The Mahratta: Prologue

You would be forgiven for asking: in an age already drowning in information and entertainment, why add more?

In India especially, free social media has convinced many that their every opinion deserves an audience and they must spray it everywhere like paan-spit. The mobile phone has become less a telephone than a spittoon. I have no interest in adding to this mess. My work, as I see it, is to clean it up.

Frédéric Bastiat wrote an essay called "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen." When cheap entertainment, half-formed ideas, and unprincipled politics fester all around us, what we fail to see is what is absent: deep thinking, serious inquiry into the questions that matter, decisions and policies born from such inquiry. For a country like India, with its immense catalogue of challenges and opportunities, this neglect, this indifference to serious questions, is unforgivable.

Is there a shortage of capable thinkers in this country? People who have painstakingly mastered their subjects? No. There is no shortage of Indians who take pride in their language, their land, their cultural essence; who possess a sense of selfhood; who dream that the fragrance of their talents should spread freely for their motherland.

The difference is this: in a poor, underdeveloped democracy, thought and ethics have retreated. This may not feel urgent now, but it is a grave danger, and without timely, deliberate reform, it could cause our complete ruin. There is no connection between a crowd of people and depth of thought; if anything, the relationship is inverse. When ignorance meets wealth, society is dragged toward decline rather than progress. For wealth, properly understood, exists to enable cooperation, to meet human needs and solve collective problems. But where there is no rule of law, no spirit of working together, wealth falls into undeserving hands. And where there is little supply of wisdom and thought, that wealth sets about making society ever more misshapen and diseased. History makes this painfully clear.

Seventy-eight years have passed since Independence. We can no longer blame anyone else for our fate. Freedom is not a license to do as one pleases. Freedom is responsibility. Today we are like mountaineers. On one side, the peak of success, still to be conquered. On the other, a chasm of subjugation, disintegration, ruin. The flaws that brought us down are still with us.

Fragile Clay

In keeping with the publication's name, let's consider the history of the Marathas. Within eight years of Shivaji Maharaj's coronation, Aurangzeb himself marched on Maharashtra. Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj and his companions met that challenge with their lives, sacrificing themselves to halt the invasion. Alongside Chhatrapati Rajaram Maharaj and Tarabai Saheb, an entire generation of Marathas was spent in this struggle for freedom. They buried Aurangzeb in Maharashtra, and from that crucible emerged a new generation, skilled in both statecraft and war.

Within twelve years of Aurangzeb's death, Maratha armies reached Delhi. Within thirty, they attacked the capital and burned its outskirts. Within fifty, half a century after Aurangzeb's death, they had crossed the Sindhu and ridden as far as Attock and Peshawar. All this before Aurangzeb's bones had turned to dust.

And then?

Within another fifty years, our own ancestors handed this entire kingdom to the British, creating the conditions for our subjugation. Personal rivalries, the greed of jagirdars, superstition, caste oppression: these brought us to a point where, even today, on the very banks of the Bhima where Sambhaji Maharaj's immortal sacrifice gave our culture new life, our own people gather at a British victory pillar and celebrate it as their liberation day. They see the British victory as their own emancipation.

When an unequal social order denies people the chance to rise through merit and ability, the capacity for achievement, in both individuals and society, rots away.

The Maratha state, guided by Shivaji's vision, had the capacity to unite all of Hindustan. Had we built a system grounded in ethics and cultural principles that accepted the fullness of human potential; that looked outward at the world and learned from it; that governed by Chanakya's maxim, the ruler's happiness lies in the happiness of his subjects, then Indian society could have transformed itself in the nineteenth century, just as Japan did through the Meiji Restoration. These are counterfactuals, yes. But the point is this: we must understand precisely what opportunities we squandered.

The flaws that made us waste those opportunities still dwell within us, raising their heads from time to time. Casteism persists. The practice of sacrificing law and ethics for self-interest persists. The habit of dodging one's duties persists.

Today, humans can land a three-hundred-foot rocket gently back on earth. They can create new life forms in laboratories. Most recently, they can build from semiconductors the very intelligence they once thought was theirs alone. Yet we have accepted our backwardness in science and technology. While technology reshapes every sphere of human life, we sit like ostriches with our heads in the sand. As a society, it seems, we have internalized the habit of squandering opportunity. In 1918, on the centenary of Pune's fall, the literary giant N. C. Kelkar wrote Marathe va Ingraj, a "centennial literary shraddha" for Maratha power. In it, he offered an analogy for the Maratha-British conflict: earthen vessel floating in a river strikes a brass vessel, and the earthen vessel shatters.

Our first duty, then, as citizens of an independent nation, is to strengthen our society. To forge a vessel of steel.

A Way Forward

We are not the first generation to face this responsibility. Just fourteen years after the Peshwas were driven from Pune, the first Marathi fortnightly launched in Mumbai: Darpan, founded by Balshastri Jambhekar. He was twenty years old. In 1848, Lokhitwadi started Shatpatre at twenty-five. That same year, Mahatma Phule opened a school for girls at twenty-one. Vishnushastri Chiplunkar wrote Nibandhmala at twenty-four. And at just twenty-five, Tilak, not yet "Lokmanya," began writing editorials for The Mahratta, while Agarkar, not yet the great reformer, began in Kesari.

To awaken a society grown lifeless and trapped in unreason; to share one's ideas, good or bad, with others; to build institutions alongside like-minded people and nourish society through them: this was the path that generation forged. From it arose a people who won freedom and preserved it.

I cite these figures not because I imagine myself their equal. I cite them to show you what ideals I hold before me as I begin.

The main purpose of this initiative is to bring together like-minded people who think this way.

The obvious next question: what will mere writing accomplish? I admit frankly that I do not yet have an answer. Writing has its benefits. It clarifies thought. Studying a subject, forming views on it, presenting those views systematically: this sharpens the mind, and the benefits extend to many areas of life. Even so, I do not yet have a path to direct impact on society. But if like-minded people come together and sharpen each other through expression, that is no small thing. And if bonds form through this, other initiatives become possible.

The next question is natural: what is this publication's stance? Whose side does it take?

I am not foolish enough to pick one. Society has many questions, many injustices. People experience them differently; their understanding and solutions will differ too. The sensible person judges each issue on its own terms. I have no interest in joining a tribe and snarling at outsiders.

But one thing is non-negotiable: India is a nation. Its progress depends on its people working with common purpose. A nation, in the end, is an idea, a feeling. This is the foundation of my endeavor.

The Mahratta arrives every fortnight, starting today. I am looking for collaborators who share this spirit.