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Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhandarkar Institute Adheesh Sathaye

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Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhandarkar Institute Adheesh Sathaye CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Digital Commons @ Butler University Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 19 Article 5 2006 Censorship and Censureship: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhandarkar Institute Adheesh Sathaye Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Recommended Citation Sathaye, Adheesh (2006) "Censorship and Censureship: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhandarkar Institute," Journal of Hindu- Christian Studies: Vol. 19, Article 5. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1360 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Sathaye: Censorship and Censureship: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhankarkar Institute Censorship and Censureship: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhandarkar Institute Adheesh Sathaye University of British Columbia ON January 5, 2004, the Bhandarkar Institute, a prominent group of Maharashtrian historians large Sanskrit manuscript library in Pune, was sent a letter to OUP calling for its withdrawal. vandalized because of its involvement in James Apologetically, OUP pulled it from Indian Laine's controversial study of the Maharashtrian shelves on November 21,2003, but this did little king Shivaji. While most of the manuscripts to quell the outrage arising from one paragraph escaped damage, less fortunate was the in Laine's book deemed slanderous to Shivaji academic project of South Asian studies, which and his mother Jijabai: now faces sorpe serious questions. If our intellectual pursuits should result in the The repressed awareness that Shivaji destruction of the very materials we study, or had an absentee father is also revealed injury to those who help us to study them, are by the fact that Maharashtrians tell jokes they worth conducting at a1l?i Or might they be naughtily suggesting that his guardian conducted in such a way as to avoid violent Dadaji Konddev was his biological reaction? As groundwork for possible answers to father. In a sense because Shivaji's these questions, this essay examines the father had little influence on his son, for intellectual history behind the violence as many narrators it was important to revealed through Marathi-language reviews of supply him with father replacements, Laine's book published in the months prior to Dadaji and later Ramdas. But perhaps the attack. If we can understand how and why we read the story of his life as governed Laine's book came to be portrayed as censorable by motivations buried deep in his and the Bhandarkar Institute as censurable, then psyche by a mother rejected by her we may begin to see this event as more than just husband. One could then see that 'insider' hooligans protesting against an Shivaji's drive to heroism was spurred 'outsider' scholar. by his attempt to please his doting mother, and that she, aware of her Attack on the Bhandarkar Institute Yad<;lva heritage and thinking of her husband as a collaborator of low birth, Oxford University Press (OUP) published the insti1h:id in her son the dream of a Indian edition of James. W. Laine's Shivaji: revived Hindu kingdom. ii ~ Hindu King in Islamic India in June 2003, but the moves towards censorship did not The furor over this passage resulted in two acts commence in earnest until Novemb~r, when a of physical violence. On December 22, 2003, ADHEESH SATHAYE is an Assistant Professor of South Asian History, Language, and Culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research interests include the Sanskrit epics and narrative literature as well as Marathi devotional poetry a\1d performance. An early version of this essay was presented at the 2004 American Academy of Religion meetings in San Antonio, Texas. Journal ofHindu-Christian Studies 19 (2006) 2-11 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2006 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 19 [2006], Art. 5 Censorship and Censures hip 3 members of the Pune branch of the Shiv Sena about Jijamata's morals as well. How (. assaulted the Sanskrit scholar Shrikant Bahulkar can we tolerate such blasphemy?Vl in his office at Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, "blackening" his face by pinning him down and The BORI Attack in the Media smearing tar on his visage. Bahulkar was targeted because Laine had thanked him in the The BORI attack received wide coverage in the book's acknowledgments. In support of his major Marathi- and English-language colleague, the noted Maharashtrian historian newspapers in Maharashtra (e.g., Sakal, Gajanan Mehendale approached the Sena offices Loksatta, Times of India, Indian Express), and on December 25 demanding an apology to the story remained in Pune headlines for over ( Bahulkar. His request denied, Mehendale two weeks. vii The electoral fallout of the attack destroyed four hundred manuscript pages of his and the charges brought against Laine for own definitive history of Shivaji. iii In light of "wantonly giving provocation with inten~ to Mehendale's protest, Shiv Sena leader Raj cause riot" (Sections 153 and 153A of the Indian Thakeray met with Bahulkar and offered a Penal Code) became the subject ofa number of personal (and well-publicized) apology, assuring stimulating analyses in the English-language him that "such incidents would not be repeated, Indian media. viii These journalists have painted a and that Sena activists would have to get a compelling picture of how and why intellectual 'clearance' from the toprung leaders before life in India is being violently appropriated by embarking on such 'aggressive campaigns' 111 political life. What remains unanswered, the future."iv however, is a basic, unavoidable question: Why Then, in the morning of January 5, Laine? 2004, approximately 150 young men appeared at James Laine was not the first Shivaji the gates of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research scholar-in. English or in Marathi-to be Institute (BORI) in Pune, overwhelmed the colltroversial, or even the first to be censored. handful ofBORI staff on duty, and proceeded to As Laine's work itself suggests, the narrative of ransack the 87-year old archives for nearly an Shivaji's life has always been subject to debate, hour. The group toppled massive shelves and even during the king's lifetime. There are cabinets housing rare books and manuscripts, interminable arguments about the date of damaged museum pieces, defaced portraits, Shivaji~s birth, his associations with the bhakti destroyed most. of the wooden fumiture, saints Ramdas and Tukaram, or if he was a shattered anything made of glass, and threw nation~l hero or a 'mountain ~at.' But few other BORI's computers into a pond. When the police publications have aroused the passions exhibited arrived, 72 individuals were arrested. The against Laine's work-passions that in India are attackers belonged to a group known as the . often associated with religious fervor. Indeed, Sambhaji Brigade-the youth ann of a relatively Laine did antlclpate controversy-seeing new Maratha 'cultural' organization called the himself as "a disturber of the tranquility with Maratha Seva Sangh. v Their leader Purushottam which synthetic accounts of Shivaji's life are Khedekar-an executive engineer in the Pune accepted"-but surely he expected objections to Department of Public Works-held a press his portrayal of Hindu and Muslim identity, and conference that evening, praising the Brigade not for publishing a joke about Shivaji's and explaining the need for the attack: mother. ix Making this connection to religion, It has come to our knowledge that some several English-language journalists erroneously passages in Laine's book state that ascribed the BORI attack to "Hindu extremists," Shivaji's renowned mentors, Samarth "angry Hindu activists," "a Hindu mob," or Ramdas Swami and Dadaji Kondeo, are "Hindu fanatics."x Though it is true that the pro­ his biological fathers. This kind of Hindu Shiv Sena had conducted the earlier brutish penmanship raises questions attack on Bahulkar, the Sambhaji Brigade professes a different, competing ideology. xi The http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol19/iss1/5 2 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1360 Sathaye: Censorship and Censureship: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Attack on Bhankarkar Institute 4 Adheesh Sathaye literature of its parent organization, the Maratha Western historical method (Dalrymple) Or are Seva Sangh, stresses devotion to Shivaji, to his protesting against perceived academic mother Jijabai, and to -modem non-Brahman hegemony (Braverman). leaders Jyotiba Phule, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and Shahu Maharaj, as part of a new Insider/Outsider and Emic/Etic religious/political movement known as Shivdharma. Founded in 2000, this largely In this manner, the attacks on Bahulkar and the lower-caste movement consciously regards itself Bhandarkar Institute touch upon a as distinct from mainstream Hinduism and is methodological issue that is central to religious particularly hostile towards Brahmanic studies: the "insider/outsider problem." xviii In hegemony. xii Shivdharma is, in short, a marriage some ways the BOR! attack might be read as the of a passionate folk devotion to Shivaji with ultimate testimony to Wilfred Cantwell Smith's anti-Brahman politics. xiii Given that BOR! is assertion that "no statement made by the scholar thought of as a Brahmanic institution, it appears, of religion is valid unless the religious believer then, that the Brigade did not carry out a 'Hindu could accept it as correct."xix (With fundamentalist' attack against non-Hindus, but 'Maharashtra' substitUted for 'religion' and one couched within ongoing caste politics that 'Maharashtrian' for 'religious believer'). are increasingly encroaching upon Conversely, one may argue that Laine, as an Maharashtrian cultural life.
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