 "Did Jawaharlal Nehru ‘insult’ Shivaji? The controversy over Fadnavis’ remark, explained")
A verbal spat has broken out between the Congress and the BJP ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly election.
Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday asked Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to apologise for the “insult” of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj by the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
This is the second time that Fadnavis has brought up the topic to counter the opposition’s criticism over the collapse of the 35-foot Shivaji Maharaj statue in Malvan’s Sindhudurg that Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled last year.
What happened?
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi unveiled a statue of Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of the Maratha empire, in Kolhapur city of western Maharashtra on Saturday.
He took a dig at PM Modi over the statue collapse at Rajkot Fort by saying, “There is no use of bowing before Shivaji Maharaj after scaring people, destroying the Constitution and institutions in the country.”
Fadnavis responded to the jibe at an event in Thane, “Rahul Gandhi is in Kolhapur today to inaugurate a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. He is remembering Shivaji Maharaj now. But he should first apologise for the insult of Shivaji Maharaj by Nehru in his book.”
This is the second time Fadnavis has accused Nehru of insulting the warrior king. He claims that Nehru showed Shivaji Maharaj in a “poor light” in his book The Discovery of India.
The BJP leader first targeted Nehru over the issue when Congress held a protest against the collapse of the Shivaji Maharaj statue at Rajkot Fort in Sindhudurg district, nearly eight months after it was unveiled by PM Modi.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“This agitation is completely political. Be it Maha Vikas Aghadi or the Congress party, they never respected Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Nehru ji insulted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in The Discovery of India. Will Congress and MVA apologise for it? In Madhya Pradesh, the then CM Kamal Nath demolished the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj with a bulldozer,” he had said.
He also claimed that the Maratha king never looted Surat, but it was a fake narrative set by the Congress to show him in poor light.
“After Independence, the Congress deliberately taught us that Shivaji Maharaj looted Surat. But he just plundered the treasury from the rightful people for ‘Swarajya’ or attacked them there. However, Congress taught us the history in such a way that showed Shivaji Maharaj went to Surat to loot common people,” he said.
What’s the truth?
According to a quick read of The Discovery of India, Nehru praised Shivaji and criticised Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.
An excerpt about Shivaji from the book reads, “Shivaji, born in 1627, was the ideal guerilla leader of hardened mountaineers and his cavalry went far and wide, sacking the city of Surat, where the English had their factory, and enforcing the chowth tax payment over distant parts of the Mughal dominions. Shivaji was the symbol of a resurgent Hindu nationalism, drawing inspiration from the old classics, courageous, and possessing high qualities of leadership. He built up the Marathas as a strong unified fighting group, gave them a nationalist background, and made them a formidable power that broke up the Mughal empire. He died in 1680 but the Maratha power continued to grow till it dominated India."
Speaking of Marathas, Nehru wrote, “Warren Hastings wrote in 1784, “The Marathas possess, alone of all the people in Hindustan and the Deccan, a principle of national attachment, which is strongly impressed on the minds of all individuals of the nation, and would probably unite their chiefs, as in one common cause, if any danger were to threaten the general state’. Probably this national sentiment of theirs was largely confined to the Marathi-speaking area. Nevertheless, the Marathas were Catholic in their political and military system as well as their habits, and there was a certain internal democracy among them. All this gave strength to them. Shivaji, though he fought Aurangzeb, freely employed Muslims.”
“Aurangzeb, far from understanding the present, failed even to appreciate the immediate past; he was a throw-back and, for all his ability and earnestness, he tried to undo what his predecessors had done. A bigot and an austere puritan, he was no lover of art or literature. He infuriated the great majority of his subjects by imposing the old hated jezia poll tax on the Hindus and destroying many of their temples. He offended the proud Rajputs, who had been props and pillars of the empire. In the north, he roused the Sikhs, who, from being a peaceful sect representing some sort of synthesis of Hindu and Islamic ideas, were converted by repression and persecution into a military brotherhood. Never the west coast of India, he angered the warlike Marathas, descendants of the ancient Rashrkutas, just when a brilliant captain had risen among them,” Nehru wrote.
How did Congress respond?
The Congress has accused Fadnavis of spreading fake narratives.
“Fadnavis should answer when he reads the book. Nehru had revised his first edition and written to historians in 1936 to send him inputs to make necessary revisions. He was an intellectual giant and had accepted that the first edition was written while he was in jail and had no access to reference material,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera had said earlier.
Speaking to reporters, Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole said Fadnavis repeatedly lied about Nehru’s comments on Chhatrapati Shivaji.
“Nehru wrote the book while in jail. After he was released, he revised his comments and also apologised. But Fadnavis has still not apologised for the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s statue in Malvan. He should tell us when he will apologise,” he told reporters, adding that PM Modi should speak about his work in the first two terms of the NDA government rather than just attacking the Congress.
With inputs from agencies
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