Shivaji and the Marathas: a challenge from the Deccan

Shivaji, who lived from 1630 to 1680, founded the Maratha kingdom in the western Deccan at a time when the region was divided between the Bijapur sultanate and the Mughal Empire. Starting from the fort of Torna, which he took in 1646 according to Maratha tradition, he built a network of hill forts in the Western Ghats, raised an army of light cavalry suited to fast raids, and challenged both Bijapur and the Mughals. In 1659 he killed the Bijapur general Afzal Khan in a famous meeting whose details are told very differently in Maratha and Bijapur accounts, and in 1664 and again in 1670 he raided the rich Mughal port of Surat.

In 1665, after a Mughal campaign under Jai Singh, Shivaji signed the Treaty of Purandar, surrendering many forts and agreeing to serve the Mughals, and in 1666 he visited the Mughal court at Agra, where he was placed under house arrest before escaping, according to the well-known story. He rebuilt his power and in 1674 was crowned at Raigad, taking the title Chhatrapati, a ceremony that asserted his status as an independent king rather than a subordinate chief. His administration included the ashtapradhan, a council of eight ministers, and a revenue system that assessed the actual produce of the land.

Shivaji's kingdom was not built on religion alone. His army and administration included Muslims as well as Hindus, and he is remembered for orders protecting mosques and holy men, though later writers have sometimes presented him in narrower religious terms. His real achievement was military and administrative: a small kingdom that could raise revenue, hold forts, and strike quickly, and that survived the Mughal attempt to crush it.

After Shivaji's death in 1680, the Marathas resisted Aurangzeb's long Deccan campaigns and, under the Peshwas in the eighteenth century, expanded across much of India, until their defeat by Ahmad Shah Abdali at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 checked their northern expansion. Shivaji remains a contested figure in modern politics, but the historical record shows a state-builder whose forts, cavalry, and revenue system outlasted him by a century.