Who was Shivaji

by Govind Pansare

In 1869 Jotirao Phule inserted a discordant note in the Brahmanical interpretation of Shivaji’s achievements by writing a powada (Marathi ballad) on Shivaji which celebrated his achievements as a Kshatriya Raja in the tradition of a Marathi shahir.[4] Phule’s Chhatrapati Shivajiraje Bhosle Yancha Powada describes Shivaji as an ideal king who lived in the saddle and fought both the Yavanas and the traitors within Maharashtra. Though Phule’s powada calls Aurangzeb a “sachcha harami shaitan” (“a real devil”), more because of what he did to his brothers and father and less because he was Muslim, it can be read alongside his larger treatise on the caste system Gulamgiri (Slavery) which was published in 1873. The anti-savarna imagination of Shivaji as a sovereign who suppressed the Brahmanical descendants of the Yavanas and elevated the social status of the dalit-bahujans crafted by Phule and his followers active in the Dalit-Bahujan movements in the twentieth century provides a part of the epistemological context of Pansare’s Who was Shivaji?