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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t4: The Pluralistic World of Śivāji

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s8.t4

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The Pluralistic World of Śivāji

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In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Maratha masses and classes were used in daily life to the Mussalman institutions and practices. The Hindu tradition survived by all means in the more important items of personal and domestic life.⁸ The social polity may in general be taken to have been still governed by the *Manu Samhitā*, and the general *mores* by the *Mahābhārata*. Certain branches of public law, i.e., political life, also, e.g., the land revenue system, the law of property, and agricultural practice remained Hindu to the last although somewhat Moslemized in a few items. But the other branches of public law, i.e., the executive and the judiciary, the army and the police had become Islamic in the main and did not possess more than mere traces of the Hindu institutions.⁹ In the Moslem states of the Deccan and South India the Hindu *personnel* was however always a noticeable feature even in the higher rungs of service.

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⁸ M. G. Ranade: *Rise of the Maratha Power* (Bombay 1900), pp. 27-38, 44-45.

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⁹ For Moslem contribution to Maratha polity see S. N. Sen: *Administrative System* etc. (Calcutta 1925), pp. 593-664 and J. N. Sarkar: *Shivaji* (Calcutta 1929), pp. 216, 386-387.

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In Śivāji's politics are therefore to be seen both these strands, Hindu and Moslem. He is a representative not only of the tribal contacts and caste-fusions so common to the Hindu culture of all ages, but at the same time a specimen and embodiment of Hindu-Moslem cultural *rapprochement*. Like Abul Fazl the Hinduized Moslem, Śivāji was to a certain extent a Moslemized Hindu, both being true indices to the Indo-Saracenic Renaissance of the times. Śivāji's sympathy with Moslems in the practice of their religion and patronage of Moslem mosques is worthy of mention in this connection.¹⁰

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¹⁰ Ranade: *Rise of the Maratha Power*, p. 277; J. N. Sarkar: *Shivaji* p. 381.

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It is in the perspective of these Hindu-Moslem culture-contacts, extensive and profound as they were, that we are to appraise the attempts of Śivāji to hold forth as a Hindu monarch, nay, as a Hindu nationalist bent upon reviving, or rather providing a fresh fillip to, the institutions and *mores* of Hindu culture. An important item as well as evidence of Śivāji's cultural nationalism is to be found in the very coronation itself.¹¹

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¹¹ J. N. Sarkar: *Shivaji* (1929) pp. 208-219.

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This ceremony, administered as it was by the "Brahmadeva and Vyāsa" of those days, namely, Paṇḍit Viśveśvara Bhaṭṭa (nicknamed Gāgā Bhaṭṭa) of Benares, served to establish his *liaison* with the entire Hindu world of the time. On the other hand, it was by this ceremony that his *Hindwi Swarāj* was affiliated to the great pre-Moslem Hindu empires of antiquity.

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The *Śukranīti* can very often be cited in illustration of the institutions and principles of the polity established by Śivāji and developed by the Peshwas.¹² The state-council of eight (*aṣṭa pradhāna*), town-planning, land revenue, forced labour, agricultural policy, military ideas, punishments, legal procedure, etc., can be explained in terms of this *nīti-śāstra*. Indeed, in the first edition of the present work (Vol. I, 1914, p. 259) it was pointed out that Śivāji's war-cry about the inviolability of the cow might suggest a date for that line of the *Śukranīti* (IV, vii, 453) which declares the killing of cows to be one of the most serious *casus belli*. And the ideas of Manu, nay, of Kauṭalya can likewise be detected in the system of Śivāji and his successors.

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¹² S. N. Sen : *Administrative System of the Marathas* (Calcutta 1925), pp. 488, 489, 499-501, 527, 531, 533, 534, 541, 549, 551-552, 556, 570, 573, 577. It is to this author that I am indebted for most of the books in Marathi language utilized in the present work as well as for the meanings of some of the more difficult words and phrases such as are beyond the competence of my very limited knowledge of Marathi. He is, however, not responsible for any of the interpretations offered in this study.

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