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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t1: The Anti-Foreign and Democratic Tendencies

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t1

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The Anti-Foreign and Democratic Tendencies

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The Maratha positivism such as in politics took shape in the *dharma-rājya* of Śivāji the Great is not an isolated phenomenon in the Hindu culture of Southern India or of the Deccan. Among the formative forces of Śivāji's *Hindwi Swarājya* are to be detected from his mother's side the memories of the war of self-defence against the Moslems conducted by the Yādavas of Devagiri (c. 1200-1318). And on account, again, of his father's experiences in Vijayanagara, the Empire (1346-1646) which successfully upheld Hindu liberty for several centuries although with vicissitudes of fortune, the ideas of Hindu statehood were imbibed by Śivāji as a matter of course.¹ Śivāji can then be regarded as but a continuator under Moghul conditions of the traditional Hindu spirit, the *dharma*, which is obstinate enough not to submit to foreign forces. In Śivāji's ambitions, exploits and achievements are, further, to be seen the embodiments of the same *parākrama* (prowess) and *digvijigīṣā* (conquest of the quarters) which enabled Chandragupta Maurya to emancipate the north-western frontiers of India from the Hellenistic Seleukos (c. 305 B.C.). In subsequent times the same assertion of the Hindu spirit against foreign domination found expression in Skandagupta's expulsion of the Huns (c. 455 A.C.) furnishing thereby another precedent to Śivāji's triumphant service to Hindu culture. Historically, however, it is the South-Indian exploits of the Yādavas and of the Vijayanagara Rāyas that in point of time as well as region served to inspire Śivāji with direct examples.

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¹ G. S. Sardesai: *The Main Currents of Maratha History* (Bombay 1933), pp. 5-7.

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Śivāji was a nationalist in culture. “Back to Hindu tradition” may be said to have been his war-cry. It is the language of the *Manu Samhitā* and the *Nīti Śāstras* that was on his lips on the most important problems of life. Speaking to a Bundella (“Rajput,” “Kṣatriya”) chieftain Śivāji gave a bit of his mind when he declared as follows:

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“Does not the Kṣatriya faith consist in protecting the cow and the Brāhmaṇa, in guarding the Vedas, in showing skill and valour in battle? And if you lose your life will you not through the solar orb enter the mansion of bliss, enjoying plenitude of happiness and repose?”²

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² W. R. Pogson: *A History of the Boondelas*, pp. 52-53 in Sen: *The Military System of the Marathas* (Calcutta 1928), p. 24.

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In this inspiring message of Śivāji’s the Rajput chief was introduced to the deliberate restoration of ancient ideals, to the *renaissance* of Hindu culture by which Śivāji’s personality was fired. It is as apostle and embodiment of *Hindwi Swarājya* (Hindu independence) and a *dharmarājya* (kingdom of *dharma*, i.e., law, duty, and justice as conceived in the *Nīti Śāstras*) that he wanted to hold forth.

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There are other items in the Maratha *milieu* which point likewise to the strength of the Hindu tradition. It is out of tailors, carpenters, potters, gardeners, shopkeepers, barbers and even untouchable *mahars* that the Maratha saints and prophets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries arose.³ The rise of the lower tribes into the higher orders of the Hindu society, "social mobility" of the "vertical type," has been an eternal fact of Indian culture history since the earliest epochs of the Vedic period. In the Marathi-speaking regions during the epoch of the Hindu re-assertion expressions of the same democratic social "metabolism" were witnessed as elsewhere in India as but regular phases of the dynamic "culture-contacts." To a certain extent this ascendancy of the under-world was partly an expression of the great *bhakti* or Vaiṣṇava movement which was almost universal during the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. Democracy and *bhakti* (love or faith) went hand in hand as much in Northern India and Bengal as in South-western India and the Deccan.

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³ M. G. Ranade: *Rise of the Maratha Power* (Bombay 1900), pp. 10, 24, 146-147, 150.

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It was therefore as an integral feature of the Hindu societal tradition that by following the profession of arms the Mores of Jawli, the Savants of Wari, the Ghorpādes of Mudhol, the Nimbalkārs of Phaltan, the Jādhavas of Sindkhed, the Jedhkes, the Mānes, the Dāfles, and others rose into prominence in the Maratha world.⁴ Śivāji the Bhonsle himself belonged to a low caste (cultivator). And prior to coronation he had to be dubbed a Kṣatriya. Not only Śivāji but all his successors down to the last Peshwa had to recruit the army from the lower tribes or castes. Husbandmen, carpenters, shopkeepers, men of mean birth always constituted the backbone of the Maratha army, as says the *Tarikh-i-Ibrahim* towards the end of the eighteenth century. 'All through the ages in India as elsewhere the military profession has functioned as a most potent "social ladder," to use a modern socio-logical category.

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⁴ S. N. Sen: *The Military System of the Marathas* (Calcutta 1928), pp. 11, 26; J. N. Sarkar: *Shivaji* (Calcutta 1929), pp. 210, 212. The idea of the lowly origin of Śivāji is contested by Bal Krishna: *Shivaji the Great* (Bombay) Vol. I. (1932) p. 4. See the discussion on the Paretian circulation of elites in the section on the "State-systems of the Hindus," pp. 108-110.

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In the matter of organizing his army from among the lower orders Śivāji was but following in the wake of the Hindu generals and statesmen of yore. He followed the Hindu tradition in other ways too, as we shall see later.

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