More ruckus about Laine's book on Shivaji
The Hindu reports Prime Minister's timely reintroduction of the James Laine issue, during an election speech in Maharashtra.
For some history on the issue: James Laine (a professor of religious studies at the Macalester College, Minnesota), along with the Oxford University Press released a book last year titled "Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India", which amongst other things, cast Shivaji as a bigot, a weak Hindu ruler and no less than an illegitimate child of Jijabai. This not surprisingly, led to a withdrawal of the book, and attacks on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (which assisted in the research), by the Sambhaji brigade in Maharashtra. While, the issue has been quiet for a couple of months, the PM seems to have found it too juicy to pass up, and decided to pimp it for some cheap votes :S
A history of the issue (besides the review of the book) can be found here, and a rather heated article can be found here or (using google's cache) here.
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