INDIA SUMMARIZED

Bhima Koregaon Victory Pillar (Knitin777/Wikimedia Commons) The so-called ‘new’ Dalit narrative celebrating the Koregaon memorial, erected for the soldiers of the 1818 Anglo-Maratha War, is a very old one. It is also not exactly an alternative or subaltern reading of history. It is only a rehashing of the colonial manipulation of Indian identities and memory. Let us assume that the Mahar community deliberately sided with the British to defeat the Peshwa regime of the Marathas because of the latter’s casteism. Then all one has to say in historical hindsight is that the Mahars made a blunder in making that decision. However, it was not a decision that had not been taken before in the history of India – communities or chieftains of the country have sided with the British so that they could settle scores with their domestic rivals. Every time an Indic community or chieftain sided with an alien invader, the results have not worked well for them. If we assume that the Mahars inten...