कर्नाटकीय विक्रम

By 1676, Shivaji's mind had found some measure of ease. The lifting of his earlier anguish, the settling of his thoughts about the coming southern campaign, and above all the presence of Shri Samarth Ramdas at Sajjangad — these were the matters that now filled Shivaji's attention. About this time Raghunathpant Hanmante arrived from Tanjore and met Shivaji at Raigad. Shivaji's health improved. Yet a faint source of disquiet was beginning to appear: the misconduct of his son Sambhaji, which was only just then starting to reveal itself, though still indistinctly. For the moment, however, the one subject that dominated Shivaji's thinking was his planned campaign into the Karnatak. In the Karnatak lay two Muslim kingdoms, Bijapur and Golconda, both of which Aurangzeb was now bent on conquering outright and absorbing fully into the Mughal empire. Pressed hard, they now turned to Shivaji for help. It was a striking reversal: Shivaji himself had, in earlier years, dealt these very kingdoms severe blows and plundered them freely. But circumstances had changed. It was now in Shivaji's own interest to preserve these two states and, with their support, raise a new front against Aurangzeb. To carry this plan through, he needed above all to secure the cooperation of his own half-brother, Vyankoji, who ruled at Tanjore. Vyankoji had on several occasions acted against Shivaji's interests and had by now established an independent kingdom of his own at Tanjore. Shivaji desired that this brother of his join wholeheartedly in his larger undertaking. That two sons of one father should stand as enemies before the world was, in Shivaji's eyes, a thoroughly shameful spectacle. His chief aim was to meet Vyankoji in person, win him over, and bring him actively into this new phase of the Swarajya enterprise. Had Vyankoji agreed and joined him willingly, the resort to arms would never have been necessary. Shivaji's own feeling was that his brother should never be made to want for anything through his doing. In the end, however, Vyankoji chose to take up arms against Shivaji, and only then, accepting battle as the remaining option, did Shivaji secure by war what he could not secure by persuasion.

रघुनाथपंतांची राजनैतिक मोहीम

The correspondence that passed between the two brothers on this matter, and the agreements eventually reached, form a substantial chapter in themselves. The entire negotiation was carried out by Raghunathpant Hanmante. Having first worked out the terms with Shivaji at Raigad, Raghunathpant travelled on to Bijapur and to Bhaganagar (Hyderabad) and there constructed the political arrangement by which these two states would lend Shivaji their support against Aurangzeb. Both kingdoms, now driven to the wall by Mughal pressure, found it in their own interest to turn favourable to Shivaji at this juncture. Golconda and Bhaganagar lie close to one another; Bhaganagar is known today as Hyderabad. There Abul Hasan, known also as Tana Shah, occupied the throne, while the actual administration of the Qutbshahi kingdom was conducted honestly and capably by two ministers, Madanna (Madanpant) and Akanna (Eknathpant), both alert and diligent men. Raghunathpant cultivated a firm friendship with these two and settled the plan that was to follow: Shivaji himself would come and meet the Qutbshah in person, and the two rulers, joining hands in a spirit of mutual regard, would carry the larger undertaking to completion. In the month of Magh of the year 1677, Shivaji set out from Raigad, fully prepared, on his Karnatak expedition. At this time, all who saw him beheld a splendour truly worthy of the title Chhatrapati. He halted at Patgaon to receive the blessing of Mounibuva, and then proceeded to Bhaganagar in full military array. The Qutbshah received him with honour and held a ceremonial audience. The visit lasted about a month in all, during which the friendship between the two rulers was firmly settled and their future course of action agreed upon with one mind. Thereafter the two armies marched together into the Karnatak.

भागानगर भेट व मादण्णा-आकण्णांचा अंत

In March of 1677, the capital of Bhaganagar witnessed an unprecedented spectacle: two sovereign rulers meeting as equals and companions. In this encounter Shivaji's cleverness and grandeur were on full display before all who watched, and a new bond of Hindu-Muslim friendship was born. In a particularly striking gesture, Madanna's own mother cooked a meal with her own hands and served it to Shivaji. Such occurrences, never before witnessed, marked this campaign as something altogether new in the relations between the two communities. The southern conquest (dakshin-digvijay) thus unfolded splendidly, yet fate had already decreed that its eventual outcome would take a very different turn. Shivaji spent a full year on this campaign, acquired a great deal of new territory, and returned to Maharashtra in April 1678. From that point onward, however, his fortunes began to move in the opposite direction. Aurangzeb had been watching Shivaji's activities closely all along, and he found the prospect of a united Hindu resistance to Mughal authority utterly intolerable. He promptly opened hostilities against the Rajputs. And even as that war was still in progress, Shivaji's own life came to its end; Sambhaji became Chhatrapati; and the Badshah himself, with the full might of his empire, marched down upon Maharashtra to crush the Marathas. This later chapter of events lies ahead in the narrative, but it claimed among its victims the two capable ministers Madanna and Akanna. In 1686 Aurangzeb laid siege to Golconda and made a chilling demand of the Qutbshah: that he put his two 'wicked' ministers to death and send their severed heads to the imperial camp. The wretched Qutbshah had no choice but to comply — the two ministers were killed and their heads dispatched to Aurangzeb in March 1686. The Badshah had them paraded through his camp in a display of contempt and humiliation. Was this not, in its own way, Aurangzeb's revenge upon Shivaji himself, taken out upon these two men long after his death? And what, in the end, was their crime? Only that they had faithfully served their own religion — for that alone, they were kafirs in his eyes, and had to die.