India’s Hindu right has a new hero: a 17th-century warrior king

On the morning of March 20, 2022, passersby in the southern Indian city of Bodhan were shocked to discover that a nearly 10-foot-tall statue of a 17th-century Hindu warrior king had been erected without permission at a busy intersection.

By the time the police arrived, several dozen men, both Hindu and Muslim, were throwing stones at each other.

Local authorities, concerned about possible widespread unrest, quickly imposed a ban on public gatherings.

It didn’t take long for the person responsible to be discovered.

Gopi Kishan, a member of a right-wing Hindu extremist group, had carried out the brazen act – which required weeks of planning and a motorbike caravan – out of sheer frustration.

According to Kishan, authorities had informally approved his application to erect a statue, but were reluctant to grant him the necessary documentation, citing the potential for what he called a “law and order problem” in a city with a large Muslim population.

But Kishan claimed he did not intend to incite violence.

He simply wanted to pay the respect he believed Shivaji, who built an empire from scratch and became a legend for the military cunning with which he fought the Muslim Mongol dynasty that dominated much of modern-day India for some 200 years, deserved.

“If I had not fought the Mongols back then, the word Hindu would not exist today,” Kishan said.

India is experiencing a real fever for Shivaji.

Across the country, hundreds of statues of the king — usually on horseback and brandishing a sword — have begun to dot the landscape, appearing in port cities and along its disputed borders with China and Pakistan.

These tributes to the king, a recurring theme in history books, were previously found mainly in Maharashtra, the Indian state dominated by the Maratha community—a large group of Hindus to which Shivaji belongs by birth, and which includes farmers and warriors, some of whom are considered lower caste.

These efforts are often supported by Hindu nationalists who promote Shivaji as a self-made pan-Indian martial hero.

They attempt to integrate their history into a coherent narrative in which their defense of their land was also a defense of Hinduism against invaders:

the Mongols from the east and the western colonialists from the sea.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose leadership style fuses ideas of self-reliance and self-governance with assertive Hindu nationalism, has praised Shivaji’s bravery in keeping foreign invaders at bay.

The statues are visual indicators of the progress the Hindu primacy movement has made in dismantling India’s founding secular and democratic principles.

Several states where the political party of Modi have allocated funds to projects that promote Shivaji’s legacy.

The Indian navy has adopted a flag inspired by Shivaji’s shield.

The army has stated that it will carefully study its military strategy. You can even find Shivaji products for sale online, from t-shirts to wristwatches.

But critics say the legacy of the Maratha king, who died aged 50, has been distorted to favor the interests of those seeking to transform India into a Hindu nation.

Numerous writings of the period present Shivaji as a pragmatic leader who included Muslims in his court and who, at times, fought against Hindu rivals.

He was a cunning and helpless warrior who conquered territories to found an empire.

This is not the first time that Shivaji’s story has been adapted by different groups for their own benefit.

The leaders of the Indian independence movement found inspiration in the king’s message of self-government.

His martial spirit and Hindu pride—he is said to have invoked the name of a female deity called Bhavani before going to war—have also been celebrated in centuries past by minstrels.

According to Ananya Vajpeyi, a professor at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, because he spent most of his life fighting in battles, Shivaji left few vestiges of the empire, such as palaces and temples, that offered a clear legacy.

“He is a protean, mobile, versatile and polysemous figure,” said Vajpeyi, author of books on the Indian independence movement. Describing him as a self-made king, he added, “you can give him a lot of play, depending on what you’re looking for.”

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, as he is formally known, has long been revered in Maharashtra, the heart of the Maratha empire that ruled a large expanse of what is today known as the Indian subcontinent for about 150 years.

For the Maratha community, which makes up about a third of the state, it is a cultural icon and a source of pride.

Born in 1630 to a lower caste, Shivaji is often called the “father of the Indian navy.”

He used guerrilla warfare to combat the powerful Mughal army led by Aurangzeb.

His political astuteness, his military acumen, and his innovative weaponry, such as the metal claws he wore on his knuckles, have been the subject of both academic study and legend.

The Maharashtra government has started allocating more funds to projects that promote Shivaji’s legacy, even outside the state.

In a recent budget, he set aside about $5 million to build a monument to Shivaji in Agra, an ancient Mughal fortress from which the Maratha king staged a daring escape.

It has also invested or allocated many more funds into theme parks and other Shivaji-related projects.

Leaders in several states where the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi’s political party, is in power, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, plan to build more statues of Shivaji.

Maharashtra has also pushed for the preservation of forts built by Shivaji.

One of them is the Sindhudurg fort, which stands above the Arabian Sea in the city of Malvan.

A short boat ride from the coast, the fortress has several observation posts within its nine-metre-high stone walls, from where soldiers scanned the horizon for Portuguese, Dutch and other enemy vessels attempting to capture lucrative trade routes.

Inside the fort, footprints and handprints engraved on the stone are preserved, said to belong to Shivaji.

Small groups of tourists often visit the fort in small boats, chanting “Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj ki jai!” (Long live Chhatrapati Shivaji!).

In the distance, a 28-meter-high statue of the king can be seen, located in the nearby Rajkot Fort.

(The original statue, inaugurated in 2023 by Modi, collapsed due to poor construction and was rebuilt almost three times as tall.)

Shivaji’s warrior legacy is increasingly promoted as a source of inspiration for India’s modern armed forces.

To mark the country’s 75th anniversary of independence in 2022, the Indian Navy unfurled a new flag incorporating Shivaji’s seal as a tribute to his maritime vision and the creation of a naval fleet capable of protecting the coastline.

The Indian Army has stated that it will study Shivaji’s guerrilla warfare while planning its battlefield strategies.

Additionally, an army regiment has erected statues of Shivaji in recent years in cities near the country’s borders with China and Pakistan, with support from governments and civil organizations.

A statue stands next to the Pangong Tso lake in eastern Ladakh, an Indian territory bordering China.

There, 20 Indian soldiers died in a clash with Chinese forces six years ago.

The statue faces China, with its sword drawn, as if ready to attack.

For the Hindu nationalist movement, often seen as representing upper-caste interests, Shivaji is an exceptional case: a king of humble origins who fought against Muslims, thus broadening his appeal as a defender of Hinduism as a whole, according to researchers.

This reinterpretation allows the movement to gloss over a divisive caste system that often pits the most privileged groups against the poorest and least educated, said Dhirendra K. Jha, a historian who has written on the topic.

According to Jha, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, a Hindu ideological organization that is at the center of the nationalist movement, can be considered an “inclusive” movement for all Hindus.

That strategy has also helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political arm of the RSS, to consolidate its influence in the country.

The BJP has courted lower-caste groups in traditional strongholds of other parties, especially in places like Telangana, a state bordering Maharashtra.

“Shivaji would be very confused by modern accusations that he was fighting for Hindus,” said Audrey Truschke, professor and director of Asian Studies at Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey.

Texts from Shivaji’s time show that he sought to achieve higher caste status rather than accepting the lower caste to which he belonged by birth, which contradicts the idea that he embraced a unified Hindu identity, Truschke explained.

For some admirers, Shivaji’s national acceptance is not happening fast enough.

Chandhrashekhar Chavan, who calls himself a “devotee” of Shivaji, has been trying for more than three years to rally popular support for the king’s birthday, which is a public holiday in Maharashtra, to become a national holiday.

A petition he created in support of this cause has gathered 152,000 signatures.

For Chavan, 51, a day of remembrance for the entrepreneurial king who built an “empire from nothing” is a no-brainer.

“Whenever we mention his name, we get goosebumps,” he said.

Kishan, who erected the statue in Bodhan in Telangana, waited three years to get official permission to install it, but the permission never came.

Thus, he chose a date and time for the operation: three in the morning on March 20, 2022, a date that coincided with the anniversary of Shivaji’s birth according to the Hindu calendar.

He devised a guerrilla operation involving about a dozen people, all members of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu militant organization that is part of the RSS.

The men had previously stored the statue in a truck, which they parked in a field about 15 minutes from the chosen location.

When the time came, they traveled in convoy, with two motorcycles in the lead and two bringing up the rear. According to Kishan, it took them no more than 10 minutes to install an iron pedestal and place the fiberglass statue on it with ropes.

Pride filled him as he took selfies with Shivaji in the background. Kishan, who paid for the statue with his own money, said he was not afraid of the consequences.

“I had already decided to go to jail,” said Kishan, who spent a few days in a cell for causing a disturbance.

“What happened to me after I placed the statue there, I didn’t care.”