Customer Reviews

Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India

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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I read with dismay about the ban on this book and the vandalism at BORI, with the loss of so many irreplaceable historical documents and treasures.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 New York Review of Books analyzes the background to this book and the controversy reflected in these reviews and in its issue of April 17, 2005, with a long analysis of contending interpretations of Indian History.

The first thing to said in a review of this book is that most of the other reviwers are not responding to its contents at all. Indeed, one must doubt whether most of them ever bothered to read it. So, I will begin by assuring the readers of this review that I have in fact read the book and have done so as an educated layman, which is to say, in one of the ways that the author intended and foresaw.
This book is in fact a work of scholarship, which is not to say that it is a documentary history of the reign of Shivaji or a biography of that great Maharashtrian king. Rather, the work is, simply stated, a literary analysis of the texts that have, over a three hundred year span narrated and re-narrated the life and legend of Shivaji. The author is a Sanskritist by training and also knows Marathi. Accordingly he has acess to and has actually read the various entextualizations extending from the time of Shivaji's own life through the 18th century hagiographers of the Maharashtrian poet saints to the works of nationalists such as Lala Rajput Rai and Justice Ranade. This reading distinguishes him from most of the reviewers here, who, one seriously suspects, have no such familiarity with the materials in question (though one reviewer implies otherwise). The book itself is, in truth, an unobjectionable, if somewhat naive and at times spotty, work of discourse analysis in a now long familiar mode. This fact is wholly ignored by the reviewers here, who, if they have in fact read the book, are incapable of making the distinction between such a mode of scholarship, which is fundamentally preoccupied with the ideological preoccupations of source material and/or of historiography, and is not itself an instance of history writing per se. Thus the charge that this is not history is beside the point entirely, as is the reference to Laine's "thesis" which is supposed to be, we can only assume, the "claim" that Shivaji's parentage is in question. No such claim is ever made in this book. Rather, the claim is made that the ideological construction of Shivaji as the examplar of various virtues according to the predilections of the particular text precludes the possibility of those texts analyzing the reasons for Shivaji's father not being his political or military ally, not being present for much of his youth, and not designating him his heir. (For these latter claims, Laine does provide substantial historical corroboration established through the usual historicist methods of sifting the sources, privileging those most contemporaneous when there is no obvious reason not to do so, seeking corroboration from sources arising from other institutional locations with differing ideological preocupations, etc.). It is in this regard, and clearly and explicitly so, that Laine retells a joke (most likely told by a Sadavshivpethi brahman, though Laine does not say so) which does in fact cast aspersion on Shivaji's mother's mother by claiming her son to have been conceived out of wedlock. As for the contemporary "veneration" of Shivaji's mother, etc. by (some of) the Maratha community, a veneration said to have been insulted by Laine's work, such matters cannot ultimately guide any scholarly enterprise, any more than a serious scholarly analysis of early Christian writings or the Vedas or the Koran and hadith can be guided by any such concerns. If people believe that scholarship writing on this subject should confine itself to "the achievements of the great hero who never lost a battle, who was a great social reformer; [sic] who had technological foresight, who gave impetus [sic] to Hindu nationalism and instilled confidence that even in the face of Muslim brutalities [such as?], a Hindu king to be coroneted [sic] with full rites" then such people don't know what scholarship is and ought instead to confine themselves to historical novels designed to reinforce their sense of identity. In short, then, Laine's book is just another book, one that makes an able, if flawed, contribution by undertaking a detailed ideological analysis of a single theme within Indian literary practice. The controversy that has arisen around the book, which has resulted in considerable vandalism, assaults, censorship, and unconstrained intimidation of persons in Pune has also had as one of its many deleterious effects, the spoliation of Dr. Laine's career, who, one expects, will not be undertaking further research in Maharashtra anytime soon. People such as those who have written many of the reviews here are respojnsible for this, as for the effects of their "veneration".

Under all the din of Shivadharma, something the good American Professor of Religious Studies hadn't reckoned with before he wrote a quick-fix book for no-less than OUP, it seems that the subalterns, illiterate or otherwise, are questioning the privilege of 'Indologists' and other scholars to make careers while riding roughshod over their living heritage and culture. An important issue not to be dismissed out of hand, as those concerned over here would love to do. The message is loud and clear, don't play with the sensitivities of the host cultures. We do bear witness to eruptions of fringe elements all over the world from time to time; but when the underlying issues are serious, or dear to the heart, you end up demonising a whole culture that is not in the fringe group!

Having said that, we come to the book, where Prof. Laine, unfortunately exhibits a serious tendency to put his foot in his mouth almost everytime that he opens it to speak! He relies on altogether untenable arguments, culled from obscure sources quite out of the context (often from western scholars), even while ignoring a vast body of historical evidence that may be contrary to his half-baked thesis, to serve us what we may call, yes, his unoriginal 'cracks' on the Shivaji story.

For example, the Ramdas issue. As every Indian knows, being non-vegetarian does not automatically bar one from the discipleship of vegetarian Gurus. Then again, there are Gurus themselves who may be non-vegetarian. We don't practice apartheid in matters of discipleship. Nor casteism, as even elementary knowledge of the Varkari tradition reveals. Ramdas himself has composed the most popular aratis in Maharashtra to Ganesh and Shiva as well as to Rama-Krishna. Being Vaishnav does not prevent people from worshipping Ganesh, Shiva, the Goddess or other deities and vice versa. Rama himself worshipped Shivalingams at various times, and Shiva is known to do mantrajapa of Rama's name! A Guru's absenteeing from a royal coronation is not proof of his rejection of a chela. Gurus are known to follow their own rules. Wanderers by definition, they are not on the keep of monarchs. Moreover, in his famous treatise, Dasbodh, (like his famous letter addressed to Shivaji) Ramdas has composed inspired verses on the great liberator, indicating that Shivaji was in fact a divine incarnation embodied to bring the rule of dharma in the ravaged land! [And let us remind the Professor of his stupidity in questioning Shivaji's role as the liberator and national hero, when this same fact is asserted, in the light of the present controversy, by revered Muslim politicians and scholars like Abdul Rehman Antulay and Rafiq Zakaria!]

Similarly, despite his claim of familiarity with the state, the author is unaware that for centuries, it is the Ganesh festival that has reined supreme in Maharashtra, which is why Tilak chose it as a vehicle for mass mobilization against colonial exploitation. Dr. Laine's egotistic monologues on the subject would have been rendered unnecessary had he developed sufficient openness to simply ask people in a straightforward manner, as a researcher and a scholar, rather than to impose upon the readers his own presumptuous and convoluted critiques! Unless he wrote only for those even less knowledgeable of the ground reality than himself, in which case the OUP should have restricted the sale to westerners only, with the injunction of "subject matter highly injurious to the peace of mind of natives and/or primitives"...

Then again, horror of horrors, the presiding deity of Maharashtra, Tulja Bhawani, of the 52 most sacred shaktipeeths in India, is castigated by the learned Christian Professor as a 'low caste deity' and a 'non-vegetarian Goddess'. This alone is enough to cause further rioting in other parts of India and Nepal, among an emotional people who take their religion seriously!

His citing an obscure Persian document without giving sufficient detail, to assert that Shivaji's granddaughters were married to Muslim nobles is another instance of irresponsible scholarship, thoroughly ignorant as the writer is of the strict rules governing marriage as a sacred tie among Hindus, and especially the royalty!

Then again, his contemptuous reference to Maharaja Sayajirao III of Baroda, as someone 'with even more questionable bloodlines' is simply additional proof of a loose screw that the Professor should get examined without further delay. He is blissfully unaware that the personage in question was one of the most respected rulers of India, who did much for the cause of education of women and also for the downtrodden in India, at a time that women were not even allowed to vote in the USA! Case enough for the descendants of Baroda to sue the writer publisher duo for serious libel! A concern that may be equally shared by other royalty, including the descendants of Shivaji Maharaj from Satara, Kolhapur and Thanjavur, especially, of Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur, for equally dismissive remarks.

There are innumerable instances of Prof. James Laine's skewed approach to the subject, and the question that really begs answer is as to what made the OUP collaborate on this venture, so full of utter disrespect to the leaders, culture and society of Maharashtra. While there are champions galore for such irresponsible and insidious scholarship in the name of freedom of speech, should not responsible people also uphold the right of book buyers to hold the writer accountable for the uncalled-for damage to the 'native psyche', in the blatant pillorying of its society and so many of its greatest nation-builders? The latter includes Lokmanya Tilak, whom Mahatma Gandhi held up as his inspiration in the struggle for freedom!

And even then, transparent truth would not have wrought the kind of denouement that this drivel has served up! It is the falsification of truth, and of the living reality of the people out there that must be condemned in this kind of a 'pseudo-intellectual' exercise. For all his self-proclaimed pious intentions, Prof. Laine has merely cast stones at 'the Shivaji story' on the basis of insufficient scholarship and then too with a highly prejudiced mind, to merely demonise all of Maharashtra. A contradiction couldn't get curiouser, in the light of the proof offered by the book itself!

I wish Laine had gone beyond the legends and myths and stuck to the actual history. He has not done that. He has failed to point out with emphasis that Shivaji like so many other Kings wanted power and territory which he was successful in doing. He was never against Muslims although he may have been agianst Muslim Kings. Even if it was some other Hindu if not Afzal Khan, Shivaji would have still gone with tiger claws to a peace meeting and tore him in the embrace. We cannot judge his deeds now. His top officials were all Muslims even his commander in chief and the court language was Persian and definitely never Marathi. In his time Hindu Muslim was never an issue.

It was only when the British took over they exploited the religious differences and followed the policy of divide and rule and most unfortunately The Congress party did the same and introduced communalism that was the cause of so many problems. The major problems have been partition of the country, invasion of Hyderabad and the Kashmir problem all based on The Hindu Muslim issues. Laine unfortunately could not do justice to history.

I have read this Lainebaby's book from cover to cover. Legerdemaine! But simply not skilled enough. Why would anyone go to all the trouble to buy this piece of hash? Seems like his Grudge 1 is against Hindu immigrants in the US bringing up their children on the unifying and heroic legends of Shivaji from their homeland... as is being told on too many websites, even with colorful illustrations, mind you! Papa Laine doesn't approve of this. He particularly doesn't like the idea of Babasaheb Purandare presenting his Janta Raja show on Shivaji on the Mall in Washington DC. He doesn't like Lata Mangeshkar collaborating with Purandare. He doesn't approve of the Brihan Maharashtra Mandal, an organization for Maharashtrians living in North America, or its official website. He disapproves of Madhukar Joshi,, when the latter makes contemporaneous references to Shivaji as a successful manager, who in fact set up the earliest Mall in history on Fort Raigad, where you 'drove through on horse-back'. Takes the sheen off Texans... Grudge 2 is that it was Shivaji against Islamic invaders. The story of repeated destruction of Hindu temples and widespread pillage and rapine doesn't go well with his own cracks. Anyway, it is not history that he is here bothered about, see? He just wants to take the shine off Janta Raja. Makes one wonder what the BMM (and BMMOnline.Org) has done to incur so much of a tantrum from JL, as an American and a Christian. He doesn't accept the record that Shivaji's army was in fact a crucible of secular Indians fighting colonial rule, and it included adherents of various castes and sects, including indigenous Muslims. He puts forth a seemingly psecular argument of where should the descendants of Islamic invaders look, why they got no place in this on-going telling and retelling of an everlasting legend? Fair justice, since Papa Laine doesn't want to study Urdu, Persian or Arabic to study the legends of Akbar, Afzal Khan, Aurangzeb or Tipu Sultan. Nor does Papa wish to visit the lands of his forefathers to take a scimitar to the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon, Gaul or Nordic tales of bravery that continue through even more spectacular efforts in say, Hollywood. Or even Star Wars. Better to delete an irritating piece of Maharashtrian history. Papa will first attack native historians on trumped up charges, to show how their caste affinities prevent them from being objective, unlike the colonial and neo-colonial myth-makers who are descended into Indology pure and milk-white! Papa stoops very low, to burn in his own sorry version, in a no-holds barred attack on the main pillars of the Shivaji legend. No, he is not telling a new story; he is just taking a few cracks at the old one. And to hell with history. He wants to have his own cracks immortalized and not the original story. In doing this, he gets adequate support from quislings who will sell their own mothers to the firang for a few dollars. Papa meets his match in the Sambhaji Brigade, who are equally unschooled to the niceties of intellectual give-and-take. Amen

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

Shivaji is considered by many as the Greatest Maratha that ever graced this planet, but what in real is it about Shivaji that makes him an icon of outstanding proportions at least within the Marathi population? This book is not just a biographical account of Shivaji's military and personal life, but more importantly it is an account of the stupendous growth of Shivaji's image as a great warrior in the 18th and 19th century Maharashtra. This means that Shivaji's image gained more fame after his death in 1680 than while he was alive. Many other great Marathas including the Peshwas accomplished prominence on the national scene after the passing away of Shivaji, yet it is Shivaji who manages to capture the distinction in history as the greatest Maratha. After briefly documenting Shivaji's life, the author spends more space in rationalizing the growth of Shivaji's image as a national hero and as a defender of Hinduism. This makes this book a good study in sociology in conjunction with the folklore that has been instrumental in constructing the legend of Shivaji. It is the personal life of Shivaji, as documented in this book that has managed to draw the attention of critics and readers alike. Although I wouldn't use my review to divulge some of the rarely known facts about Shivaji's personal life, I would at least say that the author in his attempt to relate such facts has relied on good sources, and in some instances he is honest enough to consider them as merely speculative.

I would not give single star to this book, but thats the lowest rate you can give. Completely inaccurate history of King Shivaji and his Legacy is written in this book. If your read archives of News papers in Maharashtra, India during the time period Lane was there to do incomplete and false "research" on this topic, you will understand how shallow his work was and how many anti-maratha Brahmins mis-leaded Lane about Life of King Shivaji.
If you are interested in Unbiased life story of King Shivaji, please read "Shivaji the Great by V.D. Katamble". Or more simple, just read article about him on wikipedia. Its excellent source of information and its free.