And Now Chhava

As Communal hate is on the rise through the use of History on political battle grounds, new dimensions are being added to this during the last few years. Apart from the propaganda and indoctrination through RSS Shakha, social media, IT cell of BJP, the mainstream media, particularly many TV channels and now many films have added up to the prevailing misconceptions among the society.

In the recent past, Kerala Story, Kashmir Files have gripped the society in the mania of hate. There have been other not-so-successful films like Swatantraveer Savarkar, 72 Hurain, Samrat Prithviraj to name a few. Now Maharashtra in particular and the country as a whole the film called Chhava, running packed houses, is taking the hate a few notches up. This film is not a historical film. It is based on the novel Chhava by Shivaji Samant. Already, the filmmakers had to apologise for inaccuracies in the film.

The film selectively picks up a few incidents from Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj’s life and projects the cruel and anti-Hindu nature of Aurangzeb. In the 126-minute film, good 40 Minutes are devoted to the torture of SambahjiMaharaj, this part is a part where the filmmaker may have taken lot of liberties of a fiction writer. The whole narrative is set in the presentation of medieval history as noble Hindu Kings versus the evil Muslim kings.

Sambhaji Maharaj was the eldest son of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. As Shivaji set up his kingdom, he had his officers who were Muslims, also. Maulana Haider Ali was his confidential secretary and there were 12 Generals in his army who were Muslims, Siddi Sambal, Ibrahim Gardi, and Daulat Khan, to name a few. When he confronted Afzal Khan, he was advised to carry iron claws, which were given to him by his subordinate Rutom-E-Jamaan. After Killing Afzal Khan, the latter’s secretary Krishnanji Bhaskar Kulkarni tried to attack Shivaji.

From Aurangzeb’s side Raja Jaisingh led the army to attack Shivaji. Shivaji was made to appear in Aurangzeb’s Court and later imprisoned. The person who helped him escape was a Muslim Prince, Madari Mehtar.

The Hindutva progenitors, Savarkar and Golwalkar raise questions about Sambhaji’s character, wine and women. For this he was imprisoned by Shivaji in Panhala Fort. Later, Sambhaji did ally with Aurangzeb in his battle against Shivaji. Sambhaji also allied with Aurangzeb in his battle against Adil Shah of Bijapur.

In the battle of succession after Shivaji, Sambhaji’s half-brother Rajaram (son of Shivaji’s other wife Soyrabai) tried to poison him. As the conspiracy was unearthed, Sambhaji got many Hindu officers killed. In the battle against Sambhaji, Aurangzeb had sent his general Rathod to fight against him. Once Sambhaji was captured he was humiliated and subjected to torture, which has been presented in a blown-up fashion.

On the pretext of this film, many understandings against Aurangzeb have been projected still further. He is shown to be very cruel as he dealt with his opponents. It is not a question of whataboutary but an attempt to understand the pattern of Kingdoms. Many Kings inflicted cruelties on enemies with gay abandon. The ways of the Kings against their enemies were atrocious and cannot be judged by today’s standards. The communal historians are working overtime to dig into the sources and pick up the incidents without referring to the overall context of the period of the Kingdoms.

[Contributed by Ram Puniyani]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 41, Apr 6 - 12, 2025