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Shivaji : (1627/30-80) Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was born in at Shivneri, a hill fort near Pune. Since his father Shāhāji Raje Bhonsle, employed as an officer in the army of the Sultan of Bijāpur, was often absent, he was brought up by mother Jijābai & guardian Dādāji Kondadev who trained him in the art of warfare & administration, & his guru Swami Ramdas Samartha inspired him with the noble & patriotic ideas & infused in him love for the religion & the motherland. From early teens he mixed with young mawalis (a hardy hill tribe) & organizing them into a loyal guerrilla force began to raid neighbouring territories. Beginning with the fort of Torṇa, about twenty miles from Pune, he captured the forts of Chakan, Singhaghad & Purandhar, situated within the territories of the Sultanate of Bijāpur. By 1655 he had occupied the northern part of Konkaṇ on the coast & the fort of Javāli. In 1659 the Sultan of Bijāpur sent a large army under a senior general named Afzal Khan, with instructions to kill him & bring the corpse to his court. Shivaji managed to outwit & kill Afzal Khan who tried to stab him to death after inviting him for negotiations in his camp. Shivaji went on to capture Pratapghad, the Sultan’s fort. The second army sent by the Sultan also failed to subdue him & Shivaji captured his weapons, horses, elephants & warfare materials. Emboldened Shivaji began raiding Mogul territories. Aurangzeb sent an army under Shaista Khan who occupied Pune; Shivaji made a surprise attack. Shaista Khan escaped after most his army was decimated. The second army of Aurangzeb, under Kartalab Khan, met with the same fate. In 1664, Shivaji sacked Surat. But he was defeated by his fellow Hindu king Raja Jai Singh of Amber who had sold his soul to Aurangzeb. By the terms of the treaty of Purandhar, Shivaji ceded 23 forts & acknowledged Aurangzeb’s supremacy. Unwarily, he fell into the trap laid by Jai Singh & allowed himself to be capture & imprisoned when he accepted to go to Aurangzeb’s court in Agra. But soon he escaped & crowned himself an independent ruler & assumed the title of Chhatrapati. Turning south, he conquered Ginjee, Vellore & a large part of Thanjavur. ― The most significant achievement of Shivaji was the welding of the Marathas into a nation. He infused a new spirit of unity & dignity into the Maratha people consisting of 96 clans. In recruitment to services Shivaji showed no partiality to any community. There was no discrimination, no casteism, & no communalism. He, however, laid emphasis on the recruitment of the son of the soil. Prominent among the saintly persons whom Shivaji admired were Tukārām, Baba Yakub, Mauni Baba, etc. Sanskrit poets like Jairam, Paramānanda, Gaga Bhatt, & some Hindi poets received his patronage. Administration: Largely borrowed from the administrative practices of the Deccan states modified by Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra & the Dharma shastras. Shivaji was assisted by a council of ministers. Territories under his direct rule, i.e., which had acquired Swaraj, were divided into provinces while preserving the age old system of Panchayats in the rural areas. The revenue system: An elaborate survey of the land fixed the rent at 33 per cent of the gross produce. Shivaji afterwards demanded a consolidated rent of 40 per cent. Chauth & Sardeshmukhi, the main sources of income, were levied on territories not under his direct control. Chauth or one fourth of the standard revenue was exacted as protection money & against raids by Shivaji’s parties. And territories & principalities which in addition to chauth paid an additional tax called Sardeshmukhi received Marathi protection against other invaders. Both the taxes together made a sizeable income for the Maratha kings. The Armed Forces: Shivaji created & maintained an organized & disciplined army consisting of infantry, cavalry & navy & a well-paid & efficient intelligence or espionage wing. The army mostly composed of light infantry & light cavalry was admirably well-adapted to guerrilla warfare & hill campaign. Forts played an important role in Shivaji’s military system. Every fort was kept under three officers of equal status. They acted together but served as a check on one another. The navy possessed about 200 warships whose job was to protect coastal fortresses. The Portuguese, the British, the Africans & the Moguls were thus effectively kept in check. “In his private life, Shivaji remained immune from the prevalent vices of the time, & his moral virtues were exceptionally high. Sincerely religious from his early life, he did not forget the lofty ideals with which he had been inspired by his mother & his Guru Samartha Rāmdās (q.v.), in the midst of political & military duties. He sought to make religion a vital force in the uplifting of the Maratha nation & always extended his patronage to Hindu religion & learning. “Religion remained with him,” remarks a modern Marathi writer, “an ever-fresh fountain of right conduct & generosity; it did not obsess him mind or harden him into a bigot.” Tolerant of other faiths, he deeply venerated Muslim saints & granted rent-free lands to meet the expenses of illumination of Muslim shrines & mosques, & his conduct towards the Capuchin father (Christian monks) of Surat, during its first sack by him, was respectful. Even his bitterest critic, Khafi Khan, writes: “But he made it a rule that whenever his followers went plundering, they should do no harm to the mosques, the Book of God, or the women of any one. Whenever a copy of the Quran came into his hands he treated it with respect & gave it to some of his Muhammedan followers. When the women of any Hindu or Muhammedan were taken prisoners by his men, he watched over them until their relations came with a suitable ransom to buy their liberty.” [R.C. Majumdar et al, An Advanced History of India, 3rd Ed., 1973, 1974.]