Row over award to historian Babasaheb Purandare

Rightwing Sambhaji Brigade, which vandalized BORI, takes offence over honour for historian Purandare

May 04, 2015 05:32 pm | Updated November 16, 2021 05:07 pm IST - Pune

Historian Babasaheb Purandare at his residence in Pune.

Historian Babasaheb Purandare at his residence in Pune.

In a peculiar faceoff consuming Maharashtra’s political right, the extreme rightwing, anti-Brahmin outfit Sambhaji Brigade has taken strong umbrage to the Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party government’s decision to honour rightwing historian Babasaheb Purandare with the prestigious ‘Maharashtra Bhushan’ award.

The Sambhaji Brigade, a group on the lunatic fringe, has demanded the Maharashtra govt. revoke its decision to award the 92-year-old historian at once as the ‘Shiv Sahir’s’ (Shivaji’s poet - Mr. Purandare’s popular honorific) works twisted facts about Shivaji and were essentially divisive in nature that stoked tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

The Brigade has threatened to lay siege to the houses of all Ministers and Legislators across the State if their demand was not met. 

Infamous for its eccentric views and even wilder acts of vandalism, the Sambhaji Brigade hogged the political limelight in 2004 after it vandalised the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune in protest against American scholar James Laine’s book on Shivaji titled  Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India ( 2003). 

The Brigade, founded by Purushottam Khedekar, purports to champion Maratha causes, namely reservation for the Maratha community. It advocates a different form of Hinduism through its vitriolic anti-Brahmin posture – a plank that occasionally causes the Brigade to idiosyncratically back Dalit as well as Muslim causes.

“It is Purandare who has distorted facts about King Shivaji’s life by claiming that Shivaji, his mother Jijabai and his guardian and tutor Dadoji Konddev were of the same ‘gotra’ (lineage). Laine has shamelessly borrowed from Purandare’s book,  Raja Shiva Chatrapati ,” alleged Santosh Shinde, president of the Sambhaji Brigade’s Pune unit.

Given the fact that Dadoji was a Brahmin has further raised the Brigade’s hackles against Mr. Purandare, whom the group also charges with having engendered the confusion about Shivaji’s birth date which in turn has led to chaos during the Shivaji Jayanti celebrations. 

In 2010, the Brigade, in yet another of its off-centre demands, had urged the removal of Dadoji Konddev’s statue from the Lal Mahal in Pune on grounds that Dadoji was a fictional figure introduced by Brahmin historians.

Mr. Purandare, a leader in Bal Thackeray-led Shiv Sena in the 1970s, headed the committee of historians that gave Shivaji’s birth date as February 19, 1630 – a version at odds with Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s classic and intensely researched work,  Shivaji and his Times  (1919) that gives the Maratha King’s birth date, after careful research, as April 6, 1627.

The Sambhaji Brigade’s views have found surprising accommodation with that of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA Jitendra Awhad, who earlier censured the Maharashtra govt.’s decision to confer the award on grounds that Mr. Purandare had “remained silent” on Mr. Laine’s controversial work. 

“Mr. Laine, whose book on Shivaji twisted the Maratha King’s life, was indebted to Mr. Purandare. Why has the great historian not repudiated Mr. Laine’s book which is replete with errors?” said Mr. Awhad, demanding the award to Mr. Purandare be revoked.

The Pune Police have provided tight security around the nonagenarian historian’s home in Pune’s Parvati area.

Meanwhile, State Cultural Affairs Minister Vinod Tawde, who announced the State govt.’s decision to honour Mr. Purandare, has appealed to the Sambhaji Brigade not to bring communal questions into the equation and urged them to call-off their agitation.

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