All The Fishes Come Home To Roost by Rachel Manija Brown

Author:Rachel Manija Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale Inc
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

20

A H ERO AT HOLY WOUNDS

Reluctant as I am to give Holy Wounds any credit for anything whatsoever, one facet of its curriculum was not only educational, but entertaining and even inspirational. And I would have never encountered it in America.

Year after year, the Indian history class provided stirring tales of rebels and tyrants, heroes and villains, dismemberments, disembowelments, disinterments, last stands, daring escapes, woman warriors, and giant lizards. Some of it was as apocryphal as George Washington’s cherry tree. But several of the least likely stories turned out to be absolutely true.

The textbooks had a peculiar style that combined a lively sense of narrative with an antique vocabulary larded with inappropriate British idioms and a fondness for gore. Phrases like “rent his bowels asunder” were not uncommon, and Indian commanders might alternate shouting the Marathi war cry “Har Har Mahadeo” with addressing their troops as “my plucky young lads.” “Baji Prabhu and the Memorable Battle of Ghodkhind” was a typical chapter title.

We started studying the seventeenth-century folk hero Shivaji when I was nine, the year after I returned from visiting the Grandpas A. I still have my textbook on him.

A typical chapter title is “The Discomfiture of Shaista Khan,” referring to an episode in which Shivaji snuck into the Khan’s bedroom at midnight and sliced off part of his hand. The illustration tastefully depicts Shivaji looking heroic, the pajama-clad Khan impersonating The Scream, and a thumb flying through the air.

Shivaji was a significant Indian historical figure and also a local hero in Ahmednagar. His connection to the town was that he had been born a mere two hundred kilometers away and had a tenuous legal claim to the even-then-defunct Ahmednagar Kingdom. But I can’t blame the town for snatching at his glorious coattails.

The statues portrayed a small dapper man with a clipped beard and moustache, turbaned and with one hand resting on his sword. Even in his most heroic poses, riding a rearing pony and brandishing that sword, he never looked ferocious or battle-crazed, but thoughtful.

In Shivaji’s time, India was ruled by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. The Mughals were Muslims who swept in from Central Asia in the 1500s and conquered most of the country. After a few generations of rule, Aurangzeb’s predecessors avoided unnecessarily enraging their mostly Hindu subjects. Aurangzeb’s great-grandfather, the Emperor Akbar, had been so broadminded that he created a religion that combined Hinduism and Islam. (It didn’t catch on.) Aurangzeb’s father, Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal.

Aurangzeb imprisoned his father, executed his older brother, and seized the throne. While previous Emperors had been patrons of the arts, Aurangzeb loathed art and music as heathen frivolities. He also instituted a tax on non-Muslims and imposed Muslim religious law on the entire population. This did not go over well.

Shivaji’s family were Marathas—people from Maharashtra who speak Marathi. They were of the Sudra (peasant) caste but warriors and courtiers by occupation. Shivaji’s father abandoned his family when Shivaji was a baby. Shivaji’s mother, a remarkable woman by all

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