Histories of the independent Maratha state, which typically focus on the charismatic military hero Shivaji and other leading figures in the region in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, have played a significant role in the creation of a Marathi identity as well as a larger national Indian identity. These histories have been deployed in different contexts, ranging from the struggle for Indian independence to the Hindu nationalist and Dalit movements. Creative Pasts by Prachi Deshpande explores the ways in which historical narratives focusing on this period have contributed to the construction of “an enduring, shared historical memory of the Maratha past” (p. 2).
In her introduction, Deshpande points out that studying the category of memory has been posited as a way of accessing narratives that fall outside mainstream modern historiography. In contrast to this approach, some historians draw on the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Maurice...
