1857 revolt hero Nanasaheb Peshwa's life remains a mystery : CONTROVERSY - India Today

Wrapped in enigma

1857 revolt hero Nanasaheb Peshwa's life remains a mystery
Uday Mahurkar  January 26, 2004 | UPDATED 16:52 IST
Nanasaheb Peshwa

Facts can become distorted, as they have with regard to the life of Maratha ruler Nanasaheb Peshwa, the failed hero of India's first war of independence against the British in 1857.

No one knows with certainty what happened to the daring commander, who rode alongside Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi and Tatya Tope and shook the British, after the failed uprising and the announcement of a reward on his head.

Social activist Navalbhai Mehta, who has long campaigned on the matter, recently raked up the issue again. In a statement at Bhavnagar, he asked the Gujarat Government to take an interest in the case and take cognisance of the "evidence" that had come light.

He is hopeful that Chief Minister Narendra Modi will take up the cause. At one stage, it had seemed that the controversy would soon be over. In the early 1970s three documents were recovered from an old chest in the house of Keshavlal Mehta, the grandson of Nanasaheb.

G.N. Pant, former director of the National Museum, was convinced about the authenticity of the papers and expressed his opinion in 1992. However, no definitive stand has been taken all these years.

Apathy has ensured the unanswered questions about Nanasaheb's life continue to remain a mystery long after his death. Did the Peshwa, as early government records maintain, die in Nepal after a tiger attacked him during a hunt in September 1859?

Or, was he still in the Himalayan kingdom two years later as revealed by a Maharashtrian Brahmin named Venkateshwar to the British in the 1860s? More importantly, did he live in the guise of Yogindra Dayanand Maharaj, an ascetic, for 46 years in a cave temple near Sihor, a speck of a town in coastal Gujarat?

WISING UP: Nanasaheb's great grandsons seek a scientific probe
Significantly, it is the Sihor connection that has been strongly indicated by the documents - two letters written by Nanasaheb to his guru and Sanskrit scholar Harshram Mehta and a diary maintained by Harshram's brother Kalyanji Mehta, who was a confidant of Nanasaheb and protected him and his family from the wrath of the British.

Kalyanji is believed to have raised Nanasaheb's son Shridhar - later renamed Giridhar - who, as it turns out, was the father of Keshavlal. In the picture also are Keshavlal's four sons - Kamal, 48, Vijay, 44, Janak, 42 and Harshad, 38 - who all live in Sihor in abject poverty, their lives belying their rich Peshwa lineage.

According to the letters written by Nanasaheb - in old Marathi and in black ink - it is evident that Harshram, to whom they were addressed, also acted as adviser to the Peshwa. The first letter, written in 1856 before the revolt, gives a graphic account of Nanasaheb's preparations for the war, while the second, sent after the failure of the uprising, reveals a commander vowing to fight the British till his end.

Both are signed by "Baloo Nana", a name known to Harshram, who had taken lessons in Sanskrit from Nanasaheb since childhood. Kalyanji's diary jottings also refer to Nanasaheb by the same name.

Meticulously recorded and in old Gujarati, they talk of how Nanasaheb came to Sihor with his colleagues Baldev Thakur, Rambhau Dalvi, Khani-Khanan Yakin Shah and Koktalshah after his failure to oust the colonial rulers. He continued to live here as a recluse for over four decades.

The jottings also reveal how Kalyanji visited Maharashtra several times from Sihor via the sea and how he reared Nanasaheb's son Giridhar as his own son to keep his identity a secret and then got him married into a Sihori Brahmin family.

It was only in 1903, the diary points out, that Nanasaheb died, away from his hideout and in Kalyanji's house in Dave Sheri of Sihor. To date, the modest abode displays some articles that people say belonged to Nanasaheb.

These include two deer skins, a sword, a wooden sandal and a red Peshwai headgear. There is also a map, which is believed to have been left behind by Nanasaheb, roughly indicating the whereabouts of a yet-to-be-traced treasure buried by him near his hideout.

Version Of History
On a Freedom Fighter
BREAKTHROUGH: Two letters and a diary retrieved by the Peshwa's grandson in the 1970s almost confirm that the legendary commander lived in the guise of an ascetic in Sihor in coastal Gujarat until his death in 1903. Social activists seek historical recognition for this fact.

THE NEPAL LINK: The government records still defer to the earlier interpretation that the hero of the 1857 uprising succumbed to injuries during a tiger shoot in Nepal in September 1859.

A CONTRADICTION: Venkateshwar, a Brahmin interrogated by the British in the 1860s, disclosed he met Nanasaheb in Nepal in 1861, two years after his supposed death.
Giving further credence to Nanasaheb's Sihor link is a letter written by Jadiben, Kalyanji's daughter, to Giridhar in 1923 informing him that his uncle Bhausaheb, the younger brother of Nanasaheb, had died in Hardwar.

The letter implores Giridhar to carry out the "shradha" ceremony every year as Bhausaheb did not have any sons of his own. It was Jadiben who declared in 1952 that Yogindra Dayanand Maharaj had indeed been Nanasaheb.

Kalyanji died in 1924 and Jadiben claimed she had kept her father's secret for so long for fear of inviting the ire of the British. She pulled out some articles written by Nanasaheb and placed them before the public.

Her claims were corroborated by two people from Sihor, Dhanji Kansara and Govind Luhar, who knew about Nanasaheb's identity in his twilight years.

These revelations had created a stir in the region with elderly residents taking out a procession as a mark of respect to Nanasaheb on his death anniversary. The issue, however, lost momentum after Jadiben's death in 1962.

It was only much later that Keshavlal chanced upon the three crucial documents in an old chest left behind by his father. When he showed them to Navalbhai Mehta, a forgotten chapter in the annals of Indian history was reopened.

Navalbhai's efforts to seek recognition for Nanasaheb's Sihor connection were so persistent that the Chimanbhai Patel government had to set up a full-fledged committee of historians and others, including Navalbhai, to conduct an investigation. The panel's findings were forwarded to the Central government, following which Pant visited Sihor.

He examined the documents and declared them authentic. He then wrote to the Gujarat government to institute a conclusive, scientific investigation so that a distorted account of Nanasaheb's life could finally be corrected.

However, as Navalbhai points out, the "expert" opinion seems to have made little difference. Laments Harshad: "It is a pity that in spite of such strong evidence to prove that Yogindra Dayanand Maharaj had been in fact Nanasaheb Peshwa, the government has not bothered to carry out a proper scientific examination."

Equally ironical is the fact that Harshad and his brothers, descendants of a wealthy Peshwa, are struggling to make both ends meet. While he is a priest in a local temple his eldest brother Kamal is a supervisor in a colour manufacturing unit.

Vijay, Nanasaheb's second great grandson, is a cook and Janak, the third in line, is a nurse in a hospital at Sihor.

Like the disputed samadhi of Nanasaheb which lies on the banks of a tributary of the Gautami, not far from the ascetic's cave hideout, they too are mute spectators to a pathetic paradox: a past that stubbornly refuses to be acknowledged by the present.
