Shivaji belongs to which caste

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Fact Check with Logically. Chhatrapati Shivaji belongs to a Maratha lower caste. Reference links. Related Keywords. I found a typo or a broken link in your fact check.

Although he has been appropriated by Hindu nationalists and erected as a Gobrahman Pratipalak— the protector of the cow and the Brahmin—Pansare reminds us that Shivaji faced great opposition from powerful Hindus who refused to be ruled by a person belonging to a caste lower than their own.

On 16 February , Pansare and his wife were gunned down by unknown assailants outside their home in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

Pansare succumbed to his injuries four days later. His murder, is as of now, unsolved. They conducted this yajna on behalf of Mirza Raja Jai Singh, the mighty nobleman who served the Emperor of Delhi; they wished him victory. A chronicle describes the scene:. Mirza Raja was worried that Shivaji, very brave and clever, was fond of battle. He was a very skillful warrior. He had personally killed Afzal Khan. No two persons could be more unlike.

Purandare has created a larger than life image of Shivaji. For nearly 70 years, the bearded, year-old Purandare has been writing on the Maratha ruler and delivering orations on him which have captivated huge gatherings. It is said that it is almost as if he lives in the 17th century, so obsessed is he with the Shivaji ethos. The row was started mainly by the Nationalist Congress Party and Sambhaji Brigade and the main reason for their ire is that Purandare is a Brahmin who is cornering all the limelight, while these organisations see Shivaji mainly as a Maratha caste figure.

Ironically, the Shivaji cult has been built by Brahmins, beginning with Lokmanya Tilak in the early 20th century, though later the Marathas in the Congress and the Shiv Sena jumped into the fray and exploited Shivaji for their own political ends. Communalists have added fuel to fire in many ways, such as displaying gory scenes of Shivaji tearing the stomach of Afzal Khan, the sardar of Aurangzeb, with steel claws after a friendly embrace.

Maharashtra is now caught between two socially regressive political formations, the Shiv Sena-BJP combine on the one hand and the Sambhaji Brigade types on the other. The Congress has never had the stomach to take on reactionary forces but at least its leaders are not openly communal. The Sambhaji Brigade and its allies have acquired notoriety for spreading caste hatred and vandalising the hallowed Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute library in Pune in in the wake of the controversy over the publication of a book on Shivaji by scholar James Laine.

One leader has published a venomous booklet, which calls for the raping of Brahmin women. These elements believe that writers like Purandare fed some gossip to Laine, which they find highly offensive. The NCP is also in the news for corruption of a particularly venal kind. One of its MLAs, Ramesh Kadam was arrested earlier this week for his alleged involvement in a Rs crore scam in the Annabhau Sathe Development Corporation, which is intended to serve the most backward communities, the Maang and Matang.

The corporation is named after a radical and prolific Dalit writer who grew up and died in poverty and wrote a famous powada— a kind of Marathi poetic ballad—on the battle of Stalingrad. And here one must give credit to Purandare. For a man of 93, he spoke with extraordinary verve and humour, displaying a good memory and presence of mind. At the ceremony, he shrewdly made several positive references to Muslims, sensing that he was under attack for his perceived anti-Muslim bias.