Shivaji appears in the popular imagination as a ‘Hindu’ king, among the many who resisted Muslim rule in India. Govind Pansare’s Shivaji Kon Hota? interrogates the legend to separate fact from fiction. In this extract from his introduction to the English translation (Who was Shivaji?, LeftWord, 2015), historian Anirudh Deshpande, while discussing the merits of Pansare’s book, questions the anti-Muslim aspect of the Shivaji myth.
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In Pansare’s terse and admirable book, readers [...]
On Tuesday morning, the police from the Indian city of Pune (in the state of Maharashtra) raided the homes of lawyers and social activists across India and arrested five of them. Many of them are not household names around the world, since they are people who work silently on behalf of the poor and oppressed in a country where half the population does not eat sufficiently. Their names are Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Varavara Rao. What unites these peop[...]
जिस्म की मौत कोई मौत नहीं होती जिस्म मिट जाने से इन्सान नहीं मर जाते धड़कनें रूकने से अरमान नहीं मर जाते साँस थम जाने से ऐलान नहीं मर जाते होंठ जम जाने से फ़रमान नहीं मर जाते जिस्म की मौत कोई मौ[...]