How Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Inspired India's Freedom Struggle

When one thinks of Chhatrapati Shivaji, naturally one thinks about Lokmanya Bal Gangadhara Tilak, who after Shivaji, made the word ‘Swarajya’ reverberate throughout India with his slogan: ‘Swarajya is my birth right’.

It was, although, the more moderate-leaning economist Dadabhai Naoroji who, borrowing the word from Shivaji, brought it into the modern political parlance of India. 

For Lokmanya Tilak, Shivaji was the quintessential archetype of an Indian hero-statesman. He considered Shivaji as a Vibhuti – an emanation of the Divine to protect Dharma. 

He started the Shivaji Utsav and it helped invigorating the democratic process of India. 

Sri Aurobindo too had written about Veer Shivaji. 

In one fictional conversation between Jai Singh, the Hindu collaborator with Mughals, and Chhatrapati Shivaji, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that the oppressive empire that Shivaji destroyed had not yet arisen again and the national movement that Shivaji stirred up has never been extinguished. 

The inspiration of Chatrapati Shivaji also fired the veins of one of the greatest social emancipators of modern India — Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. 

The year 2023 is not only the 349th year of the rajyabhisheka of Shivaji Maharaj. It is also the 100th year of the famous Citaram Keshav Bole Bill at Bombay Legislature which threw open all the public spaces for the Scheduled Communities.

Implementation of CK Bole act also led to the famous Mahad Satyagraha in 1927. 

The slogan that was raised at Mahad Satyagraha was ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj ki Jai!’. Dhananjay Keer writes about the day when Dr Ambedkar led his band of Satyagrahis after the deed of breaking the caste barrier and drinking water at Mahad well:

This became a vision that haunted Dr Ambedkar. Shivaji obtained Swarajya and yet Hindus lost it to the British. This troubled him. He saw social disunity as the cause of it. 

At a time when another saga of Hindavi Swarajya is facing the threat of rank identity politics, his words become important for us: 

Again in the conclusion of the Constituent Assembly debate he invoked the memory of Chhatrapati Shivaji:

Thus the Swarajya of Shivaji inspired and deeply transformed the thought processes of all those who built India during that great churn that was the national movement. 

Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in his essay ‘Shivaji O Guru Govind’ acknowledges that the conception of India as a cultural unity and political state comes from Shivaji:

In Tamil Nadu, Subramania Bharathi saw in Veer Shivaji a figure of great national renaissance. It is indeed significant that two national poets of India, Rabindranath Tagore of Bengal and Subramanya Bharathi of Tamil Nadu, both sang of Veer Shivaji. 

For Bharathi, there was also another intimate connection with warrior-king — Mother Bhavani. 

Just like Shivaji, Bharathi too was divinely intoxicated in his devotion for the Mother Goddess. 

The poem that he wrote on Shivaji contains 190 lines. It was serialised in the magazine India in the year 1906 in four issues from the middle of November to early December. 

The last part came in the magazine dated 6 December 1906, with a 'to be continued' announcement but it was not continued for some reason.

Shivaji of Bharati is a long poem in the form of an inspiring talk that Shivaji gives his troops. The poem starts:

Jaya Jaya Bhavani Jaya Jaya Bharatam

Jaya Jaya Mata! Jaya Jaya Durga

Vande Mataram! Vande Mataram!

At the outset Shivaji points out that when in her pristine glory, Mother India would not even tolerate the feet of aggressors who despise the Vedas. Alas what had we become! And by inserting Vande Mataram, the chant of the resurgent India most feared by anti-India forces then and 'Breaking India' forces now, the poem transcends historical time.

Then, Shivaji describes the glories of Bharat—geological, geographical, natural, civilisational and spiritual. 

'This is the land of Himalayas and surrounded on three sides by the ocean,

This land is rich with fruits and streams,

This is the land of sacred perennial rivers,

This is the land where women who bear not children valorous

consider themselves as having no children at all. 

This land is the very embodiment of Dharma; Dharma itself is this land. 

Devas live here. 

For seers and seekers world over 

with insatiable thirst for enlightenment, 

This land is the destination. 

This is the land of true Gnosis. 

Who am I to even state the greatness of this land!'

Each stanza here ends with the exhortation: ‘Such a great nation thou art the children of: never dare you forget this even for a second!’

Then, the atrocities of the foreign rule are enlisted in a moving way. Such a great land is today ravaged by the invaders. They had managed to capture power. They are destroying our valour. They are rapacious.

They demolish our temples; disparage our sacred texts,

They are killing the helpless-children, old people and the cows,

They are raping our women and harming the Vedic sacrifices,

Our indigenous knowledge they demean and destroy,

They are denying our basic human dignity,

They are making our heroic youth submissive serfs,

Oh! We the Aryans have become the slaves of the wretched aggressors!

(Here the term 'Aryan' is used in the traditional Indian meaning of being Dharmic and Indic and not in ethnic or racial terms.

Bharati has written an entire essay on what the term ‘Arya’ really means, condemning the Aryan race theory. Here he has included all the heritage of India including the contributions of Muslims as ‘Arya heritage’).

Then, Shivaji tells his armymen that they are free to choose to fight. It is not compulsory. Those who want to desert the battle can do it now.

'Even as one’s brethren get destroyed by the foreigners, 

those who desire to lead a happy family life, 

you can now get out of this army.

As the nation goes to the alien rulers, 

with no thought of that, 

if one wants to retire into the comfort of his own house, 

let him leave this army now.

As the nation suffers and decays, 

he who thinks of his own children’s comfort, 

let that person leave this army now. 

Then who should remain in the army? Shivaji says that only those who want to fight for the Mother should remain.

Those who care not for their bodies, 

those who care not for their comforts, 

those who cannot tolerate their nation getting ravaged by aggressors,

let them and them alone remain here. 

And they will be showered with blessings from Sri Rama and Bhima and every hero of our national epics. Victory alone shall be the destiny for us. 

Next Shivaji describes the battle that awaits the soldiers of Mother Bhavani.

'If we win then we liberate our Mother and 

if we die then we attain the fame-filled heaven 

that awaits only the heroes. 

And this is not just war. 

This is verily yajna itself'.

Killing the sheep and goats 

a few perform sacrifice for Moksha,

But pouring out our very heart’s blood, 

with Motherland as our yajna vedi,

We do this yajna – 

the Yajna that annihilates the evil suppressor

Can there be a yajna greater than this?

Shivaji describes the Kurukshetra scene of depressed Arjuna and the clarion call of Sri Krishna to make Arjuna fight. Even if your relatives are there against you, you have to fight and make their bodies the feed of the earth.

It is your great tapas that,

you are lucky to have made this choice:

fighting for Dharma today in this land of Vijaya, 

and remember 

(unlike for Arjuna who had to fight his own brethren for Dharma), 

you have to fight the foreigners 

who are alien to you in every respect!'

They not only are foreigners, 

they give scant regard to our greatness indigenous, 

and they rule trampling us over!'

It is clear if one reads the poem that the description of Mughals was in fact targeted at the British.

This passionate appeal of Bharati’s Shivaji is actually to the youths of the then Madras.

All the atrocities that the British did, including emasculating our civilisational spine through their education as well as evangelist onslaught on Hindu society, are implied in the address of Shivaji to his soldiers. 

When Bharathi's Shivaji asks the selfish and the weak to leave the army, his target was an educated class of Indians who were satisfied with their career, their salaried government jobs and considered the participation in the freedom movement a dangerous, self-destructive venture. 

But how did Bharati, a Tamil poet, have such love for Shivaji?

There are historical reasons.

Shivaji was ever-alert to new political developments or developments with a potential to have political consequences. He was aware of the nascent slave trade that was beginning to be developed by the European trade-military lobbies. 

He had warned the Europeans sternly of indulging in slave-trade of any sort. The earlier Islamic rulers had given the concession for the same to select European companies. Shivaji would have none of this. He decreed:

This instruction is with respect to the Dutch establishing trading posts at Porto Novo (Parangipettai, Cuddalore district), Tevenapatam and Puducherry. All these were provinces with Tamil population. 

In effect, it is clear that the European powers could not indulge in large-scale slave trade, as they did elsewhere, because of the fear of the Marathas, and due to the explicit decree of Veer Shivaji.

Shivaji had consciously saved the Tamil people from a humiliating misery that could have befallen them.

Transcending language differences and even barriers of sovereignty as of then, Shivaji Maharaj could see the barbarism and inhumanity of slave trade and protected his people, irrespective of what language they spoke or under whose rule they lived.

Such prohibitions of slave trade would arise in the West only in the nineteenth century.

By the mid-17th century, the British were establishing themselves as a power in Madras.

They had erected the St George Fort. In this fort area was a goddess temple. The name of the goddess is Kaligambal. Fortunately, it was not destroyed. The merchant community got it shifted to another place in Chennai.

Shivaji was monitoring this situation amidst rumours that he would invade Madras. Just three years before his untimely death in 1680, on 3 October 1677, Shivaji Maharaj is said to have visited Madras surreptitiously and have a special darshan at the Kaligambal Temple. 

Was his worship, offered at a temple relocated from St. George, an indicator of his plans to liberate southern India from the British encroachment? We can only guess.

When Bharathi worked in the magazine Swadesamitran, it is said that he used to come and worship at Kaligambal and his famous Kali Stotra is said to have come from his devotion to this Goddess:

All that is, is Kali You! Permeating all You!

Actions beneficial and harmful Your deeds all!

Enough had I of the falsity people live in,

Primordial Goddess You protect me with your Arul

No wonder Bharathi could see Chhatrapati Veer Shivaji for what he really was, the chosen warrior of the Mother whose vision is all things good in today’s India.