09-07-2006, 05:22 AM
Jadunath Sarkar is definitely Anglophilic in his earlier days- he was like one of those typically babujis who had to please the mlechCha Massa. So to sum up he was definitely a good historian by gave undue credit to the Britons. In his history of Shivaji he tries his best not to offend the British be favorably mentioning events in which Shivaji attacked the British. In one incidence Shivaji captured a British soldier involved in possible subversion and cut off his hand and leg. But Sarkar tries to coverup in the defense of the British. The second incident is the raid on Surat-- the Maratha Bakars state that they plundered the British warehouse and set fire to different European holdings. Sarkar out of respect for the Britons tries to give the British perspective on the attack on warehouse.
There was another British author who wrote a Maharatta history. He was Charles Kincaid. Though British, he was pro-hindu and correctly saw Hindus as the only surviving pagans of the old Indo-European world. Hence, he expressed his admiration for the Maharattas in the defense of the pagan religion and declared that when he saw the Hindus he felt admiration as to how they survived when the ancient Roman and Greek pagans have become extinct. He wrote a generally objective history of the Maharattas till the reign of Shahu in excellent English. However, even he did not write objectively on the Maharatta-European encounter. In the book The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy By Randolf Cooper we see for the first time a British author grudgingly accept that the conquest of India from the Maharattas was not as painted by by the victorious Britons immediately after the event.
Yes in Maharashtra Shivaji is highly magnified in the History textbooks but then these textbooks do not talk about Vijayanagara and the post-Kakatiya freedom struggle in Andhra/South India which actually was the first time a Hindus repulsed the Moslems on a large scale. So each place is regionalistic in its orientation.
Without Vijayanagara there would have been not Maratha Hindu Svarajya- remember South India gave the buffer zone when Rajaram and his wife bore the brunt of the great 26 year Jihad on Awrangzeb.
There was another British author who wrote a Maharatta history. He was Charles Kincaid. Though British, he was pro-hindu and correctly saw Hindus as the only surviving pagans of the old Indo-European world. Hence, he expressed his admiration for the Maharattas in the defense of the pagan religion and declared that when he saw the Hindus he felt admiration as to how they survived when the ancient Roman and Greek pagans have become extinct. He wrote a generally objective history of the Maharattas till the reign of Shahu in excellent English. However, even he did not write objectively on the Maharatta-European encounter. In the book The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy By Randolf Cooper we see for the first time a British author grudgingly accept that the conquest of India from the Maharattas was not as painted by by the victorious Britons immediately after the event.
Yes in Maharashtra Shivaji is highly magnified in the History textbooks but then these textbooks do not talk about Vijayanagara and the post-Kakatiya freedom struggle in Andhra/South India which actually was the first time a Hindus repulsed the Moslems on a large scale. So each place is regionalistic in its orientation.
Without Vijayanagara there would have been not Maratha Hindu Svarajya- remember South India gave the buffer zone when Rajaram and his wife bore the brunt of the great 26 year Jihad on Awrangzeb.