Fort William to Vijay Durg — such token, insensitive symbolism will not do the trick

While Chhaava , the Vicky Kaushal-starrer based on the life of Chhatrapati Shambhaji, has taken the Indian box office by storm , it has left many wondering why this history is not detailed in our textbooks.

Now if we agree on the fact that history is written by the victor, then we must agree that the Mughals had far greater influence over the Indian subcontinent than the Maratha empire ever managed to. This means the larger picture that was portrayed to the coming generations in the accounts approved by the more powerful ruler at that time is what got passed down through generations. Simply put, Mughal history was taught in greater detail because the larger narrative was homogenised to benefit the Mughals.

Now let us focus on the eastern part of India. The headquarters of the Eastern Command of the Indian Army was recently renamed to Vijay Durg in accordance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to ‘decolonise’ national institutions . The name Vijay Durg is a tribute to the oldest fort on the Sindhudurg coast, a strong naval base of the Maratha army.

An appreciable move one might presume. Why should structures in a sovereign state bear the names of the colonial masters? Fort William was named after England’s King William III, while Vijay Durg was a fort of probably the most iconic Hindu king of modern history.

However, once again, the grander history that is being presented here is overshadowing a lesser-known truth. The Marathas, however great they were, weren’t particularly on warm terms with Bengal. There are countless accounts of the Maratha army looting, raping, and plundering village after village in their five invasions of Bengal from 1742 to 1751, which only stopped after the nawab ceded to their demands of Rs 12 lakh as chauth per year. The atrocities were of such magnitude that ‘bargis’, the infantry of the Maratha army, feature in Bengali lullabies as their ‘Gabbar Singh’. One such lullaby sung in every Bengali household to date is:

When the children fall asleep, / Silence sets in, the bargis come to our lands, / Bulbuls have eaten the grains, / How shall I pay the khajna (tax)?

The renaming has been done at an Indian Army base in a city where there was a Maratha Ditch, a construction ordered to protect the city from the marauding Marathas. The Nawab of Bengal, Alivardi Khan, ordered the construction of the Ditch in Calcutta , which, (here irony dies a thousand deaths) lies north of the erstwhile Fort William, to prevent the plunder that took place in the countryside in the city during the second Maratha invasion.

By then, Murshidabad and Hoogly had already been plundered, and in the succeeding years, the Marathas continued their rampage across southern Bengal, Patna, and what is now Odisha.

Sir Jadunath Sircar quotes from the Maharashtra Purana , an 18th century Bengali text, “As soon as Bhaskar (Maratha general Bhaskar Pandit) arrived again, he summoned all his captains and ordered them, ‘Draw your swords and kill every man and woman that you see.’ When the commander spoke thus, they plundered and slew on every side with shouts of ‘Kill! Kill!!’. Brahmans, Vaishnavs, Sannyasis, women and cows were slaughtered by hundreds.”

Given the history of loot and plunder by Maratha forces in Bengal, the naming of a fort in Kolkata after the proud military heritage of the Marathas is perplexing. By painting the Marathas as heroes in a state that suffered multiple incursions smacks of a homogenisation of history, of a similar nature to what the BJP-RSS compact claims has been done with Mughal history, wherein conquests have been glorified and oppression overlooked.

If decolonisation is the aim, then such token (and arguably insensitive) symbolism will likely not do the trick. One must first decolonise the mind, and create a paradigm shift from a culture that promotes exclusion to one that integrates the ‘other’ political philosophies within its narrative. A space should be made that questions why common knowledge is presented the way it is. If that is not done, especially in a country as diverse and complex as India, it leads to further colonisation instead.

One might argue that if Hindi is ever made the national language of India, it will be a forced assimilation and integration of sorts, action stemming from probably the first page in the handbook of being a — you guessed it right — coloniser.

(Disclaimer: This views presented in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)

Fort William to Vijay Durg — such token, insensitive symbolism will not do the trick

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