6. introduction
specifically Maharashtrian. So it was that on the morning of January 5, 2004, a mob
of young men recruited by the Sambhaji Brigade, a branch of the Maratha Seva
Sangh, attacked one of India’s most distinguished research facilities, the library of
the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. They threw bricks at the win-
dows, beat up the guards, pulled down as many bookshelves as they could, and made
the Brahmin scholars who labor there feel deeply threatened. They stole or damaged
countless volumes and manuscripts and danced on the pile before they withdrew.
Why? Because the Institute had been mentioned in the acknowledgments section
of a book by an American scholar named James Laine. Hard-line Maharashtrian
leaders and several well-respected Maharashtrian scholars charged that Laine ’s
book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic Indiasaid objectionable things about the person
they regard as Maharashtra’s exemplary ruler, the man who brought the Muslim
Oppressor to his knees. This was Shivaji, a seventeenth-century Maratha leader
who through cleverness and bravery managed to challenge the hegemony of Au-
rangzeb, the Mughal emperor who has come to exemplify intolerant Muslim power
in the minds of many Hindus. Laine had repeated some irreverent gossip about
Shivaji’s parentage, and in reaction Oxford University Press was pressured into
withdrawing the book from print. But that was not enough. Now countless precious
books and documents were destroyed, and armed guards had been posted at the
homes of scholars and Institute employees whom Laine had thanked in the ac-
knowledgments. This was not specifically Hindu violence—in fact, Brahmins were
among the primary targets—but it did trade on a view of Indian history that has
been deeply colored by a perceived Hindu/Muslim dichotomy. In that way it related
to other Hindus’ efforts to police the past, especially the campaign to rewrite history
textbooks that was undertaken by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which largely ruled the
country from 1996 to 2004.^3
Fortunately, violence was not the only aspect of religious life to show up in the
daily paper at New Year’s. On Thursday, January 1, the Deccan Herald,Bangalore ’s
leading newspaper, carried several “thanksgiving” advertisements dedicated to
Jesus as he appears in the Infant Jesus shrine in the suburb of Viveknagar. Although
this church is quite new—the foundation was laid only in 1969, and the edifice was
built several years later—it is considered by local Christians and Hindus to be a holy
place. Hindus flock to this church, as they do to specific churches and basilicas all
over South India, searching for divine favors and miracles. On Thursdays, the day
considered to be most important at the Infant Jesus shrine, hundreds of Hindus
stand in line to revere the icon of Infant Jesus and garland him. Thousands of Hin-
dus also go regularly to the Basilica of the Holy Mother of Health at Velankanni in