हेरगिरीचा प्रहार

Though this daring raid did not remove the Mughal danger altogether, it did loosen the Mughal grip on Pune and set Shivaji free to move about openly again — and the terror his name now inspired among the people was itself no small gain. Aurangzeb, for his part, pursued Shivaji relentlessly from a distance, yet in his whole life he never once found the courage to march against him in person. Shivaji, having thoroughly taken the measure of Aurangzeb's cunning, shaped his own further course accordingly, for a weak power seeking to overcome a strong one must resort to such methods. The Shaista Khan affair had forged a permanent enmity between Shivaji and the Mughal emperor; there was no possibility now of retreat. Yet how was this comparatively weak Shivaji to sustain a war against so mighty an emperor? Raising and equipping an army and artillery train required money, and Shivaji, in consultation with Netaji and his other counsellors, resolved that the wealthy cities and provinces scattered across the emperor's vast dominions should be plundered without hesitation to raise the necessary funds. Since Shaista Khan had resorted to open warfare, it was only proper to answer him in the same coin. To this end Shivaji first assembled his most trusted spies and sent them out to gather intelligence from every quarter. Places such as Aurangabad, Burhanpur, Dharangaon, and Karanja, and whole provinces like Khandesh, Varhad, and Gujarat, had grown rich on decades of undisturbed peace; it was resolved, with general agreement, that all of these should be plundered without scruple, and the proceeds used to equip the army and its guns. For this purpose Shivaji organised a dedicated corps of intelligence-gatherers and despatched these new agents in every direction — to learn where Mughal forces stood ready, how forts and fortifications were maintained, which bankers and wealthy men lived where, and whether any among them might be won over to his side. Shivaji devoted enormous effort at this time to amassing every kind of such information, and it was through this effort that the art of espionage was perfected among the Marathas until it became, quite literally, a trade of theirs. This was one of the principal pillars of Shivaji's whole scheme of Swarajya, and it deserves to be understood fully on its own terms.

बहुरूपी हेरगिरीची कला

The foundation of this espionage lay in the art of disguise and glib pretence. Its practitioners could, at a moment's notice, pass themselves off as a Gosavi, a Bairagi, a beggar, a wandering mendicant, or a cripple — this was a skill that required hardly any equipment at all. A cloth sling or bag under the arm, a blanket or dhoti thrown over the shoulder, a stout bamboo staff fitted with an iron ferrule in the hand, a turban of greater or lesser length upon the head, some odds and ends of little value at the waist, a smattering of several languages, and above all presence of mind in every situation — this much preparation sufficed. These masquerading agents wandered through enemy territory gathering whatever news they could, and it was upon this intelligence that Shivaji and his lieutenants based their plans and campaigns. If the plan succeeded, so much the better; and if it failed, little was lost — this was the calculated game of bringing the mighty to heel that Shivaji now adopted as his method. The looting of Surat was the very first application of this new craft. Once his spies had brought back intelligence from many quarters, Shivaji, toward the close of 1663, resolved upon a raid on Surat. A minute reconnaissance was carried out of Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Burhanpur, and Surat, several of the principal Mughal cities.

सुरतेच्या अफाट वैभवाचें वर्णन

In terms of sheer wealth, no city in the whole empire in that age could rival Surat — it surpassed even Delhi in riches. Thanks to its overseas trade, an incalculable fortune had accumulated there, a fact of which scarcely anyone outside the city had any inkling. Tucked away on one side of the country, Surat's very name was hardly known beyond the circle of pilgrims bound for Mecca, for whom it served as the port of embarkation. Not a single foreign vessel left Indian waters without first calling at Surat's harbour, and to say that gold itself seemed to rise there like smoke would scarcely be an exaggeration. Shivaji's own men found, in the house of a single Hindu merchant, pearl necklaces weighing no less than twenty-eight ser — a measure by which the vastness of the wealth stored in that city can be imagined. Arab, Hindu, and Christian merchants — at least twenty of them, each possessed of a fortune running to ten or twenty crores — lived there quite undisturbed. Heaps of merchandise lay piled everywhere about the city, and whenever a European vessel arrived to take on cargo, it was filled to capacity within the shortest possible time. Moreover, Surat possessed no military garrison whatsoever; no one there so much as suspected that an enemy raid might come from this quarter, and the officials whose duty it was to maintain troops simply pocketed the funds allotted for the purpose and lived carelessly. It was upon this distant, undefended port that Shivaji now turned his gaze — a gaze as baleful, in the popular saying, as that of the planet Saturn.