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The Mughals and the Marathas
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada

An episode relating to Emperor Aurangzeb's time that has attracted considerable attention of historians and politicians alike is that of the Marathas' struggle to carve a niche of their own. It was not a religious movement, nor did it represent an effort for revivalism of Hindu culture. It was, basically, a political struggle to establish a regional kingdom by a Hindu chief, Shivaji (1627-80). For this, Shivaji had to contend with the Deccan Sultans as well as with the Mughals.

Contesting for territories has been a normal practice with the least consideration of religion. Hindus have fought with Hindus and Muslims with Muslims, and they have indulged in cross-alliances whenever necessary. Aurangzeb and Shivaji both had forged such alliances. It was only when the British rulers created the false impression during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of a Hindu-Muslim animosity that the Mughal-Maratha conflict was brought to the fore as a Hindu revivalist movement against Muslim dominance. Aurangzeb and Shivaji came to be perceived as protagonists of Islam and Hinduism, respectively. Since this episode has such a connotation, a description of the events will be appropriate.

The Marathas, a hardy and rough-hewn people, lived mainly in the western Ghats spilling across the Deccan up to central India. Consisting mainly of Sudra class peasantry, they had no history of their own. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they were living peacefully in the Muslim Bahmani kingdoms. Coming to the seventeenth century, Maratha chiefs took service with the local Muslim states. However, it was the ambition of one person, Shivaji Bhonsle (1621-80) that brought the Maratha race into the limelight and awakened in them a sense of belonging to the land and gave an identity to the community.

Shivaji’s grandfather, who belonged to a prominent Maratha family, had named his two sons Shahji and Sharifji after a Muslim saint named Shah Sharif, whom he deeply venerated. Shivaji's father, Shahji, was a fief-holder of Ahmadnagar of the land around Pune. He was the first important Maratha figure to make his presence felt in the politics of the Deccan by transferring his allegiance first from Ahmadnagar to Bijapur, and then to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan when he had advanced into the Deccan, accepting a Mughal mansab in 1630. When Shah Jahan returned to the north in 1632, Shahji went back to his allegiance to the original overlord of Ahmadnagar. He then carved out an independent enclave for himself, but his hold on it proved short-lived as he had to surrender himself soon to a joint Bijapur-Mughal army. Thereafter, he was banished from Pune. Shortly before the birth of Shivaji, he had taken a new wife, and then abandoned them both.

Shivaji was brought up by his devout Hindu mother. He decided early in life to free Maharashtra from the control of both the Mughals and Bijapur. He mastered the art of guerilla warfare, gathered around himself a band of loyal companions, and took to ambushing the military caravans in the countryside of Maharashtra. But like his grandfather, he remained respectful to Islam during his campaigns. The historian Khafi Khan of that time, who has termed Shivaji in his writings as ‘a sharp son of the devil’ and ‘a father of fraud’, mentions his special virtues as follows: “He attacked the caravans which came from distant ports, and appropriated to himself the goods and women. But he made it a rule that wherever his followers went plundering, they should do no harm to the mosques, the Book of God, or the women of anyone. Whenever a copy of the sacred Qur’an came into his hands, he treated it with respect, and gave it to some of his Musalman followers.”

The decrepitude of the state of Bijapur had tempted Shivaji to add to his father’s holdings. He indulged in occasional rebellions and land-grabbing activities. Bijapur sent its general Afzal Khan to curb the rebel. Shivaji, while embracing Afzal Khan in a friendly ploy, pulled out his stomach with an iron claw attached to his fingers. In 1660, Shaista Khan, the Mughal governor of the Deccan, swept aside Maratha resistance, occupied Pune, and took up residence there. Later, Shivaji made an attempt on the life of Shaista Khan, by entering deep inside his harem. In 1664, he sacked the Mughal port as far off as Surat where only the English merchants successfully defended themselves in their warehouses. After plundering Surat, Shivaji killed its wealthiest merchant, Baharji Bohra, seized the Mecca-bound ships, and exacted ransoms from the pilgrims on board. The Mughal emperor was now alarmed. Aurangzeb deputed his able general, Mirza Raja Jai Singh Kachhwaha of Amber, to destroy Shivaji and thereafter invade and annex Bijapur. Jai Singh soon secured Shivaji’s capitulation and forced him to sign a treaty in June 1665, ceding four-fifths of his territory and promising to serve the emperor loyally. Shivaji then accompanied Jai Singh with his 11,000 troops to the Mughal campaign of Bijapur. It seemed for the moment that Shivaji's career had come to an end, for he agreed to present himself at Aurangzeb's court at Agra to get a Mughal mansab. He went there taking with him offerings of submission, but he was not happy with the treatment and the reward. At the imperial court, he was to stand with the mansabdars, in order of precedence, behind Jaswant Singh, whom he had previously defeated. Further, the Mughals considered a mansub of 5,000 to be a very high rank for a new entrant like Shivaji. But he expected a mansab of at least 7,000 because of his political standing and prestige in the Deccan. Sensing Shivaji’s reluctance to compromise, he was put under house arrest but soon Shivaji escaped wearing a deception to the Deccan. He quickly re-captured most of the forts he had ceded to the Mughals. Shivaji made peace with the Mughal governor of the Deccan, Prince Mu’azzam, and secured a mansab of 5,000 for his son, Shambhuji. He was allowed a free hand to conquer Bijapur. Remaining at peace with the Mughals from 1667 to 1669 he consolidated his power. In October 1670 he again attacked Surat and plundered it mercilessly. Sparing the English, Dutch, and French factories, he destroyed the Muslim and Hindu traders.

In 1674, Shivaji assumed royal status, without reference to the Mughal emperor. This was the first time that a regional monarch had become the head of a parallel government. In the meantime, the most revered Hindu theologian at Varanasi, Gagga Bhatta was persuaded to declare that Shivaji was not a Sudra, but a lapsed Kshatriya. Gagga Bhatta traveled to the Maratha capital where he purified Shivaji and invested him with the sacred thread and Vedic verses. At the royal consecration on June 6, 1674, Gagga Bhatta raised the royal umbrella over Shivaji's head and hailed him as a Siva Chhatrapati (Lord of the Four Quarters).

Shivaji’s genius as a fighter lay in outwitting the Mughals with guerilla tactics, and as a leader of the people in welding the caste-conscious Brahmans and Sudras, into a harmonious whole. He wanted self-rule in the land of his birth, Maharashtra, and at the time of his death in 1680, he, in fact, had become the master of a compact and well-organized kingdom in western India. Shivaji was hailed by his followers as the founding father of the Maratha 'nation' but reviled by the Mughals as a 'mountain rat' of Deccan. Soon after Shivaji’s death, the Maratha kingdom lost its moral standing. The hardy patriots became toughened raiders notorious for their rapacity and ruthlessness, showing themselves as more of a scourge than an inspiration. This reputation spread all over India. Not only the Muslims but also non-Maratha Hindus dreaded them, and, as such, Maratha leadership was not accepted by Hindu India.

In 1689, Aurangzeb’s forces captured Shivaji’s successor, Shambhaji. But when he used abusive language to the religion of the captors, he was killed. Aurangzeb took Shambhaji’s seven-year-old son Shahu and his mother into the imperial palace, and made him a mansabdar of 700. The Maratha bid for an independent enclave was thus defeated by the octogenarian Aurangzeb.

Aurangzeb’s son Bahadur Shah did not pursue a belligerent policy with the Marathas. He released Shahu (Shivaji II) and sent him back to his own country, and let him fight his own war against the rebel Maratha diehards. In return for their loyalty to the Mughals, Shahu was given a mansab of fifteen thousand cavalry to serve the emperor upon call, and thus he became a member of the Mughal bureaucracy. The Marathas were given permission to collect their own tax in their territories, Sardeshmukhi and Chauth, and asked to pay one million rupees annually to the imperial treasury. They were also given a free hand to recover all of Shivaji’s old territories

During the crumbling years of the Mughal empire, the remaining power of the Marathas was shattered at the battlefield of Panipat in 1761 at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan. The Maratha confederacy, which had come up in the meanwhile, dissolved in warring fragments. However, under the leadership of MahadajiScindia, the ruler of Gowaliar, the Marathas reorganized themselves and became so powerful that they occupied Agra and Mathura. In 1771, MahadajiScindia captured Delhi and invited the Emperor Shah Alam to return to his capital from Allahabad, where he was forced to live under British supervision. He promised the Emperor to restore him to his old supreme position. In 1785, the Emperor made him the general administrator of the Mughal Empire. In that capacity, Mahadaji even demanded from the British the emperor's share of the revenues of Bengal. In 1788 the Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir sacked Delhi and blinded the hapless Mughal emperor Shah Alam. Mahadaji rushed to the rescue of the emperor but it was too late. He pursued the Rohillas, captured Ghulam Qadir, and tortured him to death. With Mahadaji's death in 1794, the Maratha Empire itself withered away. The history of about a century and a half of the Maratha insurgency faded away unsung from the Indian political scene.