Battle of Haldighati

On 18 June 1576, in a narrow mountain pass near Gogunda in Rajasthan, the forces of the Rajput kingdom of Mewar under Maharana Pratap fought a Mughal army commanded by Man Singh I of Amber. The Mughals won the day, but Pratap escaped, and he went on resisting for the rest of his life. The battle has since become a powerful symbol in India, and its meaning remains debated.

By the 1570s the Mughal emperor Akbar had brought most Rajput states into his system, but Mewar, the leading Rajput kingdom and home of the Sisodia clan, refused to submit. The siege of Chittorgarh in 1568, under Pratap's father Udai Singh II, had already cost Mewar its fertile eastern lands. Akbar also wanted control of Mewar's wooded hills to secure his routes to Gujarat. After Pratap became Rana in 1572, Akbar sent four missions to persuade him to become a vassal, led in turn by Jalal Khan Qurchi, Man Singh, Raja Bhagwant Das and Todar Mal. All failed. The court historian Abul Fazl claimed that Pratap came close to accepting, but other contemporary chroniclers do not support this.

Man Singh, a Kachhwaha Rajput whose family had risen high in Mughal service, mustered his army at Mandalgarh and marched on Gogunda. Pratap waited at the entrance to Haldighati, a pass named after its yellow, turmeric-coloured soil. The size of the armies is disputed. Mewari tradition speaks of 20,000 against 80,000, which the historian Jadunath Sarkar considered exaggerated; he put the Mughal force at 10,000, and Satish Chandra estimates 5,000 to 10,000. Al-Badayuni, who was present with the Mughal army, recorded about 3,000 horsemen and some 400 Bhil archers under Pratap. He counted the Mughal army at about 10,000, of whom 4,000 were Man Singh's Kachhwahas, 1,000 other Hindus and 5,000 Muslims of the imperial army. Rajputs thus fought on both sides, and Pratap's vanguard was led by the Afghan commander Hakim Khan Sur. Both armies had elephants, but only the Mughals had firearms.

Fighting began about three hours after sunrise. The Mewari charge broke the Mughal wings and centre, and according to Abul Fazl the Mughals fell back before rallying at a spot later called Rakt Talai. Man Singh then led the rear guard into the battle, while Mihtar Khan beat the war drums and spread word that the emperor himself was arriving with reinforcements. Mughal musket fire turned back the Mewari elephants, and the tide swung against Pratap. Wounded, he was persuaded by his nobles to leave the field. A Jhala chief, also named Man Singh, took up the royal emblems and was mistaken for the Rana; he was killed, but his sacrifice allowed Pratap to escape.

Accounts differ widely. Abul Fazl and Nizamuddin Ahmad give 150 Mughal dead and 350 wounded against 500 Mewari dead. Badayuni puts the total killed at 500, of whom 120 were Muslims. Sarkar, using Mewari sources, estimated Mewar's dead and wounded at about 1,600, while later Rajasthani chroniclers raised the toll to 20,000.

Man Singh did not pursue the retreating Rana, and Akbar, displeased, banished him from court for a time. Mughal troops briefly held Gogunda. Akbar then campaigned in person, and for some years most of Mewar was under Mughal control, while Pratap was steadily isolated. After 1585, however, Mughal attention turned elsewhere, and according to inscriptions of the period Pratap recovered most of his kingdom except Chittor and Mandalgarh.

A contemporary poetic biography of Man Singh by Amrit Rai presents the battle as Pratap's defeat. The historian Satish Chandra describes the conflict as, at most, an assertion of local independence, involving the personal honour of Pratap rather than of Rajputs or Hindus generally. In independent India, some Hindu nationalist writers have presented Pratap as the victor at Haldighati; mainstream historians, among them D. N. Jha, Tanuja Kothiyal and Rima Hooja, reject that reading as unhistorical.

Our 1530 and 1600 maps show the Mughal Empire to the north and the Rajput states of Rajputana, the region that included Mewar.