Who Was Shivaji?

“A lot has been written about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj… In spite of this, one cannot say for sure that the image of Shivaji and his times emerging from this and as embedded in popular imagination is consistent with the historical truth.”These are the words of Govind Pansare, a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and public intellectual from Kolhapur, Maharashtra, who was shot on February 16, 2015 and passed away four days later. This book is an English version of Pansare’s Shivaji Kon Hota? (1988), translated from Marathi by Uday Narkar (translator, professor, television producer and activist from Kolhapur), and published by the Pune-based group Lokayat, Pune, and Socialist Party (India).The book attempts to clear several ‘misconceptions’ about the 17th century Maratha king’s legacy – that he was a protector of the Hindu religion, hated Muslims, and discriminated on the basis of caste. Pansare writes that contemporary perceptions of Shivaji obscure his ‘uniqueness’ as a king who reined in the feudal authority of the land-owning Kulkarnis, Patils, Deshmukhs and Jagirdars over the exploited peasants or ryots.Shivaji abolished the old fiefs, got rid of oppressive tax systems enforced upon the peasants, implemented reforms to limit the rampant oppression and exploitation of women, and severely punished those who went against his established rules. He was a Hindu king, but “…his pride in his religion was not based on the hatred for other religions… Even in medieval times his faith in his religion was rational.”This five-chapter book was originally published in 1988, and has since been translated into several languages, including Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada and Urdu.Chapter 1: Shivaji – King with a DifferenceShivaji did not inherit ‘an already established throne’ but ‘founded a new state’, and was crowned as ‘Chhatrapati’ or emperor in 1674 in Raigad after decades of acquiring land and wealth through military conquests. In contrast, his contemporaries were mainly hereditary kings who did nothing to build an empire. Pansare writes, “You do not need to do anything to inherit a legacy. There is nothing admirable about it.”And Shivaji was different from them in other crucial ways too – under his rule, the ryots, the common people, believed that he had undertaken their mission, their cause. The people believed that Shivaji’s state was their own land too.In that era, kings usually did not interfere when feudatories exploited, looted and tortured ryots...