The New History of Marathas – Multiple Dimensions

Every Marathi child grows up listening to the stories of Shivaji and his glory. Every Marathi once in his or her lifetime goes through this phase: Who cares the condition today; we once collected tribute from Delhi and made the mighty Moguls rub their noses. I remember having been told stories of bravery of Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Netaji Palkar and astuteness of Mahadji Shinde and Nana Phadnavis. But what lies underneath?

In the beginning

Gordon points out that the attempts to write history are as old as the history itself. The documents he used for reference are known as bakhar. A bakhar is a document written by administrators/writers which serves as a chronology of events glorifying the sovereign or an important family or person. Though the bakhar is in important source of information, many times it ends up telling the story of only one side and tends to be adulatory. However, Gordon points out that the bakhars still are a good source of history and events and particularly refers to Sabhasadachi Bakhar and 91-Kalami Bakhar.

In more modern context, there are two distinct groups of historians in India. The first group believes, everything British is correct, the second group believes just the opposite of that. The conquering colonialists had to justify their conquest and prove everything native was sophistic. Stewart Gordon is presented this dilemma and delves deep in to the psyche of the British historians and Indian historians. The observations are poignant. Where as, British historians, like Grant Duff, were interested in showing the British supremacy, the Indian counterparts, like VK Rajwade et al, were trying to show the opposite.

History or Hagiography

The Maratha period happens at a very interesting time. It begins with the end of the Muslim/Mogul stronghold and ends with the beginning of British establishment. Many consider this period as ruled truly by the sons of the soil and hence swaraj! For some, Shivaji is a divine figure but for others nothing more than a glorified rebel.

After the defeat of the Marathas, the British administrators started writing the reports on the conquered territories and this slowly became the Maratha history. Grant Duff, the first administrator of conquered territories and Mountstuart Elphinstone, to whom the education system as we know today may be attributed, contributed to chronicling the history of the Marathas. Grant Duff writes three volumes long discourses on political affairs, wars, factions, wins and losses. But he does not spend any time on social or economic aspects. According to Gordon, he made every effort to highlight the smallest of the failures of the Marathas and celebrated the brave acts of the British. With this background, the Marathi intellect found it important to prove Grant Duff wrong. Gordon takes example of MG Ranade and VK Rajwade. Ranade, in his book the Rise of Maratha Power, established the “political, social and religious renaissance of the Marathas”. The nationalistic fervor was born out of the resistance to the “outsider” Muslim powers. Gordon observes that parallels to the emerging resistance to the British can be found in the movement of the seventeenth century (and apparently not the other way round)!

Even though the initial research has gone in to proving each other wrong, it led to considerable collection and analysis of documents not just from the central government and families but also from the regional governments and families ruling the provinces. However, Gordon points out that recently, the focus has shifted from proto-nationalism against Muslim rulers and British conquest to relationship between economic and political processes, trends and cycles. Historians today, are more interested in finding out the profound effect the Maratha “polity” had on revenue administration, law, education, trade patterns, migration and economic and social make up.