintaman Vinayak Vaidya Smritigrantha, ed. D. B. Kulkarni and N. B. Vaidya (Nagpur: CV Vaidya Smritigrantha Samiti, 1996), 112. 25. Vaidya, Durdaivi Rangu, 67–68. 26. Vasudev P. Sathe, Shree Shivachhatrapati arthat Maharashtra Jeevan Prabhat (Baroda: n.p., 1904), 4. 27. Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1992), 32. 28. A similar character is that of the protagonist Prataprao in K. P. Khadilkar’s play Kanchangadchi Mohana (Mohana of Kanchangad, 1898) and in Vidyadhar

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 254 Vaman Bhide’s Koralaicha Killedar!, set in the late Peshwai in southern coastal Maharashtra. 29. Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willeman, eds., Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, New Revised Edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 30. Apte’s adoption of the woman’s-honor-under-threat formula was also influenced by the Victorian novelist G. W. M. Reynolds, and his first novel, Madhali Sthithi, was initially conceived as a Marathi adaptation of Reynolds’s Mysteries of Old London. What is remarkable, of course, is his adaptation of this formula to the gendered imagination of the Indian nation under siege. I. M. P. Raeside, “Agarkar, Apte, and the Kanitkars,” in Writers, Editors and Reformers: Social and Political Transformations of Maharashtra, 1830–1930, ed. N. K. Wagle (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1999), 158–59. 31. Nathmadhav, Swarajya Mala, 7 vols. (1924; reprint, Poona: Varada Books, 1999), I:1–2. 32. Hadap, Kadambarimaya Peshwai, I:13. 33. Hadap, Kadambarimaya Peshwai, I:21. 34. Hadap, Kadambarimaya Peshwai, I:98. 35. Nathmadhav, Swarajya Mala, I:81. 36. There are, however definite limits to this resourcefulness; in Hadap’s text, Sarja is depicted as a determined young woman who brings her husband around to the Peshwa’s side. At the end of the story, he is blinded by the Siddis; to prevent anybody from taking advantage of her because of her handicapped husband, she disfigures her face with a flaming torch. Hadap, Kadambarimaya, I:218. 37. For Bengal, see Sugata Bose, “Nation as Mother: Representations of the Nation in Bengali Literature and Culture,” in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, ed. S. Bose and A. Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); for Tamil Nadu, see Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 38. Rangabhoomi (1909):26–27. Just a year earlier, another review in the same periodical commented on the popular playwright Krishnaji Prabhakar Khadilkar’s Rashtroddhar (National Emancipation), which had been censored by the government: “The formulaic episodes [in this play] include scaling and storming some fort or other, the mutual love of a man and woman, the evil eye of another man on the woman, her deception and capture, her escape in a man’s disguise,

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 255 reunion of the hero and heroine and happiness all around, etc. We cannot understand why the government has banned this play. Perhaps they were misled by its title?” Rangabhoomi (1908):25–26. 39. Sudipta Kaviraj, “Imaginary History,” in The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 107–109. 40. Bhate, “Vachan,” 46–47. 41. Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Introduction,” in A Comparison Between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988) and Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998) provide thoughtful, detailed discussions of the centrality of gender to this period of reform. 42. O’Hanlon, “Introduction.” 43. The clearest expression of Hadap’s argument can be found in the preface to one of his novels, Bahakaleli Taruni (The Wayward Young Woman), touted as “a special entertaining and sensational novel,” which was in its third edition by 1931. V. V. Hadap, “Bahakalelya Tarunicha Purvetihas,” Bahakaleli Taruni (Mumbai: Mouj Prakashan, 1931), 3–8. 44. Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, “Dr. Johnson,” Nibandhamala (A Garland of Essays), 2 vols. (1871–81; reprint, Pune: Varada Books, 1993), II:668–794. 45. G. G. Joshi, “Itihasa Shikavane, I & II,” Marathi Shikshak (July 1912– March 1913). 46. G. B. Borwankar, Maharashtracha Goshtiroop Itihasa (Pune: n.p., 1921). 47. B. N. Deo, “Charitrat Vishaynayakachya Gunavarnanabarobar Tyanche Doshdarshan karave ki nahi?” Vividh Dnyan Vistaar 36, no. 8 (1905): 301–307. 48. V. V. Khare, Maloji va Shahaji Charchatmaka Charitra (Pune: Author, 1920); Nana Phadnisanche Charitra (1893; reprint, Miraj: Yashwant Vasudeoshastri Khare, 1927). For an example of the latter, see Y. G. Kanetkar, Sakharambapuche Charitra, (Pune: S. N. Joshi, 1935), on the life of the statesman Sakharambapu Bokil, a contemporary of Nana Phadnavis. Kanetkar narrates a lot of anecdotes about the Peshwai, especially Nana’s legendary Birbal-like ability to think on his feet, and the circle of “three-and-a-half ” men to which Phadnavis and Bokil belonged. 49. B. B. Deo, “Ahilyabai Holkarin,” Vividh Dnyan Vistaar 36, no. 9 (1905): 341–365. Purushottama, Devi Sri Ahalyabai Holkar Hiche Sachitra Charitra (Mumbai: Ananta Atmaram Moramkar, 1913).

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 256 50. Yashodabai Bhat, Aitihasik Stree Ratne (Bombay, 1932). 51. Dinkar Sakharam Varade, Aitihasik Streeya (Mumbai, 1907) is a good example of this depiction of Jijabai as the ideal mother. Varade argued that character building was more important for women than for young men. But while women didn’t have the capability for action men did, their role was far more important as the inspiration behind such action. 52. Yashodabai Bhat, Aitihasik Stree Ratne, 7–18. 53. Muktabai Lele, Holkar Kulabhushana Devi Ahilyabai (Mumbai: Damodar Savlaram & Co., 1936). 54. Apte ’s social novels are well known and were serialized in the Karmanuk itself: Madhali Sthiti (The Compromise, 1885), Ganpatrao (1887–88), Pan Lakshyat Kon Gheto? (But Who Pays Any Attention, 1890–93), Yashwantrao Khare (1892–95), Mee (I, 1893–95), and Jag He Ase Aahe (This Is How the World Is, 1897–99), besides other incomplete works. Nathmadhav too wrote novels on social issues, including Vimalechi Grahadasha (Vimala’s Tragic Home Environment, 1917). Hadap’s works, with rather unsubtle titles, included Patita ki Pativrata? (Adultress or Devoted Wife?, 1925); Bahakaleli Taruni (The Wayward Young Woman, 3rd ed., 1931), advertised as “A specially entertaining and sensational novel”; and a sequel, Nivalaleli Taruni (The Purified Woman, 1925). 55. Quoted in Achala Joshi, Hari Narayan Apte Yanchya Kadambarya (Mumbai: Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh, 1975), 11. 56. Raeside, “Apte, Agarkar and the Kanitkars,” 163. 57. Ian Raeside has argued that Hari Narayan Apte ’s social novels, while highlighting the need for reform, also advocated moderation and caution, although in his private letters Apte was considerably more forthcoming about the need for women’s rights and caste reform. Although Raeside ascribes this cautionary note in the novels to artistic choice, I would argue that when taken together with the gendered representations in Apte ’s historical novels, the Maratha past did serve as a site for consensus for reformers and traditionalists, away from the conflicts over women’s right to refuse conjugal rights, age of sexual consent, and education. Ibid., 162–163. 58. Quoted in N. K. Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal ani Marathi Natyasrushti (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1977), 27. 59. Nathmadhav, Swarajya Mala, I:3. 60. See, for instance, the character of the boy Savalya in Ushahkaal. Gunjikar’s Mochangad too has a similar, precocious character.

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 257 61. V. V. Khare, Nana Phadnisanche Charitra (A Biography of Nana Phadnavis), 3rd ed. (1893; reprint, Miraj: Yashwant Vasudeoshastri Khare, 1927). 62. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 187–88. 63. Panase, Hari Narayan Apte, 231. 64. Rajaram’s own quest for legitimacy probably first influenced the negative portrayal of Sambhaji in the Sabhasad text. See Y. M. Pathan,, ed., Krishnaji Ananta Sabhasada Virachit Sri Sivaprabhunche Charitra, Sabhasad Bakhar (A Biography of the Lord Shivaji by Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad, the Sabhasad Bakhar) (Aurangabad: Samartha Prakashan, 1974)73–74, and Raghunath V. Herwadkar, ed., Shakakarte Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj yanche Saptaprakaranatmak Charitra, Malhar Ramrao Chitnis Virachit (Pune: Venus Prakashan, 1967), 235–38. 65. Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 1600–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 90–94. See also Kamal Gokhale, Chattrapati Sambhaji (Poona: Navkamal Publications, 1978), 386–99. 66. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 158. 67. Here I am following B. B. Kulkarni’s discussion of Kerkar’s play, since I have been unable to trace the original. Kulkarni mentions that it was posthumously published in 1896, as Kerkar died when she was sixteen. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 159–60. 68. Ram Ganesh Gadkari, Sachitra Sangita Rajasannyasa Apurna Aitihasik Natak (Mumbai: Parachure Puranika ani Mandali, 1926), 2. 69. Nathmadhav, Marathyanche Atmayajna (Pune: n.p., 1917), 2. 70. Yashwant N. Tipnis, Shaha Shivaji (1933; reprint, Mumbai: Parchure Puranik and Co., 1945). 71. V. B. Deshpande, ed., Kanetkar: Raygadala Jevha Jag Yete, Ek Sinhavalokan (Pune: Bhumika, 1987), 14–16. 72. Ibid., 16–19. 73. Ibid., 70, 93. Snehaprabha Pradhan, in the same volume, found the women characters “too modern” (89). 74. Ibid., 113. See the essays by D. K. Bedekar, 51–62. 75. Rustom Bharucha, In the Name of the Secular: Contemporary Cultural Activism in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 227. 76. Sandria Freitag, “Visions of the Nation: Theorizing the Nexus Between Creation, Consumption and Participation in the Public Sphere,” in Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics and Consumption of Public Culture in India, ed. R. Dwyer and C. Pinney (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 35–75.

6. Maratha History and Historical Fiction 258 77. Chintaman Kolhatkar, Bahurupi (1957; reprint, Mumbai: Mauj Prakashan, 1963), 109. 78. The most famous play to be censored at this time was K. P. Khadilkar’s powerful allegory on the tenure of Curzon as viceroy, Keechakvadh (The Killing of Keechaka, 1909), depicting the death of the evil Mahabharata character who molested Draupadi at the hands of Arjuna. For details of censorship of plays in the early twentieth century, see Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal, 89–97. 79. Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 231. 80. Quoted in Kulkarni, Aitihasik Natake, 251. 81. Quoted in Shanware, Rajakiya Chalwal, 20. 82. After Sinhagad in 1923, Baburao Painter of Maharashtra Studios made Kalyan Khajina (1924) on the famous story of Shivaji protecting women’s honor. The left-leaning playwright Mama Warerkar’s Poona Raided (1924) described the successful staving off of Aurangzeb’s attack on Pune. Bhalji Pendharkar’s film directorial debut, Bajirao Mastani, appeared in 1925. Pendharkar also made Netaji Palkar (1939) before his more famous blockbuster successes, Mohityanchi Manjula (1962) and Chhatrapati Shivaji (1960). Gajanan Jagirdar directed Ramshastri (1944), based on the life of Ramshastri Prabhune, the judge who had to decide on Raghoba’s culpability in Narayanrao Peshwa’s murder. The film was based on Khadilkar’s play Bhaubandaki (1902). Rajadhyaksha and Willemann, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, 243–302. See also Daniel Jasper, “Commemorating Shivaji,” Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, New York, 2002, 155–179.

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 1. K. S. Thackeray, Gramanyacha Sadyanta Itihasa, Arthat, Nokarasahiche Banda (Mumbai: Yasavanta Sivarama Raje, 1919), 12. 2. This “exclusion” of non-Brahmans, of course, meant not just the lack of a presence in institutional spaces as teachers and researchers but also the physical exclusion from modern, apparently “public” spaces of schools and meeting halls due to pollution fears well into the twentieth century. 3. See chapter 4. 4. Quoted in Rosalind O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology: Mahatma Jotirao Phule and Low-Caste Protest in Nineteenth-Century Western India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 296.

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 259 5. Ibid., 295. 6. O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 296. 7. This critique of hollow inclusive nationalist rhetoric that failed to acknowledge and tackle real social disabilities head on was at the heart of B. R. Ambedkar’s criticism of Gandhi and the Congress’s nationalist plank from the 1920s on. Particularly relevant to this chapter, as we shall see in the conclusion, is the applicability of Ambedkar’s argument not just to Brahman nationalists but also to elite non-Brahman leaders and the hollowness of their claim to leadership of the entire non-Brahman masses. 8. See Prachi Deshpande, “Caste as Maratha: Social Categories, Colonial Policy and Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Maharashtra,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 41 (1) (2004): 7–32, 11–13 for a discussion of this Peshwa policy, its implications, and the extent of its application. 9. V. K. Rajwade, “Chandraseniya Kayastha,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samagra Sahitya (Collected Works of V. K.Rajwade), ed. Murlidhar B. Shah, 13 vols. (Dhule: Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade Samsodhan Mandal, 1995–1998), 7– 8:225–239. In a series of essays collected in this double volume, Rajwade also portrayed at several points the Marathas as the low-caste products of contact between inferior Kshatriya peoples in the Gangetic plain who had tired of Buddhist ideas and settled farther south and aboriginal Naga peoples of the Deccan, and conceded Kshatriya status only to a few elite families, including Shivaji’s Bhosale lineage. 10. Thackeray, Gramanyancha Sadyanta Itihasa, 16. 11. Ibid., 10. 12. Ibid. 13. S.N.K., “Aamche Chukte Kuthe?,” Vividh Dnyan Vistaar 36, no. 6 (1905): 235–251. 14. Rajwade, “Shree Samartha Ramdas,” in Itihasacharya V. K. Rajwade, 13:107. 15. Lakshman R. Pangarkar, Ramadasibuwa (1907; reprint, Pune: Author, 1951), 11. 16. Ibid., 30. 17. This was the tone in many of the essays published in the monthly journal Brahman, which brought out a special issue in Rajwade’s honor, shortly after his death in 1926. The article by Chandorkar began with a quote by Ramdas, “Protect and respect the Brahman way of life.” Brahman (March 1926):8. 18. Wilbur S. Deming, Ramdas and the Ramdasis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1928), 18. See Bhaskar V. Bhat, Maharashtra Dharma arthat Marathyancya

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 260 Itihasache Atmika Svarupa (Maharashtra Dharma or the Essence of Maratha History) (Dhule: Satkaryottejaka Sabha, 1925), and Sri Samartha Ramdas Swami ani Sri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj yancha Anyonya Sambandh (The Close Relationship Between Samartha Ramdas and Chhatrapati Shivaji) (Dhule: Vishvanath G. Javadekar, 1928), and Shankar S. Deo, Shree Samarthanchi Don Juni Charitre (Two Old Biographies of Samarth Ramdas) (Dhule: Satkaryottejak Sabha, 1906). 19. J. S. Karandikar, “Ramdas Swaminchi Rajakiya Kaamgiri,” in Shivaji Nibandhavali, ed. N. C. Kelkar and D. V. Apte (Pune: Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhan Mandal, 1930), 105–132. 20. Ibid., 105. 21. These articles are too numerous to be detailed here and are spread across different periodicals and pamphlets. For a scholarly overview of the Ramdas debate, see A. G. Pawar, ed., Maratha History Seminar, May 28–31, 1970; Papers (Kolhapur: Shivaji University, 1971). 22. Krishnarao A. Keluskar, Kshatriyakulavatansa Chhatrapati Shivajimaharaj yanche Charitra (A Biography of Shivaji, the Scion of a Kshatriya Family) (Mumbai: Nirnaysagar Press, 1907), 540–549. 23. S. S. More, ed., Jagurtikara Palekar (Pune: Ma. Jotirava Phule Samata Pratishthana, 1996), 236. 24. Ibid., 237. 25. S. H. Mohite, Shivaji Maharajanche Khare Guru (Mumbai, 1936). 26. See Govind C. Bhate, Sajjanagad va Samartha Ramdas (Pune: Author, 1918); Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (1919; reprint, Calcutta: S. C. Sarkar and Sons, 1961), Govind Sakharam Sardesai, The Main Currents of Maratha History (Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar & Sons, 1926), Pawar, Maratha History Seminar. 27. Jyotsana Uppal, “Decay, Diet and Desire: The Making of Community in Colonial Punjab,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1998. 28. Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 121. The memoirs of many nationalist leaders of the early twentieth century testify to this importance of akharas in introducing them to nationalist ideas and politics in their youth. See, for instance, G. V. Deshmukh, Kala Samudratila Ratne, 2 vols. (Nagpur: Nagpur Press, 1949), especially his discussion of the Nagpur Vyayam Shala, 1:119. 29. The Kesari of August 20, 1985 published a “communication” from Shivaji to his descendants on earth: “I have been praying to the great goddess to show fa-

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 261 vor to the Hindus, who are at present impotent and emasculated . . . I must again go down on earth, because England has robbed the independence I once secured for my country. . . . Be united and drive away all traitors from your camp. Have proper reverence for the good old Hindu religion.” 30. The Ganpati idol of the Guruji Talim Mandal, established in 1893 and active in the festival celebrations since then, enjoys pride of place in the annual immersion parade in Pune even today. 31. See the report extracted from the Baroda Vatsal on celebrations across Maharashtra, May 19, 1895. Reports from several other papers across Maharashtra over the next decade indicate that sports tournaments and athletic displays were an active element. Sanjiv Desai, ed., Chhatrapati Shri Shivaji Maharaj Coronation Tercentenary Commemoration Volumes: The Shivaji Commemoration Movement, vols. 13–14, Maharashtra Archives Bulletins (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1984), 23–89. 32. Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001); see also Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly” Englishman and the “Effeminate” Bengali in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1995). For a survey of the literature, see Mrinalini Sinha, “Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the Historiography of Colonial India,” Gender and History 11, no. 3 (1999): 445–461. 33. R. M. Betham, Marathas and Dekhani Musalmans: Compiled Under the Orders of the Government of India (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1908); M. G Abhyankar and C. L. Proudfoot, Valour Enshrined: A History of the Maratha Light Infantry (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1971). 34. For an overview of British attitudes toward this Brahman middle class, see Richard I. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), especially the chapter “British Policy and Maratha Brahmans.” The most striking example of this discourse of fear and suspicion is Arthur Crawford, Our Troubles in Poona and the Deccan (Westminster, England: A. Constable, 1897). 35. Nationalist leaders also actively encouraged such activity using Ramdas as an example. Tilak’s grandson G. V. Ketkar and R. G. Soman, a Karad-based nationalist, for instance, actively propagated Ramdas’s akharas as institutions of national regeneration, blueprints for a continuing program. MSA Bombay, “Confidential Report for the Week ending Feb. 6, 1926, Poona District,” Home (Spl), File 143 (K) (d).

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 262 36. G. N. Sahasrabuddhe, “Bushido Athava Maharashtra Dharma,” Vividh Dnyan Vistaar 36, no. 5 (1905): 213–218. 37. MSA Nagpur 1939, “RSS activists and the Pratap Vyayam Shala in Wardha,” CP-Berar Political & Military Department, File No. 28. See also Deshmukh, Kala Samudratil Ratne, 1:140. 38. Frietag, Collective Action and Community, 225; Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India: 1925 to the 1990s (New Delhi: Penguin, 1993), 35–40. 39. Keshavrao Jedhe, Chhatrapati Mela Sangraha 1922–1927 (Pune, 1928). 40. Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Acts of Appropriation: Non-Brahman Radicals and the Congress in Early Twentieth-Century Maharashtra,” in The Indian National Congress and the Political Economy of India, 1885–1985, ed. M. Shepperdson and C. Simmons (Aldershot: Brookfield USA, 1988), 122–125. 41. Deshpande, “Caste as Maratha,” 17–25. 42. On this debate in the late nineteenth century, see O’Hanlon, Caste, Conflict and Ideology, 290–299. 43. Deshpande, “Caste as Maratha,” 28–32. 44. These appeared regularly in all the non-Brahman newspapers. For instance, the Maratha Navjeevan of April 7, 1936 advertised K. B. Deshmukh’s books as “Excellent Histories of the Kshatriyas” and the Rashtraveer of April 14, 1931 advertised a text by one Swami Narottamanand Saraswati called Shahannav Kuli (Ninety-six Families), on Kshatriya Maratha families and a history of their rule and fiefdoms. 45. K. B. Deshmukh, Kshatriya Vaishyancha Brahmananshi Samana (Amravati: Author, 1921), 28. 46. Jedhe, Chattrapati Mela Sangraha, 4. 47. Y. D. Phadke, Brahmanetar Chalavalitila Dhadadiche Karyakarte Dinkarrao Javalkar Samagra Vangmaya (Pune: Ma. Jotirao Phule Samata Pratishthana, 1984), 69. 48. Jedhe, Chattrapati Mela Sangraha, 8. 49. This postcolonial dominance of the Maratha caste group in regional politics and agrarian society has received much attention. See Anthony T. Carter, Elite Politics in Rural India: Political Stratification and Political Alliances in Western Maharashtra (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974); V. M. Sirsikar, The Rural Elite in a Developing Society: A Study in Political Sociology (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970); Jayant Lele, Elite Pluralism and Class Rule: Political Development in Maharashtra, India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 263 1981); Mary C. Carras, The Dynamics of Indian Political Factions: A Study of District Councils in the State of Maharashtra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 50. A detailed survey of this rhetoric and the political alliances involved in this movement may be found in Y. D. Phadke, Politics and Language (Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House, 1979). 51. Atre was somewhat of a mercurial figure well known for never mincing his words or being shy of offering opinion or judgment on any issue or personality. He started his political career with active participation in the nationalist agitation under Gandhi and in the years following independence veered toward sympathy with leftist ideas, although he was never an official member of either the Praja Socialist or the Communist parties. He remained an independent candidate during elections and was well known for his equally sharp treatment of allies and opponents through editorials in the Maratha, generating considerable controversy and animus within the multiparty and often fragile Samiti coalition. His passionate, if lengthy, five-volume autobiography clearly demonstrates his love for instant opinions; most of his writings and speeches, immensely popular, are available in edited volumes today. His colorful life continues to be transmitted, strangely enough, through popular “Acharya Atre jokes,” but he is perhaps remembered most fondly for his deep love for Maharashtra. 52. Phadke, Politics and Language, 241. 53. Pralhad K. Atre, Karhecha Pani, Atmacharitra, 5 vols. (1967; reprint, Mumbai: G. P. Parchure Prakashan, 1998), 5:598–608. 54. Ibid., 22. 55. Quoted in Phadke, Politics and Language, 34. 56. The Peasants and Workers Party leader Shankarrao More was another. Phadke, Politics and Language, 34. See also Atre, Karhecha Pani, 5:94. 57. Atre, “What does Marathi-ness mean?” in Karhecha Pani, 5:634–640. 58. Amar Shaikh, Amar Geet (Mumbai: Abhinava Prakashan, 1951), 66–79. 59. For a fuller treatment of this divide within the shahiri tradition as practiced in leftist and Dalit politics in Maharashtra today, see Sharmila Rege, “Conceptualizing Popular Culture: Lavani and Powada in Maharashtra,” Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 11 (2002). 60. These oral traditions, of course, formed the basis of Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer’s well-known works on folk religion and culture in Maharashtra: Biroba, Mhaskoba and Khandoba: Pastoral Deities in Western India, trans. Anne Feldhaus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Folk Culture, Folk Religion, and

7. Caste, Identity, and Difference 264 Oral Traditions as a Component in Maharashtrian Culture (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1995). The vast material collected by Sontheimer over two decades is available at The Sontheimer Archive of Oral Literature, part of the Archives & Research Centre for Ethnomusicology at the American Institute of Indian Studies, Pune. I am deeply grateful to Anne Feldhaus for making the cassettes and transcripts of the Umaji Naik stories, complete with fonts and technical support, available to me, and to Rajaram Zagade for help with transcribing some of the narratives. 61. Narrated by Narayan Kondiba Mane, Kirloskar Wadi (Kundal), not dated. 62. Narrated by Sonu Rama Bhovar, Jawahar, District Thane, not dated. 63. Narrated by Sonubai Gore, Kinai, Koregaon Taluka, Satara district, 23 September 1987. 64. Ibid., not dated. 65. While Sumit Guha has described Umaji’s relentless attempt to maintain hereditary claims in the Pune district and interpreted his actions in light of a long history of conflict and negotiation between forest peoples and administrations in western India, Sadashiv Athavale ’s delightful biography has described his individual resourcefulness both as a robber and as an armed rebel fighting the new colonial state. Sumit Guha, Environment and Ethnicity in India, 1200–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 98–101, 152–153; Sadashiv Athavale, Umaji Raje: Mukkam Dongar (Pune: Continental Prakashan, 1991). 66. Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994). 67. B. R. Ambedkar, “Thoughts on Linguistic States,” in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, ed. Vasant Moon (Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1979). 68. Jayashree B. Gokhale, “The Evolution of a Counter-Ideology: Dalit Consciousness in Maharashtra,” in Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order, Vol. I, ed. F. Frankel and M. S. A. Rao (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 232. Many Mahar men had also been recruited into the East India Company army from the 1750s and fought on the British side in a crucial battle at Koregaon against the last Peshwa, Bajirao II, on January 1, 1818; the memorial that stands at Koregaon indicates that as many as twenty-two Mahar men died fighting for the British (an inference drawn on the basis of names with the suffix “nak,” usually attached to Mahar names). Dalit discourse, interestingly, also expressed cultural dissidence by celebrating the Mahars’ support of the British against the socially oppressive Peshwas. See Philip Constable, “The

Conclusion 265 Marginalization of a Dalit Martial Race in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Western India,” Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 2 (2001): 444–449.

Conclusion 1. Of course, as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, it was a “hyperreal Europe” that emerged as the overarching, silent referent of these national histories. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 2. Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wildness in Western India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); Saurabh Dube, Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity and Power Among a Central Indian Community, 1780–1950 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Shail Mayaram, Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Ann G. Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar, In the Time of Trees and Sorrow: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). As noted earlier, the scholarship on Partition has been especially rich in this regard, using memory to effectively destabilize standard histories that have sought to erase the terrible human toll and complex experiences of 1947 in favor of triumphalist nationalist narratives. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 3. Here, rather than the abstract, theoretical debates over the fictional nature of history itself, I am thinking of historical novels, plays, and films that take up specific episodes and questions of very particular pasts. Historical novels and films are increasingly part of undergraduate history syllabi, chosen by instructors to generate discussion and students’ thinking about the many different ways the past is represented. The implications of this pedagogical exercise also need further exploration outside the classroom, where these popular materials circulate and shape historical memory. 4. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 5. See introduction, note 46. 6. Krishna Kumar, “The Origins of India’s “Textbook” Culture,” Comparative Education Review 32, no. 4 (Nov. 1988): 452–464; Delhi Historians Group,

Conclusion 266 The Communalisation of Education: The History Textbooks Controversy (New Delhi: Delhi Historians Group, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2001). 7. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 55–58. Although Sumathi Ramaswamy’s study of Tamil identity is rich and textured, in rejecting the analytic of nationalism for that of the particularities of Tamil “language devotion,” she does not provide a framework to explore the interactions between discourses of regional and national identity more generally in the subcontinent. Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891– 1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 8. Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity and the Making of Kashmir (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003); Jayeeta Sharma, Empire’s Garden: Assam in the Making of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, forthcoming); Rajendra Vora and Anne Feldhaus, eds., Region, Culture and Politics in India (Delhi: Manohar, 2006); Sugata Bose, “Nation as Mother: Representations of the Nation in Bengali Literature and Culture,” in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, ed. S. Bose and A. Jalal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997). 9. Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 14. 10. Ayesha Jalal, for instance, has pointed to the couching of the Akali Dal’s demand for a separate state of Punjab in linguistic rather than religious Sikh terms in the 1950s and ’60s. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 166–167. 11. Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002); Christopher King, One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in NineteenthCentury North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994). 12. See, for instance, Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue, 168–178. 13. As many commentators noted after the BORI attack, the Maratha Seva Sangh and the Sambhaji Brigade seemed to suddenly appear on the political scene. There have as yet been no sustained scholarly or even journalistic studies of this movement, which is a caste-based, Maratha-led organization of Marathi society focused on rural youth belonging to the broad Maratha caste cluster. Much of its literature and organizing activities is stated to be “progressive,”

Conclusion 267 involving promoting education and awareness against superstition and blind faith. The Maratha Seva Sangh, for instance, consciously distances itself from the Hindu nationalist parties such as the BJP and the Shiv Sena in invoking a secular, anti-Brahman genealogy from Shivaji and Tukaram in the seventeenth century to Jotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar in the nineteenth and twentieth. The Sambhaji Brigade is its “youth wing.” In late 2004, the group announced the establishment of a new religion, “Shiv Dharma,” as a protest against Vedic Brahminism and counterpoint to Hinduism. See Maratha Seva Sangh, Jijau Brigade va Sambhaji Brigade Sanskarmala, Maratha Sanskarmala I (Nagpur: N.p., n.d.). I am grateful to Lee Schlesinger for making this pamphlet available to me.

Bibliography

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Bibliography 271 Patil, Pandharinath. Maratha Shikshan Parishad (Maratha Education Conference). Bombay: N.p., 1932. Sadashiv Pethetil Juna Mavali Mela (The Old Mavali Mela of Sadashiv Peth). Pune: n.p., n.d. Vastad, Arjunrao. Go Brahman Pratipalak Shri Shivaji Maharajki Jai (Glory Be to the Protector of Cows and Brahmans Shivaji Maharaj!). Jastgaon: Shri Shivaji Akhara, 1926.

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Index

Agarkar, Gopal Ganesh: opposition to Marathas as used for nationalist purposes, 142 Aitihasik Stree Ratne (Bhat), 166 Ajnapatra, centralized administrative procedures advocated by, 44 akharas, 16; formation of, 188, 260n28; as Hindu communitarianism inculcation site, 190; in RSS, 191 akhbars: Maratha bureaucracy produced, 23–24; movement to bakhars, 23–28 Ambedkar, B. R., 202 Amin, Shahid, 5–6 Apte, Hari Narayan, 104, 152, 154; social novels of, 167; social reform as advocated by, 167 Apte, V. G., 176 Athavale, Sadashiv, 199 Atre, Acharya: career of, 196, 263n51; Maratha debacle at Panipat invoked by, 196; on Marathi man, 197 Aundhkar, V. H., 171 authority: in bakhars, 30–31; Maratha state ’s multiple sites of, 40–41, 70 authorship, 98, 235n12 Avji, Balaji, 34, 223n50

bakhars: akbhar movement to, 23–28; in archive for Maratha history, 115; authentication in, 32–37; authority of, 30–31, 115; bases used for, 31–32; characteristics of, 20; in colonial period, 89–93; contestation in, 32–37; dates in, 29; as defined, 13; events in, 13, 28–29; exclusion from colonial history syllabi, 93; exclusion of printing, 83–84; features of, 204; genealogical narrative ’s continuation of, 90; historiographic practice of, 35, 37, 66; historiography features of, 39; history of term, 21; intellectual practices shaped by narratives of, 71; linear unfolding of narrative of, 29; literary nature of, 28; as local factual narratives, 22, 221n17; Maratha identity in, 48; Maratha power as represented in, 36–37, 44–45, 68–69; Maratha state ’s ideological underpinnings represented in, 69–70; Maratha v. Mughal religious differences in, 48; in Marathi literature, 93; nineteenth-century changes of, 90–91; political/social power claims articulated in, 13; predictions/prophecies in, 29; print of, 92; production of, 89;

Index 298 bakhars (continued): published, 117; reappearance in colonial education system, 92–93, 234n63; Sambhaji as portrayed in, 171; scribes in, 37–38; shahiri poetry content v. content of, 66–67; social origins of, 21–22; as source for Grant Duff ’s work, 77–78; see also Bhausahebanchi bakhar; Chitnis bakhar; Sabhasad bakhar Bala, Honaji: ordinary warrior in lavani by, 64 Baruah, Sanjib: on regional consciousness in Assam, 208 Bayly, C. A., 23, 39, 68 Bebandshahi (Aundhkar), 171 Bhagvat, Rajaramshastri: Bhakti as interpreted by, 129; on Bhakti movement, 130 Bhakti philosophy: interpretation of, 129; Prarthana Samaj invoking, 110; roots of, 134 Bhakti tradition: caste/social inclusiveness of, 130; Maharashtra dharma representing values of, 133–34; Maratha struggle ’s connection with, 133–34; passivity of ideology of, 133; Ramdas in, 133, 247n21 Bhandare, Haribhau, 148, 250n52 Bhandarkar, Ramkrishna Gopal: break with Sanskritic learnings represented by, 98–99; on caste, 110; as contesting derogatory remarks on Indian civilization, 100, 236n20; historical surveys of, 99–100; as Indian Indologist, 98; parameters of method of, 99; works of, 98 Bhanu, C. G., 140 Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal (BISM), 117, 184; community established by, 121 Bhat, Balaji Vishwanath, 11, 217n45; as Peshwa, 11 Bhat, Bhaskar Vaman, 133, 184; Sarkar as criticized by, 136–37 Bhat, Yashodabai, 166 Bhate, G. S., 163; on history v. historical novels, 154–55 Bhau, Sadashivrao, 30 Bhausahebanchi bakhar: historicity of, 123; integrated into broader narrative within Maratha politics, 34, 223n51; killing in, 54–55; Maratha power as represented

in, 36–37; Marathi dharma in, 49, 52–53, 55–56; moral dilemmas in, 49–50; narrative construction of, 28, 222n27; Panipat battle recounted in, 21, 27–28, 49, 220n10; Rajputs signaling military culture in, 49, 226n19; Shindes in, 52 Bhavani, 33–34, 41 Bhave, Gandhian Vinoba: integrative approach to Bhakti by, 134 Bhave, V. L.: on powadas/lavanis, 64 Bhide, Vitthal Vaman, 152 Bhilawadikar, Vinayak, 154 Bhopatkar, L. B., 191 Bhosale, Shivaji: administration policy of, 96; Bijapur general’s killing as justifiable by, 130–31, 196; centralizing claims of, 44; in Chitnis bakhar, 46, 47; coronation of, 10; documents for writing biography of, 114, 240n69; as emulated in fiction, 168; as Hindu racial/masculine glory’s preeminent example, 143, 248n37; as idealized, 169–70; ideology underlying actions of, 10; independent Maratha state carved out by, 10; invocation of, 2; masculine regeneration of society from military legacy of, 188, 260n29; military successes of, 72; in nationalist historiography, 16; as nationalist icon, 126; as peasant lord, 179; Phule on identity of, 112; political career of, 47; popularity of, 2, 211n4; powadas depicting, 60; protests against interpretations of, 2; Ramdas v., 186–87; Ramdas v. Jijabai as guru of, 187; religious identity of, 46; in Sabhasad bakhar, 42; Sarkar’s appraisal of, 136; in Shivabharata, 42; symbol’s political appropriations, 2; traditions of Maharashtra represented by, 130; see also Chitnis bakhar; Sabhasad bakhar; Shivaji festival biography: of Ahilyabai Holkar, 166–67; historical, 164–67; moral education through historical, 164–65; negative/positive qualities of subject of, 165; of Shivaji, 20, 25, 114, 220n7, 240n69; subjects of Marathi, 165–66; of women, 165–67 BISM. See Bharat Itihasa Sanshodhak Mandal

Index 299 Bombay University: establishment of, 85; history in, 85–89; Indian history as taught in, 86–87 Borwankar, G. B., 165 Brahmans: background of Ramdas, 183; dominance protested against in Maratha history, 177; historiography as controlled by, 125; jatis dominating middle class in Maharashtra, 82, 231n31; nationalist historiography led by, 180; natural leadership of, 108, 238n32; non-Brahman critiques of historians as, 122; v. non-Brahman visions of Maratha history, 17; v. non-Brahman writers debate over Ramdas, 183; v. non-Brahmans in Maratha state ’s cultural landscape, 82; Phule on, 111; power in nineteenth century, 82, 231n32; on Ramdas, 184–85; Ramdas in context of masculinity/nationalism of, 188–91; RSS and dominance of, 190; Satkaryottejak Sabha establishment and opinions of, 184; social leadership of, 186; values of, 47 Cashman, Richard: on Shivaji festival’s decentralized nature, 139, 248n32 caste(s): ancient history of, 181; in Bhakti movement, 130; Bhandarkar on, 110; conflicts, 15, 218n52; debates, 11; dominance of upper, 15; educational/legal opportunities brought from colonial rule for lower, 17; Hindu tradition/work preserved in, 184; Maratha struggle possible by labor of non-Brahman, 180; Marathas as tribe v., 193; mobility/disability, 9; past/symbolic capitol conflicts shaped by marginality based on, 15, 218n52; Phule ’s critique of, 179; social institution of, 111; see also Brahmans Chandorkar, Aba: Brahmanya associated with, 184, 259n17; on Maharashtra dharma, 184 Chapekar, Damodar, 141 Chatterjee, Partha, 7, 101, 208 Chavan, Y. B., 196 Chhatrapati mela: Maratha history put forward through, 191–92; non-Brahman radicals in, 191; songs of, 194–95

Chiplunkar, Vishnushastri: colonialist histories critiqued by, 101; on concept/ practice of history, 100, 155; on cultural power, 111; on Hindu society, 113; on history-as-biography and morality, 164; Indian history of India demanded by, 101; on Marathi language heritage, 149; Marathi nonfictional prose style popularized by, 103; modern Marathi idiom based on Sanskrit roots argument of, 102; on national empathy to writing history, 100–101; on political/military power, 111; on reality of past, 101; as sign of nationalist consciousness, 101; writing career of, 100 Chitnis bakhar (Chitnis): as biography of Shivaji, 20–21; information department policies by Shivaji in, 23; Peshwas/Bhosales tension over state establishment in, 47; printing of, 92; protection through political/military action in, 45–46; Ramdas in, 46; Shivaji’s political career as focus of, 47; Shivaji’s project forcefully analyzed in, 32; Shivaji’s religious identity shown by, 46; sources used in, 31 Chitnis, Balwantrao, 77 Chitnis, Malhar Ramrao, 20–21; on ideal scribe, 39; from scribal family, 37; Shivaji biography’s objective by, 27; sources used by, 31 cinema: form of Marathi, 153, 251n9; literalness of imagined community expressed through, 175; material fueling Marathi, 153 Coats, Thomas: on Maratha peasantry, 66 collective identities, 4 colonialism: caste debates during, 11; historical methods used during, 8–9; influence of Western, 16; Marathi historical consciousness as impacted by, 14; rupture in historical consciousness during, 8; traditions in India before, 8; wider introspection in Marathi religion/culture brought by, 15 commemoration: in relation to professionalization of history, 4, 213n13; subjects of collective, 4

Index 300 Confino, Alon: on memory, 4 cultures: colonialism bringing wider introspection in Marathi, 15; Marathas’ regional, 129; of military in Bhausahebanchi bakhar, 49, 226n19; shared activities in, 4; warrior-peasant, 63–64, 228n36 Deccan College: closure of, 118; historical research at, 89, 233n52 Deo, B. B., 166 Deo, S. S., 133, 184 Deshmukh, Gopal Hari: on Maratha power’s decline, 96 Dhangars, 198 dharma: Peshwyanchi bakhar showing Peshwa’s adherence to, 45; see also Maharashtra dharma; Marathi dharma Dhavale, S. N., 153–54, 252n12 Dhere, R. C., 56 Dirks, Nicholas, 79; on Tamil vamcavalis, 8 Dixit, K. H., 174 Durdaivi Rangu (Vaidya), 156 education: bakhars’ exclusion from colonial, 93; colleges in colonial system of, 88–89; colonial, 14, 17, 80–82; colonial rule brought women/lower castes rights for, 17; Elphinstone ’s policy for, 82, 231n33; English history texts translated into Marathi for, 95; history as modern/Western projected in colonial, 14; history’s scope/importance as changed by Western liberal, 80; ideas as transmitted by Marathi intelligentsia through, 14; language in colonial, 102–3; linguistic division of educational levels in colonial, 81; of lower middle-class Marathi, 81; M.A.-level, 88, 233n50; moral, 164–65; teleological view of history in colonial, 86 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 14; civil policy for colonial rule in Maratha territories set out by, 73; as critical of Mill, 73; eagerness v. content control of printed matter by, 83; education policy of, 82, 231n33; encouragement/guidance of Grant Duff by, 74–75, 230n10; printed

reading materials introduced with education policy of, 82–83 England deshachi bakhar (Jambhekar), 95–96 Erskine, William, 73–74 festivals. See Ganpati festival; Shivaji festival fiction. See Marathi historical fiction films. See cinema 1421 (Menzies), 4–5 Gadkari, Ram Ganesh, 171 Ganim: as defined, 51–52; Maratha position as, 51–52 Ganpati festival, 138; decentralized nature of, 139; non-Brahmans’ community in public arena of, 178; songs from, 139 Ghashiram Kotwal (Vijaykar), 96 Ghorpade, Maloji, 44, 225n8 Glushkova, Irina: on Maharashtra dharma, 46, 226n13 Godse, D. G., 173, 197 Godse, Nathuram, 197 Godse, Vishnubhat, 96–97 Gordon, Stewart, 114 Grant Duff, James, 14; bakhars as source for work of, 77–78; complete history as objective of, 75–76; Elphinstone’s encouragement/guidance of, 74–75, 230n10; Maratha history work of, 72–77; Maratha kingdom’s demise debate stimulated by, 79; Marathas as central category of narrative of, 75–76, 230n13; Marathas as independent historical category in work of, 76–77; personal correspondence of, 76, 79; personal sympathy for Marathas of, 76; self-doubts of, 79; sources for work of, 77–80; suspicion of informants by, 78–79, 230n20; works in Indian history classes, 86 Guha, Ranajit: precolonial historical perspectives as characterized by, 30 Guha, Sumit, 47, 66, 199; on bakhars’ origin, 21–22 Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, 207 Gune, Vitthal T., 124 Gupte, K. T., 181 Gupte, Shantaram Gopal, 152

Index 301 Hadap, V. V., 153; on moral education, 164 Halbwachs, Maurice: on social nature of remembrance, 3 Hanuman Prasarak Vyayam Mandal, 191 Haug, Martin, 97 Hindu: Brahman natural leadership in society, 108, 238n47; communitarian politics, 191; communitarianism inculcated in akharas, 190; nation in novels, 160–61; nation protected by Maharashtra dharma, 134; nationalist politics, 18; revivalist extremist nationalism, 102; society, 113 Hinduism: freedom as essence of, 132; Maharashtra dharma as interpreted by militant, 133; Shivaji as example of racial/masculine, 143, 248n37 historical memory: as defined, 6–7; function of, 7; making of Maratha, 7–8; of Maratha military successes, 65–66; popular shared Marathi, 18, 219n54; powadas shaping/contributing to, 65–66; renewal of, through public activity, 66; as underwriter of Hindu nationalist politics, 18 historical research: institutional establishment under postcolonial Indian state of, 7 historiography: ambitions of bakhars, 35; bakhar features of, 39; bakhars as practice of, 37, 66–67, 204–5; bakhars v. modern, 203–4; Brahman control of, 125; broad contours of Marathi, 9–13; contours of practice of, 28–32; debates on, 15; emergence of modern Marathi, 81; institutional context of, 7; as lacking in precolonial India, 74; Marathas in larger colonial Indian, 93; Marathi, 9–13, 81, 94, 205–6; modern Indian, 7; narrative process of, 34–35; nationalist, 16; nature/practice of, 15; non-Brahman critique of Brahman-led nationalist, 180; novelists/playwrights contribution to notions of, 17; professional rigor brought to Maratha, 123; scholarly, 5, 8; social history of, 4–9; writers within positivist nationalist, 182–83 history: age for introduction to, 164–65; analytical/aatmik, 106; Chiplunkar on concept/practice of, 100; collective

identities expressed by instrument of, 80–81; collectivity in, 101; conceptual approach to writing, 73–74; consumers of, 207, 265n3; descriptive/bhoutik, 105; expressive detail in writing, 104; expressive/emotive power of, 102; historical fiction v., 154–57; of human thought, 106; as idea debates by Marathi writers/scholars in nineteenth century, 94; imagination and, 155, 175–76; imagined communities and, 109–13; of India as written by Indians, 101; invocation in public arena of, 138; Jambhekar on, 95; legitimate sources for early Indian, 99; literature v., 102, 105, 237n36; Marathas as independent category of, 76–77; Marathi print and, 82–85, 88; memory as antidote to, 3, 212n7; as modern/Western projected in colonial education, 14; myth dichotomy with, 5; national v. people’s, 107; nature of, 100; partisan, 178; philosophical, 73–74; as philosophical principle, 105; political, 100; politicization of, 5; popular, 4–5, 6, 215n21; as positivist discipline, 14; practicing v. knowing, 86–87; of pride, 109, 111–12; process of writing, 121; as rationalist philosophy, 14; reliable sources’ hierarchy for ancient Indian, 99–100; scholarly v. popular, 4–5; sources for, 99–100; teaching of, 87–88, 233n49; in textbooks as rewritten, 5; textual evidence tested as source material for modern, 99; in university, 85–89; Western ideas of, 85; Western liberal education changed scope of, 80; Western/modern positioning of, 88; writing, 73–74, 103–4, 106, 109; see also Maratha history History of the Mahrattas (Grant Duff ), 14; changes inaugurated by, 80; circulation/importance of, 80; conceptual approach to writing history as influencing, 74; generalizations of population’s character drawn in, 75; making as history workshop, 77; new historiographical discourse signaled by, 71; new Maratha social inaugurated by, 93; school use of, 80

Index 302 The History of British India (Mill), 73 Hobsbawm, Eric: on invented traditions, 3–4 Holkar, Ahilyabai, 12, 18; biographical essays on, 165–66; biography of, 166–67 Holkar, Malharrao, 11, 34, 49, 53, 55 identity: Maharashtra regional, 150, 209; of Shivaji, 46, 112; social commemorative practices relation to collective, 3–4; see also collective identities; Maratha identity India: hierarchy of reliable sources for ancient, 99–100; historiography in modern, 7; Marathi state ’s relationship with nation of, 127; precolonial, 7–8 Indology: institutional resources for researchers of, 118; as marginalized, 111; research in, 97; respect for practitioners of, 118, 242n86 Jambhekar, Bal Gangadhar Shastri, 84–85; career of, 95; on history, 95; on Shivaji’s administration policy, 96 Javalkar, Dinkarrao: songs by, 192 Jawalikar More Yanchi Chhoti bakhar, 43–44, 225n5 Jedhe, Keshavrao: songs by, 191 Jenkins, Richard, 73 Jijabai: in powadas, 59–60; as Shivaji’s guru, 187 Joshi, Ram, 63 Joshi, S. N.: on term bakhar, 21 kalajnana: time frame, 29, 222n30 Kanitkar, N. B., 153–54, 252n12 Karandikar, J. S.: Ramdas in narrative of, 185–86 Kaviraj, Sudipta, 162 Kelkar, N. C., 174 Keluskar, Krishnarao, 182 Khadilkar, Krishnaji Prabhakar, 170–71 Khare, Ganesh Hari, 121 Khare, V. V., 120, 149, 165, 255n48 Kielhorn, Franz: original manuscript idea of, 98, 235n12; textual methods of, 97–98 Kirtane, Neelkanth Janardan, 97 kirtans: political/nationalist, 147–48; powadas integrated into, 147

Kolhatkar, Chintamanrao, 174 Kulkarni, B. B., 173 Kulkarni, D. A., 56, 124 Kunte, Mahadev Moreshwar, 102 Laine, James W., 2, 46–47, 68 Lal, Vinay: on scholarly historiography, 5 language(s): in colonial education, 102–3; heritage of Marathi, 149; Marathi literature ’s promotion and, 91; of Marathi print, 84, 92; Rajwade’s approach to, 106; regeneration for Marathi, 104; study of, 92; see also Modi lavanis: desirable/controlled female sexuality v. illegitimate sexuality in, 65; in eighteenth century, 61; elite constraints on, 64–65; erotic idiom of, 65; in folk theater, 56; as performed, 56, 64; print of, 91–92; shahirs performing, 56; soldiers’ larger environment as recreated by, 64; warrior in, 64 Lele, Muktabai, 166–67 literary criticism: modern Marathi, 103 literature: bakhars in Marathi, 93; history v., 102, 105, 237n36; Marathi akhyan, 22; promoting Marathi, 91 Lokahitawadi. See Deshmukh, Gopal Hari Macaulay, Thomas, 104 Mackintosh, James, 73–74 Madhavgranth (Phandi), 62 Maharashtra: bodybuilding linked with nation building in, 181–89; Brahman jatis as dominating middle lass in, 82, 231n31; British government in, 71–74; centrality of Maratha narratives to contemporary politics of, 182; complete history of, 101; as formal state, 210; freedom as Hinduism’s essence in, 132; imagination of regional identity of, 150, 209; as linguistic region, 148–49; Maratha history in modern, 2; as militant leader/protector of Indian nation, 135; past’s presence in, 1; Ramdas/Shivaji representing two sides of traditions of, 130; Samyukta, 195–97; scholarship on, 9; as separate state, 195–96

Index 303 Maharashtra dharma, 13; anticolonial protests’ common space created by, 16; in bakhars, 69; Bhakti values represented by, 133, 134; in Bhausahebanchi bakhar, 49, 52–53, 55–56; bushido v., 190; character of, 133–35; cultural heritage of Maharashtra as, 137; as described, 52; Glushkova on, 46, 226n13; Hinduism embodied in, 132; Maratha struggle ’s meanings debated within, 128; meanings of, 128; militant Hindu interpretation of, 133; as political ideology protecting Hindu nation from Muslim invasion, 134; Rajwade on, 131, 132–33, 133, 246n14; reformist position on, 133 Maharashtra Mandal, 191 Maharashtra rajya, 46 Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad: Marathi language/literature interests promoted by, 91 Maharashtra University Committee, 122 Maharashtra Vyayam Shala, 191 Malcolm, John, 73; works in Indian history classes, 86 Malusare, Tanaji, 10, 57–60, 67, 145–47, 154, 159, 161, 165, 170, 175, 195, 201 Maratha history: archive for, 114–17, 124, 204, 241n73, 245n109; beginning of, 1; Brahman dominance protested against in, 177; Brahman v. non-Brahman visions of, 17; caste identity in, 177; Chhatrapati mela putting forward, 191–92; community’s present status based on contribution to, 182; contributions approach to, 179–83; in creation of Marathi identity, 2–3; as discursive field, 15; document access for writing, 116–17, 241n78; editing process of documents for archive of, 115–16, 241n73; Grant Duff ’s work with, 72–77; historiographical endeavor of scholar-publicists of, 118–19; historiography and, 9–13; ideological uses of, 143–44; information sources for, 109; language/linguistic pride in, 149–50; Marathi national/regional imaginations fueled by, 94; martial, 189–90; middle-class nationalists drew

on figures/themes from, 15–16; modern caste-based debates of, 11; in modern Mahashtra, 2; narratives of, 9, 201–2; nationalist interpretations of, 127–28; non-Brahman political position rooted in, 177; nonjudgmental approach in writing of, 109; in oral narrations, 198–99, 263n60; peasant life in, 179; as physically inscribed, 1; in politics, 1; positivist search for general truth about, 17; as produced, 124; program for new, 114; prominence/popularity of, 15; public activity related to, 139; Rajwade’s lead in establishing, 105, 237n35; reformist/moderate interpretation of, 128–29; region/nation relationship as identified in, 135; researchers as not affiliated with Bombay University, 120; as resource for anticolonial nationalism, 127; sources for, 105; voices in, 197–202 Maratha identity: in bakhars, 48; collective, 70; Maratha history in creation of, 2–3; military context of, 48–49; power and, 67–70; production of modern regional, 127 Maratha period: historical narratives of, 9; institutional structures of authority/exclusion among scholars working on, 119 Maratha power: in bakhars, 36–37, 44–45, 68–69; decline of, 96; identity and, 67–70; nature of, 41–43; powada as site representing, 63; in Sabhasad bakhar, 41; structures of, 16; successful establishment of, 129 Maratha state: Brahmanized values identified with, 47; Brahmans v. non-Brahmans in cultural landscape of, 82; as carved out, 10; centralizing process under Shivaji of, 42–43; colonialist discourse’s emergence on history of, 14; establishment of independent, 22, 33; expansion of, 10–11, 11, 217n45; ideological underpinnings represented in bakhars of, 69–70; Indian nation’s relationship with, 127; King/ Peshwa v. chiefs/lineages of, 40; language in imagination of, 148–50; Mughal state ’s complex relationship with, 68;

Index 304 Maratha state (continued): multiple sites of authority within, 40–41, 70; nature of power of, 41; Peshwyanchi bakhar showing growth of, 44–45; Shejwalkar’s critique of eighteenth-century, 123–24; svarajya of, 41 Marathas: ambiguous definition of, 193; Brahman dominance in life of, 179; English histories of, 72; identification of category of, 193; identity, 67–70; as independent historical category, 76–77; as India’s original nationalists, 16; in larger colonial Indian historiography, 93; Marathi v., 197; martial attributes of, 189; meaning/social composition of category of, 192–93; military behavior of, 51–52, 227n22; nationalist purposes use of, 142–43; non-Brahman protest of, 179; Panipat defeat of, 12, 123, 196; peasantry, 66; polemical style of language in historiographic discourse on, 121, 244n97; power structures of, 16; pride in past founding regional identity of, 195; prose, 15; as protectors of Mughal throne, 11; regional consciousness of, 127; regional culture of, 129; regional identity of, 150–51, 195; shahiri poetry increase under, 57; stereotype in British colonial discourse of, 68; term as used, 9–10, 216n32; as tribe v. caste, 193; women, 165–66 Marathas and the British (Kelkar), 174 Marathe, Kashinath: on novels, 152 Marathi historical fiction: as anticolonial nationalism vehicle, 151; anticolonial possibilities’ celebration in, 163; formulaic, 162, 170; gender relations in, 168, 256n57; history v., 154–57; history’s potential/possibilities explored in, 162–63; idealized templates of behavior in, 170; imaginative history through, 175–76; Muslims in, 163; pigeonholing of characters in, 163–64; popularity of, 163; reader expectation contributing to formulaic, 170–71; regional identity expressed by, 151; Shivaji as emulated in, 168; tradition/modernity negotiations

in Marathi society through, 151; see also cinema; novels; plays Marathi Sahitya Parishad, 122, 244n98 Marathmola: gendered cultural matrix fleshed out by, 65; term as used, 65 martyrs, 146–47 masculinity: colonial discourse raise anxieties about, 17 Masselos, Jim, 144 memory: as antidote to history, 3, 212n7; as authentic site of recollection, 206; category of, 3; Confino on, 4; as contested construction, 4; cultural history category of, 4; fatigue, 4; in power relations, 3–4; see also historical memory Menzies, Gavin, 4–5 Mill, James, 73 Mochangad (Gunjikar), 152 modernity: emergence of, 18 Modi: ban of use in public offices, 91, 234n56; as Marathi clerks’ handwriting script, 91 Moonje, B. S., 191 More, Chandrarao, 43–44, 225n5 More, Sadanand, 107 Morris, Henry, 103 Muslims: as foreign to Indian society, 18; in Marathi historical fiction, 163; political ideology protecting Hindu nation from invasion of, 134 Muzumdar, G. N., 119 Naik, Umaji, 175, 199–201, 264n68 Naregal, Veena, 81 nationalism: consciousness of, 101; influence of Western historiographic models on discourses of Indian, 8; Marathi historical fiction as vehicle for anticolonial, 151; politics of, 18; revivalist extremist Hindu, 102 nationalist(s): consciousness, 101; historiography, 16; Maratha history interpreted by, 127–28; Maratha history’s figures/ themes drawn on by middle class, 15–16; Marathas as India’s original, 16; powadas used by, 143–48; Ramdas in texts of, 131; Shivaji as icon of, 126; writings, 127

Index 305 Natu, Balajipant, 77 Nibandhamala (Chiplunkar), 100, 112–13 non-Brahman movement, 17, 117, 177 novels: as attracting/distracting reader from responsibilities, 152, 250n1; creativity by writers of historical, 156–57; general truth in historical, 157–58; Hindu/Indian nation as represented in, 160–61; historical, 152–53; historical task in writing, 157; history v. historical, 154–55; Marathi adaptations of English, 152; Marathi historical, 16–17, 155–56; past linked with present in historical, 158–59; rooted in ordinary life, 152; Shivaji’s relationship with father in historical, 168–69; social/religious reform topics in, 167–68; sources for historical, 156, 157; urge to rebel of young men in, 169; women as represented in Marathi, 161–62; women in, 168 Orme, Robert, 72 Padmanji, Baba, 112 Palekar, Bhagwantrao, 182; on Ramdas v. Shivaji, 186–87 Pangarkar, L. R.: on Ramdas, 184 Paramanand, Kavindra, 42 Parasnis, Aba, 77 Parasnis, Dattatraya Balavant, 117, 120 Pathare, Atmaram Moreshwar, 171 Patil, Nana, 147 Pawar, A. R., 124 Pendharkar, Bhalji, 175 Pendse, Lalji: on Shivaji’s principal project, 137–38 Perlin, Frank, 41 Peshwa, Nanasaheb: Maratha administration stabilized under, 12 Peshwai: Brahman status of, 11, 45; in caste debates of colonial period, 11; dissolution in Pune, 74; dominance, 11 Peshwyanchi bakhar: content of, 30; detail in text of, 31; as genealogical account of Peshwas, 34; historiographical ambitions in, 35; Maratha power as represented in, 36–37; Maratha state ’s growth shown

in, 44–45; Peshwa morality/adherence to dharma emphasized in, 45; Peshwas’ Brahman status emphasized by, 45; Peshwas’ history as narrated in, 21, 35–36, 220n9; Peshwas’ military valor depicted in, 45, 53–54 Phadke, Shankar Tatya, 96 Phandi, Anant, 62 Phillips, Mark, 104 Phule, Jotirao, 15, 82, 102, 122; autonomous history of pride envisioned by, 111–12; on Brahmans, 111; caste critique of, 179; myths reinterpreted by, 112, 239n58; powada as used by, 112; on Shivaji’s identity, 112 Pitale, D. M., 152–53 plays: Bajirao-Mastani romance theme of, 154; bridge between written and performance spheres, 174; censorship of, 174, 258n78; general truth in, 157–58; historical, 174–75; literalness of imagined community expressed through, 175; Marathi historical, 16–17, 153, 251n7; musical, 174; nationalist politics’ rise giving boost to, 153; for political expression, 174; popular understanding of history through historical, 174–75; Sambhaji as portrayed in, 171–73; in Shivaji festival, 154; Shivaji festival boosting writing of, 138; social themes of, 153–54; social/religious reform topics in, 167–68; structure of historical, 158; Tilakite politics associated with, 153–54; women in, 168 poetry: of Amar Shaikh, 197–98; bridge between written and performance spheres, 174; social-political importance of Marathi, 57; see also shahiri poetry politics: Hindu communitarian, 191; Maratha history in, 1 Potdar, Datto Vaman, 119; on non-Brahman critiques of Brahman historians, 122 powadas: battles commemorated in, 61; Chief rendered familiar in, 60; collective space of past narrated by, 13; as defined, 13; in eighteenth century, 61;

Index 306 powadas (continued): examples of, 57–64; historical memory shaped/contributed to by, 65–66; ideological function of, 60; integrated into kirtans, 147; Jijabai in, 59–60; Maratha patriotic fervor’s by-product/expression as, 56, 227n23; Maratha power represented at site of, 63; as mobilization tool in nationalist politics phase, 138; on nationalist martyrs, 146–47; in nationalist mobilization, 143–48; in pamphlets used for political activity, 144, 249n40; Phule ’s use of, 112; political success pride by, 57; printing of, 91–92; Pune ’s prosperity celebrated in, 63; religion in, 64; shahirs performing, 56; Shivaji as depicted in, 60; in Shivaji festivals, 143; singing in mobilization strategy, 144–47 power: of historical themes used for anticolonial protest, 140; nineteenth-century Brahman, 82, 231n32; see also Maratha power Prarthana Samaj: Marathi Bhakti philosophy invoked by, 110 pride: combating powerlessness, 101; history of, 109, 111, 112; linguistic, 149–50; powadas creating political success, 57 print: of bakhars, 92; Balbodh in, 91; of Chitnis bakhar, 92; eagerness v. content control of works in, 83; early history books in, 85; English works’ translation in Marathi, 84–85; history of Marathi, 88; ideas as transmitted by Marathi intelligentsia through, 14; languages used for, 84, 92; of lavanis, 91–92; Marathi, 82–85; of powadas, 92 Priolkar, A. K., 84 professionalization: in relation to commemorations of the past, 4, 213n13 prose: modernization of Marathi, 15; see also bakhars Quit India movement, 147 Rajputs: fighting practices of, 49–51; signaling military culture in Bhausahebanchi bakhar, 49, 226n19

Rajwade, Vishwanath Kashinath: on bakhars, 19; BISM established by, 117; on Brahman natural leadership in Hindu society, 108, 238n47; on chaturvarnya, 113; complete history sought by, 105–6, 106; on dating systems, 113; in establishing Marathi history, 105, 237n35; financial challenges of, 120–21; government help for history writing spurned by, 121; historical program of, 109; history v. literature for, 105, 237n36; ideas imparted by, 114, 240n65; individual research supported by, 120; language approach of, 106; on Maharashtra dharma, 131, 132–33, 246n14; on Marathas as leaders/protectors of Indian nation, 135; on Persian language’s influence on Marathi language, 149; positivism of, 106, 108; on Ramdas, 130, 131; reliable sources’ hierarchy established by, 115; society/institutions emphasis by, 108; on sources for Maratha history, 105; translations by, 105; on university system, 120, 243n89; on writing Maratha history, 105–6, 109 Rajyasanyasa (Gadkari), 171 Ramdas, 69; atmashakti message of, 190; authenticity of quotes from, 131; in Bhakti tradition, 133, 247n21; Brahman background of, 183; in Brahman caste ’s masculinity/nationalism context, 188–91; Brahman social leadership and, 186; Brahman v. non-Brahman writers debate over, 183; Brahman writers on, 184–85; caste order’s importance for discipline for, 183–84; in Chitnis bakhar, 46; as force behind Maratha freedom, 184–85; importance of, 183–88; institutional expression of, 184; interest in, 183–84; Marathi poets v., 131; in nationalist texts, 131; non-Brahman writers on interpretations of, 186; philosophy as Maratha zeitgeist, 131–32; Rajwade on, 130–32; Shivaji v., 186–87; traditions of Maharashtra represented by, 130 Rana Bhimadeva (Shirvalkar), 175 Ranade, M. G., 91, 116, 120, 128, 197; Bhakti as interpreted by, 129; on Bhakti

Index 307 movement, 130; petitions for saving Shivaji tomb by, 139 Rao, V. N., 8; on kalajnana, 29 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS): akharas in, 191; Brahman dominance and, 190 reform. See religious reform; social reform Rege, Sharmila: on erotic idiom of lavanis, 65 religion: colonialism bringing wider introspection in Marathi, 15; Maratha v. Mughal, 47–48; in powadas, 64; in Sabhasad bakhar, 41–42, 46; as transient concept, 106 religious reform, 110 Report on the Territories Conquered from the Peishwa (Elphinstone), 73 research. See historical research Review of the Hindu Empire of Maharashtra (Savarkar), 150 Rise of the Maratha Power (Ranade), 128, 197 RSS. See Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sabhasad bakhar (Sabhasad): achievements of, 26–27; as biographical narrative on Shivaji, 20, 25, 220n7; content of, 25–26; discursive concerns of, 43–44; Maratha power represented in, 41; Maratha state ’s establishment interpreted in, 33; religion in, 41–42, 46; Shivaji in, 42; task of, 25–26 Sabhasad, Krishnaji Anant, 20 Sahasrabuddhe, G. N.: on Maharashtra dharma, 190 Samyukta Maharashtra movement, 17; context of, 197; Marathi speakers united in, 208–9 Sankpal, Bapuji, 21 Sanshodhakacha Mitra (Khare): positivist method’s advances represented by, 121 Sardesai, Govind Sakharam, 119; on Shivaji’s principal project, 137–38 Sarkar, Jadunath, 119; on bakhars, 19; Bhat’s criticism of, 136–37; Shivaji as appraised by, 136 Sarkar, Sumit: on levels of historical awareness, 6 Sathe, Vasudev P., 158

Satkaryottejak Sabha: Brahman opinion and establishment of, 184 Savarkar, V. D., 103, 150, 199 scholarship: on Maharashtra, 9; on modern Indian historiography, 8 scribes: in bakhars, 37–38; world of, 37–39 shahiri poetry: bakhars content v. content of, 66–67; heroes/battles narrated in, 40; increase under Marathas, 57; Maratha warrior in, 63–64, 70, 228n36; performative form of, 63; recent events’ competing versions articulated in, 62–63; roots/transmission/consumption of, 56–57; in warrior-peasant culture, 63–64, 228n36; see also lavanis; powadas shahirs: famous, 61; lavanis performed by, 56; powadas performed by, 56 Shaikh, Amar: poetry of, 197–98 shakavalis: chronicles in form of, 29 Sharma, Vaijnath, 83 Shejwalkar, Tryambak S., 1, 120; critique by, 122–25; eighteenth-century Maratha state as critiqued by, 123–24; as iconoclastic, 124; nationalist historians critiqued by, 123; professional rigor brought to Maratha historiography by, 123; published in English journals and Marathi periodicals, 122–23, 124n104 Shirvalkar, Vasudeo Ranganath, 175 Shiv Sena, 1–2 Shivabharata (Paramanand): Shivaji as portrayed in, 42 Shivaji. See Bhosale, Shivaji Shivaji and His Times (Sarkar), 136 Shivaji festival: anticolonial movement and, 138; anticolonial sentiment mobilized by Maratha symbols in, 141; committee, 143; creation of, 138–39; decentralized nature of, 139, 248n32; initial phase of, 140; non-Brahmans’ community in public arena of, 178; as physical activity arena, 188–89, 261n31; plays at, 154; politicization of cultural forms through, 138; powada in, 143; region/nation in, 138–43 Shree Shiva Chhatrapati (Sathe), 158 Shulman, David, 8

Index 308 SLSS. See Students’ Literary and Scientific Society social institutions: chaturvarnya as, 113; leading individuals within society v. individual action shaped by, 107; nation and, 108; see also caste(s) social reform, 110 Sohoni, Krishnaji Vinayak, 21 songs: of Chhatrapati mela, 194–95; from Ganpati festival, 139; by Javalkar, 192; by Jedhe, 191; Maratha sovereignty lost by Peshwas in, 192; non-Brahmans performing, 192–93 Sontheimer, Gunther: Dhangars collected by, 198 sports. See akharas; talim mandals Students’ Literary and Scientific Society (SLSS), 87 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 8 talim mandals, 188, 260n28 Tamasha, 56 Tanaji Malusare (Bhilawadikar), 154 Textures of Time (Rao): kalajnana in, 29 Thackeray, Prabodhankar, 196; on Prabhu community, 181–82; on the writing of Maratha history, 177–78 A Threat to Shivaji (Tipnis), 172

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 103, 113; anticolonial politics platform created by, 138–39; on Bijapur general’s murder by Shivaji, 130–31; as political leader, 138; prison sentence of, 141; Shivaji festival created by, 138–39; Shivaji’s tomb memorial project taken up by, 139–40 Tipnis, V. N., 172 university. See Bombay University Ushahkaal (Apte), 152, 158 Vaidya, Chintaman, 156 Vijaykar, Moroba Kanhoba, 96 Vividh Dnyan Vistaar, 112; bakhars brought to public sphere by, 92; debating practice/meaning of history in, 92; establishment of, 91 warrior: ideal, 48–55; in lavani, 64; peasant, 63–64, 228n36; in shahiri poetry, 70 widows: remarriage, 164 Wink, André, 41 women: biography of, 165–67; education rights for, 17; educational/legal opportunities brought by colonial rule for, 17; Maratha, 165–66; in novels, 161–62, 168; in plays, 168