Histories of the independent Maratha state, which typically focus on the charismatic military hero Shivaji and other leading figures in the region in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, have played a significant role in the creation of a Marathi identity as well as a larger national Indian identity. These histories have been deployed in different contexts, ranging from the struggle for Indian independence to the Hindu nationalist and Dalit movements. Creative Pasts by Prachi Deshpande explores the ways in which historical narratives focusing on this period have contributed to the construction of “an enduring, shared historical memory of the Maratha past” (p. 2).
In her introduction, Deshpande points out that studying the category of memory has been posited as a way of accessing narratives that fall outside mainstream modern historiography. In contrast to this approach, some historians draw on the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Maurice Halbwachs to analyze the problematic role played by memory in the construction of a hoary past that props up the illusion of the modern nation that has existed from time immemorial. This uneasy relationship between history and memory also reflects a tension between scholarly and popular history. Deshpande suggests using the term “historical memory” to include both the academic discourse of professional historians as well as popular accounts, which range from “amateur biographies, historical fiction and poetry, performance, film, and polemical tracts” (p. 6).
Deshpande begins with an examination of bakhars, which were prose historical narratives that usually detailed significant events in the context of family histories or biographies of important rulers. Deshpande draws on Sumit Guha's work to examine the links between the bakhars and the bureaucratic structures of the emerging Maratha state. Among the bakhars that Deshpande analyzes are the Sabhasad bakhar (ca. 1694) and the Chitnis bakhar (ca. 1811), which are biographies of Shivaji. In addition to narrating significant events in Shivaji's life, the Sabhasad bakhar also included mundane administrative details in an attempt to legitimize the central authority created by Shivaji's coronation in 1674. While the Chitnis bakhar is clearly influenced by the Sabhasad bakhar, Deshpande points out that it “replaces Shivaji's personal religiosity and piety with an overtly political understanding of Hindu religious difference” (p. 46). In addition to examining bakhars, Deshpande also studies powadas, which were poems commemorating the bravery of military heroes. Deshpande suggests that the powadas played an important role in the creation of a historical memory of Maratha military campaigns in a wide-ranging social context.
The advent of the British had a significant impact on Maratha historiography. Deshpande's analysis of the development of a colonialist discourse on Maratha history focuses on the work of James Grant Duff, a protégé of Mountstuart Elphinstone. Duff's influential History of the Mahrattas (London: Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826) contained sweeping dismissive generalizations about the Marathas. Duff also dismissed the bakhars as lacking historical accuracy and legitimacy. Traditional modes of Indian historiography were further influenced by the British system of liberal education, which was introduced in the 1830s and emphasized the idea of history as a positivist discipline. Deshpande goes on to examine how the new Western-educated intelligentsia began to challenge Duff's claims through a serious engagement with questions about methodology and truth in the context of writing history. Figures such as Bhandarkar, Chiplunkar, and Rajwade began to have a significant impact in the Marathi public sphere. Writers such as Jotirao Phule also offered radical histories that examined lower-caste perspectives, which had been marginalized in both the British and upper-caste narratives.
The middle-class nationalists continued to challenge colonialist discourse in prose, poetry, and plays in the late nineteenth century through the articulation of a “Maharashtra dharma” which was also linked to the larger Indian struggle for independence (p. 16). Deshpande points out that this discourse of dharma contained a multiplicity of voices ranging from the Hindu right, which emphasized Hindu–Muslim conflict, to the secularists, who portrayed an India united against the British, to the peasant leaders who were fighting for the overthrow of the feudal system. Deshpande also examines the gendering of this discourse, which portrayed “a masculine Maharashtra as a protector of the feminine Indian nation” (p. 16). The final section of the book examines the tensions between higher and lower-caste perspectives of Maratha history as well as the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of the 1950s, which resulted in the formation of the state of Maharashtra in the Indian union in 1960.
Deshpande's book displays impressive range and theoretical sophistication in its exploration of the construction of modern Marathi identity, and it is particularly noteworthy for the attention paid to popular modes of historiography. This book is recommended for readers interested in Indian historiography as well as those who are interested in the negotiation of modernity and the politics of identity in the Indian context.
