Shivaji and the Mughals: The Founding of Maratha Power
Chhatrapati Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha state, was figures in the late seventeenth-century Indian world. Born in 1630 at the hill fort of Shivneri in the Sahyadri range, he built over the course of his career a state that challenged the Mughal and Deccan sultanate claims to sovereignty in the western Deccan, pioneered a new form of guerrilla warfare that proved extraordinarily effective against the heavy cavalry armies of the period, and laid the political and ideological foundations for the Maratha expansion of the eighteenth century. The broader political context of the Maratha rise is examined in the rise of the Maratha power page, and the principal biographical treatment of his Mughal antagonist is the life and reign of Aurangzeb. This page focuses on Shivaji’s career, his conflicts with the Mughals, and his legacy.
Early Life and the Bhakti-Shivaji Tradition
Shivaji was born on 19 February 1630 at Shivneri, a hill fort in the Pune region of the western Deccan. His father, Shahaji Bhonsle, was a prominent Maratha officer of the Adil Shahi sultanate of Bijapur, holding a major jagir in the region, and his mother, Jijabai, is remembered in the Maratha tradition as a major figure in the formation of her son’s character. The young Shivaji was raised in the household of his father and in the care of his mother, and the Maratha tradition ascribes to Jijabai a major role in the formation of his religious and political outlook.
The political and religious traditions of the western Deccan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provided the cultural and ideological context for Shivaji’s career. The bhakti devotional movement, with its emphasis on personal devotion and its synthesis of Hindu and Sufi themes, had produced a distinctive religious culture in the Marathi-speaking regions, and the Warkari tradition associated with the poet-saints of the region provided a cultural basis for a distinct Maratha identity. The political traditions of the region, including the legacy of the Yadava dynasty and the Bahmani sultanate, provided a frame of reference for the later Maratha rulers. The broader context of the Deccan in the seventeenth century is examined in the life and reign of Aurangzeb and the rise of the Maratha power.
The Rise of Maratha Power
Shivaji’s career as a state-builder began in the 1640s, when he began to assemble a small body of followers and to capture a number of hill forts in the Sahyadri range from their Adil Shahi garrisons. The early conquests were conducted on a small scale, but they established a pattern that Shivaji would refine over the next three decades: the use of the hill forts of the Sahyadri as secure bases, the recruitment of a highly mobile light cavalry from the Maratha peasantry, and the use of the ganimi kava, the “stealthy attack” or guerrilla tactic, against the heavy cavalry armies of the Deccan sultanates.
The first major consolidation of the Maratha state occurred in the 1650s and 1660s, when Shivaji extended his control over a significant portion of the western Deccan. The conquests included the major hill forts of Rajgad, Torna, Sinhagad, Purandar, and many others, and they extended Maratha control over a considerable area of the Konkan coast, including the important port of Kalyan. The expansion brought Shivaji into direct conflict with the Adil Shahi sultanate of Bijapur, which dispatched a number of military expeditions against him. The most famous of these was the campaign of 1659, in which the Bijapuri general Afzal Khan was killed in a famous encounter with Shivaji, an event celebrated in the Maratha tradition as a major symbolic moment.
The Treaty of Purandar 1665
The most consequential of Shivaji’s early conflicts with the Mughals was the campaign of 1665, in which the Mughal general Mirza Raja Jai Singh I, one of the most capable of the Rajput commanders in the imperial service, conducted a major expedition against the Maratha state. The campaign, conducted with major force and considerable skill, succeeded in capturing a number of the major Maratha forts, including the important fort of Purandar, and in forcing Shivaji to negotiate.
The Treaty of Purandar, signed in June 1665, was a significant concession by Shivaji. By its terms, Shivaji ceded a considerable portion of his forts to the Mughals, agreed to serve the Mughal emperor in the Deccan campaigns, and committed to the payment of a major tribute. The treaty was, in effect, a settlement that recognised Shivaji’s remaining possessions while subordinating the Maratha state to Mughal authority. The treaty was concluded in the context of the broader Mughal campaign against the Deccan sultanates, of which the Maratha state was, in Aurangzeb’s view, a subsidiary. The broader context of the Deccan campaigns is examined in the life and reign of Aurangzeb.
The Visit to Agra and the Escape 1666
The Treaty of Purandar was followed by Shivaji’s visit to the Mughal court at Agra in 1666, a visit that has become episodes in Maratha history. Shivaji visited the court with his son Sambhaji, and the visit was intended to confirm the terms of the treaty and to secure the Maratha alliance in the Deccan campaigns. The visit, however, was a disaster. Shivaji was treated with what he considered inadequate honour, and a serious incident at the imperial court led to his confinement under house arrest. Shivaji escaped from Agra in a famous episode, returning to the Deccan under circumstances that are still debated by historians, and resumed his campaign against the Mughal and Bijapuri authorities.
The visit to Agra and the subsequent escape marked a turning point in Shivaji’s career. The episode was widely interpreted in the Maratha tradition as evidence of the humiliations that the Maratha state suffered at the hands of the Mughal authorities, and it contributed to the significant legitimacy that Shivaji’s campaign acquired in the Maratha countryside. The episode is also examined in the broader context of the rise of the Maratha power and the life and reign of Aurangzeb.
The Coronation 1674
The most significant event of Shivaji’s later career was his coronation at Raigad in 1674, an event that formally established the Maratha state as an independent kingdom and Shivaji as a sovereign ruler of equal rank to the Mughal emperor. The coronation was performed with great ceremony, and Shivaji assumed the title of Chhatrapati, the “lord of the umbrella,” an ancient title of Hindu sovereignty. The coronation was conducted with the assistance of a Gaga Bhatt, a learned Brahmin who certified Shivaji’s Rajput descent and the legitimacy of the title, and the considerable expense of the ceremony, in part financed by the proceeds of Shivaji’s recent raid on Surat, reflected the political importance that the new monarch attached to the event.
The coronation was a direct challenge to the Mughal and Deccan sultanate claims to sovereignty in the region, and it inaugurated a long period of conflict between the Maratha state and its neighbours. The most important of these conflicts was with the Adil Shahi sultanate of Bijapur, which Shivaji’s forces raided repeatedly in the 1670s, and with the Mughals, with whom the relationship remained tense throughout the rest of Shivaji’s reign. The broader context of the Maratha expansion is examined in the rise of the Maratha power page.
The Conflicts with Aurangzeb
The conflict between Shivaji and the Mughal authorities continued for the rest of Shivaji’s reign, with major Maratha raids on Mughal territory and major Mughal expeditions against the Maratha state. The death of Shivaji in 1680, at the age of fifty, marked the end of the first phase of the Maratha state. His son Shambhaji succeeded him, and the conflict with the Mughals continued under the new ruler. The most consequential phase of the Mughal-Maratha conflict, however, came under Aurangzeb himself, whose twenty-five-year Deccan campaign from 1681 to 1707 was significantly directed against the Maratha state. The campaign is treated in the life and reign of Aurangzeb and the rise of the Maratha power pages.
The Ganimi Kava and the Military Legacy
The military innovation most closely associated with Shivaji was the ganimi kava, the “stealthy attack” or guerrilla technique that he developed and refined over the course of his career. The ganimi kava was a system of small-unit tactics designed to take advantage of the difficult terrain of the Sahyadri range, where the heavy cavalry of the Mughal and Deccan sultanate armies was at a major disadvantage. The Maratha forces, typically operating in small bands of a few hundred cavalry, would strike at the flanks and rear of an enemy force in the field, would cut off its supply lines, would occupy the hill passes, and would disappear into the hills when confronted by superior force. The system required a high degree of mobility, local knowledge, and command discipline, and Shivaji was unusually successful in developing all three.
The ganimi kava proved extraordinarily effective against the heavy cavalry armies of the period, and it was the foundation on which the Maratha military success of the eighteenth century was built. The Maratha expansion of the early eighteenth century, including the campaigns of Bajirao I and the Maratha expansion, was significantly based on the ganimi kava tradition, and the system continued to influence Maratha military doctrine down to the Anglo-Maratha Wars of the early nineteenth century. The broader military context of the period is examined in the Mughal cavalry and the famous battles of the Mughals pages.
The Legacy
The legacy of Shivaji is major. In the immediate political sense, he founded a state that, under his successors and the Peshwas, became the dominant political power in India in the early eighteenth century. In the cultural and ideological sense, he established a political tradition that combined devotion to the bhakti traditions with a commitment to the protection of Hindu religious institutions and the establishment of a Hindu swarajya, or self-rule. The tradition became a major part of the political vocabulary of the Maratha state and, eventually, of the broader Indian national movement. The broader context of the Maratha rise is examined in the rise of the Maratha power, the Mughal decline overview, the Mughal history overview, and the Mughal culture and society pages.
Sources
- Stewart Gordon, The Marathas, 1600–1818 (NCHI II.4, 1993), ch. 2.
- Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times (1920; reprint 1973).