Dear Readers,
I had the privilege of giving a talk on Chhatrapati Shivaji
Maharaj’s mind. The extract below is the text of the speech I had delivered.
It's long, but you may find it interesting, so do read along. Thank You for
being there.
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(Charge of the Maratha cavalry in the Battle of Salher 1672
Salher fort in the backdrop)
Influence of Forts on Shivaji Maharaj's Military Strategy
and Tactics.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Maharaj is a much-revered
personality. He has a divine image in Maharashtra and is compared to the Shiva
the God. There is a sound reason for it. Historians see him in India as the man
who stopped the tyranny of the Mughal rule in India. The Mughals, invaders from
a foreign land, ruled this country for over three centuries. Whatever their
contributions to India, they have a blot which cannot be erased, and that is
their persecution of the Hindu religion and its followers. Shivaji Maharaj
swore to liberate his land from foreign rule and give his people the freedom to
follow their religion without fear of persecution. His concept of 'Hindavi
Swarjya'. Yet Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj has many detractors. His life history
also bears contradictions, and his life is open to many different
interpretations. Why is Shivaji Maharaj's life open to discussion? This is a
critical question. Shivaji's life was never chronicled by anyone when he was
alive except either the foreigners or his court poet, Kavindra Permanand
Govind. To top it all, most of the chronicles written during his time were
either lost or destroyed. The Britishers are accused of burning his capital,
Raigad Fort, which housed numerous records and correspondence of his time. Most
literature written on Shivaji Maharaj other than Maudi, a dialect of Marathi,
is based on either the Mughal A& Persian chronicles or the
English/French/Dutch factory records. Dennis Kincaid's book 'History of Maratha
People', writes :
"Shivaji has, by curious fate, suffered more at the
hands of the historians than any other character in history. They have one and
all accepted the opinion of Grant Duff as final. And while judging Shivaji with
utmost harshness, they have been singularly indulgent with his enemies."
Yet there is unanimity amongst all that he was the shrewdest
general of his time. Many Portuguese and French historians have compared him to
Hannibal and Napoleon. This paper examines Shivaji Maharaj's mind's brilliance
and ability to think beyond the obvious and the normal. Central to his
successes were the presence of forts in the Sahyadri or on the Konkan coast.
His brilliance lay in his ability to build his strategy and tactics around
forts, a force multiplier balancing the lack of large standing armies his
adversaries possessed.
Constraints
To understand why Shivaji Maharaj devised a specific
strategy or tactics, one must understand the constraints he worked under.
Pointwise, it is given below:
- Terrain
- Lack
of manpower and resources
- A
divided state
- Surrounded
by enemies on all sides
- Lack
of revenue
Terrain: At the height of his power, Shivaji
controlled the regions of Konkan, western parts of Maharashtra, and parts of
Karnataka or greater Karnataka, which at that time encompassed the present-day
Tamil Nādu. If one looks at the terrain available in this dominion, it is
characterised by three essential segments. To the West was the vast coastline,
and the Konkan belt ran from Gujrat to the South. Konkan is the narrow belt of
land that runs parallel to the coastline South of Mumbai and south of Goa. The
long and dense line of a mountain range is called the Sahyadri, also called the
Western Ghats. Sahyadri ranges extend from Gujrat into Tamil Nadu and are all
along the western coast. Maharashtra has a 650 km vertical length. It is steep
and forested initially in Maharashtra, tapers down a bit in Karnataka, and
rises again in Kerala, where it merges with before it merges with the plains of
Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Sahyadri was the focal point around which Shivaji's
dominion existed. On the east of the Sahyadri were the massive plains of the
Deccan Plateau, which were bereft of any natural cover but interspersed with
rivers. River Bhima and Nira were of great importance to Shivaji.
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Lack of Manpower and Resources: Shivaji Maharaj
did not inherit an empire or an army to start his struggle. When he dreamt big,
he was short on manpower and resources. He lived in a jagir ruled by his father
on behalf of the Adil Shahi sultanate. He had no fighting force and no fort to
take shelter from his enemies. He started with a small band of his childhood
friends and their followers when he took the 'Hindavi Swarjya' oath at
Raireshwar in 1645.
A divided State. The region which Shivaji
Maharaj wanted to liberate was ruled by chieftains who owed no allegiance to
their population. Almost all of them, barring a few, were vassals
of the Adil Shahi or the Mughals. Their masters had no concern for their population
if people paid their taxes on time. These Maval chiefs were ruthless in getting
their share of taxes from their population, which always reeled under the
burden of debt and poor crops. They hated being subservient to one of their
own. Shivaji Maharaj's battle started from this reality.
Surrounded by Enemies from all Sides: To make matters
worse, his intended dominion was surrounded by his prospective enemies, i.e.,
the Mughals in North Deccan, the Adil Shahi Sultanate in Bijapur, which was
Southern Eastern Deccan, and the Qutub Shahi Eastern portion of Deccan Plateau.
The Portuguese, Siddhis, and the English on the Konkan coast were behind him.
The resources available to his adversaries were far better than he could have
hoped to raise.
Lack of Revenue. The people he vowed to
liberate were living in abject poverty, abuse, and subservience. They were
looked down upon, and centuries of foreign rule had depleted their will to
stand up for their rights and demand basic human dignity. The Hindu religion
was scorned and abused, and its gods were desecrated. Their source of income
was agriculture, which needed more institutional support. Shivaji Maharaj had
to improve agricultural production to increase revenues or find alternate
means.
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