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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