what do you thing is the author s opinion about shivaji? which lines tell you this?
Answers
The warrior king Chattrapati Shivaji (Photo: Advait Supnekar)The warrior king Chattrapati Shivaji (Photo: Advait Supnekar)When a force as refractory and ungovernable as Maharashtra’s Sambhaji Brigade sets itself against a nonagenarian scholar, more than just the scholar in question need to be concerned. This, after all, is one of our worst prototypes in the business of cultural surveillance and censorship. Notoriety came to the Brigade in 2004 after they destroyed 18,000 books and 30,000 manuscripts at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. The provocation was a few lines on Shivaji’s parentage in a book by a till-then obscure western scholar, James Laine. And what proceeded involved vandalism, the blackening of faces, and yet another concession of intellectual space to those able to make threats of violence and to carry them into action.But Babasaheb Purandare, the latest target of this group, is probably aware that the origins of their grievances are hardly contemporary. Purandare is considered one of the foremost historians of Shivaji’s life and work, to the extent that his romanticised renditions have earned him the popular title, Shiv Shahir (‘Shivaji’s bard’). His critics, though, find in his work a heavy pro-Brahmin (and equally contentious anti-Muslim) tilt. This is why the award to him of the Maharashtra Bhushan for his research on the 17th century king has come under fire now.This heavily contested symbolism of Shivaji has been a battle entrenched enough to directly affect Maharashtra politics—Purandare is simply the most recent excuse for an ominous public display. Within basic parameters of reverence, Shivaji is a plastic concept that is to different people different things. The real issue, then, is about which groups can ‘claim’ his memory with the greatest authority. In this context, the writing of history decides what ironies of the past may be celebrated and what are denied. All so that political contingencies today can be aligned into a linear trajectory of ‘tradition’ and meaning.
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