Part 1: A century after his landmark Patna lectures, Main Currents of Maratha History remains a classic primer for understanding the anatomy of Maratha power. It seems Chhatrapati Shivaji and Maratha history are condemned to be trapped between the Scylla of ‘liberal’ Western obloquy and the Charybdis of regional chauvinism that fails to evaluate historical processes with objective rigor. Every so often, a piece appears in a ‘liberal’ Western newspaper casting Shivaji Maharaj