With the Maharashtra Assembly elections round the corner and close on the heels of a controversy over the collapse of a Shivaji statue in Sindhudurg, a war of words has broken out between the BJP and the Congress after Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis claimed that former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru insulted the Maratha king in his book, “The Discovery of India”.
This is the second time in as many months that Fadnavis has brought up the matter to counter the Opposition’s criticism over the collapse of the 35-foot statute at Rajkot Fort that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unveiled last year. The row over the statue has the potential to hurt the Mahayuti alliance given the almost divine status of the Maratha king in Maharashtra and the key role he plays in shaping the Maharashtrian identity.
On Saturday, responding to the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) attacks over the statue collapse, Fadnavis said, “The agitation (over the statue collapse) is purely political. The MVA and Congress have never respected Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Nehru ji insulted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in The Discovery of India. Will Congress and MVA apologise for it?” He also accused the Congress of spreading falsehood by claiming Shivaji looted Surat.
Last month, days after Fadnavis first raised the matter, BJP leader Narayan Rane said Shivaji had looted Surat. “I am not a historian. But from whatever I have read, heard, and known from historian Babasaheb Purandare, ‘Shivaji Maharaj ni Surat la loot keli (Shivaji Maharaj had looted Surat),’” he said.
However, a quick reading of “The Discovery of India” shows that Nehru showered praises on the Maratha king and criticised Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb for “undoing his predecessors’ legacy”.
“Shivaji, born in 1627, was the ideal guerilla leader of hardened mountaineers and his cavalry went far and wide, sacking the city of Surat, where the English had their factory, and enforcing the chowth tax payment over distant parts of the Mughal dominions. Shivaji was the symbol of a resurgent Hindu nationalism, drawing inspiration from the old classics, courageous, and possessing high qualities of leadership. He built up the Marathas as a strong unified fighting group, gave them a nationalist background, and made them a formidable power that broke up the Mughal empire,” Nehru wrote.
The former PM also wrote that Aurangzeb “failed to understand the present and the immediate past … and tried to undo what his predecessors had done”.
“A bigot and an austere puritan, he was no lover of art or literature. He infuriated the great majority of his subjects by imposing the old hated jezia poll tax on the Hindus and destroying many of their temples. He offended the proud Rajputs who had been props and pillars of the empire. In the north he roused the Sikhs, who, from being a peaceful sect representing some sort of synthesis of Hindu and Islamic ideas, were converted by repression and persecution into a military brotherhood. Near the west coast of India, he angered the warlike Marathas, descendants of the ancient Rashtrkutas, just when a brilliant captain had risen among them,” Nehru wrote.
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On Marathas, the former PM wrote, “Warren Hastings wrote in 1784, ‘The Marathas possess, alone of all the people in Hindustan and the Deccan, a principle of national attachment, which is strongly impressed on the minds of all individuals of the nation, and would probably unite their chiefs, as in one common cause, if any danger were to threaten the general state.’ Probably this national sentiment of theirs was largely confined to the Marathi speaking area. Nevertheless, the Marathas were catholic in their political and military system as well as their habits, and there was a certain internal democracy among them. All this gave strength to them. Shivaji, though he fought Aurangzeb, freely employed Muslims.”
Responding to Fadnavis’s remarks, Congress leader Pawan Khera said Nehru had written to historian P R Devgirikar to seek references on Shivaji and had corrected some of the inaccuracies in the book in its second edition. “Nehru accepted his mistake and made corrections as he had written the first edition from prison without adequate resources,” Khera said.