Who Was Shivaji? Part -1

Summarising Who was Shivaji? book in couple of parts keep watch on this blog to read more about King Shivaji.

In time, and due to generations of collected memories fashioned by vested interests and ideology, fact and fiction become inseparable in out love for our heroes and our hatred for our villains.

In the haste to identify with the heroes of our history and alienate the villains from this process of identification we forget that love and hatred both can be, and ofter are, irrational.

Alexander becomes a champion of Hellenic and Western civilisation whereas Changez Khan is portrayed as a blood thirsty marauder in dominant narrative of history which shape our minds from a tender age.

Shivaji, the founder of the medieval "Maratha" kingdom in the 17th century is not an exception to the tendency of nationalist history, which must seek heroes to justify itself against the enemies of the nation.

In 17th century Mughal, Portuguese and English sources suggest that he was seen as a formidable leader in South Western India during his lifetime by his friends and foes alike. 

By the late 17th and early 18th century, Shivaji's name has become the generic name of the Marathi Speakers who opposed rising English power rising on Western coast of Maharashtra, though Shivaji himself never fought with the English.

By the time the British soldier, administrator and self taught scholar James Grant Duff published the first comprehensive history of the Marathas in 1826, Shivaji was already a household legend in the Maharashtra if not the whole of India.

Shivaji was made an icon of pan-India(basically means Presence across Nation. It is a term that includes almost everything that is spread or related to India.) Hindu nationalism by the nationalist historiography and movement which developed in reaction to colonialism.

Part-2 Coming Soon...