Chhava Sparks Controversy in Maharashtra: Sambhaji’s Legacy, Caste Politics, and Right-Wing Narratives

The action film based on the life of Sambhaji, who succeeded his father Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha kingdom, to the throne, has become the subject of a raging controversy. With the brutality that Sambhaji faced when he refused to bow before the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb reinvigorating stories of the Maratha empire’s glory in people’s minds, Chhava is expectedly being used by the right-wing to push forward its divisive anti-Muslim agenda. In Maharashtra, however, where King Sambhaji fought and died 336 years ago, the film has stirred a public debate not just on the lines of religion but also on caste, the idea of Maharashtra, and much more.  

The film is based on the Marathi novel Chhava, a word that means “cub”. The novel was written by the popular Marathi novelist Shivaji Sawant, whose other works such as Mrutyunjay on the life of Karna, a heroic figure in the Mahabharata, and Yugandhar on the life of the god Krishna were beloved for generations. Chhava was first published in 1979, but it was not the first novel or book on King Sambhaji’s life. Many other books were written on Sambhaji before that, as well as mentions of Sambhaji in various plays, novels, and books before Chhava came into the hands of readers. But Chhava was different. It accurately reflected the politics around King Sambhaji and the core of the Maharashtrian battle for supremacy over the years. 

Sambhaji was killed on March 11, 1689. Almost 120 years after his death, between 1808 and 1810, a clerk of the Maratha Empire named Malhar Ram Rao Chitnis wrote an account (called Bakhar) of his reign. He was asked to do so by King Shahu II, who wanted a history of the six Chhatrapatis (Shivaji was the first, Sambhaji was the second). Chitnis was the clerk who traditionally maintained the kingdom’s records; his ancestor had been a clerk in Shivaji’s durbar. 

Chitnis was a Brahmin by birth. And in his telling, Sambhaji was shown as an incompetent king and a drunkard who lured women and who was caught by the Mughal army when he was in a drunken stupor.

An evolving historical narrative

While this account was rejected by the historian Jadunath Sarkar—in his book Shivaji and His Times Sarkar wrote that “the Bakhar is not in chronological order and does not have supportive proof”—most Marathi literature of the early 20th century was largely based on Malhar Ram Rao’s account. For generations, the account by Chitnis was considered authentic and became the image of Sambhaji, carried forward even in the plays written in the early quarter of the 20th century. 

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Things, however, were slowly changing. As opportunities for education opened up for all people during the British colonial period, including for people from the lower castes, many people began to realise what had been written about their kings and icons. While King Shivaji and his son King Sambhaji were always heroes in the minds of Maharashtrians, they were unaware about the writings on their heroes.

From 1707 to 1818, the Maratha Empire was spreading across the Indian subcontinent, but it was controlled by the Peshwa of Pune. The Peshwas were Brahmin while Shivaji and many of his followers were Maratha. When the doyen of Indian reformist thought, Mahatma Phule, started writing about the need to understand Indian history through the prism of the caste, he came up with the term “Bahujan”. This term was used in the Pali language for the first time in the 10th century.

Phule and his organisation Satya Shodhak Samaj united and inspired literate and progressive youths from all castes, but the term Bahujan denoted those who were not Brahmin. In the 1880s, it was Phule who first went to Raigad, one of the capitals of Shivaji deep in the forests of the Sahyadri ranges and found the place where the Marathi king was cremated. Until Phule came on the scene, Shivaji had been given adjectives such as Gau Bramhan Pratipalak (Cow and Brahmin Saviour), but Phule started calling Shivaji the Bahujan Pratialak. This effort to bring out the reality of Shivaji’s rule soon took wing and the generations that followed in the footsteps of Phule-Ambedkar started to read and research history from a different perspective. 

By the time of independence, the Satya Shodhak Samaj movement founded by Phule turned into the Bramhan Bramhanetar movement that challenged the supremacy of Brahmins in the Hindu caste hierarchy. The reformists began to raise questions about the literature written by Brahmin authors and pointed out the need to rewrite history correctly. Finally, in 1956, the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Yashwantrao Chavan asked the renowned Marathi historian Vasudev Sitaram Bendrey (famously known as Va Si Bendre) to write an authoritative history after researching all contemporary records. 

Why only Chavan was able to do this is also an important point. First, he was himself Maratha and a product of the reformist Bramhan Bramhanetar movement. An avid reader, an ardent follower of Jawaharlal Nehru yet close to the communist stalwart M.N. Roy, Chavan believed that the Bakhar writers had done injustice to Sambhaji. He chose Va Si Bendrey because his authority on the subject of Deccan history was well-established. At the same time, Bendrey himself was a reformist Brahmin and came from the tradition of stalwarts such as M.G. Ranade, Gopalkrishna Gokhale, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, and others. Also, Bendrey at the time had already been working for almost 30 years on tracing the life of Sambhaji. 

With the government’s support, Bendrey could travel to the UK, France, Denmark as well as New Delhi and other parts of India to find authentic records about King Sambhaji. In 1960, Bendrey published the book titled Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, and Chavan released it. The book changed not just the course of historical writings but also the socio-political history of Maharashtra. Bendrey did not just write a book on Sambhaji, he also found the place where Sambhaji was cremated, unknown until then.

According to Bendrey’s account, King Sambhaji was not just a warrior but also a poet, author, and polyglot. Shivaji Sawant’s novel Chhava was a product of this new history and became one of the most popular books of Marathi literature. 

When Chhava, based on this book, was released, it was naturally expected to be popular in Maharashtra, but it became a hit across India.

Chhava’s success renews debate

Interestingly, the film has remained true to history even in the bit about Sambhaji having to confront the ministers of his father’s durbar. Shivaji had set up an Ashta Pradhan Mandal, or cabinet of ministers. Some members of this cabinet were not fond of Sambhaji’s working style and when Shivaji died suddenly in 1680, there was a brief power struggle between Sambhaji and his stepmother Queen Soyarabai, in which some ministers sided with Soyarabai. But Soyarabai’s brother Hambirrao Mohite, who was also Shivaji’s chief general stood with Sambhaji. When the members who were against Sambhaji started conspiring against him, Sambhaji punished them with the death sentence.

The ministers who conspired against Sambhaji, such as Annaji Datto, were Brahmin by caste. The Bakhar writers were also Brahmin. Most of the writers who defamed Sambhaji in their plays and novels in the early 20th century were also Brahmin. So Chhava in a way has again kicked off the Brahmin versus Maratha debate in Maharashtra’s politics. 

Against this backdrop, another major controversy has now erupted in Maharashtra. A young and popular historian from Kolhapur named Indrajit Sawant has made a sensational claim. Until now, it was accepted that Sambhaji was caught by the Mughal army because a landlord named Ganoji Shirke revealed his whereabouts to the Mughal general. But Sawant now claims that Sambhaji’s whereabouts were actually leaked by a Brahmin clerk and he cites the diary of Francis Martin, the French governor of Pondicherry at that time. Sawant wrote: “As per Martin, a senior clerk of the Maratha kingdom leaked the whereabouts of King Sambhaji. Annaji Datto’s family had the responsibility of Sangmeshwar for revenue collection. They also had a similar responsibility for Vasmat province. The Mughal general Shaikh Nijam who caught Sambhaji in Sangameshwar was also the general of Vasmat in Mughal empire. So, these new revelations tell us about the possible role of Brahmins in the arrest of Sambhaji.” 

Even as Chhava was breaking records in box-office collection, these new revelations created a sensation in Maharashtra. As soon as Sawant made his claim, the Marathi media and social media took it up. Some Brahmin organisations condemned Sawant while novelist and popular writer Vishwas Patil contested his claims.

As the debate heated up, Sawant got a threatening phone call from a person named Prashant Koratkar who claimed to be close to the Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and who threatened Sawant with death if he kept talking against Brahmins. Koratkar denied the call and blamed a hacker or AI. However, the caller reportedly made a reference to a British historian named James Laine whose book Shivaji: The Hindu King in Islamic India made controversial remarks about Shivaji’s paternity. A huge controversy had erupted over Laine’s book in 2004, which took on a Brahmin versus non-Brahmin hue as the people who had helped Laine in his research were mainly Brahmins from Pune. Laine’s book is banned in the State, so Koratkar supposedly referring the book became so controversial that the State government had to take cognizance and Fadnavis had to direct the Kolhapur Superintendent of Police to act. Accordingly, an FIR has been filed against Prashant Koratkar in Kolhapur. 

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Sambhaji’s fight against Aurangzeb has always been portrayed by right-wing historians as a Hindu-Muslim battle, with Sambhaji’s torture and brutal beheading seen as the supreme sacrifice he made for his religion. In Maharashtra, the BJP has always called Sambhaji “Dharamvir” or the faith hero. The film Chhava has, predictably, been released at a time when the right-wing’s anti-Muslim propaganda is already raging and seeks to push a communal agenda back to the forefront of people’s minds.

To counter this, progressive thinkers are taking recourse to the writings of the Hindutva icon V.D. Savarkar and the second RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar. Both of them wrote against Sambhaji, with Savarkar writing in Hindu Pad Padshahi that “Sambhaji was incompetent to lead the kingdom. He was short-tempered, a drunkard and a womaniser which added to his incompetency.” Golwalkar said similar things in “Bunch of Thoughts”. 

As Chhava records new audience highs, old battles around history have been reopened and are being recontested in today’s context, proving true the famous line that all history is past politics, and all politics is present history.