Aneesh Gokhale

This book was written to highlight mainly the main wars of the Maratha armies, but it was most of the time full of praise of what the Marathas did, rather than the inherent problems they had, leading to the loss to the British. Looking at the personalities, Chhatrapati Shivaji was well ahead of his time and no doubt whole of India should take pride in his deeds. However, soon after his death, most of the unity was in tatters and the great division showed that the Marathas were not yet ready to rule the whole of India. Their armies were not professional armies, and the fact that they relied on looting showed there was very little discipline in the armies they had. The author glossed over the Bargi atrocities in West Bengal, and the Hindus suffered most. The author tried to show that Bengalis have forgiven the incidents of what happened 150 years ago and tried to imply that it was not as much an atrocity as it was made out to be. In fact, it was much worse than anything the British did to the Indians. Also, the Maratha armies relied heavily on the Pindaris, who were happy to loot after the winning (or losing) wars. It seems, apart from Mahadji Shinde and Ahilyabai Holkar, none of the others who came after Shivaji were good enough to be compared with the great man.
Modern Indian history does not give enough credit to Shivaji, or for that matter the Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi revolutionaries or people like Shri Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, etc. . It tries to imply that the independence came as a result of the effort of the Congress Party and the non-violence movement.… (más)