मलिकंबराचे कर्तृत्व व भातवडीचा संग्राम

Malik Ambar's remarkable competence became a celebrated chapter of history in its own right, and it was under his guidance that Shahaji Bhosale mastered the many arts of statecraft. Malik Ambar treated Hindus and Muslims with perfect impartiality and never harbored the least bigoted hatred toward those of another faith. He reformed the system of revenue assessment and thereby increased the yield of the land. He raised armies, and it was he who first devised and put into practice the technique of wearing down a stronger enemy through guerrilla warfare. It was because Shahaji, Dadaji Kondadev, and others mastered all these various skills under his tutelage that Shivaji was later able to establish Swarajya; for this reason, Malik Ambar's administration must be counted as the very first foundation upon which the rise of the Marathas was built. In 1624, Malik Ambar and Shahaji together annihilated a vast Mughal army in the celebrated Battle of Bhatvadi — an engagement still remembered in history as the first great victory won through the methods of guerrilla warfare. Adopting this very style of fighting, Shahaji went on to wage a struggle against the Mughal emperor for ten long years, and it was this very experience that welded the Marathas into an organized force and gave them their first true awareness of their own capacity for valor. Jijabai watched these developments with admiration, and it was through her that this seed of self-confidence came to be implanted in the young Shivaji.

जाधव-भोसल्यांचे वितुष्ट

By a bitter irony of fate, in this very same ferocious struggle against the Mughals, Jijabai's own father and the whole body of the Jadhav clan went over to the Mughal side, even as Shahaji continued fighting against them — so that the clash between the Mughals and the Nizamshahi came, in effect, to be an open contest between father-in-law and son-in-law. Naturally enough, this bitter conflict cast its shadow over Jijabai's proud nature for years on end, leaving her, as the saying goes, with a well behind her and a river before her. This rift between the Jadhavs and the Bhosales filled Jijabai's early life with grief, and it was out of the very midst of that grief that Shivaji's rise came to take shape. One consequence of this estrangement was that Jijabai found herself deprived of her husband's affection. Wrongly regarding her as an ill-omened woman, Shahajiraje took a second wife, Tukabai, daughter of the Mohite family. Even as Shivaji was being born, children were being born to Shahaji by Tukabai as well, and since all of Shahaji's affection came to be lavished upon the children of this second wife, Jijabai's existence turned as sorrowful as a life of exile. For years together Jijabai had to endure the most trying of circumstances, and the infant Shivaji became, for her, the sole mainstay of her existence. Students of Shivaji's life would do well to keep these details of his early childhood firmly in mind, for it is against this very backdrop that his later valor shines all the more brightly.

जिजाबाईचा असहायपणा व पळून जाण्याचा प्रसंग

However capable Jijabai was, she remained, after all, only a wife, and how was she, sitting at home, to learn of the political maneuvers being carried on outside between father-in-law and son-in-law? Whatever news reached her ears, secondhand, after the fact, was all she had to content herself with as the days went by. When matters had come to such a pass that the father-in-law sought the son-in-law's life, and the son-in-law was prepared to bring the father-in-law to a violent end, how was an outsider — let alone his own wife — expected to conduct herself? One can only imagine Jijabai's predicament, for words scarcely capture it. Actual meetings between husband and wife were themselves rare, and even when they did occur, neither dared to speak candidly with the other. There is a story, credible enough not to be dismissed out of hand, that once, when Jijabai was pregnant and unable to flee on horseback alongside her husband as her own father pursued them, Shahajiraje was compelled to escape alone, leaving his wife behind. Lukhoji Jadhavrao, following in pursuit of Shahaji, came upon Jijabai on the road near Junnar; she was seven months pregnant at the time. Jadhavrao wished to send her back to her parental home at Sindkhed. Consider what a cruel predicament this was: for an Aryan wife there is no deity but her husband, and yet here was her husband gone, leaving her helpless. But so resolute was her spirit that she refused to accompany her father to her maternal home. Nearby stood the fort of Shivneri, part of the Bhosale jagir, and it was there that she went for her confinement — and it was there, in due course, that Shivaji was born.

संभाजीचे संगोपन व दौलताबादेतील जाधवांची कत्तल

The elder son, Sambhaji, had by now grown up and begun to help his father. Shahaji wished this son to remain constantly at his side, to receive his true education in the school of life itself — to witness statecraft, warfare, and strategy at first hand. As a consequence, Sambhaji never came to know his mother's affection at all; he remained ever at his father's side, grew thoroughly versed in his father's work, and it was in the very course of that work that he met his death, young, at the age of thirty-five, in the Battle of Kanakgiri in 1654. In short, Jijabai was denied even the companionship of her own elder son. Taken all together, Jijabai's life became one of extreme hardship, and her many trials can scarcely be imagined. After Malik Ambar, the great pillar of the Nizamshahi, died, anarchy took hold within the kingdom. Around this time the Mughal emperor Jahangir, a mild and even-tempered ruler, also died, and his fierce son Shah Jahan ascended the throne at Delhi. Shah Jahan at once took up, as his very first undertaking, the conquest of the Deccan: he sent ahead a vast army together with artillery, and then came himself, encamping at Burhanpur, while his forces ranged across the whole of Maharashtra. The first blow fell upon the Nizamshahi kingdom, and it was Shahaji who boldly took upon himself the perilous task of defending it. Malik Ambar's son, Fateh Khan, became minister of the Nizamshahi, but he did not possess his father's ability; moreover, the valorous Jadhav sardars of the kingdom had by now gone over to Shah Jahan, thereby turning enemy to the Nizamshahi. To deal with them, the Nizamshah summoned them, under the pretext of a meeting, to the fort of Daulatabad, and there, through sheer treachery, had several of them murdered. In that ghastly episode, Jijabai's own father, Lukhoji Jadhavrao, his two sons Achalaji and Ratnuji, and his grandson Yashwantrao, were all killed. This cast a pall of tension over the whole region; the wives of the murdered men became satis, and their memorial chhatris, now standing in a ruined state, can still be seen at Sindkhed today — a sight that cannot fail to move the heart of anyone who sees it. One can only imagine how precarious this turn of events made the position of Shahaji and Jijabai. Since the Nizamshahi's capital, Ahmednagar, had already earlier been seized by Akbar, the Nizamshah now shifted his residence, as convenience allowed, between Junnar, Daulatabad, and Pemgiri — also called Bhimgad — and Shahaji defended him as best he was able. Amid this constant turmoil, Shahaji himself was never able to settle at any fixed abode; his two wives lived in separate places, and he visited them as time permitted. Among all these places, his eye rested particularly upon Pune, and he had it in mind to build residences there where his household might be kept settled — but circumstances never afforded him the stability needed to carry this plan through.