Was Chhatrapati Shivaji a Great King?

It goes without saying that Shivaji possessed a creative genius of a very high order. From the son of a petty Jagirdar in a Muslim State, he rose to the position of a Chhatrapati. He brought order out of chaos and welded the Marathas into a nation.

The Marathas regarded him as a “superman, a divine agency to free them from the yoke of Muslims.” He had a very high standard of morality although he was illiterate; he was capable of understanding the most complicated problems of Government.

Both in diplomacy and statecraft, he had no equal. He was a very religious-minded man but this does not mean that he was a bigot. He respected the Muslim Saints also and gave lands and annuities to Muslim Shrines. It is true that he fought against the Muslims, but he stopped the war as soon as they accepted his over lordship. Khafi Khan describes “Shivaji as “a father of fraud” and “a sharp son of the devil.”

But even he admits that Shivaji had “made it a rule that whenever his followers went plundering, they should do not harm to the mosques, the Book of God, or the women of any one. Whenever a copy of the sacred Koran came into his hands, he treated it with respect and gave it to some of his Mussalman followers. When the women of any Hindu or Mohammadan were taken prisoners of his men, he watched over them until their relations caine with their ransom to buy their liberty.”

Again, “Shivaji had always striven to maintain the honour of people in his territories. He preserved in a course of rebellion, plundering carvans and troubling mankind; but he entirely abstained from other disgraceful acts and was careful to maintain the honour of women and children of Mohammadans, when they fell into his hands. His injunctions upon this point were very strict and anyone who disobeyed them received punishment.”

Shivaji “had the born leader’s personal magnetism and threw a spell over all who knew him, drawing the best elements of the country to his side and winning the most devoted service from his officers, while his dazzling victories and ever-ready smile made him the idol of his soldiery. His gift of judging character was one of the main causes of his successes, as his selection of generals and governors, diplomatists and secretaries were never at fault, and his administration, both civil and military, was unrivalled for efficiency.”

About Shivaji, Mahadev Govind Ranade says that his great achievement was that he kept the separatist tendency among the Marathas under control, brought the common forces together in the name of a common religion and represented in himself not only the power of the age, but the soul- stirring idea, the highest need and the highest purpose, that could animate the Marathas in a common cause. He did not create the Maratha Power.

That power had already been created, though scattered in small centres all over the country. He sought to unite it for a higher purpose by directing it against the common danger. This was his chief achievement and his chief service to the country and in this consists his chief claim upon the gratitude of the people. It was not for nothing that the people looked up to him as their inspired leader.

He felt that inspiration himself and communicated it to those about him, not only in one generation but for generations more to come after him till the idea of re-establishing Hindu Power throughout the country was realised in the great centres which the Marathas established in all parts of the Indian continent.

About Shivaji, Mahadev Govind Ranade says, “Shivaji had the magnetic power which only true leaders of men possess and which neither bandits nor made fanatics can ever claim. He attracted towards himself all that was hopeful and inspiring in, the land without distinction of class or caste or creed or colour. His very councilors were selected from all the great communities which constituted the strength of the country. His touch made the very grossest of men feel the cleansing fire power burning within them.”

Again, “Shiavji’s self-discipline was as great as his power of control and his military daring. This characteristic of his nature stands out in marked contrast with the looseness and ferocity of those times. In the worst excesses committed by his armies under the stress of war and need of money, cows, women and cultivators were never molested. Women especially were treated with a chivalry unknown to his enemies. When captured in the chances of war, they were sent back to their husbands with all honours.

Religious fervor, almost at white heat, bordering on the verge of self-abnegation, a daring and adventurous spirit born of a confidence that a higher power than man’s protected him and his work, the magnetism of superior genius which binds men together and leads them to victory, a rare insight into the needs of the times, and a steadfastness of purpose which no adverse turn of fortune could conquer, a readiness and resourcefulness rarely met with either in European or Indian history, true patriotism which was far in advance of the times, and a sense of justice tempered with mercy-these were the sources of the strength that enabled Shivaji to sow the seeds of a power which accomplished in the hands of his successors all that he had planned out, and enabled his race to write a chapter in India history to some purpose.”

According to Professor M.B. Deopujari, the place of Shivaji in Indian military tradition should be determined by the extent to which he contributed to the development of the art of war. An analysis of the military transactions of the Shivaji period reveals the working of the master mind seeking balance between military force and stratagem, direct fighting and indirect methods of offensive warfare.

The means adopted to defeat powerful enemy commanders like Afzal Khan and Shayista Khan Manifest mental and moral qualities judgment, resolution, courage, talent for conceiving and executing surprises and a high moral purpose that constitute military genius. Skill in devising stratagems or in executing tactical man oeuvres proves the existence of a particular or special bent of mind in general.

The charismatic character of Shivaji’s hold on the mass mind, the spiritual fervor, enthusiasm and devotion for the cause he communicated to the rank and file, the common trooper no less than the highest officer and the civilian, are achievements associated with genius.

The errors of Shivaji benefited his adversaries very little. He turned them to good account by so managing things that loss in human life was and the morale of the army remained high. His two escapes-one from Panhala besieged by Sidi Jauhar and the other from Agra-can be cited as examples.

The period of regular defensive warfare by land and sea was not one of guerrilla enterprises. Maratha fighters had become seasoned troops and Maratha officers were ready to carry on their own. These considerations are enough to show that Shivaji’s genius for war was not limited to genius for guerrilla war.

According to Rawlinson, “His was a dark and violent age and at least Shivaji’s hands were not stained like those of Aurangzeb with the blood of his kindred. He was never deliberately or wantonly cruel. To respect women, mosques, and non-combatants, to stop promiscuous slaughter after the battle, to release and dismiss with honour captured officers and men-these are surely no light virtues.”

According to Jadunath Sarkar, “No blind fanatic, no mere brigand can found a state. There can be no denying the fact that he was as the Ancient Greeks would have called him, a king among men – one endowed with the divine instinct or genius.” Again, “Unlike Ranjit Singh and Mahdaji Siridhia he built up an administrative system and raised a national army without any foreign help. His institutions lasted long and were looked up to with admiration and emulation even a century later in the palmy days of Peshwas’ rule.” Shivaji was not “an entrepreneur of rapine of a Hindu Edition of Ala-ud-Din Khilji or Timur.”

According to J.N. Sarkar again, “Before his rise, the Maratha race was scattered like atoms through many Deccani Kingdoms. He welded them into a mightily nation and he achieved this in the teeth of the opposition of four mighty powers like the Mughal Empire, Bijapur, Portuguese India and the Abyssinians of Janjira. No other Hindu has shown such capacity in modern times.

The materialistic Maratha authors of the Bhakhars have given us a list of Shivaji’s legacies – so many elephants, horses, soldiers, slaves, jewels, gold and silver and even spices and raisins! But they have not mentioned Shivaji’s greatest gift to posterity, viz., the new life of the Maratha race.”

To quote Sarkar again, Shivaji was “not only the maker of the Maratha nation, but also the greatest constructive genius of medieval India”, and “the memory of a true ‘hero as king’ life Shivaji remains an imperishable historical legacy for the entire human race – to animate the heart, to the highest endeavors.”

According to Elphinstone, “Though the son of a powerful chief, he had begun life as a daring and artful captain of banditti, had ripened into a skilful general and an able statesman, and left a character which has never since been equalled or approached by any of his countrymen.

The distracted state of the neighbouring countries presented openings by wi.ich an inferior leader might have profited; but it acquired a genius like his to avail himself as he did of the mistakes of Aurangzeb, by kindling as zeal for religion, and, through that, a national spirit among the Marathas. It was by these feelings that his government was upheld after it had passed into feeble hands and was kept together, in spite of numerous internal disorders, until it had established its supremacy over the greater part of India.

Though a predatory war, such as he conducted, must necessarily inflict extensive misery, his enemies bear witness to his anxiety to mitigate the evils of it by humane regulations, which were strictly enforced. His devotion latterly degenerated into extravagances of superstition and austerity, but “seems never to have obscured his talents or soured his temper.”

According to Grant Duff, “The territories and the treasures, however, which Shiavji acquired, were not as formidable to the Mughals as the example he had set, the system and habits he had introduced and the spirit he had infused into a large proportion of the Maratha People.”

According to J.N. Sarkar again, “To the Hindu world in that age of renewed persecution, Shivaji appeared as the star of a new hope, the protector of the ritualistic paint-mark (Tilak) on the forehead of the Hindus and the Saviour of the Brahmins. His court, as later his son’s, became the rallying point of the opposition to Aurangzeb. The two rivals were both supermen, but contrast in character.”

It is stated in “A short History of Hind-Pakistan’ prepared by Pakistan History Board, that the contemporaries of Shivaji speak of him as a bandit and a marauder and do not conceal their contempt for his activities. This is not untrue, for the most consuming passion of his life was loot and in looting the people he made no distinction between his co-religionists and others. Later writers have tried to idolize him as a national leader who wanted to deliver the Hindus from the Rule of the Mughals.

This is not supported by facts. He started life as a brigand and owing to a state of confusion and disorder prevailing in Bijapur, he was able to seize a number of hill- fortresses and the surrounding lands. With the growth of power and resources, his ambitions also grew and every year he planned new raids with the object of pondering peaceful inhabitants.

In carrying out these raids, he frequently employed the weapons of murder, treachery and fraud without any scruples, On his return from the Mughal Court at Agra, Shivaji seems to have conceived the idea of setting up a small state of his own, but even this did not stop him from continuing his old profession of brigandage.”

A Maratha Historian justifies this view in these words: “The Maratha forces should feed themselves at the expense of foreign countries for 8 months every year and levy blackmail.” The tradition he left for his followers was to kill and destroy and not to build and preserve. His administration in the territory of the Swarajya was a clumsy imitation of the Mughal system of government, with slight alterations here and there. Most of the designations and functions of the state officials were borrowed from the Mughals.”