Śivājī

Marāthā emperor of India (r. 1674-1680)

• Born: April 6, 1627
• Birthplace: Poona, India
• Died: April 3, 1680
• Place of death: Rājgarh, India

The founder of an independent Marāthā kingdom, Śivājī was a pioneer of guerrilla warfare, a great general, and a fiery Hindu nationalist. He became a symbol of Hindu statesmanship for twentieth century Indians.

Early Life

Śivājī (dee-VAH-gee) was born in west India, the son of parents from two prominent Marāthā families. His mother, Jija Bai, was the daughter of Lukhji Jadhava of Devagiri, and his father was Shanji Bhonsle. The Marāthās, a resourceful and self-reliant hill people, successfully resisted Muslim rule for three generations and also held the later British invaders at bay. Śivājī’s father virtually abandoned him and his mother shortly after Śivājī’s birth. Consequently, Śivājī was reared largely by his mother and his guardian Dadaji Kondadev, a clever former official of the neighboring Muslim sultanate of Bijapur.

During the first nine years of his life, Śivājī experienced constant peril. He and his mother were forced to stay on the move, wandering from place to place to escape capture by attacking Mughal armies. Eventually, they settled in Poona in 1636 and lived there for ten years. Then they moved to a newly built mountain fortress, Rājgarh, which in time became the capital of his Marāthā empire.

Three major forces molded Śivājī’s character. His mother wielded the paramount influence. This spirited woman was proud of her Kshatriya (warrior caste) heritage and centered her ambition on her son, developing in him traits of defiance and self-assertion. A devout Hindu, she imparted her love of religion to him and provided an education focused on the great epics the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata. He became fond of devotional music and attended the sermons of various Hindu teachers in the Poona vicinity. He never lost his love of Hinduism, later introducing compulsory recitations of the war chapters of the Rāmāyana by all his troops.

The second great influence on his character was his guardian, Dadaji. Not merely a clerk or accountant, Dadaji was a strict disciplinarian, a shrewd tactician, and a fierce Hindu nationalist as well. He hated Muslim domination and felt a deep affection for the peasantry. His skill in politics and his passion for justice deeply influenced Śivājī.

The third influence was Mahārāshtra itself. He spent much of his boyhood roaming the secluded hills west of Poona, where he was exposed to nature’s demands and learned to cope with deprivation. He developed methods of guerrilla warfare and gained firsthand knowledge of the needs of the common people by constantly moving among them as a youth. Before he reached the age of twenty, Śivājī gained control of several districts west of Poona and began to raise his own army. He repaired and garrisoned forts and improved the local administrative machinery. He thus earned the reputation of an able and upright ruler.

Life’s Work

When Dadaji died in 1647, Śivājī embarked upon a vigorous policy of territorial expansion. Politics of the western Deccan (central India) were dominated by two independent but corrupt Muslim sultanates, Bijapur and Golconda, and languid Mughal armies interested more in personal gain than in imperial conquest. Śivājī took advantage of the absence of aggressive Mughal generals to expand. Intensely pragmatic, he employed any and all means to attain his ends. He had two main objectives in mind as he launched his expansion. First, he wanted to secure the welfare of the Marāthās under his control. Second, he sought to create well-defined frontiers that were easily defended against the Mughals. Between 1648 and 1653, he managed to organize a small, cohesive state encompassing the region around Poona. In addition to forming a formidable army, Śivājī also built naval forts and created a powerful navy backed by shipbuilding yards and arsenals. By the mid-1650’s, Śivājī was clearly the outstanding Marāthā statesman and a threat to the surrounding Muslim principalities.

Bijapur reacted to the threat in 1659 by raising a well-equipped army under the control of Afẓal Khān to send against Śivājī. Afzal Khan swept into Śivājī’s domains in September, 1659, plundering and destroying as he went. Śivājī could not defeat Afzal Khan’s forces in open combat and so decided to attack him by deception instead. After complicated negotiations, the two opponents met for a conference on November 10, 1659. Śivājī, a short, wiry adventurer of only five feet in height, seemed to pose no personal danger to the powerfully built Bijapur general. Śivājī, however, took advantage of the situation by wearing an iron vest and a metal skullcap under his turban and by carrying a concealed dagger in one hand and tiger claws in the other. Although the exact details of the khan’s encounter with Śivājī may be lost in legend, the Marāthās claim that when Śivājī came into the conference tent, the khan attempted to kill him with a dagger. Śivājī parried the blow and ripped open the khan’s bowels with the tiger claws, killing him nearly instantly. The death of the khan demoralized the Bijapur troops, who left the field without a battle. Bijapur no longer threatened the new Marāthā state.

This success, in addition to Śivājī’s general expansion in the western Deccan, alarmed the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, who had spent many years in the Deccan as a prince and was intimately familiar with the politics there. Determined to quell the Marāthās, Aurangzeb sent a powerful force against Śivājī in January, 1660, under the direction of Shaista Khan. The khan seized Poona and for three years hunted Śivājī in all directions. Only Śivājī’s intimate knowledge of Mahārāshtran geography and guerrilla tactics prevented his capture.

Once again, Śivājī resorted to a stratagem to save himself. Through secret agents, he learned the details of the khan’s schedule and the arrangements of his command center. On the evening of April 15, 1663, Śivājī launched a surprise attack on the khan’s personal quarters, killing nearly fifty people and wounding the khan. That forced the Mughals to relax the pressure on Śivājī for a time. He took advantage of the lull to plunder the rich port city of Surat, one of the most highly prized Mughal possessions. This direct attack on the Mughal Empire’s power and prestige incensed Aurangzeb, who sent a huge new army under the Rājput Jai Singh to deal with the Marāthā “mountain rats.”

Jai Singh’s powerful force arrived in Poona in March, 1665. Śivājī, unaware of his coming, was campaigning in the south. When he heard of the new danger, he returned immediately to Rājgarh, but Jai Singh established a firm hold on the regions north of Poona, and Śivājī could not hope to defeat him. Accordingly, he signed a treaty with Jai Singh on June 12, 1665, agreeing to hand over twenty-three of his important forts, keeping only twelve minor ones for himself. Śivājī then proceeded to Āgra to attend Aurangzeb’s formal accession to the Mughal throne on May 12, 1666.

Aurangzeb then made the single greatest mistake of his life. In return for giving up his forts, Śivājī expected to be made a full ally of the Mughals and to be appointed as a first-class mansabdar (commander of horse). Instead, Aurangzeb made him a third-class officer with no title or presents. Śivājī was so insulted that he fussed and fumed and eventually fainted. He was carried from the court and put under house arrest. Instead of making an indispensable ally in the Deccan, Aurangzeb created a bitter enemy. While Aurangzeb debated what to do with him, Śivājī planned a clever escape and fled Āgra on August 19, 1666. Following a circuitous route, he arrived back at Rājgarh on September 12. His daring escape buttressed his already considerable national reputation, and he was welcomed back to the Deccan as a returning monarch.

Thereafter, the persistent Marāthās tried to fight the Mughals to the death. By 1670, Śivājī had recaptured most of the fortresses he had ceded to the Mughals in 1666. He felt strong enough to launch a second, even more successful attack on Surat, plundering it for three full days in October, 1670. In 1674, after thirty years of struggle, Śivājī decided to confirm his conquests by having himself crowned Chatrapati (lord of the universe) in a traditional Hindu coronation in which some eleven thousand Brahmans chanted sacred Vedic mantras and more than fifty thousand of his followers pledged their allegiance to the great Hindu king, the reincarnation of the great god Siva.

This coronation, however, did not confirm Śivājī as ruler of all Mahārāshtra and the surrounding regions. Aurangzeb could not move against the Marāthās because he was occupied with campaigns against the Afghans in the northwest. Within the Deccan, however, Bijapur and Golconda remained unreconciled to Marāthā expansion, and Śivājī waged several campaigns against them over the next four years. Despite his considerable successes, Śivājī never controlled a very sizable domain or incorporated all Marāthās into his empire.

Śivājī died of a fever on April 3, 1680, at his capital of Rājgarh. His death did not bring an end to Mahārāshtra’s struggle for independence, however, for he bequeathed to his sons and fellow Marāthās his fierce spirit of Hindu nationalism. They continued his battle against Mughal power, preventing Aurangzeb from ever gaining full control of the Deccan.

Significance

Śivājī was hailed by his followers as the founding father of the Marāthā nation but was reviled by the Mughals as a “mountain rat.” There is little doubt that his exploits made him a savior to the Hindus, a protector of the tilak, the ritual paint on Hindu foreheads. Charismatic and shrewd, Śivājī inspired his people to become a nation, rallying Hindus to a sense of their own worth and power. Twentieth century Hindu nationalists have eulogized him as the earliest of the modern Hindus who struggled against foreign oppressors for India’s national survival.

Śivājī was a fierce warrior who campaigned relentlessly for Marāthā independence. He sought self-rule and the freedom to practice his own religion. He mastered guerrilla tactics in fighting both Mughal and Bijapur armies. He and his “mountain rats” would wait for the heavily laden armies to enter the hill country and then swoop down to plunder whatever they could use. They employed hit-and-run tactics against numerically superior enemies and chose to fight only when it was to their advantage. He secured mountaintop fortresses to which he could retreat to escape the pursuit of more powerful forces. Using his intimate knowledge of his homeland to the best advantage, he well deserves to be labeled one of the founders of modern guerrilla warfare.

His commitment to Hinduism and religious freedom was genuine. In some respects, he appears to have cared more for religious freedom than for political dominion. At the same time, however, he realized that religious freedom for Hindus could not be achieved without political freedom. In that respect, he articulated a political philosophy in common with the leaders of the twentieth century independence movement. He thus became a symbolic hero to Hindus in the political climate of the early twentieth century.

In their minds, Śivājī began the work that Mohandas Gandhi would complete. Even as he welded the scattered Marāthā people into a political and military unit with a powerful new sense of identity, so did Śivājī create a Hindu national identity. His colorful life and his ruthlessness tinged with fantasy provided the perfect raw material for a legendary hero. Thus, Śivājī was an important historical figure in his own right, as he united the Marāthās as a people and prevented Mughal domination of the Deccan. He is also important as a symbol of the new India, of a people united in a quest for political independence and a new national identity.

Bibliography

Gascoigne, Bamber. A Brief History of the Great Moghuls. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002. This well-written, general history of the Mughals, originally published in 1971, chronicles the rise and fall of the empire from its founder, Babur, through Aurangzeb. Profusely illustrated, it presents a compelling portrait of Śivājī’s struggles against Aurangzeb.

Gordon, Stewart. The Marathas, 1600-1818. Vol. 4 in The New Cambridge History of India, edited by Gordon Johnson, C. A. Bayly, and John F. Richards. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. A comprehensive history of the Marāthās and their kingdom, including a chapter on Śivājī and the Marāthā polity.

Hansen, Waldemar. The Peacock Throne: The Drama of Mogul India. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. A detailed history of the Mughal period, offering many insights into the Deccan problem as it was perceived by Śivājī and Aurangzeb.

Ikram, S. M. Muslim Civilization in India. Edited by Ainslie T. Embree. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Provides a comprehensive summary of the role of Muslims in India from 712 to 1857. Ikram assesses the role of Śivājī, chronicling from a Muslim perspective his military and political exploits.

Laine, James W. Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Laine traces the origins and development of Śivājī’s legend to offer a complex and unconventional view of Hindu-Muslim relationships in India.

Majumdar, R. C., H. C. Raychaudhuri, and Kalikinkar Datta. An Advanced History of India. 4th ed. Delhi: Macmillan India, 1978. An especially detailed history of India by Indian scholars. Strikes a balanced view of Śivājī’s leadership style, providing a useful appraisal of Śivājī’s position in the history of the Indian nationalist movement.

Pearson, M. N. “Shivaji and the Decline of the Mughal Empire.” Journal of Asian Studies 35 (February, 1976): 221-236. Focuses on the relationship between Śivājī’s persistent independence in the Deccan and the decline of Mughal power.

Singh, Mahendra Pratap. Shivaji, Bhakha Sources and Nationalism. New Delhi: Books India International, 2001. A history of the Mughals, with special reference to Śivājī, based upon the Braja literature of the time.

Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. This frequently updated general history of India provides a broad historical context for understanding Śivājī’s role during the Mughal period.