p. 427

§1. Shivaji's policy how far traditional. Shivaji's State policy, like his administrative system,* was not very new. From time immemorial it had been the aim of the typical Hindu king to set out early every autumn to "extend his kingdom" at the expense of his neighbours. Indeed, the Sanskrit law-books lay down such a course as the necessary accomplishment of a true Kshatriya chief. (Manu. vii. 99-103, 182.) In more recent times it had also been the practice of the Muhammadan sovereigns in North India and the Deccan alike. But these conquerors justified their territorial aggrandisement by religious motives. According to the Quranic law, there cannot be peace between a Muhammadan king and his neighbouring "infidel" States. The latter are dar-ul-harb or legitimate seats of war, and it is the Muslim king's duty to slay and plunder in them till they accept the true faith and become dar-ul-islam, after which they will become entitled to his protection.† * For an earlier parallel and possible model, see the Adil-Shahi rules given in B. S. 333. † For a detailed account and authorities, see History of Aurangzib, iii. 284-293.

p. 428

The coincidence between Shivaji's foreign policy and that of a Quranic sovereign is so complete that both the history of Shivaji by his courtier Krishnaji Anant and the Persian official history of Bijapur use exactly the same word, mulk-giri, to describe such raids into neighbouring countries as a regular political ideal. The only difference was that in theory at least, an orthodox Muslim king was bound to spare the other Muslim States in his path and not to spoil or shed the blood of true believers, while Shivaji (as well as the Peshwas after him) carried on his mulk-giri into all neighbouring States, Hindu no less than Islamic, and squeezed rich Hindus as mercilessly as he did Muhammadans. Then, again, the orthodox Islamic king, in theory at least, aimed at the annexation and conversion of the other States, so that after the short sharp agony of conquest was over the latter enjoyed peace like the regular parts of his dominion. But the object of Shivaji's military enterprises, unless his Court-historian Sabhasad has misrepresented it, was not annexation but mere plunder, or to quote his very words, "The Maratha forces should feed themselves at the expense of foreign countries for eight months every year, and levy blackmail." (Sabh., 29.)

pp. 428-429

Thus, Shivaji's power was exactly similar in origin and theory to the power of the Muslim States in India and elsewhere, and he only differed from them in the use of that power. Universal toleration and equal justice and protection were the distinctive features of the permanently occupied portion of his swaraj, as we have shown elsewhere.

p. 429

§2. Causes of Shivaji's failure to build an enduring State. Why did Shivaji fail to create an enduring State? Why did the Maratha nation stop short of the final accomplishment of their union and dissolve before they had consolidated into an absolutely compact political body? An obvious cause was, no doubt, the shortness of his reign, barely ten years after the final rupture with the Mughals in 1670. But this does not furnish the true explanation of his failure. It is doubtful if with a very much longer time at his disposal he could have averted the ruin which befell the Maratha State under the Peshwas, for the same moral canker was at work among his people in the 17th century as in the 18th.

p. 429

The first danger of the new Hindu kingdom established by him in the Deccan lay in the fact that the national glory and prosperity resulting from the victories of Shivaji and Baji Rao I. created a reaction in favour of Hindu orthodoxy; it accentuated caste distinction and ceremonial purity of daily rites which ran counter to the homogeneity and simplicity of the poor and politically depressed early Maratha society. Thus, his political success sapped the main foundation of that success.

pp. 429-430

In the security, power and wealth engendered by their independence, the Marathas of the 18th century forgot the past record of Muslim persecution; the social grades turned against each other. The Brahmans living east of the Sahyadri range despised those living west, the men of the hills despised their brethren of the plains, because they could now do so with impunity. The head of the State, though a Brahman, was despised by his other Brahman servants,—because the first Peshwa's great-grandfather's great-grandfather had once been lower in society than the Desh Brahmans' great-grandfathers' great-grandfathers! While the Chitpavan Brahmans were waging social war with the Deshastha Brahmans, a bitter jealousy raged between the Brahman ministers and governors and the Kayastha secretaries. We have unmistakable traces of it as early as the reign of Shivaji.

pp. 430-431

"Caste grows by fission." It is antagonistic to national union. In proportion as Shivaji's ideal of a Hindu swaraj was based on orthodoxy, it contained within itself the seed of its own death. As Rabindranath Tagore remarks: "A temporary enthusiasm sweeps over the country and we imagine that it has been united; but the rents and holes in our body-social do their work secretly; we cannot retain any noble idea long. Shivaji aimed at preserving the rents; he wished to save from Mughal attack a Hindu society to which ceremonial distinctions and isolation of castes are the very breath of life. He wanted to make this heterogeneous society triumphant over all India! He wove ropes of sand; he attempted the impossible. It is beyond the power of any man, it is opposed to the divine law of the universe, to establish the swaraj of such a caste—ridden, isolated, internally-torn sect over a vast continent like India."* * From his Rise and Fall of the Sikh Power, as translated by me in Modern Review, April 1911.

pp. 431-432

Shivaji and his father-in-law Gaikwar were Marathas, i.e., members of a despised caste. Before the rise of the national movement in the Deccan in the closing years of the 19th century, a Brahman of Maharashtra used to feel insulted if he was called a Maratha. "No," he would reply with warmth, "I am a Dakshina Brahman." Shivaji keenly felt his humiliation at the hands of the Brahmans to whose defence and prosperity he had devoted his life. Their insistence on treating him as a Shudra drove him into the arms of Balaji Avji, the leader of the Kayasthas, and another victim of Brahmanic pride. The Brahmans felt a professional jealousy for the intelligence and literary powers of the Kayasthas, who were their only rivals in education and Government service, and consoled themselves by declaring the Kayasthas a low caste not entitled to the Vedic rites and by proclaiming a social boycot of Balaji Avji who had ventured to invest his son with the sacred thread. Balaji naturally sympathised with his master and tried to raise him in social estimation by engaging Gaga Bhatta who "made Shivaji a pure Kshatriya." The high-priest showed his gratitude to Balaji for his heavy retainer by writing a tract [or rather two] in which the Kayastha caste was glorified, but without convincing his contemporary Brahmans.* * Nor has he succeeded in convincing posterity. Only two years ago, Mr. Rajwade, a Brahman writer of Puna, published a slashing attack on the Kayasthas (Chaturtha Sam. Britta), on the plea of editing this tract. He has provoked replies, one of which, Rajwade's Gaga Bhatta by K. T. Gupte, makes some attempt at reasoning and the use of evidence, while another, The Twanging of the Bow by K. S. Thakre, belongs to the same class as Milton's Tetrachordon or Against Salmasius! This is happening in the 20th century, and yet Mr. Rajwade and Prof. Bijapurkar (who called Shivaji's descendant at Kolhapur a Shudra) are nationalists, even Chauvinists. It was with a house so divided against itself that the Puna Brahmans of the 18th century hoped to found an all-Indian Maratha empire, and there are Puna Brahmans in the 20th century who believe that the hope failed only through the superior luck and cunning of the English!

p. 432

There was no attempt at well-thought-out organised communal improvement, spread of education, or unification of the people, either under Shivaji or under the Peshwas. The cohesion of the peoples in the Maratha State was not organic but artificial, accidental, and therefore precarious. It was solely dependent on the ruler's extraordinary personality and disappeared when the country ceased to produce supermen.

p. 433

A Government of personal discretion is, by its very nature, uncertain. This uncertainty reacted fatally on the administration. However well-planned the machinery and rules might be, the actual conduct of the administration was marred by inefficiency, sudden changes, and official corruption, because nobody felt secure of his post or of the due appreciation of his merit. This has been the bane of all autocratic States in the East and the West alike, except where the autocrat has been a "hero as king" or where a high level of education, civilisation and national spirit among the people has reduced the evil.

pp. 433-434

§3. Neglect of the economic factor by the Marathas. The Maratha rulers neglected the economic development of the State. Some of them did, no doubt, try to save the peasantry from illegal exactions, and to this extent they promoted agriculture. But commerce was subjected to frequent harassment by local officers, and the traders could never be certain of freedom of movement and security of their rights on mere payment of the legal rate of duty. The internal resources of a small province with no industry, little trade, a sterile soil, and an agriculture dependent upon scanty and precarious rainfall,—could not possibly support the large army that Shivaji kept or the imperial position and world-dominion to which the Peshwas aspired. The necessary expenses of the State could be met, and all the parts of the body-politic could be held together only by a constant flow of money from outside its own borders, i.e., by a regular succession of raids.

p. 434

As the late Mr. G. K. Gokhale laughingly told me when describing the hardships of the present rigid land assessment in the Bombay Presidency, "You see, the land revenue did not matter much under Maratha rule. In those old days, when the crop failed our people used to sally forth with their horses and spears and bring back enough booty to feed them for the next two or three years. Now they have to starve on their own lands."

pp. 434-435

Thus, by the character of his State, the Maratha's hands were turned against everybody and everybody's hands were turned against him. It is the Nemesis of a Krieg-staat to move in a vicious circle. It must wage war periodically if it is to get its food; but war, when waged as a normal method of supply, destroys industry and wealth in the invading and invaded countries alike, and ultimately defeats the very end of such wars. Peace is death to a Krieg-staat; but peace is the very life-breath of wealth. The Krieg-staat, therefore, kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. To take an illustration, Shivaji's repeated plunder of Surat scared away trade and wealth from that city, and his second raid (in 1670) brought him much less booty than his first, and a few years later the constant dread of Maratha incursion entirely impoverished Surat and effectually dried up this source of supply. Thus, from the economic point of view, the Maratha State had no stable basis, no normal means of growth within itself.

pp. 435-436

§4. Excess of finesse and intrigue. Lastly, the Maratha leaders trusted too much to finesse. They did not realise that without a certain amount of fidelity to promises no society can hold together. Stratagem and falsehood may have been necessary at the birth of their State, but it was continued during the maturity of their power. No one could rely on the promise of a Maratha minister or the assurance of a Maratha general. Witness the long and finally fruitless negotiations of the English merchants with Shivaji for compensation for the loss of their Rajapur factory. The Maratha Government could not always be relied on to abide by their treaty obligations. Shivaji, and to a lesser extent Baji Rao I., preserved an admirable balance between war and diplomacy. But the latter-day Marathas lost this practical ability. They trusted too much to diplomatic trickery, as if empire were a pacific game of chess. Military efficiency was neglected, war at the right moment and in the right fashion was avoided, or, worse still, their forces were frittered away in unseasonable campaigns and raids conducted as a matter of routine, and the highest political wisdom was believed to consist in raj-karan or diplomatic intrigue. Thus, while the Maratha spider was weaving his endless cobweb of hollow alliances and diplomatic counter-plots, the mailed fist of Wellesley was thrust into his laboured but flimsy tissue of state-craft, and by a few swift and judicious strokes his defence and screen was torn away and his power left naked and helpless. In rapid succession the Nizam was disarmed, Tipu was crushed, and the Peshwa was enslaved. While Sindhia and Holkar were dreaming the dream of the overlordship of all India, they suddenly awoke to find that even their local independence was gone. The man of action, the soldier-statesman, always triumphs over the mere scheming Machiavel.

pp. 436-437

§5. Character of Shivaji. Shivaji's private life was marked by a high standard of morality. He was a devoted son, a loving father and an attentive husband, though he did not rise above the ideas and usage of his age, which allowed a plurality of wives and the keeping of concubines even among the priestly caste, not to speak of warriors and kings. Intensely religious from his very boyhood, by instinct and training alike, he remained throughout life abstemious, free from vice, devoted to holy men, and passionately fond of hearing scripture readings and sacred stories and songs. But religion remained with him an ever fresh fountain of right conduct and generosity; it did not obsess his mind nor harden him into a bigot. The sincerity of his faith is proved by his impartial respect for the holy men of all sects (Muslim as much as Hindu) and toleration of all creeds. His chivalry to women and strict enforcement of morality in his camp was a wonder in that age and has extorted the admiration of hostile critics like Khafi Khan.

p. 437

He had the born leader's personal magnetism and threw a spell over all who knew him, drawing the best elements of the country to his side and winning the most devoted service from his officers, while his dazzling victories and ever ready smile made him the idol of his soldiery. His royal gift of judging character was one of the main causes of his success, as his selection of generals and governors, diplomatists and secretaries was never at fault, and his administration, both civil and military, was unrivalled for efficiency. How well he deserved to be king is proved by his equal treatment and justice to all men within his realm, his protection and endowment of all religions, his care for the peasantry, and his remarkable forethought in making all arrangements and planning distant campaigns.

pp. 437-438

His army organisation was a model of efficiency; everything was provided for beforehand and kept in its proper place under a proper care-taker; an excellent spy system supplied him in advance with the most minute information about the theatre of his intended campaign; divisions of his army were combined or dispersed at will over long distances without failure; the enemy's pursuit or obstruction was successfully met and yet the booty was rapidly and safely conveyed home without any loss. His inborn military genius is proved by his instinctively adopting that system of warfare which was most suited to the racial character of his soldiers, the nature of the country, the weapons of the age, and the internal condition of his enemies. His light cavalry, stiffened with swift-footed infantry, was irresistible in the age of Aurangzib. More than a century after his death, his blind imitator Daulat Rao Sindhia continued the same tactics when the English had galloper guns for field action and most of the Deccan towns were walled round* and provided with defensive artillery, and he therefore failed ignominiously. * Owen's Selections from Wellington's Desp., 284, 289.

pp. 438-439

§6. Shivaji's political ideal and difficulties. Did Shivaji merely found a Krieg-staat, i.e., a Government that lives and grows only by war? Was he merely an entrepreneur of rapine, a Hindu edition of Alauddin Khilji or Timur? I think it would not be fair to take this view. For one thing, he never had peace to work out his political ideal. The whole of his short life was one struggle with enemies, a period of preparation and not of fruition. All his attention was necessarily devoted to meeting daily dangers with daily expedients and he had not the chance of peacefully building up a well-planned political edifice. His record is incomplete and we cannot confidently deduce his political aim from his actual achievement. It would be more correct to conjecture it from indirect sources like his regulations, though this class of materials is scanty and often inconclusive.

p. 439

In the vast Gangetic valley and the wide Desh country rolling eastwards through the Deccan, Nature has fixed no boundary to States. Their size changes with daily changes in their strength as compared with their neighbours'. There can be no stable equilibrium among them for more than a generation. Each has to push the others as much for self-defence as for aggression. Each must be armed and ready to invade the others, if it does not wish to be invaded and absorbed by them. Where friction with neighbours is the normal state of things, a huge armed force, sleepless vigilance, and readiness to strike the first blow are the necessary conditions of the very existence of a kingdom. The evil could be remedied only by the establishment of a universal empire throughout the country from sea to sea.

pp. 439-440

Shivaji could not for a moment be sure of the pacific disposition or fidelity to treaty of the Delhi Government. The past history of the Mughal expansion into the Deccan since the days of Akbar, was a warning to him. The imperial policy of annexing the whole of South India was unmistakable to Shiva as to Adil Shah or Qutb Shah. Its completion was only a question of time, and every Deccani Power was bound to wage eternal warfare with the Mughals if it wished to exist. Hence Shivaji lost no chance of robbing Mughal territory in the Deccan.

p. 440

With Bijapur his relations were somewhat different. He could raise his head or expand his dominion only at the expense of Bijapur. Rebellion against his liege-lord was the necessary condition of his being. But when, about 1662, an understanding was effected between him and the Adil-Shahi ministers, he gave up molesting the heart of the Bijapur kingdom. With the Bijapuri barons whose fiefs lay close to his dominions, he had, however, to wage war till he had wrested Kolhapur, North Kanara and South Konkan from their hands. In the Karnatak division, viz., the Dharwar and Belgaum districts, this contest was still undecided when he died. With the provinces that lay across the path of his natural expansion he could not be at peace, though he did not wish to challenge the central Government of Bijapur. This attitude was changed by the death of Ali II. in 1672, the accession of the boy Sikandar Adil Shah, the faction-fights between rival nobles at the capital, and the visible dissolution of the Government. But Shivaji helped Bijapur greatly during the Mughal invasions of 1679.

pp. 440-441

§7. His influence on the spirit. Shivaji's real greatness lay in his character and practical ability, rather than in originality of conception or length of political vision. Unfailing insight into the character of others, efficiency of arrangements, and instinctive perception of what was practicable and most profitable under the circumstances,—these were the causes of his success in life. To these must be added his personal morality and loftiness of aim, which drew to his side the best minds of his community, while his universal toleration and insistence on equal justice gave contentment to all classes subject to his rule. He strenuously maintained order and enforced moral laws throughout his own dominions, and the people were happier under him than elsewhere.

p. 441

His splendid success fired the imagination of his contemporaries, and his name became a spell calling the Maratha race to a new life. His kingdom was lost within nine years of his death. But the imperishable achievement of his life was the welding of the Marathas into a nation, and his most precious legacy was the spirit that he breathed into his people.

pp. 441-442

The mutual conflict and internal weakness of the three Muslim Powers of the Deccan were, no doubt, contributory causes of the rise of Shivaji. But his success sprang from a higher source than the incompetence of his enemies. I regard him as the last great constructive genius and nation-builder that the Hindu race has produced. His system was his own creation and, unlike Ranjit Singh, he took no foreign aid in his administration. His army was drilled and commanded by his own people and not by Frenchmen. What he built lasted long; his institutions were looked up to with admiration and emulation even a century later in the palmy days of the Peshwas' rule.

p. 442

Shivaji was illiterate; he learnt nothing by reading. He built up his kingdom and Government before visiting any royal Court, civilised city, or organised camp. He received no help or counsel from any experienced minister or general.* But his native genius, alone and unaided, enabled him to found a compact kingdom, an invincible army, and a grand and beneficent system of administration. Before his rise, the Maratha race was scattered like atoms through many Deccani kingdoms. He welded them into a mighty nation. And he achieved this in the teeth of the opposition of four mighty Powers like the Mughal empire, Bijapur, Portuguese India, and the Abyssinians of Janjira. No other Hindu has shown such capacity in modern times. * His early tutor, Dadaji Kond-dev, was a Brahman well versed in the Shastras and estate management. He could only teach Shivaji how to be a good revenue collector or accountant. Shivaji's institutions, civil and military, could not have been inspired by Dadaji.

p. 442

The materialistic Maratha authors of the bakhars have given us a list of Shivaji's legacy,—so many elephants, horses, soldiers, slaves, jewels, gold and silver, and even spices and raisins! But they have not mentioned Shivaji's greatest gift to posterity, viz., the new life of the Maratha race.

p. 443

Before he came, the Marathas were mere hirelings, mere servants of aliens. They served the State, but had no lot or part in its management; they shed their lifeblood in the army, but were denied any share in the conduct of war or peace. They were always subordinates, never leaders.

p. 443

Shivaji was the first to challenge Bijapur and Delhi and thus teach his countrymen that it was possible for them to be independent leaders in war. Then, he founded a State and taught his people that they were capable of administering a kingdom in all its departments. He has proved by his example that the Hindu race can build a nation, found a State, defeat enemies; they can conduct their own defence; they can protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they can maintain navies and ocean-trading fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He has proved that the Hindu race can still produce not only jamaitdars (non-commissioned officers) and chitnises (clerks), but also rulers of men, and even a king of kings (Chhatrapati.)

p. 443

The Emperor Jahangir cut the Akshay Bat tree of Allahabad down to its roots and hammered a red-hot iron cauldron on to its stump. He flattered himself that he had killed it. But lo! in a year the tree began to grow again and pushed the heavy obstruction to its growth aside!

p. 444

Shivaji has shown that the tree of Hinduism is not really dead, that it can rise from beneath the seemingly crushing load of centuries of political bondage, exclusion from the administration, and legal repression; it can put forth new leaves and branches; it can again lift up its head to the skies.

p. 445

APPENDIX III. The Character of the Marathi records about Shivaji. The Marathas in the 17th century were a poor and rude people, dispersed through many States, and with no literature of their own except folk-songs and religious poetry. Shivaji for the first time gave them peace wealth and an independent national Court, without which it is not possible to produce literature or store official records. But this happy state of things lasted barely 18 years, from his last rupture with the Mughals in 1671 to the death of Shambhuji in 1689. Thereafter every Maratha fort and city was occupied by the Mughals and the Maratha State records were burnt or dispersed, exactly as Elphinstone's library was destroyed by the Marathas when they captured his Residency in 1817.

pp. 445-446

Even during these 18 years of power and prosperity the Marathas were more busy with the sword than the pen; no literature proper, no long history or biography was produced then. Both of Shivaji's Court-poets were foreigners. Office records, revenue returns and copies of letters sent and received were, no doubt, kept, and might have supplied us with valuable raw materials of history if they had survived. It is significant that not a single State-paper or official despatch of Shivaji's time (except three letters concerning Tanjore affairs) has been unearthed after the devoted search of nearly half a century. (Rajwade, xv. does not really go against this view.)

p. 446

But thousands of private legal documents, deeds of grant, decisions of law suits, orders on petitions, etc., have been collected, and for the sufficient reason that they were kept not in the State archives (where they would have perished long ago) but in private families, which carefully preserved them as title-deeds. Hence, the Maratha kingdom before the Peshwa period utterly lacks the State-papers, detailed official histories, contemporary memoirs, and letter-books with which Mughal history is enriched.

p. 446

The only contemporary records of Shivaji's and even Shambhuji's times that now survive are in English and Persian and none at all in Marathi. In point of time the sole Marathi record of his reign,—if we may apply this dignified title to Sabhasad's brief and confused recollections written in 1694,—occupies the third rank, and in point of accuracy and authenticity its position is lower still. As regards Shambhuji's reign the situation is worse still. His earliest and only Marathi history is one of 10 short pages written more than 120 years after his death!

pp. 446-447

On the other hand, the Persian (and to a lesser extent English) sources were absolutely contemporary, promptly recorded, fully detailed and dated, and carefully preserved. Their writers also belonged to a higher intellectual type than the Marathi chroniclers, as is clearly borne in upon us when we study the records in the three languages in the original.

p. 447

In this state of things it may be patriotic to prefer the Marathi accounts (always long posterior to the events and very often full of legends and garbled or entirely false traditions) to the accurate and contemporary Persian and English sources; but it would not be honest history.

p. 447

In the late 18th and, if my surmise be correct, the early 19th century also, many Marathi works on Shivaji's times were composed. These are the bakhars flaunted by uncritical nationalists in the face of an ignorant public. But what is their value, their source, their literary character? Their utter lack of dates, their confusion in the order of events (known correctly from non-Marathi sources), their abundance of supernatural episodes, in short, their gossipy character and poor literary merit, at once mark them out for worthless collections of modern traditions. They are not history in any sense of the term.

pp. 447-448

Even the Sabhasad Bakhar, though written by a contemporary of Shivaji, is not based on State-papers and written notes, because it was composed while Raja Ram was closely besieged in Jinji fort, to which he had escaped from Maharashtra by the skin of his teeth, leaving everything behind, and after roving hither and thither in constant risk of capture. Such a master and his servants, running with their lives in their hands, before relentless pursuers, could not have burdened themselves with papers during their perilous flight across the entire Deccan peninsula. Sabhasad's work, therefore, is entirely derived from his memory—the half-obliterated memory of an old man who had passed through many privations and hardships.

p. 448

Malhar Ram Rao Chitnis had no State-papers of Shivaji's or Shambhuji's times, because, as I have shown above, all such had perished during the ravages of the long Mughal wars. He does not cite a single document, and he derives all his facts from Sabhasad, thereby proving that he had no other source of information.

p. 448

Internal evidence shows that all the so-called "old bakhars" uncritically accepted or published by Rao Bahadur D. B. Parasnis (and his English mouthpiece, Mr. Kincaid) have the same literary characteristics. They contain "loose traditions," often palpably false, a maximum of legends supernatural marvels and bazar gossip, with a minimum of facts and dates. (The cities of Bijapur and Golkonda are founded in consequence of exactly the same prodigy! Javlikar More-yanchi chhoti Bakhar.) All are anonymous and of unknown date.

pp. 448-449

These so-called bakhars are evidently the production of some ignorant credulous dull-brained writers, and not the work of any clever minister of State or scholarly author. They do not make the least pretence of being based upon contemporary written records or authentic State-papers. They carry on their faces the suggestion that they were composed after the intellectual brilliancy caused by the Peshwas' rule had passed away, and before the rise of the modern school of sound and critical Marathi historians under Khare and Sane, Rajwade and Sardesai. I hazard a guess that they were written between 1820 and 1840 or '50,—though the kernel of some of them (almost equally legendary or inaccurate) may have been put down in writing about 1770-1790.