Xenophobia in Seventeenth-Century India Kruijtzer, Gijs Citation Kruijtzer, G. (2009). Xenophobia in Seventeenth-Century India, 315. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/21362 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown) License: Leiden University Non-exclusive license Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/21362 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). It is tempting to think of precolonial India as a harmonious society, but was it? This study brings evi- dence from new and unexpected sources to take position in Gijs Kruijtzer the sensitive debate over that question. From the investiga- tion of six conflicts in the Deccan region it draws conclu- sions about group behaviour that put modern clashes in context. Some of the conflicts under investigation appear odd today but were very real to the involved, as the antago- nism between Left and Right Hand castes was for about a Xenophobia in Seventeenth-Century India Xenophobia thousand years. Other conflicts continue to the present day: the seventeenth century saw lasting changes in the relation- ship between Hindus and Muslims as well as the rise of patriotism and early nationalism in both India and Europe. This book carefully brings to life the famous and obscure people who made the era, from the Dutch painter Heda to queen Khadija and from maharaja Shivaji to the English Xenophobia rebel Keigwin. Gijs Kruijtzer is historian. He has published on the (art) history of the Deccan, Dutch overseas expansion and the in Seventeenth- archives created in the process of that expansion. LUP Dissertations Century India Gijs Kruijtzer 9 789087 280680 Leiden University Press LUP Xenophobia in Seventeenth-Century India XENOPHOBIA IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA GIJS KRUIJTZER First Leiden University Press edition, 2009. Entirely revised from the author’s dissertation Xenophobia and Consciousness in Seventeenth-Century India: Six Cases from the Deccan, 2008. Cover illustration: a relief in the wall outside the Banjara Gate of Golkonda fortress, made around 1560. It depicts a tiger and a bull fighting over a unicorn, and to the far left, a lion trampling an elephant. A modern lamp-post partly obstructs the view. Photograph by Robert Simpkins. Cover design: Maedium, Utrecht Lay out: Gijs Kruijtzer ISBN 978 90 8728 068 0 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 094 8 NUR 680 © G.C. Kruijtzer / Leiden University Press, 2009 The whole or parts of this book may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes provided that its authorship is properly acknowledged. The copyright of some of the photographs is held by others than the author, as mentioned in the list of illustrations and above. CONTENTS Acknowledgements viii Introduction The Ethics of Writing the Precolonial 1 WHY THIS STUDY—SETTING AND OUTLAY— THEORETICAL ISSUES—ACCUSATIONS AND COUNTERACCUSATIONS—PRELIMINARY COMMENTS ON THE SOURCES Part I 18 Chapter 1 A Dutch Painter in Bijapur: National Sentiment and 18 European-ness as Reflected in the Relation between the Dutch and the Portuguese in the Early Century INTRODUCTION—EUROPEANS AMONGST EACH OTHER (AN ARTIST AND A PATRIOT—JUST WAR AND JIHAD)— EUROPEANS AND INDIANS (THE BOUNDS OF ETHICS— SEXUAL BOUNDARIES—BOUNDARY CROSSING AND DUTCHNESS)—EXPLAINING EUROPEAN BOUNDARIES —CONCLUSION Chapter 2 The Queen and the Usurper: Deccanis vs. 74 Westerners in Bijapur around 1636 INTRODUCTION—A WEDDING AND A MURDER— COSMOPOLITANISM AND TRUST—LOCAL TIES—THE WAR PARTY VS. THE PEACE PARTY—THE PATRIOTIC PROGRAMME: GOOD GOVERNMENT—THE ROLE OF THE MONARCH AND HIS CONSORT—CONCLUSION Chapter 3 The Right and Left Hand Disputes in 105 Chennapatnam 1652-55: A Minimal Group Experiment in Seventeenth-Century India? INTRODUCTION—THE NEW TOWN AND ITS STATE OF DIARCHY—THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS—THE DISPUTE AND ITS STAKES—PROBLEM 1: THE ROLE OF THE ENGLISH: TOO UNINVOLVED OR TOO INVOLVED?— PROBLEM 2: UNDER WHOSE GAZE? —PROBLEM 3: THE MINIMAL GROUP HYPOTHESIS IN HISTORY, AND THE PROBLEM OF INVENTION—CONCLUSION Part II 153 vi CONTENTS Chapter 4 Saying One Thing, Doing Another? Shivaji and 153 Deccani Patriotism 1674-80 INTRODUCTION—SHIVAJI’S DISCOURSE ON “DECCAN FOR THE DECCANIS”—ACTIONS OF SHIVAJI AND HIS ANTAGONISTS—DISCOURSES OF CONTEMPORARIES ON SHIVAJI’S MOTIVATION AND THAT OF HIS ANTAGONISTS—CONCLUSION Chapter 5 Anxiety in Aurangzeb’s Deccan: Marathas, Sidis and 191 Keigwin’s Rebellion 1683-4 INTRODUCTION—THE DECCAN ELECTRIFIED—THE EFFECT OF WARFARE ON THE NON-COMBATANT POPULATION—THE REPUBLIC OF BOMBAY—FEAR OF THE SIDIS AND THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN MARATHAS AND SIDIS (BOMBAY IN BETWEEN—CONQUEST, ENSLAVEMENT, CONVERSION—NUANCES)— CONCLUSION Chapter 6 Madanna, Akkanna and the Brahmin Revolution in 224 Golkonda 1674-86 INTRODUCTION—SOME BIOGRAPHICAL DATA—THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS—THE FACTIONS—THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN NATIONS AND THEIR RENEGADES IN THE FACTIONAL STRUGGLE—THE SOCIAL IDENTITIES—THE PROBLEM OF LOYALTY— CONCLUSION Conclusion Human Nature in a Seventeenth-Century 256 Environment Epilogue Aurangzeb/Shivaji and the Eighteenth Century 265 AN AXIAL DECADE—A BLEAK CENTURY—THE ETHICS REVISITED Appendix I Dutch Usage for Muslim and Hindu 285 Appendix II Aurangzeb on Stratagem 287 Appendix III On the Authenticity of Shivaji’s and Sidi Mas‘ud’s 289 Letters to Maloji Ghorpade A Note on Usage 292 List of Abbreviated References 293 Repositories of Unpublished Sources 294 Select Bibliography 295 Index (also serving as glossary and who is who) 306 CONTENTS vii MAPS The Deccan in 1600. 4 The Deccan in 1650. 104 Tentative Reconstruction of the Chennapatnam Area in 1650. 121 The Deccan in 1680. 190 FIGURES Chennapatnam/Fort St. George around 1653. 117 Intensity of the Left-Right Antagonism as a Function of Time: 147 Three Models. ILLUSTRATIONS Detail of the frontispiece of Havart’s translation of Sa‘adi’s Bustan. 42 Courtesy Koninklijke Bibliotheek, catalogue number 895J66. Dutch translation of the seal of Bari Sahiba Khadija Sultana. 50 Courtesy National Archives, The Hague, VOC 1241: 335. Portraits of Khawas Khan and Mustafa Khan in the Witsen Album, numbers 42 and 43. Courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. 79 Right side of the façade of Khawas Khan’s mosque. 80 Interior of Mustafa Khan’s mosque. 81 East face of the gate to the ceremonial core of the Raigarh fortress. 154 The Monarch of the Field gun at Bijapur 155 Upper portion of the entrance gate to Raigarh, with close-ups of the 161 reliefs. Portrait of Shivaji wearing a boar-headed gauntlet sword, with detail. 162 Courtesy Musée Guimet, Paris, catalogue number 35.554. -3 Reliefs to the left and right of the inscription at the Sharza Bastion. 165 The fortress of Sindhudurg, built by Shivaji on an islet just outside 193 the port of Malvan, with tourists. Image of the deified Shivaji (Shivarajeshvar) in a temple built by his 213 son Rajaram in the Sindhudurg fortress in 1695. Akkanna and Madanna as represented in the Witsen Album, 228 numbers 38 and 37. Courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Details of the Witsen Akkanna and Madanna. 229 Portrait of Akkanna in Havart’s Op- en ondergang, 2: opposite 220. 238 Courtesy Leiden University Library, catalogue number 456 B7. Madanna as represented in the The Smith-Lessouëf 233 album, folio 271 12. Courtesy Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Modern statues of Shivaji in Sholapur, Hyderabad and Bijapur. 281 Photographs 2003. -3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book has been a long time in the making. I did not begin to research and write it in earnest until 2002, but some parts (Chapter 6) go back as far as 1997. In March 2008 it earned me a PhD and I have revised it once more since. Needless to say, it has benefited greatly from the input of the large number of people whom I have talked to and corresponded with in the period. First among them is Jos Gommans of Leiden University. I cannot express better the great role he played in my (intellectual) life than he himself did in the so-called laudatio he spoke at my thesis defence in Leiden in March 2008. Dirk Kolff, also of Leiden, has also been a wise and sharp commentator during the writing process. Connoisseurs of Deccan history will notice the similarity in the set-up of Eaton’s Social History of the Deccan and the present work. Although I believe we arrived at this set-up as a series of case studies independently, Richard Eaton has been a great influence on my work and his advice, together with that of Gommans and Kolff, has been invaluable. I should like to thank a number of people for critically reading chapters and giving both their honest opinions on them and suggestions for improvement: Vasant Bawa, Stefan Kras, Matthijs Lok, Sheldon Pollock and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. I am also indebted to a great number of people for suggesting literature, sources and angles, or for helping me obtain or decipher sources: Irfan Ahmad, Ari Anand, Anna Livia Beelaert, Aditya Behl, Shailendra Bhandare, Mark Brand, Lennart Bes, Benjamin Cohen, Kim van Dam, Linda Darling, Kavita Datla, Sebastiaan Derks, Nirmal Devasiri, Simon Digby, Anne Feldhaus, Jorge Flores, Daniel Friedrich, John Fritz, Femme Gaastra, Stephan van Galen, Tracy Goode, Nile Green, Sumit Guha, Najaf Haider, Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis, J.C. Heesterman, Jan Houben, Thibaut d’Hubert, Eugene Irschick, Martine van Ittersum, Hester Jansen, Stéphane Jettot, Janet Kamphorst, Simin Karimi, Omar Khalidi, Gerrit Knaap, Dick Kooiman, Marijn Kruk, Remke Kruk, Leo Lucassen, Pauline Lunsingh Scheurleer, Ruby Maloni, Gajanan Mehendale, George Michell, Renaud Morieux, Ghulam Nadri, Amina Okada, Gert Oostindie, Zareena Parveen, Carla Petievich, Gyan Prakash, Om Prakash, Remco Raben, David Shulman, Louis Sicking, Robert Simpkins, Anjana Singh, Kamran Talatoff, B.N. Teensma, Sebastiaan Tijsterman, Ananya Vajpeyi, Peter van der Veer, Tycho Walaardt, Douglas Weiner, Lucia Werneck Xavier, Rik van Welie, Ian Wendt, André Wink and Paul Wormser. Peter Longbottom I thank for the final editing and correction.