One more 'Battle of Panipat': Neeraj Chopra versus Abdali ?

In the deluge of congratulatory messages for Olympic Gold Medalist Neeraj Chopra, Gurinder Randhawa, a friend of mine described him as the winning hero of the 'fourth Battle of Panipat'. He was alluding to the the fact that Neeraj belonged to a village near Panipat and also to the fact that his winning the Olympics Jevlin throw Gold Medal was such a happy hormone booster for a medal starved India, that it, even if momentarily, drowned the humiliating memories of the defeat India had suffered in the three historic Battles of Panipat that changed the course of Indian history. And now when a Panipat boy gave the nation something to cheer up hugely, the feeling was as immense as one would have won this fourth battle of Panipat.

That is allgorical and would dissipate in due course of time but there is something more to the story not known much about.Going by the popular folk history, Neeraj Chopra is, as I am, a descendant of the surviving Maratha soldiers who after their massive defeat against Ahmad Shah Abdali in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, scattered in the jungles around Panipat, Karnal and Kurukshetra. They picked up the threads of their lives afresh and settled as farmers in villages in the area.They still inhabit that area and are called Ror-Maratha community. They observe the anniversary of the Third Battle of Panipat on the 14th of January and raise slogans like,
 'hum aaj bhi hain Panipat mein, 
tu kahan chhipa hai Abdali' 
( We are still embattled at Panipat O Abdali! Where have you hidden yourself).
Panipat is a festering wound in the memories for the Maratha community of Maharashtra as it ended the spread of their vast empire from Poona to Panipat. Scholars and historians have been visiting Panipat and its surrounding villages to pick up stories on their ancestors,  a large number of whom died fighting at Panipat but some survived and their stories continued reaching Poona from time to time. They found some Maratha customs in the Ror-Maratha community and some of their gotras too matched.
Now delegations from Maharashtra too join the anniversary celebrations in Panipat, Karnal and Kurukshetra. Virender Verma a former bureaucrat has been probing and propagating the links between the Marathas of two distant places. President Pratibha Patil participated in the 250th anniversary celebrations of the Third Battle of Panipat in 2011. The current descendants of Chhatrapati Shivaji too had joined these celebrations on different occasions. There is nostalgia on both sides and mutual bonds are being strengthened.

So don't mind if some people try to frame the Neeraj Chopra story in the wider Panipat context of Indian history, even if metaphorically.Gurinder Randhawa, the friend I referred to earlier, also has yet another  take on the Third Battle of Panipat."Abdali not only killed thousands of Maratha soldiers in the battle but also took many more as slaves to be sold in the central asian slave markets. These included 22000 women also. The Sikhs under their chieftain Jassa Singh Ahluwalia waylaid the tail end part of the caravan returning to Afghanistan near the town of Goindwal on the banks of the Satluj in Punjab and set the women and others free. They also looted the booty being carried by the Abdali forces. This infuriated Abdali who had marched quite ahead beyond Lahore. He returned to Amritsar to destroy the Sikh shrine of Harmandir Sahib by blasting it. He filled the holy sarovar with bodies of people and cows to desecrate the shrine. A blast there was so huge that it chopped off the nose of Abdali. For rest of his life he used a silver cover over his badly disfigured nose. He reportedly died as his wound became gangrenous. His grave still exists in Kandahar" says Randhawa who functioned as the All India Radio's Special Correspondent in Afghanistan for three years during the Karzai regime. He was quite friendly to Karzai since his days as AIR's correspondent in Shimla where Karzai was a student of Himachal Pradesh University.

That is not the end of the story. When Ranjit Singh emerged as the Sikh Maharaja of Lahore, he conquered Afghanistan to avenge the desecration of the holiest Sikh shrine in Amritsar. The Panipat humiliation was partly avenged by the Sikh Chieftain Jassa Singh Ahluwalia by freeing the captured Maratha and other women.Has Neeraj Chopra avenged at least a bit of the humiliating defeat of his ancestors?  This is anybody's speculation in this hour of national jubilations. Allgorical references, even if far fetched, are bound to flow and hence pardonable. The party should continue.

(Writer is a freelance journalist based at Hisar in Haryana)