ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts how the colonial episteme manufactured the myth of ‘martial’ races in India and, in doing so, classified the natives into the binaries of masculine and effeminate. It traces the historical reasons and politics of how this colonial masculine narrative surrounding the ‘martial’ Maratha caste emerged as the hegemonic form and how this notion was applied by the elite amongst this caste to construct a world view that substantiated this myth. This fabrication of the analogy has meant that the Maratha leadership has retained its dominance using this analogy of rulership and the rhetoric of being a martial race. This narrative of the ‘masculine’ Maratha got further reinforced through reproduction in the regional films and through popular culture in the decades of 1950s till the 1980s.
