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MUMBAI: Politically, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale were opposite poles: one a radical and an extremist, the other a moderate and an advocate of ‘constitutional methods’. But excesses committed by British officials in Pune during the 1896-97 outbreak of plague in Bombay Presidency gave these poles a meeting point.

The then plague commissioner for the region, Walter Charles Rand, began a policy of invasive checks in people’s homes, with officials forcing themselves in and committing outrages. Tilak called Rand “suspicious, sullen and tyrannical” in a speech in Mumbai, and Gokhale said British soldiers had been “let loose on the town” and had raped two women, one of whom had killed herself after the violation.

Two youths from Pimpri-Chinchwad near Pune, Damodar Hari Chapekar and his brother Balkrishna, shot Rand and another British officer, Charles Ayerst, dead on June 22, 1897. The Chapekar brothers were hanged in 1899, but their act began the post-1857 course of revolutionary activities across India. Soon after Rand’s killing, the movement picked up in Maharashtra and Bengal (with Tilak being charged with sedition for having allegedly incited the twin murders and Khudiram Bose becoming the first Indian to be hanged in the 20th century) and spread across the country before Mahatma Gandhi arrived on the scene and became India’s pre-eminent leader with his slogan of non-violence.

Now, 120 years after Rand was shot, the search for names of historical villains continues in the slanging match between political parties ahead of the Mumbai, Pune, Thane and other civic polls. If, in the run-up to the 2014 assembly election, Uddhav Thackeray had equated PM Narendra Modi and his NDA ministers with Bijapur general Afzal Khan’s army, he has now said the BJP, if voted to power in Mumbai after having won the Centre and state polls, will start behaving like Rand. Alleging that the Modi government, which had “forced” demonetization on India, had “its eyes on ordinary women’s savings”, the Shiv Sena president said in Pimpri-Chinchwad, hometown of the Chapekar brothers, that “Modi’s officials are now going to check dabbas in people’s houses. At the time of the plague, Rand wrought havoc by invading people’s homes. Something similar is going to happen here.”

Uddhav’s comments came days after PM Modi praised the Chapekars in the Lok Sabha. Replying to Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge ’s charge in Parliament that “not even a dog from your house” had sacrificed his life in the freedom struggle, Modi said those of his generation born after Independence had not had the fortune of fighting for India’s liberation. “The problem is, we never hear you speaking of the Chapekar brothers who laid down their lives for the nation, of Savarkarji who suffered imprisonment at ‘Kala Paani’ and of Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad. The problem is, you try to create the impression that only one family brought us Independence,” Modi said in perhaps the first reference to the Chapekars by a PM.

Not to be outdone, NCP chief Sharad Pawar equated CM Fadnavis with Nana Fadnavis — not the astute minister of the Peshwas from the 18th century as he is known to historians, but the fictional character as depicted in the landmark Marathi play Ghashiram Kotwal . The late Vijay Tendulkar had in the 1972 play portrayed Fadnavis as depraved, invoking the anger of conservative Brahmins, and Pawar was trying to say that like the fictional Nana inducted the crooked Ghashiram as police chief, the CM was playing power games by inducting “goons” in his party. (Tendulkar, incidentally, also wrote the dialogues for ‘22 June 1897,’ a 1979 national-award-winning Marathi film on the Chapekar brothers.)

At a time when history and mythology are getting mixed in many ways, Ashish Shelar, Mumbai BJP chief, carried the debate all the way to the Mahabharata era, calling Shiv Sena “the army of Kauravas.”

And the by-now hotly contested realm of history finally entered the 20th century with Team Sena accusing BJP of “Hitler-shahi” and Uddhav screaming “Emergency” by referring to BJP’s request to the Election Commission to ban Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna for three days. Significantly, the Shiv Sena in its 50-year record has consistently lavished praise on Hitler , and Sena founder Bal Thackeray had supported the Indira-imposed Emergency.

But no claims on history in Mumbai and Maharashtra can be complete without a reference to Chhatrapati Shivaji. “Shivaji belongs to all of us,” Fadnavis told a TV channel when asked if BJP was trying to hijack the icon from the Sena. “Is it Chhatrapati Shivaji Shiv Sena Pvt Ltd?” he asked, saying the Maratha hero had inspired all of Maharashtra, and no party could claim him as their own.

On the poll-season fascination with history, Ranjit Savarkar, grand-nephew of Veer Savarkar, told TOI: “Though discussion of history is welcome, as we must remember all the heroes who gave us freedom, it must not be with a view to gaining political brownie points. Nobody can claim a monopoly on history.”

