Shivaji

Shivaji Bhonsle was a Maratha leader who carved an independent kingdom out of the western Deccan in the seventeenth century and was crowned Chhatrapati, "lord of the umbrella", at Raigad in 1674. Starting from his father's estate around Pune, he fought the sultanate of Bijapur and the Mughal Empire of Aurangzeb, using hill forts, fast cavalry and raids to wear down larger armies. The state he founded grew after his death into the Maratha Empire, the leading power in India in the eighteenth century, and he is today one of the most revered figures in Maharashtra.

Shivaji was born at the hill fort of Shivneri, near Junnar in today's Pune district. The date is disputed: the Maharashtra government marks 19 February 1630, while some historians prefer 1627. His father, Shahaji Bhonsle, was a Maratha commander who served, and frequently switched between, the Deccan sultanates of Ahmadnagar and Bijapur and the Mughals, holding a revenue estate, or jagir, around Pune. His mother, Jijabai, came from the Jadhav family, which claimed descent from the old Yadava kings of Devagiri.

In 1636 Shahaji entered Bijapur's service and was posted far to the south, around Bangalore. Shivaji grew up in Pune with his mother, while the estate was run by an administrator, Dadoji Kondadeo. After Dadoji's death in 1647 the young Shivaji took charge of it himself. Later Maratha traditions gave his mother a central role in inspiring him to found a Hindu kingdom, though how far this reflects later storytelling is debated.

In about 1646–47, while the Bijapur court was distracted by the sultan's illness, Shivaji seized the fort of Torna, and over the following years took Purandar, Kondhana and others around Pune, building his own seat at Rajgad. In 1656 he killed Chandrarao More, a rival Maratha lord, and took the Javali valley, a deed even sympathetic historians have called ruthless. His father, under pressure from Bijapur, disowned his actions.

In 1659 Bijapur sent its veteran general Afzal Khan with a large army against him. Shivaji withdrew to the fort of Pratapgad, and the two men agreed to meet below it, each with a single attendant. Shivaji came wearing armour and carrying a concealed steel claw and a dagger. What happened is known mostly from Maratha accounts, which say Afzal Khan attacked first; at any rate Shivaji killed him, and his hidden troops then routed the leaderless army. The following year Shivaji was besieged at Panhala and escaped by night, his rearguard under Baji Prabhu Deshpande holding a mountain pass at the cost of their lives.

Shivaji first clashed with the Mughals in 1657. After Aurangzeb took the throne, he sent his uncle Shaista Khan to the Deccan, and Shaista Khan occupied Pune itself. In April 1663 Shivaji led a small party in a night raid on his quarters, killing one of his sons and cutting off three of his fingers. In 1664 he sacked Surat, the richest Mughal port, carrying off enormous plunder.

Aurangzeb then sent the Rajput general Jai Singh, who pressed Shivaji so hard that in June 1665, with Purandar under siege, he accepted the Treaty of Purandar, surrendering 23 of his forts and agreeing to serve the Mughals. In 1666 he went to Aurangzeb's court at Agra. Offended at being made to stand among nobles of modest rank, he protested and was placed under house arrest. In August he escaped; the popular story says he and his young son Sambhaji were carried out in baskets of sweets, though historians such as Stewart Gordon think bribed guards are a likelier explanation. A truce followed, but by 1670 fighting resumed. Shivaji recovered most of the forts he had given up and sacked Surat a second time.

Despite his power, Shivaji was legally only a rebel landholder. To claim the status of a sovereign, and to place himself above other Maratha chiefs, he arranged a coronation. Some Brahmins objected that he did not belong to the kshatriya, or warrior, class from which Hindu kings were supposed to come, and a scholar from Varanasi, Gaga Bhatt, produced a genealogy linking the Bhonsles to the Sisodia Rajputs, a claim historians regard as doubtful. On 6 June 1674 Shivaji was crowned at Raigad with elaborate Vedic rites, taking the titles Chhatrapati and protector of the Hindu faith.

He governed through a council of eight ministers, the Ashta Pradhan, paid many soldiers and officials in cash rather than with land grants, and promoted Marathi and Sanskrit at court in place of Persian. His power rested on a network of forts, each commanded jointly by officers who checked one another, and on a small but effective army of Maratha infantry and light cavalry. He also built a coastal navy, with a sea fort at Sindhudurg, to contest the Konkan coast with the Siddis of Janjira, the Portuguese Empire and the English at Bombay, today's Mumbai.

In 1677, in alliance with the sultan of Golconda, he led a large expedition into the south, capturing Gingee and Vellore and much of the territory his half-brother Venkoji held from their father's estate.

Shivaji presented himself as a Hindu king and protected temples, Brahmins and cows. Yet his conflicts were not simply religious. Muslims served in his army and navy, including commanders and his admiral, he endowed Muslim shrines, and he allied with Muslim rulers when it suited him, as with Golconda against his own Hindu half-brother. Historians such as Vinay Lal and Stewart Gordon describe his wars as political and economic struggles over land, revenue and status, rather than a campaign against Islam, while others, such as Gijs Kruijtzer, trace an increasingly sharp religious language on both sides in his last years.

Shivaji fell ill with fever and dysentery and died at Raigad in early April 1680, aged about fifty. A succession struggle followed between his sons Sambhaji and Rajaram. Sambhaji won, but was captured and executed by Aurangzeb in 1689. The Maratha state nevertheless survived, and in the eighteenth century, under the peshwas, it spread across much of India.

His image has changed with the politics of each age. British writers often dismissed him as a plunderer. Nineteenth-century Indian nationalists, especially Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who founded a festival in his honour in 1895, made him a symbol of resistance to foreign rule, while the reformer Jyotirao Phule portrayed him as a hero of the lower castes. Since independence he has been honoured across India, Mumbai's main railway station, airport and museum bear his name, and the Shiv Sena party is named after him. Hindu nationalist writing often portrays him as a champion of Hinduism against Muslim rule, an interpretation many academic historians consider too simple. Scholarship on him remains sensitive: in 2004 the American historian James Laine's biography was banned in Maharashtra and a research institute in Pune attacked, before the courts lifted the ban.