Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India [Hardcover]

This is not so much a review of the book as my take on the controversy surrounding it and some of the comments in the other reviews on Amazon. Yes, I've read the book. Yes, it's silly in parts. But nothing to get so upset about....

I read with dismay about the ban on this book and the vandalism at BORI, with the loss of so many irreplaceable historical documents and treasures. This is Indian history that was lost forever through senseless destruction, and Indians are the poorer for it. It's a shame that a democracy has to resort to book banning; and so readily produces mindless mobs who wantonly destroy priceless history. Democracy can't exist without the freedom of speech, including speech you consider to be wrong or contrary to your beliefs.

That said, this book is an ill-assorted compendium of half-digested facts and speculation, without any attempt at rigorous scholarship. I know the author has since explicitly stated that it is not meant to be historical; it is in fact a collection of stories about Shivaji -- some historical and documented, others that he heard from his buddies over a cup of tea in Pune. The trouble is that most people *do* see it as a factual account (with authority conferred by the credentials of the author and the Oxford University Press). To some extent, it is the fault of the author for not being sufficiently explicit to begin with, but then again, he probably did not expect such scrutiny from the public.

No one knows the truth except the author himself, but I really do not think he set out deliberately to demean Hinduism or to defend Islam. The hints of cultural smugness, his confidence in the interpretations of Western rather than Indian scholars, and the discussion (funny and inept though it may be) of why Indian scholars might be biased in their accounts, are probably also not deliberate. It is common practice to assume that someone who has nothing invested emotionally in the culture or religion under study is more impartial. This viewpoint ignores any biases that the scholar may bring with him from his own culture, but the assumption is not inherently demeaning or mischievous.

I see more prosaic explanations. First, there is this trend in the West to introduce ambiguity into *all* history. All history was written by humans, who no doubt had their own biases and motives -- so all history is suspect. All history, that is, except physical, archeological evidence. But that doesn't really tell us who the heroes were, and who the villains. I'm sure a healthy skepticism is good for research. Sometimes though, and this book comes across as an example, it is carried to an extreme, resulting in a very flexible history where one man's speculations are as good as another's documented facts; and who cares about the difference anyway so long as you tell a good story.

That brings me to the second reason. Aside from getting brownie points from fellow scholars for being fashionably ambiguous, it also opens up a popular mass-market for your books. Many of the scholarly books that score big with the lay public do so not because of their originality or scholarship, but because they tell a lurid and exciting tale. And anyone who thinks that "scholarly" authors like James Laine didn't have this market in mind is kidding himself. They check their Amazon sales rank as often as any newbie novelist.

The book indeed shows no sensitivity towards Hindu beliefs or culture, but why is that so strange. It was written by a Christian, who at the very least, must believe that Hindus are deluded and must be brought into the fold. By the nature of Christianity (or Islam, for that matter), you do people a favor when you chip into their heathen beliefs and soften them up to accept your God. This is hard for Hindus to understand on an emotional level, since Hindus are typically born into Hinduism, not converted. They have no experience of the missionary-conversion zeal, except as it was done to them by Muslims and Christians.

My suggestion is, get used to it. As India modernizes and becomes part of the global economy, more world attention will be focused on it. You will see much more of this kind of attention, and banning books or destroying manuscripts only gets bad press. Indian historians and intellectuals have their own accounts to give. These are valuable accounts, largely unknown to the West. A century's worth of respectibility and authenticity has attached itself to the interpretations of dead white colonial men. It can't be dislodged in a day, and surely never by book bans and mob violence.

The fundamental confusion is synthesized in the sub-title. James W. Laine attests to a cultural crossroads in India where two cultures were grappling wirh one another in terms of being at times comprehensive and at times confrontational.

Generally. looking in on a situation from the outside, without being part of it, or being within it, is not conducive to an understanding of human relationships since humans in a time/place frame have their own rationales and it is questionable that "objectifying" them is going to make them any more accessible. Only conceptual arrogance can convince otherwise: We cannot oblige everyone to think the way we do. In other words, our terms are not the only ones to think in. "Our" traditions and "our" rationales, talking of the U.S.A., could easily become the laughing stock of the world. In Studies in Classic American Literature, apparently suppressed in 1923, the year of its publication, D.H. Lawrence does a good job of it. He argues that hypocrisy, ably portrayed in the works of Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, and others, will be the seed of our destruction.

I believe that the purpose of Laine's thesis crumbles when he confuses the thesis of historical perfection with human frailty. The imperfection of human beings is all too well known. Lain recurs to his youthful miscomprehension of Davy Crockett as a regional or national hero seen as a villian, he assures us, in the eyes of Mexican status quo. And evidently the scenario does present confrontational issues that, however, cannot be resolved in terms of pseudo terminology brought into existence by contemporary situations, e.g. "Anglos as Illegal immigrants," (pp.89-90). -- Both of which terms belong in the XXth and XXIst centuries and can only be applied retoactively to create conceptual inaccuracy.

Riots? Destruction? have to be seen as an indispensable reaction to intrusive arrogance. (Look at what happened in Los Angeles in 1992 when the wrongdoers were whitewashed.)

The really muddy part of Laine's presentation becomes quagmire when he talks about being allowed "to entertain certain unthinkable thoughts." (p.90,2nd paragraph).

Shivaji appears to have risen above personal limitations to represent a non personal ambition of unity for his people and shouldered the responsibility of guiding and governing them by their own ideals and princibles. In spite of his recurrent cynicism Laine provides the answer he is seeking in his quote from Sivabharata (p.98):

all men formerly fearful

now reached their goals

Certainly that would not have occurred had Shivaji not liberated the nation.

A more complete rating would be:

Content- 4 stars, Style- 2 stars, Viewpoint- 0 stars.

The main thesis of this book is that history is bunk and that the writing of history is a modern attempt to recreate the past to mirror our own perceptions of the present. In a supreme irony the author does not realize he has fallen in his own net. The book sets out to rpove that the Hindu Nationalists have stolen Shivaji, the king of the Marathas, and made him into a legend in order to be anti-Muslim. But the true story of Shivaji was supposedly different. According to this book Shivaji was a diveristy loving, multi-cultural, moral relativist and perhaps even a secular-humanist, who loved Islam and didn't really care about Hinduism. It is nice to project our own modern loves into the past but nothing could be further from the truth.

Shivaji was a warrior king who desired to assert the independence of his people, Hindus, from a colonial power, Mughal Muslims. He was a freedom fighter. If he was tolerant, that was by accident. He was not 'Davy Crocket' as the author tries to paint him. Legends about him don't abound with him fighting bears, but rahter with him waging a war of independence. The documents, both Muslim and Hindu, attest to the authenticity of his life. Sometimes modern historians should be mature enough to accept that some legends are real, they arn't all cynical manipulations by modern politics.

Seth J. Frantzman