Maratha state, the one established by Shivaji can be categorized into three periods which are remembered by people. Period of Shivaji, that of Tarabai-Shahu I and last of Shahu II. The first period was the period of rule establishment, second one of expansion and third one of social reforms. Following is a detailed summary explaining who were Peshvas in this rule.
1. Maratha rule was established by Chatrapati Shivaji Bhosale in second half of 1600. He had established the rule to protect the common people in region from Mughal and other rulers. Along with the protection he also implemented ideal administrative and welfare policies. One part of it was ashtapradhan mandal, where different responsibilities were handled by individual ministers. One of these minister used to be a prime minister or Peshva. After death of Shivaji, Sambhaji and Rajaram, the two sons of Shivaji were ruling the state. Sambhaji was elder and used to carry most of the responsibilities.
2. After the
death of Sambhaji, his brother Rajaram went to Karnataka and gave
powers to peshvas,Ghorpades and Jadhavs. They all did well in that
time. Later Tarabai came back and took over. She herself was a
warrior and good ruler.
3. In the
intrigues following the death of Aurangzeb, the Mughal governor of
the Deccan released Shahu, the grand son of Shivaji, from captivity,
hoping to keep the Marathas locked in an internecine struggle between
the partisans of Shahu, and Tarabai who governed in the name of her
son Shivaji and denounced Shahu as an impostor substituted by the
Mughals for the son of Sambhaji.
4. Tarabai sent
her senapati Dhanaji Jadhav to attack Shahu. Dhanaji Jadhav sent
Balaji Vishwanath to secretly meet with Shahu and verify his bona
fides. Balaji is believed to have persuaded his master Dhanaji to
support the cause of Shahu. Then Dhanaji's forces met Shahu's at
Khed, in Pune District. Instead of attacking Shahu, Dhanaji Jadhav
declared him to be the rightful successor to the Maratha throne.
Dhanaji's confidence in Balaji Vishwanath however aroused the
jealousy of his son and successor, Chandrasen Jadhav.
5. Then the
Shahu was coronated and at that time of Shahu's coronation at Satara
in January 1708, Balaji Vishwanath received appointment as mutaliq or
deputy to Amburao Hunmante (Amatya of Shahu) to ensure his presence
at the Maratha court and maintain personal contacts with monarch all
the time.
6. After death
of Dhanaji Jadhav in June 1708, Shahu appointed Dhanaji's son
Chandrasen Jadhav as Senapati, but the rivalry between Chandrasen and
Balaji led the former to intrigue with Tarabai, while seeking an
opportunity to eliminate Balaji.
7. A dispute
over the conduct of a junior officer in Balaji's employ led
Chandrasen to attack Balaji, who fled to the fortress of Purandar.
8. Chandrasen
besieged Purandar whereupon Balaji fled again to Pandavgad whence he
sent an emissary to plead for help from his sovereign. Shahu had
Balaji Vishwanath brought under escort to his capital Satara and
asked Chandrasen to make the case against Balaji Vishwanath before
him.
9. Instead of
obeying Shahu Chandrasen defected to the cause of Tarabai in April
1711. Haibatrao Nimbalkar, who Shahu had dispatched against
Chandrasen, also defected to Tarabai, and Shahu's fortunes were an at
their lowest.
10. Bereft of
his experienced generals, Shahu turned to Balaji Vishwanath, who
undertook to raise a new army in the cause of Shahu. For this the
monarch gave Balaji Vishwanath the title of Senakarte or Organiser of
Maratha armies (20 August 1711).
11. Balaji next
turned against Tarabai 'her own armoury of intrigue'. The fall of
Tarabai at Kolhapur in 1712 was the outcome of a conspiracy hatched
by Balaji Vishwanath in connivance with the disgruntled elements of
Tarabai's court.
12. Balaji
Vishwanath induced Rajaram's other widow, Rajasbai to install her
son, Sambhaji, on the throne of Kolhapur, dethroning Shivaji II, the
son of Tarabai. This brought the ruling house of Kolhapur under
protection and subordination of Shahu.
13. Next Shahu
turned to subdue the Angres. Tukoji Angre had commanded Chattrapati
Shivaji's navy and was succeeded in 1690 by his son Kanhoji Angre.
14. Kanhoji
received from Tarabai the title of "Sarkhel" or Admiral of
the Maratha fleet.
15. Kanhoji
seized the opportunity of war between Tarabai and Shahu to
effectively free himself of the suzerainty of either. Instead he
captured the major trading center of Kalyan and the neighboring forts
of Rajmachi and Lohgad.
16. Shahu sent
a large force under his "peshva" or Chief Minister,
Bahiroji Pingale . Kanhoji defeated Pingle and imprisoned him at
Lohgad, and started to advance towards Shahu's capital Satara.
17. Shahu
commanded Balaji again to raise another army to subdue Kanhoji.
Balaji preferred the path of negotiation and was appointed as Shahu's
plenipotentiary to negotiate with the admiral.
18. Balaji
convinced Shahu to alter Shivaji's old constitution of the Maratha
state, whereby the nobles were salaried employees of the ruler.
19.
Henceforth, nobles would be feudatories with grants of land over
which they ruled as vassal princes.
20. In doing
so, Balaji planted the seeds of the both the rise and the decline of
the Maratha empire/confederacy.
21. Granting
the nobles vast territories enabled the rapid expansion of the empire
from 1713 to 1760 and then onwards.
22. Balaji and
Kanhoji met at Lonavala. The newly appointed peshva appealed to the
old sailor's patriotism for the Maratha cause. Angre agreed to become
the Sarkhel (admiral) of Shahu's navy with control of the Konkan.
23. Balaji and
Angre then jointly attacked the Muslim Siddis of Janjira. Their
combined forces captured most of the Konkan coast, including Balaji's
birthplace of Shrivardhan, which became part of the Angre fiefdom.
24. Delighted
with Balaji's success, Shahu dismissed Bahiroji Pingale and appointed
Balaji Vishwanath as peshva on 16 November 1713.
25. There
existed a power vacuum in the Mughal empire, caused by the death of
Aurangzeb in 1707, and that of his successor Bahadur Shah, leading to
continual internecine conflict within the imperial family and the
leading Mughal grandees.
26.
Farrukhsiyar came to the throne in 1713 with the help of the two
powerful nobles, Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan and Sayyid Abdullah Khan.
Claiming descent from the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, the Sayyid
Brothers had turned king-makers in the Mughal court. Soon after,
differences arose between them and the Emperor Farruksiyar.
27. And while
the Mughals were intriguing in the civil war between the factions of
Shahu and Tarabai, the Marathas themselves became a major factor in
the quarrels between the Emperor and the Sayyids.
28. To rid
himself of the tutelage of the Sayyids, in 1718 Farrukhsiyar
dispatched Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan as Viceroy of the Deccan with
orders to restore Mughal authority over the south.
29. Behind the
Sayyid's back, Farrukhsiyar urged various Maratha chieftain's to
attack his own viceroy.
30. Hussain Ali
Khan found himself harried by the Marathas who resorted to their
traditional guerilla tactics. Unable to defeat the Marathas in a
pitched battle and weary of chasing after constantly marauding
Maratha horsemen, Hussain Ali Khan sought to make peace with the
Marathas.
31. In July
1718 Balaji negotiated a Maratha-Mughal treaty with Hussain Ali Khan,
demanding the Maratha right of "chauth" (literally: 1/4th
of revenues) and "sardeshmukhi" (an additional 10% of
revenues) of the old Mughal provinces of the Deccan. To this Balaji
Vishwanath added the demand of chauth and sardeshmukhi over the rich
provinces of Gujarat and Khandesh, and the restoration of Chattrapati
Shivaji's conquests in Karnataka.
32. In return
for which Balaji promised that Shahu would acknowledge the nominal
overlordship of the Mughal Emperor, and the Marathas would provide a
force of 15,000 armed horsemen to the Mughal Empire. To these
egregious demands Sayyid Hussain Ali Khan readily agreed, with a view
to use the Maratha soldiers to their advantage in their struggle with
the Emperor.
33.
Farrukhsiyar refused to ratify this treaty and sought to depose and
murder the Sayyids. The plot was betrayed to Sayyid Abdulla Khan who
was in Delhi, who succeeded in neutralizing other powerful Mughal
nobles like Asaf Jah I (also known as Chin Qilich Khan and
Nizam-ul-Mulk) and Sarbuland Khan (governor of Patna) with promises
of rich governorships of Malwa and Kabul respectively.
34. In
September 1718, accompanied by Balaji Vishwanath and supported by
(now) sixteen thousand Maratha horsemen commanded by the gallant
Parsoji Bhosale Hussain Ali Khan arrived in Delhi. Most of
Farrukhsiyar's supporters fled but the Emperor's partisans resisted
but were overcome at the cost of two thousand Maratha soldiers.
35.
Farrukhsiyar was dethroned, blinded and imprisoned by the Sayyid's,
who substituted in his place a more pliable puppet,Rafi-ul-darjat in
February 1719. (This hapless prince was dying of tuberculosis and was
in turn replaced after a reign of only three months by his older
brother Rafi Ud-Daulah.) Rafi-ul-Darjat duly ratified the Maratha
treaty. Shahu and his successors were recognized by the Mughal
Emperors as the rightfully heirs to Chattrapati Shivaji.
36. Balaji
returned in triumph from Delhi to Satara, having also secured the
release after decades of Mughal captivity, the mother (Yesubai), wife
(Savitribai) and half-brother (Madan Singh) of Shahu. Weary from his
labors and the tiresome journey back from the imperial capital,
Balaji Vishwanath's health began to fail. In October 1719 he obtained
leave from Shahu to retire to the village of Saswad near Pune that
had been granted by Shahu to the peshva.On 11 March 1719 he
celebrated the marriage of his son Visaji, the future peshva Baji Rao
I with Kashibai.
37. Balaji
Vishwanath died on 12 April 1720. He was succeeded by his elder son,
the celebrated Bajirao I, who was appointed peshva by Chattrapati
Shahu.
38. Before
death, Balaji Vishwanath had laid the foundation for the complex
administrative system of the Marathas that held sway for a century
after his death. The Maratha tax collection system from a wide swathe
of nominally Mughal provinces was based on a widespread network of
agents and collectors. To it as much as to their victories in the
field the Marathas owed the spread of their empire. The mechanism of
revenue collected was supported by credit facilities from established
banking families.
39. At the age
of 20, Bajirao was appointed by Shahu as peshva, ignoring other more
experienced and older claimants to the post. It is quite clear from
this appointment that Shahu recognized his talent even as a boy and
positioned him as peshva. Bajirao was popular with his soldiers and
even today his name is an honorable one.
40. On the
south front in 1722, the Nizam's personal ambitions lay exposed
before the mughal emperor and the latter (Muhammed Shah) started
sidelining him. The Nizam now rebelled openly against the mughal
emperor and declared his regions as independent with the capital
being Hyderabad. When the imperial army led by Mubariz Khan tried to
seize the errant Nizam, the latter sought the help from his old
enemies the Marathas and agreed to accept all their earlier demands.
41. Thus Shahu
instructed Bajirao to send an contingent to assist the Nizam. Their
collective armies, ably led by Bajirao, defeated the powerful Mughal
imperial forces in the bloody battle at Sakherkheda in 1724. The
Mughals withdrew thereby giving the Nizam a relatively secure kingdom
in Hyderabad.
42. By the time
Bajirao became the peshva, the Chhatrapati Shahu was almost a titular
ruler, largely confined to his residence in Satara. The Maratha
confederacy was run in his name, but the real power lay in the hands
of the peshva.
43. By the time
of Bajirao's appointment, the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah had
recognized Marathas' rights over the territories possessed by Shivaji
at his death. In 1719, the Mughals had also recognized the Maratha
rights to collect taxes (chauth and sardeshmukhi) in the six
provinces of Deccan. Bajirao believed that the Mughal Empire was in
decline, and wanted to take advantage of this situation with
aggressive expansion in north India. However, as a new peshva, he had several challenges.
44. His
appointment as the peshva at young age had evoked jealousy from
senior officials like Naro Ram Mantri, Anand Ram Somant and Shripat
Rao Pratinidhi
45.
Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, the Mughal viceroy of Deccan, had
practically created his own independent kingdom in the region, and
challenged the Maratha rights to collect taxes in Deccan
46. The
Marathas needed to assert their rights over the nobles of the
newly-gained territories in Malwa and Gujarat
47. Several
areas that were nominally part of the Maratha territory, were not
actaully under peshva's control. For example, the Siddis controlled
the Janjira fort
48. In 1728,
Bajirao moved the administrative capital of the Maratha Empire from
Shahu's Satara to the city of Pune. His general, Bapuji Shripat,
persuaded some of the richer families of Satara to settle in the Pune
city, which was divided into 18 peths (boroughs).
49. This was
shift of power from Satara, a Maratha dominated place, to Poona which
had a complete domination of Brahmins in general and the Chitpavans
in particular.
50. The
establishment of the peshva rule elevated the Chitpavans to the
status of the dominant of the dominant caste group. The Chitpavans
regarded themselves as a governing caste with special privileges and
exemptions.
51. They had a
lions share in the monopoly of all the secretarial posts and received
handsome salaries. They had the privileges of exemption of their
goods from custom duties and ferry charges which the other Brahmins
and Prabhus did not enjoy.
52. They had
their land assessed at half of the lower rate of others. They also
had the monopoly share in the Dakshina charity, a charity that was
instituted during the time of Shivaji to honour the learned Brahmins,
who once a year assembled at Poona to show their talents, knowledge
and the understanding of the Vedas and other scriptures.
53. However,
during the peshvas this institution degenerated into a system of
maintaining their caste fellows to consolidate their position. The
state under the peshvas was an institution established to perpetuate
the stratification of the society.
54. The
individuals as well as the caste-community as a whole could not
deviate from the occupation and position assigned to them in the
varnaashrama dharma.
55. Though the
peshvas themselves had violated the caste rules by becoming the
rulers, they justified their actions on the ground that the state had
failed to maintain the varnashrama dharma in the preceding centuries.
56. In
Sawantwadi conflict over rituals arose between the Saraswat and
Karhade Brahmins and peshva decided the case in favour of Karhade
Brahmins which resulted in the migration of Sarswat Brahmins from
Sawantwadi to Shahapur.
57. In a
conflict between the Brahmins and the Prabhus, which was settled
during the time of peshvas Narayanrao, states an order binding on the
Prabhus. They could not perform any religious rites accompanied by a
recital of Vedic hymns, could visit only the temples frequented by
Shudra and could not employ Brahmins in their household.
58. The Prabhus
being a small well knit economically strong with highest percentage
of literacy after Brahmins threatened the possible consolidation of
Chitpavans position in the state.
59. Another
regulation issued during the same period, stated that the Sonar or
the gold smith community if performed the rituals, accompanied by
Vedic hymns they were to be captured and put in chains and those
belonging to this community, well versed in the Vedic mantras should
be tied to an elephant's feet.
60. Unlike the
Prabhus, the Sonars were not new to the Vedic studies. They had
always observed the purity-pollution concept as strictly as the
Brahmins themselves. They retaliated by establishing their right of
employing their caste-fellows as priests.
61. If the
social disabilities imposed on the intermediate castes, were aimed to
curb the possible challenge that the Brahmins would face, the Mahars
and the Mangs, the lowest castes infact outcastes in the Hindu
hierarchy had to endure even harsher treatment at the hands of the
peshvas.
62. Apart from
the most inhuman disability that they suffered on an all-India basis,
they were awarded mutilation of their limbs and capital punishments
for even minor crimes.
63. Anyone who
failed to observe the social disability was also punished. In 1746, a
Chitpavan by name Govind Hari Patwardhan was punished for having
entertained in service a maidservant of Mahar caste.
64. So the
state under the peshvas, besides the normal functions of a state
existed to protect the caste stratification and to interpret the
Dharmasarthras or scriptures to emphasize and maintain their
spiritual superiority.
65. The state
played a decisive part in the restoration of caste status of
individual persons who had deviated from traditional religious and
social code of conduct. It was seen by all sections of the society as
a protector of cows and Brahmins Go-Brahmana Pratipalak.
66. In this
period the chitpavans enjoyed all the luxury. They also imposed
various restrictions on the deshastha bramhins. The deshastha
bramhins used to be Deshmukhs since the period of Shivaji. But the
peshvas displaced the Deshastha Brahmins in the administration by
Chitpavans.
67. The system
of administration created by the peshvas to control the Deshmukhs and
to collect the tax on land rested on simple principles. The kingdom
was divided into revenue divisions, each one of which was placed
under an officer called Mamlatdars, who supervised the collection of
land tax and attended to police and judicial duties.
68. However,
even under the oppressive peshva regime, their powers were not
absolute. The power of collecting revenue within the village was in
the hands of Patil.
69. In times of
distress and drought, if the Patil who was always a Kunbi refused to
collect the tax, the Mamletdars referred the matter to the village
Panchayat and the Deshmukh.
70. Since the
village Panchayat was numerically dominated by the Kunbis and the Deshmukhs who always had rivalry with the Chitpavan
Mamlatders were in a position to secure a great measure of relief for
the farmers.
71. With the
introduction of new land revenue system, the Patil lost his overall
responsibility for the collection and payment of taxes due from the
village. Each individual cultivator was to be liable for the payment
of his own tax. The Brahmin Kulkarni, or village accountant, became
the main channel of communication between the village and the local
revenue office.
72. In this
strategic mediatory position the Kulkarni was able to influence such
vital issues as the level of new assessment, remissions of rent in
case of crop failure and the fate of cultivators unable to pay taxes.
73. As the land
became a transferable and heritable property it paved the way for the
transfer of land from the farmers to the professional classes and
moneylenders who, happened to be Chitpavans in many cases. Kunbis
were changing into hired labourers working on their own fields. The
miseries were compounded by the fact that the condition of
agricultural labourers was far from satisfactory.
74. The daily
wage of an agriculture labourer in Poona district as late as 1900 was
two anna and three paisa, the wages received by women were about 50
-60 percent of male wages and the children were paid only half of the
adult male labourers wage. They could not obtain loans and having no
reserves of money of grain, a day without labour to them meant a day
of starvation.
75. If the
economic policies of colonial rule continued and empowered the
pre-colonial social structure, the educational policies, though
aimed towards the same end created a different situation. Since the
colonial rule was indifferent to the caste regulations, the
educational institutions opened by the government were open to all. And this was start of the major social reforms!
By this way
the peshvas were out of power and British had take over. This
actually can be called as end of the Maratha dynasty as a separate
rule. But for those interested in further happenings at Bhosales of
Satara, more history can be explored through life of Shahu
maharaj (Shahu II).
Now readers
should understand that the Bajirao peshva indeed was a great warrior
but he was not alone in wars. Holkars, Schindians and lot of other
warriors were part of the kingdom expansion. The kingdom expansion was in a sense a franchise activity. The history and
specially the historians have not done right justice to the non-peshvas.
Most of the learned historians and eminent personalities with
influence on history writing belonged to communities with legacy of Peshavas. Obviously the textual history favored them.
But the common masses who always remember rulers who loved praja and not lands, have done
justice. You won't see anybody out-side certain communities praising
the peshva rule. Atrocities and restrictions by them while protecting
the varnashramdharma have wounded most of the other communities, even other bramhins. The
wounds are unforgettable. Yes, the rule was doing good but at the
expense of social harmony in the state!
So, now we
should stop reading and interpreting history any more and live as one
community. Our focus should be welfare of the downtrodden in the state, be it bramhins,
marathas, malis, dhangars, mahars or mangs or any other caste. The Peshavai is no more.
The British are no more. We are a free country and are being ruled by ourselves through the
constitution. We should follow it line by line. Period.
Jai Hind.
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