Indian Antiquary Vol 56

SR No.: 032548
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1986
Total Pages: 286
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 13 MB

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
SEPTEMBER, 1927
around him, who is 'bon camarade', who can show timely emotion or deftly touch the chords of popular imagination, stands a far better chance of ultimate "canonisation' than the most impeccable ruler, who wears the armour of severe righteousness and holds himself coldly aloof from the foibles of mankind.
So far we have dealt with the Muhammadan rulers. We will now turn to a Hindu-the famous Shivaji. This individual has recently gone through a lengthy process of "whitewashing" at the hands of various authorities. What are the facts ? That he was a robber chief in a wild and mountainous part of India. That he made his way to the front hy his audacity and bravery. As to his famous murder of the Muhammadan General sent against him, it seems to have been about six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. But its treatment by rival historians is instructive. On the one side Shivaji only anticipated similar treachery on the part of his adversary; on the other the Muhammadan commander was the innocent victim of the blackest treachery. That he carved out of the dying Empire a kingdom of his own and that he set up a rough form of government which only survived him a few years. But all this has undergone a transformation. Shivaji is now the pure-minded high-souled patriot called by Providence to the liberation of his motherland. His childhood at his mother's knee is like the boyhood of Alfred the Great.
A torrent of abuse has been directed against a writer who mildly suggested, on unequi. vocal authority, that Shivaji had two mistresses, or in other words that of the eight wives whom he is recorded as having married, two were probably concubines. One would hardly have supposed that such a statement regarding an Indian chieftain of the seventeenth century, in a country where the moral standards of Exeter Hall had not yet penetrated, would have mused the Brahman press of Poona to a fierce declamatory frenzy. But the statement was obnoxious to the Poona press as it does not accord with the modern Shivaji myth, which has been seda lously cultivated in Western India for purely political purposes during the last twenty years. The exponents of the myth are at pains to declare, often without adequate evidence, that Shivaji combined in himself the asceticism of St. Anthony, the military genius of Napoleon and the imperial prescience of Cecil Rhodes.
That is Shivaji to-day after the modern historians have done with him. We await with interest his next biography written from the Mughal point of view.
But the stream of “alteration ” flows on. We now come to an episode familiar to all“The Black Hole of Calcutta ". The site of this tragedy is now believed to have been identified. There is plenty of corroborative evidence,-e.g., Admiral Watson's--to support Holwell's narrative of the massacre. Even Macaulay believed it. But recently an ingenious attempt has been made to prove that the tragedy never took place, that Holwell was a liar, and that the so-called victims of the Black Hole were really killed in fair fight earlier in the proceedings. The next step is the elimination of the episode from Indian History as taught in schools.
Turn again to the Mutiny. The old king of Delhi, Bahadur Shah II, explained the whole episode by saying " I suppose my people gave themselves over to the devil." There is no doubt as to the old man's guilty participation in the outbreak. "The evidence given at his trial is perfectly conclusive. But this is not enough for the listorian with a bias. The newest theory now put forward is that it was the East India Company who were at fault, and that the Mutiny was a just retribution for disobedience to their overlord of Delhi, and that the punishment meted out to the last of the Timurids has rankled in Indian minds ever since. As regards the first part of the theory, we were able, in a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Historical Society to demonstrate that it was completely at variance with the facts as reveal. ed in the official records of the Punjab Government. As regards the second, we make bold to say that we do not consider that the extinction of the Timurids made or has made any more stir in India than the final extinction of the Western Empire in 476 or the renunciation of his title by Francis II in 1806 did in Europe. But we are not out of the Mutiny wood yet. We