Ajaz Ashraf underscores how Bhima Koregaon riots, and the subsequent clampdown on leftist leaders, was sparked by various interpretations of Shivaji’s role and his stature in the Marathi consciousness
Maharashtra, India’s top state, houses all engines of growth. It is a powerhouse in manufacturing that makes everything from a safety pin to high-end cars and pharmaceuticals. It leads Indian states with a GDP of Rs 40 lakh crore (Tamil Nadu, in second place, has Rs 29 lakh crore) and recorded an FDI inflow of 53.97 billion dollars in 2023, according to Forbes. It is the most creative state as well, with the film industry based there and all major advertising, design, film studios that create dreams and sell them. It is also the financial capital; unlike, say in Kerala, where everyone talks protest, everyone talks money in Maharashtra. It is here that many social reformers like Bhimrao Ambedkar showed the way forward. Maharashtra is the house of modernity. If India has to go anywhere globally, it will be the driving force.
Yet, in a bitter and dangerous irony, underlying all this is a subterranean fascination with the medieval and the regressive in the state. Reimagining and then constantly recreating and restating history is a favourite obsession of many of Maharashtra’s social and political leaders. Such obsessive reinterpretation of the past constantly creates social tensions which are kept simmering by certain leaders who make sure to keep the caste divides as wide as possible. The state and its leaders are obsessed by the Maratha ruler Shivaji, known always with the honorific Chhatrapati, whose wars with the Mughals form the very basis of an imagined Marathi pride. Shivaji has been deified and made the protector of Marathi pride, an imagined concept. Shivaji has been appropriated from the pages of history, garnished with various tales of valour, and installed as a conqueror, defiant ruler, courageous fighter, a man of immense pride.
Maharashtra’s bane: The subnationalistic sabre-rattling
Various riots, protests, marches, attacks on libraries, demands for banning of books happen frequently based on any interpretation of Shivaji. Any book in English or any Indian language on Shivaji is cause for trouble. It is in the backdrop of centuries-old conflicts and reimagining of history that the riots of January 1, 2018, occurred in Bhima Koregaon near Pune. These riots, though minor in terms of fatalities (one dead), resulted in the Modi government’s unprecedented large-scale crackdown on Leftist intellectuals, followed by an elaborate charade pointing to the dangers such intellectuals posed to national security.
In other words, an extremely vindictive state joined hands with the various freelance interpreters of history to organise a frightening clampdown by planting fake evidence, unprecedented in India or in any truly democratic set-up. Senior journalist Ajaz Ashraf places his brilliantly reported and intricately researched book, Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste — Brahminism’s wrath against dreamers of equality (Paranjoy Publishing), in this dangerous intersect and points to the hazards of constantly reinterpreting history to suit short-term ends. Frighteningly, we have come to realise that Maharashtra has one foot in the speed boat of modernity and the other in the catamaran of the past.
Like any other violent episode in Maharashtra over the last 100 years, Bhima Koregaon also was caused by the various interpretations of Shivaji’s role and his stature in the Marathi consciousness. In this frenzy of making a superhero or a divine being out of Shivaji, naming all possible public places after him for instance, the very mention of his name itself now sounds an alarm.
Was Shivaji a martial hero? Was Shivaji a high-caste (he was not)? Whose hero should he be? Is he a Hindutva icon? These are all questions that are intertwined with notions of subnationalistic pride and endlessly debated in street corners in Maharashtra even today. For instance, an award-winning movie, Sairat, about intercaste love and honour killing, released in 2016, created havoc in the state. Various organisations protested. “The film has done injustice to Marathas by portraying them as villains. While honour killing is a reality in many communities, Marathas are being singled out,” Rajendra Kondhre, head of the Akhil Bharatiya Maratha Mahasangh, was quoted as saying.
Another organisation, World Maratha Association, also protested against the film on the same ground. Over the years, many books on Shivaji, including one by an English academic, has been banned due to protests and riots by various ‘Maratha pride’ organisations in the state. The moderate Maratha Seva Sangh, led by Purushottam Khedekar, is another major player in the Maratha sweepstakes. Such subnationalistic sabre-rattling has been the bane of this otherwise forward-looking state. Behind all this can be seen the conniving eye of the RSS, also headquartered in the state.
A voice of defiance against the state
The 200th anniversary of Bhima Koregaon was the happy hunting ground of many such pro-Maratha organisations, waiting to confront the various Dalit organisations. Bhima Koregaon is the place where, in January 1818, the British army comprising Mahar Dalit soldiers won the battle against Peshwa ruler Baji Rao II. The British erected a victory pillar which over the years became a place for Dalit victory celebrations and later on their assertion of pride. Dalits overrule this question of Dalits fighting for a colonial army.
Umar Khalid, who spoke at the 2018 Elgar Parishad meeting, told journalists: “I said we are celebrating the end of the Peshwa state, which treated the majority of the population worse than animals.” Ambedkar himself had visited Bhima Koregaon where there is a small victory memorial for Mahars in 1927. The anniversary celebrations, apart from being a Dalit assertion against the Maratha supremacy, were a show of anger against the various riots and killings, like the Khairlanji massacre. Khalid had said in his speech that Modi searches for roots of casteism in the Mughal rule and not in Manu. He was a marked man since then and was duly arrested two years later and is still in jail.
Another path that led to the build-up of violence was the newfound confidence of the Maratha groups after the BJP came to power; the government started supporting all right-wing organisations. A slew of outfits named variously as Samasta Hindu Aghadi (SHA), the VHP and various Maratha sanghs decided to stop this annual celebrations and meeting. Ashraf aptly titles this chapter as ‘Right Wing Pushback’. It was the right time to quell Dalit assertion. Milind Ekbote, who ran SHA, started the anti-Dalit propaganda way back in 2001. He had started terrorising Dalits and once ransacked a bidi unit whose bidis were named Sambhaji (the eldest son of Shivaji) Bidi. In 2018, he and other groups struck.
Chhatrapati Sambhaji, the brother of Shivaji who was killed and mutilated by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1689, was at the centre of the 2018 rioting. The question was: who actually buried Sambhaji after stitching together his body parts? Dalits believed it was Govind Mahar. A memorial to Govind Mahar came up in Vadhu Budruk, close to Bhima Koregaon. Marathas refused to believe that a Dalit could have cremated their leader. Ekbote was at the forefront of this too, bringing his 25-year-old campaign against Dalits to a fiery denouement. A 1689 incident was revived with various readings and rereadings and culminated in Bhima Koregaon incident of 2018, and the resultant crackdown on Dalit and leftist leaders, which is still continuing.
Ashraf’s book quotes hundreds of sources to construct its narrative. Such books are crucial in reclaiming the narrative from the state and police, and putting forward an independent account of incidents. In many riots, the state controls the narrative through police statements, FIRs, and often, commission reports that often toe the government’s line. The truth is always buried. According to the author, police recordings of incidents were manipulated to aid Ekbote and others in evading justice, typical of cases where victims are portrayed as perpetrators and imprisoned. Ekbote spent only two months in jail, while Umar Khalid remains incarcerated for speaking in support of Dalits. Just as the Dalit struggle for assertion, Challenging Caste can be viewed as a voice of defiance against the state in the never-ending battle to establish the truth.
