A Farewell To Cops

The armed bodyguard posted at my door since January 7, 2004 was finally taken off by the government ofMaharashtra after three months. I had not asked for this protection. It was provided to me by the governmentwho must have their own reasons for doing so. These reasons were not communicated to me, nor were theycommunicated to other taxpayers at whose cost the protection was provided.

Should I feel free from danger now? Assuming that the danger to me was from the same people andorganizations that vandalized the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune on January 5, it did makesense to create a public impression that the government of Maharashtra was not actually targeting me.This could be done best by providing me an armed bodyguard to accompany me at every public event I attended,or on my visits to the University of Pune where I am a Chair Professor.

In Maharashtra, the now-publicly accepted reason for the vandalisation of the Bhandarkar Oriental ResearchInstitute is what the Marathi media and politicians across the board call the James Laine issue. It isbelieved that ‘the James Laine issue’ will influence the outcome of the elections to the 14th LokSabha. James Laine does not even remotely sound like a Maratha name in the caste sense unless it was the nameof a former 96-clan ‘Maratha’ converted to Christianity, perhaps a remote cousin of the former ChiefElection Commissioner of India whose first name was James and who was therefore portrayed as an alien inneighbouring Gujarat not too long ago. In neo-Hindu India, Christians are alien.

But then this Laine turns out to be much worse. He is a white American. If he were a black American,he would still be an alien, though an American dalit or bahujansamaj blackass. Whatbusiness had he in Maharashtra? Was he a C.I.A. agent in disguise--a mole suddenly activated to becomean agent provocateur in order to subvert the political equations in Maharashtra? You say he isoriginally from Texas? Is he part of the Texan long-range plan to capture Bombay High and deprive Maharashtraof its oil resources? You say he teaches comparative religion in a private college in Minnesota? A Christianproselytizer in disguise? Many Maharashtrians now believe that whoever he actually is, James Laine is a mostundesirable alien in cahoots with the Brahmins of Maharashtra (not Marathas, please note) who have appropriated and subverted Maratha history for nearly 300 years now.

Those who have followed the BORI news trail would know that on December 22, 2003 a Shiv Sena group led byRambhau Parekh blackened the face of Sanskrit scholar Shrikant Bahulkar in Pune for having helped James W.Laine, the author of Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India published by the Oxford University Press. OnDecember 28, 2003 Raj Thackeray came from Mumbai to Pune and personally apologized to Bahulkar on behalf ofthe Shiv Sena, thus conforming the Sena’s involvement in the manhandling of the Sanskritist.

Then, on January 5, 2004 over 100 members of the till then little-known Sambhaji Brigade arrived in severalcars at 11 a.m. at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune and vandalized the institute’sarchives and library, destroying several original documents and objects that were irreplaceable sources forthe study of Maratha as well as Indian history, rare manuscripts and artifacts, out-of-print editions ofbooks, and so on. The reason given for this was that this well-organized mob brought to Pune from longdistances represented the ‘hurt sentiments’ of the Marathas upon their perusal and serious reflection onLaine’s book on Shivaji in which he acknowledges the help he received from the BORI and some peopleassociated with it.  

The Maratha braves--who imagine they are the custodians of Maharashtra’s militant self-image--were outraged by this alleged conspiracy by Brahmin historians hiding behind the BORI’s87-years old ramshackle main building on Law College Road, Pune and an alleged scholar and citizen of theU.S.A. to tarnish the image of the Founder King of Maratha Svaraj. They courted arrest in a spirit ofdefiance. Seventy-two of them were later tried in a Pune court but were released on bail. They have alreadybeen publicly celebrated as heroes in the Southern city of Kolhapur.

The government of Maharashtra--ruled by an alliance of the Congress Party and the Nationalist CongressParty--launched criminal proceedings against Laine and his publishers on January 9, 2004 for having hurtpublic sentiments and instigated riots among other things and announced a ban on Laine’s book on Shivaji onJanuary 13, 2004. Oxford University Press had, in fact, withdrawn the book on November 21, 2003 from themarket, even before it was banned, as they probably had an inkling of threatened disturbances from lettersthey received.

On January 10, 2004 the 77th ‘Marathi Sahitya Sammelan’ (Marathi Literary Conference) was inauguratedby the President of the NCP, Sharad Pawar. He cautioned research scholars against hurting public sentiments.He did not condemn the attack on the BORI in his speech. The President of the Sammelan, Professor R.G. Jadhavwas provided an armed bodyguard just in case he might condemn the attack on the BORI and provoke members ofthe Sambhaji Brigade present in the audience to take care of that possibility.

On January 16, 2004 Prime Minister Vajpayee (of the BJP-led NDP coalition) speaking in Mumbai condemned theattack on the BORI and also criticized the Maharashtra government’s ban on the book. The very next day aformer Chief Minister of Maharashtra, A. R. Antulay and the present Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde--bothof the Congress Party--stated that an attack on the Chatrapati would not be tolerated. It was becomingobvious that the 17th century founder of a Maratha kingdom surrounded by hostile non-Hindu hegemonies was notonly a cult figure for 20th century Maharashtrians but a ‘brand’ for whose proprietary marketing rightsall political parties in Maharashtra would fiercely compete in the impending elections to the 14th Lok Sabha.

I was given armed protection from January 7 because Laine has thanked me in his acknowledgements. I neitherhave hastily condemned Laine’s book to distance myself from the heat nor sung the customary paeans to thegreat King of the Marathas (by which I understand all Maharashtrians) because such acts would be both cowardlyand irrelevant. The lessons in freedom that Shivaji gave to us were to stand on one’s ground and tenaciouslydefend it. As a writer, my ground is freedom of the press; and in defending it with a state-provided armedguard at my doorstep, I felt for a while like a tycoon realtor or a Bollywood celebrity being protectedagainst underworld extortionists.

But I was wrong. The state only seemed to protect me from itself. They did not do anything to the realinstigators and engineers of the attack on the BORI, whom they have in effect protected so far from the law.They not only know these vigilante outfits and extra-constitutional armies and brigands but also have foundthem useful in creating a show of strength in the Prime Minister’s election rally at Beed in late March.

More bizarre uses of Shivaji were to follow. Gopinath Munde, former Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtraand BJP leader demanded a ban on Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India and Bal Thackeray, the Supremoof the Shiv Sena, demanded a ban on a translation of a book on Shivaji by Surendra Nath Sen published by theMaharashtra State Board for Literature and Culture, following which on cue, the Shiv Sena attacked the houseof the Board’s President, R. R. Borade in Aurangabad in full view of a television crew ( how did it getthere at the right time?) and damaged his car parked in front. Borade was in Mumbai and escaped possiblemanhandling by the mob.

Way back in 1967, when the Shiv Sena ‘prevented’ the then Deputy Prime Minister Morarji Desai fromentering Mumbai by creating a riot-like situation, I wrote two articles. One of them, turned down by a leadingEnglish newspaper in Mumbai but carried by B.G.Verghese on the edit page of The Hindustan Times, NewDelhi was titled The Rise of the Third Shivaji and it warned against the rise of extra-constitutionalpolitics leading to Fascism. The second article was Riots: Scenes and Reflections, an eyewitnessaccount of what I saw during that three day orgy of violence at Shivaji Park, Prabhadevi, and Mahim. It wascourageously published by A.D. Gorwala in his Opinion.

Both the Marathi and the English media have--forty years later--either treated the ‘James Laine issue’with fearful circumspection or with a penchant for sick entertainment as though no serious issues wereinvolved. They have not even remembered the sanctity of the Constitution of the Republic of India and pledgesto the rule of the law and the due process it demands. It seems that the executive believes that hurtsentiments justify violent reactions that are ‘understandable’. They do not question the bona fides ofviolent mobs set upon destruction of life and property in the name of ‘hurt sentiments’ that are actuallyinstigated and engineered cases of conspiracy against civil society and its values.

In my childhood, Marathi-speaking children used to play a nursery game. It was called Shivaji Mhanto (ShivajiSays). The rule of the game was to follow every instruction that is preceded by the order, "Shivaji Says".But the rule also lays down that a ‘false order’ given by anybody other than Shivaji must not beobeyed. There was a profound lesson in this. If the order is "Thackeray Mhanto" or "PawarMhanto" or "R.R. Pail Mhanto" or "Vajpayee Mhanto"or "Munde Mhanto" youknow what to do. Just ignore the order. That is the true lesson of Shivaji for impressionable children. I donot know if the game is still as popular as it used to be or whether it is played at all now. But it is worthreviving it in the name of Shivaji.

Updates

Dilip Chitre is Honorary Editor of New Quest---a quarterly journal of participative inquiry into society andculture--and this is the Editorial of the journal’s issue Number 156 (April-June 2004).