WHO IS JAMES LAINE?
James W. Laine is an American professor and writer, most famous for his controversial book on the 17th century Maratha king Shivaji, titled "Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India" (OUP: 2003). The publication of the book was followed by heavy criticism and the attack on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, India. In view of the attacks and the public unrest, the book was banned in the Indian state of Maharashtra in January 2004. The ban was lifted by the Bombay High Court in 2007, and in July 2010 the Supreme Court of India upheld the lifting of ban, which was followed by public demonstrations against the author and the decision of the supreme court.
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At every step, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, has been insulted by the Congress rulers who believe in nurturing the tradition of slavery !
At every step, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, has been insulted by the Congress rulers who believe in nurturing the tradition of slavery !
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of Hindvi Swaraj is not only revered in Maharashtra but is an inspiration for people all over the country. It is, therefore, condemnable if someone maligns his or Rajamata Jijau’s name. Such literature should not be published anywhere. Once again there is furor in Maharashtra over a book, written by a controversial foreigner called James Laine, titled ‘Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India’. Laine has insulted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Rajmata Jijau enraging all patriots in this country. Of course, a ban was imposed on the book as expected but owing to the incompetent Congress Government, the ban could not be upheld in the High Court and the Supreme Court leading to lifting of the ban on the said book. People from this State expressed their anger through protest rallies, agitations, ‘road blocking’ etc.
Incompetence of the Government !
Who approached the Court to lift the ban on Laine’s book, how could the Congress Government had to face defeat in High Court and the Supreme Court when for once, the 10 crores of the population in the State was with the Government; answers need to be found to these questions. Everyone (except the Government) was making efforts to continue the ban. About 7-8 historians like Shiv-shahir Babasaheb Purandare, senior research historian Shri. Ninad Bedekar, Shri. Pandurang Balkawade etc. wrote a letter to ‘Oxford University Press’ demanding that the book should not be published. As an aftermath of which, the renowned publishing house had to render apology through a letter. The historians demanded that the letter issued by Manzar Khan, an officer of the Oxford University Press to few historians seeking pardon should be presented by the Congress Government in the Court as powerful evidence; but the Congress Government rejected their plea and fell on its face in the High Court.
The same demand was made by these historians when the Government appealed in the Supreme Court but the Congress did not take it seriously and the Congress Government again fell on its face even in the Supreme Court. The letter sent by this publishing house was in a way an open acceptance of their mistake and therefore, the letter was of utmost importance as an evidence to be presented in the Court. Why then such letter was not presented by the Government in the Court? The people must ask for an explanation for this to the Government.
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- According to book from Jame laine .... Shivaji was son of Hoysala lineage from karnataka..... and not from Rajput lineage ..... Such sort of comment was insult of the great person
- Laine exposes his agenda when he foists the unnatural concept of South Asia upon the geographical and cultural boundaries of India; this is awkward because his discussion is India-centric and specific to the Maharashtra region. He is also unable to disguise his discomfort at the fact that Shivaji withstood the most bigoted Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, and established political agency for the embattled Hindu community, amidst a sea of Islamic sultanates.
- Laine repeatedly makes inane remarks about Hindus employed under Muslim rulers and vice versa, to claim that the two communities lacked a modern sense of identity, and could not be viewed as opposing entities. What he means, of course, is that Hindus of the era cannot be ceded to have had a sense of 'Hindu' identity.
- Laine did not once mention Shivaji's famed ambition to establish a Hindu Pad Padshahi. This is a strange omission in a work claiming to study how contemporary authors viewed Shivaji's historic role, and the assessment of his legacy by subsequent native and colonial writers. The most notable omission is of the poet Bhushan, who wrote: "Kasihki Kala Gayee, Mathura Masid Bhaee; Gar Shivaji Na Hoto, To Sunati Hot Sabaki!" [Kashi has lost its splendour, Mathura has become a mosque; If Shivaji had not been, All would have been circumcised (converted)].
- This is how Mathura was looted .WE ARE TALKNG OF 1018 AD Mahmud GHAZNI seized five gold idols weighing 89,300 missals and 200 silver idols. According to Utbi, "The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naptha and fire, and levelled with the ground." The pillage of the city continued for 20 days. Mahmud now turned towards Kanauj which had been the seat of several Hindu dynasties. Utbi continues: "In Kanauj there were nearly ten thousand temples... Many of the inhabitants of the place fled in consequence of witnessing the fate of their deaf and dumb idols. Those who did not fly were put to death. The Sultan gave his soldiers leave to plunder and take prisoners."
- Bhushan's verse has immense historical value because the Kashi Vishwanath temple was razed in 1669 and thus lost its splendour, and the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple was destroyed and converted into a mosque in 1670. Bhushan came to Shivaji's kingdom from the Mughal capital in 1671, and within two years composed Shiv Bhooshan, a biography of Shivaji. It clearly states that Shivaji wanted to set up a Hindu Pad Padshahi.
- Hence,James Laine's view that Shivaji had no ideological quarrel with Aurangzeb and was only an adventurer in search of power and resources is juvenile. Laine obviously subscribes to the secularist school of historiography that decrees that Hindus must forget the evil done to them, a phenomenon Dr. Koenraad Elst calls negationism. But history is about truth, and Hindu society's long and painful experience of Islamic invasions and the subsequent Islamic polity has been so well documented in standard works like Cambridge History of India, that it is amazing a modern historian should claim there was no tension between Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects.
- Shivaji strove consciously for political power as an instrument for the resurrection of dharma (righteousness), a quest he termed as "Hindavi Swarajya," a word having both geographical and spiritual-cultural connotations. When still in his teens in 1645 CE, Shivaji began administering his father's estate under a personalized seal of authority in Sanskrit, an indication that he envisaged independence and respected the Hindu tradition. A 1646 CE letter to Dadaji Naras Prabhu refers to an oath that Shivaji, Prabhu, and others took in the presence of the deity at Rayareshwar, to establish "Hindavi Swarajya."
- Shivaji was aware of the economic ruin and cultural annihilation of Hindus under the various sultanates. He desired to end this suffering, but was personally free from bigotry, as attested by contemporary Muslim chroniclers, notably Khafi Khan. It is therefore galling when Laine smugly proclaims: "I have no intention of showing that he was unchivalrous, was a religious bigot, or oppressed the peasants."
- A.S. Altekar (Position of Women in Ancient India) has recorded how Shivaji, in stark contrast to Muslim kings and generals of his era, ensured that Muslim women in forts captured by him were not molested and were escorted to safety. It is inconceivable that Shivaji would not know that Hindu women similarly situated would have to commit jauhar. It is therefore incumbent upon Laine and BORI to explain what "unchivalrous" and "bigot" mean.
- The insinuation about "bigot" is especially objectionable in view of Laine's insistence that Shivaji had no particular interest in Hindu civilization and no proven relationship with the revered Samarth Ramdas or sant Tukaram. Laine has probably not read the references cited in his book!!!!!!!! What the reader needs to understand is that Ramdas' historical significance lies in the fact that he openly exhorted the people to rise against oppression and hinted in Dasbodh that Shivaji was an avatar who had come to restore dharma. By denying that he was Shivaji's spiritual mentor, Laine seeks to disprove that the great Maratha wanted to establish a Hindu Pad Padshahi.
- Ramdas, a devotee of Rama (Vaishnava sampradaya), visited the Khandoba temple at Jejuri, Pune; apologized to the god (Shiva) for boycotting the temple due to the practice of animal sacrifice there; and built a Hanuman temple at its entrance. I mention this to debunk Laine's pathetic insistence that devotion to a personal god divides Hindu society. This is alien to our thinking; we see no conflict between Ramdas and the Bhavani-worshipping Shivaji.
- Laine maintains that there is no standard biography of Shivaji. The author asserts that the primordial view that the Hindus and the Muslims were pitted against each other and ever fighting is false. {HOW CAN HE SAY THAT WHEN THE HINDU TEMPLES WERE REPEATEDLY PLUNDERED AND THE PILGRIMAGE TAXES OF THE MUGHALS????}
- Only some Muslim rulers did create ethnic trouble.(APART FROM AKBAR I DONT FIND ANY ISLAMIC KING IN THE HISTORY WHO DID SOME GOOD FOR HINDUS.I CUD GIVE SOME EXAMPLES OF EACH ISLAMIC KING
- (1) Mahmud Ghazni---Plundered India repeatedly.Even the Buddhist monks at Sarnath were SLAUGHTERED.Mahmud's sack of Somnath is too well-known to be retold here. What needs emphasizing is that the fragments of the famous Sivalinga were carried to Ghazni. Some of them were turned into steps of the Jama Masjid in that city. The rest were sent to Mecca, Medina, and Baghdad to be desecrated in the same manner. He plundered Somnath Temple,devasted Mathura,Kanauj was targeted.The Brahmins of Munj, which was attacked next, fought to the last man after throwing their wives and children into fire.
- (2)In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-lslam mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak "adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants".
- (3)In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite reinforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, "fifty thousand infidels were dispatched to hell by the sword" and "more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors".
- (4)Jalaluddin Khalji led an expedition to Ranthambhor in 1291 AD. On the way he destroyed Hindu temples at Chain. The broken idols were sent to Delhi to be spread before the gates of the Jama Masjid.
- (5)Kampala Devi, the queen of Gujarat, was captured along with the royal treasury, brought to Delhi and forced into Alauddin's harem.
- (6)After the sack of the temples in Orissa, Firoz Shah Tughlaq attacked an island on the sea-coast where "nearly 100,000 men of Jajnagar had taken refuge with their women, children, kinsmen and relations". The swordsmen of Islam turned "the island into a basin of blood by the massacre of the unbelievers".
- (7)AMIR TIMUR says: "My great object in invading Hindustan had been to wage a religious war against the infidel Hindus...[so that] the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the Hindus." To start with he stormed the fort of Kator on the border of Kashmir. He ordered his soldiers "to kill all the men, to make prisoners of women and children, and to plunder and lay waste all their property". Next, he "directed towers to be built on the mountain of the skulls of those obstinate unbelievers". Soon after, he laid siege to Bhatnir defended by Rajputs. They surrendered after some fight, and were pardoned. But Islam did not bind Timur to keep his word given to the "unbelievers". His Tuzk-i-Timuri records:
- (8) I think u wudnt like to read more on this,BUT IT IS A FACT THAT THERE WAS A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE HINDUS AND MUSLIMS,and JAMES LAINE says Only some Muslim rulers did create ethnic trouble is TOTALLY WRONG.
- The author asserts that pre-modern Marathas did not understand identities and allegiances in terms of Hinduism and Islam. Hence, Laine concludes, that to regard Shivaji as an Indian is absolutely wrong and that myths woven round him give a distorted picture of the reality.
Laine's profound Freudian analysis is that he has thanked his wife and children and dedicated his book to his mother; I couldn't but notice the absence of a father. Is one to deduce something from the omission? Laine can relax: since the Vedas, Hindus have placed only proportionate emphasis on biological bloodlines; there is no shame if a man cannot mention his father; a true bastard is one who does not know the name of his mother.
Reality check on what actually Shivaji Maharaj is---
Tilak cites Arjuna's example from The Mahabharata. Tilak comments that great men are exempted from following the strict standard of conventional morality. Indian leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Annie Besant, Aurobindo Ghosh and poet Tagore have paid eloquent tributes to Shivaji as a great national leader and the builder of the country. The author treats such views as flippant.Now here apart from Tilak,the other leaders do not belong to Maharashtra but still they praise Shivaji,so is James Laine greater than then?????
Tilak cites Arjuna's example from The Mahabharata. Tilak comments that great men are exempted from following the strict standard of conventional morality. Indian leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Tilak, Annie Besant, Aurobindo Ghosh and poet Tagore have paid eloquent tributes to Shivaji as a great national leader and the builder of the country. The author treats such views as flippant.Now here apart from Tilak,the other leaders do not belong to Maharashtra but still they praise Shivaji,so is James Laine greater than then?????
- Saved Hindus and kept Hindu Dharma alive (had he not been there, the Hindus on this planet would have been wiped out) AS WE KNOW HOW HINDUS WERE SLAUGHTERED BY MUGHALS
- Started the First Hindu Ram Raajya after a Non-Hindu rule of nearly a millennium.
- First ever to re-admit (reconversion) people back to Hindu Dharma (those who were converted to Islam forcibly and/or with allurement)
- First to start administration in local language (earlier Pharasi, Arabic were used for the administration)
- Started Naval armory. Built forts in ocean also and established full control on seas
- Fought and defeated enemies like Moghuls, Adil Shaahi, Portuguese etc. (EVEN SHIVAJI KNEW THAT BRITISHERS WERE A THREAT SO HE EVEN CHECKED THEM)
- Treated women with respect (the famous incident of a daughter-in-law of Kalyaan’s general, another one of Hirakani who had climbed down the difficult fort etc)
- Established guerilla warfare.
- Fought wars with less resources.
- Established good administration.
- Great Escape in the world History: Personally went to Agra to meet Aurangzeb, who imprisoned him. But Ch. Shivaaji escaped with all his nearly 400 guards.
- Led from the front. Many times fought wars personally.
- Earned respect even from enemies.
- Therefore, say with pride, Jai Shivaaji, Jai Bhavaani !!! JAI BHARAT!!!
Indian history is being fabricated by Marxist and ‘secular’ writers under the patronage of the foreign-born, lady-directed, un-Indian UPA government.
Look at these atrocities:In the text book of NCERT for Standard 7 ‘Our Past – ll’ there are only 5 lines on Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj.60 pages given to Mughal’s history and Mughal rulers who made the Hindus slaves.Not even a single photo of valorous Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj is printed. The place for the photograph is left blank.IF NCERT DOESNT HAVE A PHOTO OF GREAT SHIVAJI I WUD SEND THEM ONE.
While the photos of atrocious, tyrannical Muslim kings, Babar and his descendants starting from 700 AD are printed.
No mention of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaja’s ‘Hindavi Swarajya’ but it is just mentioned as ‘local government’.
No mention at all of Maharana Pratap who had fought with Mughal sacrificed the leisure of royal palace and used to sleep on the grass like ordinary people.
Dear readers,just because you do not like the Thackerays and their policies,do not underestimate THE GREAT SHIVAJI.(the Thackerays is a totally different issue,it might b so tat they might b protesting against the JAMES LAINE book to gain political mileage,but their cause and reason is well justified).
WHEN JAMES LAINE WRITES SO MUCH WRONG ABOUT THE NATIONAL HERO AND STILL IF OUR SO CALLED LITERATE INDIA AND HONOURABLE SUPREME COURT FEELS THAT THE BAN SHUD B LIFTED ON HIS BOOK THEN I FEEL THAT WE R INSULTING AND Demeaning Shivaji, denigrating dharma
