Recently,
I visited a place called Jaswantgarh in Arunachal Pradesh state of
India. This place was actually a defensive position a few Kilometers
north of the SeLa pass, set up by Indian army to fight against
advancing Chinese forces in 1962 war. A great battle was fought here
by Indian army in which heroic efforts of three soldiers defeated the
Chinese. Two of the three soldiers had lost their lives. Jaswant
singh- after whom the spot is named-was one of them. There can be
absolutely no doubt about the valour and bravery displayed by this
rifleman, fighting against heavy odds.
Bust of Jaswant Singh
I came across number of stories, which depicted Jaswant singh's heroic efforts in a totally different way. In fact, one story narrates this battle in some kind of Rambo style fight in which Jaswant singh alone, with help of two local girls, had defeated and killed advancing Chinese army single handed. Nothing can be further from truth, as the correct narration of events is already displayed at the memorial in form of a display board. Why do we spread such superlative but false stories about dead, who can not defend themselves or comment about the historic event? Perhaps the glorification gives some consolation to our minds.
Read
any fiction based on some historic event. It could be second world
war or India's fight against foreign invaders. We glorify the actions
and the events to such an extent so as to create impression on the
minds of the readers that the characters were some kind of super
humans. Main reason for this glorification, according to me, is to
fit these characters and events into our expectations. Let me give
you an example. Each and every Indian today, hates our past, where
for at least last 2000 years, we were continuously attacked by people
coming from central Asia and Europe, who conquered us, made us to
part with our wealth and imposed great misery on us. Starting from
Kushans, I can list, Greeks, Sakas, Huns, Afghans, Turkmenistani
Moghuls and finally English people, here. There have been a few
sporadic efforts to stop the invaders. We glorify these efforts by
few men like Chandragupta Maurya, Gautamiputra Satavahana, from
pre-historic periods and heroes from recent past like Rana Pratap
from Rajasthan and Great Shivaji off course. However, we never seem
to think about the fact that India was conquered because it was never
united, There were too many kings, who fought against each other and
finally each and every one lost against the foreign invader. We
glorify the deeds of few heroes in this long dark history of defeat,
because it gives us some kind of relief and solace.
Statue of Maharana Pratap
Glorification of heroes, according to me, can be tolerated to some extent as it may not cause too much damage except for ballooning of egos. What is worst is the new trend of vilification of some historic characters either for some ulterior motive or to gain popularity by sensationalism. Let me give some examples. We have been learning from our history text books that The Great Maratha king Shivaji, was tutored in his early life by an dministrator of his lands, “Dadoji Konddev.” To be frank, till a few years ago, I did not even know, surname of this historic figure and his cast or community. A few years back, someone found out that he belonged to a particular community hated by many. When this fact came to be known by a group, who take pride in being anti of that community, they were terribly upset. This led to realignment of history from what we had read from the history books, and that poor “Dadoji Konddev,” lost his place from history books and even his statues were removed. No one knows for sure, whether “Dadoji” was really the tutor of great Shivaji or not, yet he lost his place in history, just because he belonged to a particular community and in present context, it does not look appropriate that a person of this community could have been associated with the Great king.
Statue of Dadoji Konddev- now removed
Since the medieval period in Maharashtra, three saintly persons and their poetry, have dominated the minds of common people of this land. Out of these three, Dnyaneshwar, is from 15th century and Samarth Ramdas and Tukaram belonged to 17th century. It so happens now that two of the three, Dnyaneshwar and Ramdas did also belong to the community of "Dadoji." A new movement has lately been started to raise Tukaram's status and downgrade that of the other two. If you take a larger perspective, the effort looks childish, because the thought and its expression in form of poetry, from all these three has overwhelmingly dominated culture of Maharashtra for last four or five centuries. Yet some people have indulged in it because it suits there political perspective today.
An artist's imaginative painting of Samarth Ramdas; no longer a favourite
However the worst vilification according to me, is not caused by people who look upon history with some ulterior motives, because impact of such vilification efforts on the society is rather limited. What makes the most long lasting and deep impact is the vilification done by authors, poets, play writers and litterateurs, who effectively vilify historic characters, through their novels, poems or plays. We may add to this list now, movie makers and TV serial makers too.
During
my childhood, I had read number of works of fiction, based on Maratha
History. One Marathi author, “Nathmadhav,” is particularly
noteworthy. He must have written 20 or more novels, set during
Maratha period. We can add contemporary works of “ Ranjit Desai,”
to this list. There also have been many Marathi theater plays based on
Peshwa history. One thing that can be said about all these works of
fiction, is that they never vilified any historic figure. Yet, a
Marathi play introduced during 1970's, has proved to be such a great
exception to this norm that it has managed to turn a real life Maratha hero
into a caricature, that has become a lowly subject of raunchy comments
and randy or rowdy jokes.
Painting of Nana Fadanavis
I am speaking about “Nana Phadanvis,” who sworn to protect a 40-day old Peshwa and almost singlehandedly prevented the British from fulfilling their imperialistic designs on Maratha Empire for at least two decades. In process, he became one of the most powerful men in India and for over 20 years, he had called the shots in the Maratha Empire.
It is
a historically known fact that this man was easily attracted by
women. He himself has candidly talked about his early attraction for
women in his youth, in his autobiography. However, what this play writer, using this trait in Nana's character, has done in this
play, is just unbelievable. Nana has been defamed and made to look
like a lowly character, almost a maniac. Any real history lover would be pained to see this
kind of character assassination of this historic figure, particularly
when the person is attributed with such extraordinary and great historic achievements.
I
always believe that history should be seen and studied objectively,
we tend to look at it with passion and in the framework of in vogue
traditions and norms of the society. We always tend to rewrite
history so as to satisfy our inner emotions and egos. Such kind of
doctored history is not of any real use to any one at all, because it
would never teach us anything. That is why I feel, that we should
never colour or taint history, with what we think is right and we should study only the facts, however painful or
hurtful they may be to us.
5th
February 2015
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