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By:

Shoumojit Banerjee

27 August 2024 at 9:57:52 am

125 Years of Rise of the Maratha Power

Justice Ranade’s 1900 classic remains a foundational text of Maratha historiography that sought to reinterpret Maharashtra’s past as a disciplined national effort. When Mahadev Govind Ranade published ‘Rise of the Maratha Power’ in 1900, he was better known as a judge and reformer than as a historian. Yet, this book (more accurately, a collection of essays), issued in collaboration with his fellow jurist K. T. Telang, became the founding text of Maratha historiography. In a landscape...

125 Years of Rise of the Maratha Power

Justice Ranade’s 1900 classic remains a foundational text of Maratha historiography that sought to reinterpret Maharashtra’s past as a disciplined national effort. When Mahadev Govind Ranade published ‘Rise of the Maratha Power’ in 1900, he was better known as a judge and reformer than as a historian. Yet, this book (more accurately, a collection of essays), issued in collaboration with his fellow jurist K. T. Telang, became the founding text of Maratha historiography. In a landscape dominated by colonial chroniclers such as Mountstuart Elphinstone and James Grant Duff, whose narratives, to a lesser or greater degree, essentially treated the Marathas as shrewd adventurers in the ruins of Mughal rule, Ranade offered a strikingly different account. His interpretation of the Maratha nation was one whose edifice was built of moral purpose, social awakening and collective agency. As he explained in his preface, his aim was “to present a clear view of the salient features of the history from the Indian standpoint” and to dispel “misapprehensions which detract from the moral interest and political lessons of the story.” The rise of the Marathas, he insisted, was “a genuine effort on the part of a Hindu nationality…to achieve what had not been attempted before.” Ranade’s thesis, steeped in nineteenth-century moralism, gave regional and Indian history an internal logic. Yet the same moral fervour sometimes led Ranade to see continuity where later historians found rupture, and religious revival where evidence pointed to political calculation. Ranade’s career explains much about his method. Born in 1842 and educated in Bombay, he absorbed the analytic habits of the British and European liberal tradition - Gibbon’s irony, Mill’s utilitarianism, Ranke’s critical method, Macaulay’s literary flourish - but turned them to Indian ends. In 1891, he had devised, with Telang and others, an ambitious plan for a collaborative history of the Marathas. It never materialised, but the fragments became ‘Rise of the Maratha Power.’ His judicial discipline gave his prose its measured tone while his reformist temperament, shaped by the Prarthana Samaj (the socio-religious reform movement founded in Mumbai in 1867 by Dr. Atmaram Pandurang and his brother), gave it moral weight. In the opening chapter of ‘Rise of the Maratha Power,’ Ranade, in discussing the importance of Maratha history, rejected the idea that the Maratha confederacy was a band of marauders who prospered by accident. Freebooters, he argued, could not found empires that lasted generations. According to Ranade, the endurance of the Maratha power for nearly a century showed that it rested on deeper foundations like language, religion, local institutions and, above all, a moral sense of collective destiny. In a subtle assertion of indigenous legitimacy, Ranade pointedly reminded readers that the Marathas, and not the Mughals, were the immediate predecessors of the Raj in India’s political hierarchy. “The fact that the Maratha power, taking its rise in western Maharashtra, attained imperial supremacy over the continent of India for a century,” he wrote, “cannot but be a matter of absorbing interest to the British rulers of India.”  Ranade attributed the origins of Maratha power to geography and social organisation as much as to heroism. Maharashtra’s ridged landscape - the Sahyadri and Satpura ranges laced with hill-forts - had trained its inhabitants in the arts of defence and guerrilla war. Village panchayats and ryotwari land tenures had bred habits of independence unknown in other provinces. According to him, centuries of Muslim rule, far from extinguishing autonomy, had paradoxically honed it. By the seventeenth century, “a slow process of national emancipation was being peacefully worked up.” Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, in Ranade’s telling, did not create this energy; he united it. “The power had already been created, though scattered in small centres all over the country,” he wrote. Shivaji’s genius was to consolidate these forces against a common danger - the Mughal advance southward. His sense of mission, “inspired by religious enthusiasm,” distinguished him from mere fortune-seekers. For Ranade, religion was not fanaticism but social cement. The cults of Vithoba at Pandharpur and of Bhawani at Tuljapur and Kolhapur, the bhakti poetry of Tukaram and Ramdas - all supplied the moral voltage for political unity. Shivaji Maharaj’s interactions with these saints represented, Ranade thought, “the new aspirations of the time in intensified form.” The Maratha war of independence, therefore, was the political expression of a religious and social awakening. Later scholars would contest Ranade’s cause-and-effect chain, especially the role of religion in the rise of Maratha power. G. S. Sardesai argued in ‘Marathi Riyasat’ (1915) that the religious revival followed, rather than preceded, political consolidation. Yet, Ranade’s larger insight, which was that ideology and organisation mattered as much as arms, has remained seminal. The book’s later chapters read less like history than like moral audit. The later Peshwas, Ranade believed, had abandoned Chhatrapati Shivaji’s inclusive nationalism for Brahminical exclusiveness. Where earlier leaders had drawn strength from the peasantry and the soldiery, the Poona court degenerated into faction and patronage. “Parties within parties,” he lamented, destroyed the sympathy that had once bound classes together. Even the Dakshina charity, founded to support learning, had become “a grant generally to all Brahmins,” turning Poona into “a centre of a large pauper population.” His diagnosis of military decay was equally stern. The adoption of European-style infantry under later Peshwas created mercenary armies devoid of national feeling. Unlike the old hill militia, these troops served only their paymasters. He observed that in assisting the English to put down Angre’s power, the Peshwas diminished the importance of their own navy while the neglect of the hill-forts that had been Shivaji’s backbone, symbolised a deeper rot. Ranade’s argument culminated in a moral epigram worthy of a Victorian sermon: when a state limits its purpose to “protecting the cow and the Brahmin,” virtue decays and conquest follows “as a matter of course.” Time has not been kind to all of Ranade’s conclusions. Maratha historiography has vastly advanced since ‘Rise of the Maratha Power’. Ranade’s comparison between the Maratha  chauth  and Wellesley’s Subsidiary Alliance overstated the analogy.  Chauth,  as later scholars such as Surendranath Sen showed, promised no real protection, and its function evolved only under Shahu. Ranade’s likening of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s Ashta Pradhan council to the Governor-General’s Executive Council also strained credibility. Modern historians note that collective responsibility was only partly recognised in Shivaji’s system. Ranade’s reading of religion as the prime mover of politics reflected his own reformist piety more than the evidence. The Maratha movement’s appeal, as later research has revealed, owed as much to local grievances, regional trade and the opportunism of warrior elites as to bhakti zeal. His insistence on moral unity occasionally blurred the distinctions among castes, sects and interests that made Maratha politics fractious from the start. Yet, these are the inevitable blemishes of a pioneer. “Modern researches have made some of his conclusions untenable today,” admitted Dr. Surendranath Sen in 1925, “but the credit of pointing out a new angle of vision belongs strictly to him.” That “angle of vision” transformed Maratha historiography. Later writers like Dr. Bal Krishna Rao Bahadur G.S. Sardesai and V.V. Joshi among them either refined or contested his framework, but none escaped it. Bal Krishna’s  Shivaji the Great  (1940) largely accepted Ranade’s interpretations, correcting only technical comparisons. Joshi extended his method to the whole eighteenth century in  Clash of the Three Empires  (1941). Sardesai’s  New History of the Marathas  (1946) retained Ranade’s sociological lens even while revising its chronology. Revisiting the book on its quasquicentennial anniversary, one finds that  Rise of the Maratha Power  still remains valuable for its interpretation. Ranade’s Maharashtra was not just a province but a prototype for India - a polity in which geography, faith and self-government intertwined. As a jurist who believed that freedom required self-restraint, and a nationalist who distrusted chauvinism, Ranade’s history was neither a hymn to rebellion nor a paean to empire, but a study in civic virtue.

Political slugfest over Adani: BJP vs Others

  • PTI
  • Nov 22, 2024
  • 5 min read

Rahul demands Adani’s immediate arrest


BJP says Adani invested in Congress-ruled states

BJP vs Others

New Delhi: Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded the immediate arrest of Gautam Adani after the billionaire industrialist was charged in the US for alleged bribery and fraud.


Addressing a press conference here hours after the US prosecutors charged Adani and associates for allegedly paying USD 250 million bribe to Indian officials, the Congress leader said it is now pretty clear and established in the US that the businessman has broken Indian as well as American laws.


The Adani group denied the charges, saying the allegations by US prosecutors are baseless and the conglomerate is compliant with all laws. It also said that all possible legal recourse will be sought.


Gandhi said Adani should be arrested immediately and interrogated while his “protector” and SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch should be removed from her post and a probe should be initiated.


He further said he will raise the issue during the Winter session of Parliament beginning Monday. The entire opposition is together on the matter and will jointly raise the issue, he said.


He said the opposition’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the transactions of the Adani Group stands.


“I can guarantee that Adani won’t be arrested or investigated in India because the Modi government is protecting him,” Gandhi alleged.


When pointed out that nothing was happening in India against Adani despite Gandhi raising the issue several times, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said a lot has happened ever since he started raising the Adani issue.

“The PM’s credibility has been destroyed. The entire country knows they Adani and PM are one. We will expose everyone and the entire network. Madhabi Buch was the first example,” he said.


“India is in the grip of Adani. Adani is controlling India. We will not spare them,” Gandhi said. “I’m confident we will work slowly and in the end, we will dismantle this structure.”


“This is a political-financial-bureaucracy network as it captures India’s political system (on one hand) with money and on the other hand, they work for profit. It is a virtuous cycle which is negative for the country,” he said.

Gandhi said criminality and corruption are two different issues. But if Adani is working under due process, we don’t have a problem,” the senior Congress leader said.


“It is up to the government to investigate. Catch Adani and put him behind bars.”


Gandhi claimed the retail and small investors would suffer losses because of this and stressed that it was his job as the leader of opposition to warn them.

He said investigations should cover all states, irrespective of which party was in power.


“It is now pretty clear and established in the US that Mr Adani has broken both American and Indian laws. I’m wondering why Adani is running around a free man,” he said.


The former Congress chief said while chief ministers have been arrested for smaller allegations, Adani has been involved in a Rs 2,000 crore scam and he is still going scot-free.


Gandhi said the charges made by US prosecutors against Adani and his associates “is a vindication of what we have been saying”.


Accusing Prime Minister Modi of protecting Adani, the former Congress chief said, “The PM is clearly protecting him. It is my job to raise this issue. We want Adani to be arrested immediately.”


“We want to show the country that Adani ji will not be arrested because the PM is protecting him,” he said, adding, “Even after a scam of Rs 2,000 crore, I guarantee he will neither be arrested nor will there be any probe against him.”


Asked about some states ruled by non-BJP parties being named by the US prosecutors, he said, “Wherever this has happened, be it any government, there should be an investigation. But the one involved in the corruption should be jailed.”


Rahul, Congress trying to target Modi’s image: BJP

The BJP on Thursday dubbed Rahul Gandhi’s attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of his long-running efforts to target its leader, and noted that none of the four states named in American courts had a BJP government.


Addressing a press conference, BJP spokesperson and MP Sambit Patra made it clear that as far as allegations against the Adani group are concerned it is for the company to issue a clarification and defend itself.


“Law will take its own course,” he said, while keeping the focus on Gandhi’s allegations against the prime minister and the BJP government at the Centre.

Since 2002, Rahul Gandhi, his mother Sonia Gandhi and the Congress have been trying to tarnish Modi’s image, but they have not succeeded and the prime minister received the highest civilian award in a foreign country on a day the opposition party was attacking him, the BJP leader said.


Rahul Gandhi claimed in his press conference that the opposition has been successful in destroying Modi’s credibility over his alleged proximity to the business tycoon.


Citing the Adani group’s investment in various states ruled by the Congress and its allies, Patra noted that it invested Rs 25k crore and Rs 65k crore in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan when Bhupesh Baghel and Ashok Gehlot were at the helm there respectively.


The conglomerate invested Rs 45k crore in the DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu and had recently given Rs 100 crore donation to Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy for a skill development foundation, he added.


If Adani is “corrupt”, then why are the Congress governments seeking investment from his company, he asked.


The billionaire industrialist has been charged by US prosecutors for allegedly being part of a scheme to pay over USD 250 million (about Rs 2,100 crore) bribe to Indian officials in exchange of favourable terms for solar power contracts.


This was concealed from the US banks and investors from whom the Adani group raised billions of dollars for the project, the prosecutors have alleged. US law allows pursuing foreign corruption allegations if they involve certain links to American investors or markets.


Kejriwal stopped Adani Group: AAP

The Adani group tried to enter Delhi’s power sector but was stopped by then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh claimed. He claimed that Adani Green Energy secured power supply contracts in several states, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, through unethical means.


“Adani even attempted to enter Delhi’s electricity market but failed because then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal stopped them,” he said while warning people that if the BJP gains power in Delhi, electricity costs could surge.

“We will not keep quiet and will raise this matter with full force in the upcoming session of Parliament,” Singh added.


TN has nothing to do with Adani’s firm: minister

Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji on Thursday asserted that Tamil Nadu government run electricity corporation has no commercial relationship with Gautam Adani’s company and that the state has an understanding to buy power only from a Central government firm.


“I would like to first clarify that as regards TANGEDCO (TN Generation and Districution Corporation), there has been no kind of commercial relationship with Adani’s company during the past three years (after the DMK assumed power in May 2021),” he said.


Taking into account the electricity requirements of the state, Tamil Nadu inked a pact for procurement of 1,500 MW, with the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited, a Central government company, at a very competitive price of Rs 2.61 (per unit), he said adding “there is no direct contact with Adani firm.”

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