South Asia Citizens Wire | 28 March, 2004
** India seeks to arrest US scholar **
India seeks the arrest of an American scholar who wrote a controversial
biography of Shivaji.
URL: < news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/3561499.stm >
o o o
[March 27, 2004]
Dear Friends:
I write in regards to the recent controversy over a US scholar's history
book in India. As some of you may know, James Laine, a professor of
religious studies at Macalester College in MN, has published a book through
Oxford University Press entitled SHIVAJI: HINDU KING IN ISLAMIC INDIA. As a
result of its publication, Indian scholars and scholarly institutes in
Western India (Maharashtra) have been harassed and ransacked. The
controversy has grown to such ridiculous proportions that the Indian Prime
Minister has commented on the book, "warning" Laine, and the Maharashtra
government has called for his ARREST through Interpol. See the above BBC
story.
If you don't have the book, get it! It is quite good. As with The Satanic
Verses and The Myth of the Holy Cow (or Harry Potter for that matter), those
who seek its ban have usually not read the book in question and certainly
have no desire for nuance or precision.
SHIVAJI: HINDU KING IN ISLAMIC INDIA is about the role of myth and legend in
the construction of historical memory. One claim in the book in particular
has raised people's ire---that Shivaji's mother may have had an affair with
someone other than his "real" father. For this, Indian politicians have
claimed that Indian pride has been insulted and that this is an insult to
the nation.
It's a shame that the nation has such thin skin, but it is also easy to see
why nationalists would be so threatened by this book. I've looked at the
passages in question. They are in Chapter 5 of the book, especially in the
first, full paragraph on p. 93. Without a doubt in my mind, this
controversy is a bunch of nonsense---politically motivated through and
through. Laine begins this chapter with a quote from W.E.B. DuBois. Let
me requote it for you: "[O]ne is astonished in the study of history at the
recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed
over.... We must forget that George Washington was a slaveowner...and simply
remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty
with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and
example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but does not tell the
truth." (p. 89)
Shivaji is one of these perfect heroes in mythic history. Laine's goal is
to illustrate the tensions between myth and history, not by historically
proving one thing or another, but by raising a panoply of "questions that
haven't or can't be asked." By revealing the gap between what is known or
thought to be known, and the unasked (let alone unanswered) questions, Laine
hopes to provide foundation for further serious, historical inquiry.
To this end, he begins with a discussion of Texas and myths related to Davy
Crockett and the Alamo (timely, given the new movie coming out on this
topic). He then states: "My primary claim is not that I have a truer, more
objective history than the standard accounts. What I would prefer to do is
look once again at the emerging narrative that we have considered to see
those places where the authors themselves have carefully avoided saying
something, or where they say something rather abruptly in order to answer
some unexpressed concern. Such a pursuit will allow us NOT TO SEE THE
"REAL" SHIVAJI BUT TO BETTER APPRECIATE THE IDEOLOGICAL CONCERNS OF THE MANY
AUTHORS WHO HAVE SHAPED THE NARRATIVE TRADITION OF SHIVAJI'S LEGENDARY LIFE.
[Caps added for emphasis] The real issue is what the authors are saying
about themselves, about the dreams they hold, the dreams they see expressed
in the tales of their hero." (p. 90)
Laine then broaches the "unthinkable thoughts" and dares to ask questions
that haven't been asked. Among 5 questions, can we imagine, he asks, if
Shivaji had an unhappy family life. In an elaborate multi-page answer to
this question, Laine provides some speculation, not quite idle, but not
"proof of the fact" either. But his goal is not to prove a point of view,
but precisely only to illustrate people's popular ideas versus some
"thoughts that cannot be thought." To this end, Laine states on p. 93: "The
repressed awareness that Shivaji has an absentee father is also revealed by
the fact that Maharashtrians tell jokes naughtily suggesting that his
guardian Dadaji Konddev was his biological father. In a sense, because
Shivaji's father had little influence on his son, for many narrators it was
most important to supply him with father replacements, Dadaji and later
Ramdas. But perhaps we read the story of his life as goverened by
motivations buried deep in his psyche by a mother rejected by her husband.
[This point is discussed on the previous page.] One could then see that
Shivaji's drive to heroism was spurred by his attempt to please his doting
mother, and that she, aware of her Yadava heritage and thinking of her
husband as a collaborator of low birth, instilled in her son the dream of a
revived Hindu kingdom...."
"None of these unseemly facts accord well with the family values of
contemporary middle-class Indians, and are largely ignored in popular modern
accounts...."
"The great man was great because of his public deeds, and as a great man, he
is presumed to be a man whose private virtues informed his domestic life.
But, in fact, we know virtually nothing of his family affairs."
These last lines are critical, because they acknowledge the weakness in our
historical knowledge. More questions need to be asked and more research
done. Laine does not claim that he is providing the definitive answers.
Laine's book and the crisis surrounding it are therefore battlegrounds on
freedom of speech and freedom of expression issues. How can we pursue
ideal, objective scholarship if certain questions cannot even be asked, let
alone certain answers ever be provided?
One does not have to agree with Laine's conclusions or with his assessments.
But that is what scholarly debate is for. Material that "breaks ground"
gets us thinking about new issues, and in new ways. It does not imply that
it is definitive, that it is the "last word." It might or might not be, but
we'll only know after healthy, vigorous debate.
But we can't have that if this debate is clotured before it is even begun.
Banning books only reveals the fear of debate that the banners have. Which
leads to the question: what are they so afraid of? What gives the banners
the right to determine what we can or cannot discuss, what we can and cannot
think or say? Think about DuBois' prescient analysis. Therein lies the
rub.
Sincerely,
Manu Bhagavan
Assistant Professor
Department of History and Political Science
Manchester College
N. Manchester, IN 46962 [USA]
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