Re: [Goanet] DEBATE: History... that's only in the movies (Aakar Patel, in ToI)
Totally agree with you Rico. You are saying what I feel too. When I said tweaked I mean tweaked by whoever is writing it. Read history as written by the Greeks re Alexander on India. Then read the same battle by Indian historians. Both versions are vastly different. As for the film, I liked the film. The author who wrote the article did not see the movie and used it as a referral for another point. Fine by me. The point is that history is written most often by the victorious and it is not necessarily the correct version as yo well pointed outré Shivaji. To many he is a hero but to the Brits they called him a Mountain Rat Best we accept all points of view W Sent from my iPad Wendell Rodricks, Campal, Panjim. GOA 403001. INDIA. Off tel: +91-832-2420604, Shop tel: +91-832-2238177 Off email: rns.wend...@gmail.com On 25-Dec-2015, at 3:15 PM, Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا wrote: > Dear Wendell, > > The issue is not so much about the *film*, as about the way history gets > depicted in our parts of the world (and I guess elsewhere too). These myths > go beyond films and are consistently celebrated in daily life too. Aakar > Patel might have done a good job by questioning it in a rather articulated > way. > > Feature films and fictionalised films have every right to create myths; but > history doesn't. Questionable versions can be challenged, and should be. > > In today's Goa, Shivaji is treated as a hero. Wonder what he meant to > villagers of another era living along the then 'international border' in > places like your Colvale, Tivim, Siolim or Aldona. That reality our ancestors > of another generation might have a story about; but do they have the voice to > do so? If we portray him as someone out to save a religion, then we're > setting misleading terms of discourse. > > Your justification about history being "tweaked" doesn't seem to hold much > water, given that this is promoted by a supposedly secular state, and it has > serious implications for current day religious infighting. If politicians > want to ascend power based on religious infighting, we might not be able to > stop them... but at least we should not justify them. > > Happy Good Governance day! > > FN > > On 24 December 2015 at 19:11, Wendell Rodricks > wrote: >> It is a sumptuous film. >> And the director has every right to create his version as he has many >> factors to consider from investors to the public making the movies hit. >> Those that want to portray another Bajirao are free to do so. Not that I am >> carrying a candle for the film nor Hindi cinema staying truthful to >> history. The end was a sob drama for janta consumption, who doesn't like >> lovers who die or killed off at the end?, It has been done ad nauseum in >> poetry, literature, film >> As for a great Hindu nationalist, history is written and tweaked depending >> who is writing it. >> In my research for Moda Goa, it was as if. history writers were writing >> about different events depending on the victorious or loosing sides >> At this time of Hindu pride,it is natural for some to push the cause for >> Hindu Nationalism >> W > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. Goanet annual year-end meet in Goa: if you're reading this, you're eligible to join us! Dec 28, 2015 @ 11 am Fundacao Oriente, Panjim Confirm your participation with a short email to goa...@goanet.org -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Re: [Goanet] DEBATE: History... that's only in the movies (Aakar Patel, in ToI)
Dear Wendell, The issue is not so much about the *film*, as about the way history gets depicted in our parts of the world (and I guess elsewhere too). These myths go beyond films and are consistently celebrated in daily life too. Aakar Patel might have done a good job by questioning it in a rather articulated way. Feature films and fictionalised films have every right to create myths; but history doesn't. Questionable versions can be challenged, and should be. In today's Goa, Shivaji is treated as a hero. Wonder what he meant to villagers of another era living along the then 'international border' in places like your Colvale, Tivim, Siolim or Aldona. That reality our ancestors of another generation might have a story about; but do they have the voice to do so? If we portray him as someone out to save a religion, then we're setting misleading terms of discourse. Your justification about history being "tweaked" doesn't seem to hold much water, given that this is promoted by a supposedly secular state, and it has serious implications for current day religious infighting. If politicians want to ascend power based on religious infighting, we might not be able to stop them... but at least we should not justify them. Happy Good Governance day! FN On 24 December 2015 at 19:11, Wendell Rodricks wrote: > It is a sumptuous film. > And the director has every right to create his version as he has many > factors to consider from investors to the public making the movies hit. > Those that want to portray another Bajirao are free to do so. Not that I am > carrying a candle for the film nor Hindi cinema staying truthful to > history. The end was a sob drama for janta consumption, who doesn't like > lovers who die or killed off at the end?, It has been done ad nauseum in > poetry, literature, film > As for a great Hindu nationalist, history is written and tweaked depending > who is writing it. > In my research for Moda Goa, it was as if. history writers were writing > about different events depending on the victorious or loosing sides > At this time of Hindu pride,it is natural for some to push the cause for > Hindu Nationalism > W > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. Goanet annual year-end meet in Goa: if you're reading this, you're eligible to join us! Dec 28, 2015 @ 11 am Fundacao Oriente, Panjim Confirm your participation with a short email to goa...@goanet.org -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
[Goanet] DEBATE: History... that's only in the movies (Aakar Patel, in ToI)
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/aakarvani/bajirao-the-great-hindu-nationalist-thats-only-in-the-movies/ Bajirao the great Hindu nationalist -- That's only in the movies Aakar Patel in Aakarvani | India | TOI I think I'll write about Bajirao Mastani today. I have not seen the movie, nor do I intend to (only one Gujarati makes the cut as director of watchable pap and that is neither Sanjay Leela Bhansali nor Sajid Nadiadwala, but Manmohan Desai, a true master). However, I have read Bajirao Mastani's reviews and one of them said to my alarm, that the film "explores the romantic side of 18th-century Maratha general Bajirao Ballal Bhat, who fought and won 40 battles against the Mughals with an aim to create a unified Hindu kingdom or Akhand Bharatvarsha". Whoa, hold it right there. First, the Marathas only ever wanted a Marathi kingdom for themselves. It was not unified, hardly *akhand* and never Hindu. The Marathas were despised by other Hindu rulers, and disliked by non-Marathi Hindus as well, as history shows us. Bajirao and the Marathas campaigned for one thing alone, and it was called *chauth*. It meant a fourth of all revenue from other kingdoms, no matter what the faith of king and subject, and at collecting this Bajirao and the rest were efficient. Maratha extortion caused Jaipur's Ishwari Singh to commit suicide in December 1750. Sir Jadunath Sarkar (the Manmohan Desai of our historians) writes of what followed in his four-volume classic, *Fall of the Mughal Empire*: "On 10 January, some 4,000 Marathas entered Jaipur... (and) despising the helpless condition of a king propped up by their arms, seemed to have behaved towards Jaipur as a city taken by storm. Suddenly the pent-up hatred of the Rajputs burst forth; a riot broke out at noon, and the citizens attacked the unsuspecting Marathas. For nine hours slaughter and pillage raged." The Marathas first invaded Bengal in 1742. Of their behaviour, the *New Cambridge History of India* tells us that "all authorities, both Indian and European are agreed". A contemporary writer calls them "slayers of pregnant women and infants" and Sarkar has recorded their gang-rape of Hindu women, inexplicably stuffing the mouths of their victims with dust and breaking their arms and tying them behind their backs. The only Indian to try and protect his subjects against the Marathas incidentally, was the Mughal governor Ali Vardi Khan. So much for Akhand Bharat. But I must say that the Marathas did not behave differently from any other ruler or warrior community, and the idea of a unified Hindu sentiment exists only in the imagination of those who get their history from the movies. What the Marathas did striking north from the south, the Sikhs did in the opposite direction (they called their extortion 'rakhi', or protection, and it was 10% for all Indians). It is undeniably true on the other hand that the Marathas were originals. It is important for this romance between Bajirao and Mastani that she knew how to ride well because there were no palanquins and howdahs travelling with the Marathas as there were with the Mughals. The Marathas were the Mongols of South Asia, always on horseback, and with no infantry and no giant camp behind. Even the scavengers who followed them around, the bargis, rode. When the monsoons ended, the Maratha army, about 40,000 men, rode across the Narmada and Tapi, the border that marked off the Deccan, and attacked 'Hindustan'. Shivaji always organised this on a particular day: Dussehra (Bal Thackeray continued this tradition of declaring war on other Indians with his fiery Dussehra speeches). After the death of the peasant king, power passed to the Brahmin peshwas of whom the best was Bajirao. As the Mughal fighting ability and finances (the two being interchangeable) declined after Aurangzeb, the Marathas began penetrating increasingly into hitherto unknown territory in the north. It was the young Bajirao, then only in his teens, who determined, rightly, in one of these raids that the Mughals had gone soft and could no longer defend the realm. From this point on, the Marathas began holding ground instead of just taking their horses back. It is why we see Marathi names like Holkar and Scindia and Gaekwad in parts of India they do not naturally belong. Everyone grabbed what they could and held onto it, there was no Hindu or Bharat angle to any of it. Bajirao had one good battlefield victory, against Chin Qilich Khan, first Nizam of Hyderabad. It was a positional win, meaning the arrangement of Bajirao's force gave no space for Khan and he gave up without much fighting. Like chess. A similar situation came in Panipat, when Abdali positioned the Marathas out. Bravely, the Marathas c
