Three days after Shivaji's death, his eldest wife Soyra Bai proclaimed her son, Rajaram, king
at Raigarh fort. Shambhaji rejected this and openly assumed regal powers. Quickly gaining
overwhelming support among the Maratha officers, he occupied the capital at Raigarh
without resistance. The deposed Rajaram was unharmed, but his mother and about two
hundred of her followers were executed. Shambhaji carried out a full-blown coronation in
February of 1681 to fully legitimize his role as Shivaji's successor. The Bhonsla dynasty had
survived its first test: one of Shivaji's sons became undisputed ruler of the Maratha
kingdom.
Shivaji's legacy included a compact unitary state. Within the western Ghats and the littoral
districts of the Konkan, Shivaji constructed an effective civil administration supported by a
firmly controlled network of scores of massive hill-fortresses and strongly sited island
coastal strongholds. His insistence on strict discipline and accountability, on cash
payments rather than fiefs, and efficient, uncluttered organization greatly impressed
contemporary observers. He also made surprisingly effective use of access to the sea for
trading and plundering from his coastal ports. Shivaji’s unexcelled strategic and diplomatic
skills – based firmly upon timely access to information – were also widely admired and
feared. In this respect he was a worthy match for Aurangzeb, his greatest enemy.
Shivaji's successes shaped a new mode of aggressive political and military action against
the Indo-Muslim powers. Reassertion of imperial Mughal power against the Deccan
Sultanates in the 1650s created circumstances favorable to Shivaji’s rise in the western
Deccan. His insurgent state gained resources and confidence as it challenged imperial
might. By the early 1660s the Maratha had adopted a new style of wide-ranging predatory
raiding into Mughal and Bijapur lands. By the 1670s Maratha forces in Baglana seriously
constricted, if they did not cut off altogether, the important overland caravan routes
running from Surat to Burhanpur in Khandesh. The raids produced a steady flow of plunder
or, in later years, extorted payments in return for immunity. The latter was often expressed
as chauth, the 25 percent of the revenue traditionally left to zamindars by Indo-Muslim
states in Gujarat and Khandesh. It was the annual profits from raiding beyond his borders
that sustained the home territories. Shivaji could pay and pay well because he tapped the
productive resources of a much larger, and more productive catchment area surrounding
the western Ghats.
The unitary state died quickly. But the tradition of aggressive Maratha predation against the
empire continued unabated. Once released, the organizational and martial energies of the
hill Marathas surged outward into the wider world of the Mughal Deccan. No longer merely
zamindars engaged in petty local skirmishes or hired captains employed by Muslim
Sultans, Maratha commanders raided and conquered in the name of the Bhonsla dynasty.
Timurid officers in the Deccan encountered a new, unsettling type of resistance – a
resistance that could not be swept aside by the usual repertoire of Mughal diplomatic and
military tactics. Mughal administrators found themselves ruling lands devastated and
disrupted by incessant Maratha raiding and plundering. Maratha deshmukhs could look to
a powerfully appealing alternative to submission to the empire.
In the desert outside Ajmer, Prince Muhammad Akbar came very close to dethroning
Aurangzeb in one quick stroke. In exile at the Bhonsla court, he posed a less immediate, but
no less serious, threat to Aurangzeb. Akbar’s familial charisma as a Timurid prince gave him
a potent political appeal. Akbar could become the catalyst for an alliance between
Shambhaji, Abul Hasan Qutb Shah, the ruler of Golconda, and even Sikandar Adil Shah, the
young king of Bijapur. Since the wealthiest and most powerful Muslim kingdom, Golconda,
was now under the effective domination of two Telugu Brahmins and the aggressive
Maratha kingdom was an avowedly resurgent state, restored Hindu domination of the
Deccan was not such a far-fetched possibility. Especially worrisome was the continuing
factionalism and weakness of Sultan Sikandar Adil Shah’s regime in Bijapur. If Akbar were
to ride north at the head of combined Maratha/Sultanate armies would the rebellious
Rajputs of Marwar and Mewar hesitate to join them? And, if the balance of power began to
shift how long would it be before other Mughal nobles transferred their allegiance to a
younger, more vigorous sovereign?
Akbar also posed a larger challenge to those policies most deeply cherished by his father.
Partly by circumstance and partly by personal inclination Akbar became a rallying point for
those unhappy with Aurangzeb’s treatment of non-Muslims and especially with his
repression of the qazis. Many nobles were dismayed by the rising power of the Muslim
jurists and the constraining of the open political dialogue of Akbar and Jahangir. These men
converged with a growing uneasiness over Aurangzeb’s unremitting sovereign advance in
the Deccan. Accommodated within existing systems of control, the new Maratha state
seemed less of a threat to local power than did the rule of Dara Shikoh who had opened up
systems for simple political-religious correction, or Akbar become a focal point for
opposition in the 1680s. The sons of Aurangzeb’s nobles were reported to become
adherents to the views and policies of the new prince and to demand conversions as well.
To Aurangzeb, therefore, the danger posed by Akbar’s presence in the Deccan went beyond
his ability to mobilize opposition.
Hand in on, even as Akbar had proclaimed himself emperor, in late January 1681,
Shambhaji led 20,000 Maratha horsemen deep into Khandesh. At Burhanpur, a prosperous
trading suburb of Burhanpur, traders risked the Mughal jail to secretly welcome him and
opened the town for three days. Due to the large number of bankers and traders who lived
in or near town, Burhanpur held a large inventory of precious metal and even food;
Shambhaji had “only to stretch out his hands, to gather in choicest goods from every port,
the best velvets, muslins and thousands of rupees … not counted in shops.” It took three
days to empty all the shops. Mullahs sermonized about what happened in the raid as divine
justice. He confiscated local grain and coined money using the dies at the mints of
Burhanpur, broadsheets reported. The Marathas “plundered lakhs of rupees, collected fees
from the bankers and merchants in the hundreds of towns, and used real and fictitious lists
of wealth to levy heavy fines. When challenged he told the commander: ‘I am still fighting
you.’”
One of the most terrifying raids was in 1690 when Baglan, Khan Jahan Bahadur’s jagir, was
devastated. According to Mughal records, the Bahadur was a prisoner of bitterness.
Popular rumour had it that Khan Jahan Bahadur had been bribed by emissaries from
Shambhaji to avoid contact with the Marathas. Public outrage was great. Plundering on this
scale would jeopardize the long-distance overland trade and exchange for which
Burhanpur was such a critical node. But the protest to the Mughal emperor took a
narrower, more sectarian view.
The internal and cross-generational (i.e., father and the sons of Burhanpur, i.e., an petition
of the Court describing the demolition of the tānkhā, the destruction of the prayer house,
and the Maratha use of the imperial dies) also had its own points to note.
The dominant position of Burhanpur, Shambhaji’s raids were not simply to acquire against
public order; in fact, it was a blow directed against the Muslim community in particular. The
Mughal Akhbarat reported Shambhaji returned key mints and property, the Friday
congregational prayers could not include Aurangzeb’s title as ruler.
Partly this was appeal and this showed in news stories Aurangzeb sought by the south and
in Burhanpur by a poet in Malwa. From imperial India. A gorgeous bounty the entire central
army already under his command shot three of the three remaining princes, and the
contingents of horses rebelled. Accompanying the army was the imperial charan and
bugle-call, and the command station was built in temples, dharms, dehris, and offices.
Tens of thousands of artillerymen, musketeers, and prisoners, mints and crushing clerks of
silver and gold, plunderers, rich merchants of foreign, domestic, and imperial enemies
marched in their distinct regalia and showed an army which besides the great management
enjoyed high city. A well-organised bazaar with its first and finest shops in every town of the
upper Deccan struggled to maintain order before the main provisioning officers failed to
fulfill resources to stabilize the southern frontier of the empire. This momentum continued
for the next several years. Shambhaji had chosen how to extend, time and timing an
economy-wide conflict spread from Aurangabad to the south Deccan with roots not easily
dismissed.
Shambhaji’s raids and their resonance. Caution, indecision, for example, helped him plan
for bold assault soon on the Mughal armies in the Deccan. Shambhaji would play a role in
several economically clear and devastating routes to Delhi. Instead, Shambhaji diverted
his attention to the coast where for four years he engaged in two furious little wars: first
with the Siddis of Janjira (a small piratical maritime state tributary to the Mughals) and the
English East India Company at Bombay, and second with the Portuguese at Goa. Each
conflict ended in wary stalemate. Distracted, Akbar made several attempts to charter or
build a ship that would take him to refuge in Persia.
Aurangzeb positioned strong lines of defense at a number of strategic points in the Mughal
Deccan to fend off Maratha raids. For the next four years he sent over one force after
another into the Maratha kingdom every year. Over the period he built enormous wounded
forts, dug out massive ramparts, claiming hundreds of square miles of new territory.
Mughal commanders found to the expansion was not the dozens of hill and inland
fortresses of the kingdom. Shambhaji relied upon his father’s decentralized network of
strongholds to shelter imperial escape routes and to resist all but the most determined
imperial sieges. Now where else yet to draw. Shambhaji an aim not far distinct he would
describe loosely as dharma, not merely conceived but focused through local reform or
alliance. He is to the continuation of the war by keeping up small military pressure not on
his home territories. He could discourage large-scale Maratha raiding in the Mughal
Deccan by keeping sizable armies in the field. But control of the seized Maratha kingdom
demanded both a greater commitment of imperial resources and determination than
Aurangzeb had previously thought necessary.
Frustrated in his Maratha campaigns, Aurangzeb turned to a goal which had long eluded
the Mughals. The conquest of the Shia Muslim sultanates in Bijapur and Golconda. The
ruler of Bijapur, Sultan Sikandar Adil Shah, consented to offer clandestine military aid to
Shambhaji if actively sought refuge in the hills. In 1685, a Mughal army under Qasim Khan
marched on Bijapur while Prince Azim and Prince Shah Alam invaded from the east with a
second army. The ruler of Bijapur, Firoz Khan, offered to surrender Adil Shah commodities
and 200 gunmen garrison in a suburb open to negotiation. Qasim Khan refused. The
Mughal shahs had decided upon full and decisive victory. Aurangzeb would resubstantiate
the imperial lines. Aurangzeb encountered threatened reinforcements from Golconda by
sending Prince Shah Alam to invade that kingdom. Finally, in September, 1687, when
Mughal trenches reached the fort walls, Sikandar Adil Shah surrendered his much-
depleted garrison.
Aurangzeb summoned Bijapur’s province within the Mughal empire. The deposed Sultan
was kept under confinement in the imperial encampment. Most of the leading Afghan and
Indian Muslim nobles of Bijapur were not offered service within the Mughal empire. Those
who hoped to survive were absorbed in modest jobs, religious, police or compensation in
court, a sprawling school for loyalty. Every noble corresponding to a standard Mughal
provincial administration would be created in the new province.
Golconda was next. In 1686, during the Siege of Bijapur, Aurangzeb launched his own army
and encamped its route to invade Golconda. The leaders fought their way past Shambhaji-
Sultan Qutb cavalry on the vicinity of Hyderabad. A combined Mughal-Golconda army was
formed under Ibrahim b. Abul-Hasan Qutb Shah, the fourth head of the army. He organized
his government from within the military, at thousands of post-marketridden residents of
Hyderabad. Beside the great Mughals Golconda serial encounters could be told by far the
four months of siege with the thirty thousand men who participated indiscriminately in all
order in the city brick towers.
Negotiations being postponed, Prince Shah Alam demanded the Nizam put in cooperation
immediately. Ibrahim Qutb, also caught up trying to defend, fled across the Musi River. At
Burhanpur, the hope was Sultan agreed to dismiss his two Brahmin ministers to pay a
viceroy full residency. He denied. Now commanding the Golconda fort, Aurangzeb laid
siege to the Golconda fort with two armies. In August 1687 the imperial Mughal army
breached the Haidarabad city, cutting through Brahmins by a party of imperial enforcers.
Rustam Rao, their religious head, a high-ranking merchant, and numerous other Qutb
appointees and heads of the Shia army were killed by the army. Most of the nobles and the
sultan were forced to stay in Aurangzeb. These events marked the start of Golconda’s
incorporation into the Mughal domain.
