Chapter 3

The Rise of the Marathas

"Among the merchants, the hat-wearers like the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch, the French and the Danes also conduct trade. But they are not like other merchants…. They are fully intent on entering this land, increasing their territory and propagating their religion. They are obstinate people, and Navy and gunpowder are their chief weapons. Their traffic should be controlled, and they shouldn't be allowed to build strong buildings." — Ramachandrapant Amatya, Ādnyāpatra (1715)

Who are the Marathas?

The Marathas are a group of people native to the Deccan plateau, more specifically present-day Maharashtra, identified with the Marathi language, which has had a rich, continuous literary history since the 12th century. During the 13th century, most of Maharashtra was ruled by the Yadava dynasty from Devagiri (present-day Daulatabad), until the Khilji Sultanate from Delhi overcame the Yadavas in the early 14th century.

Amid these political changes, cultural traditions continued, particularly those related to bhakti (devotion to the divine). Between the 7th and 17th centuries, saints and seekers from across India preferred this path of personal devotion over external ritual, composing devotional songs and poetry in the languages of the masses so their messages could travel far and wide.

In Maharashtra, saints like Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram, and Ramdas gained popularity, helping translate texts like the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gītā into Marathi and focusing on social organisation and political awareness, similar to the Sikh gurus. This gave society a solid cultural foundation that later helped the Marathas organise into a political power. By the 17th century, some Maratha chiefs had made early attempts at establishing sovereignty, but none succeeded until Chhatrapati Shivaji rose to power and brought the Marathas together.

Foundation of Maratha Power and the Rise of Chhatrapati Shivaji

Shivaji was born in 1630 in the Bhonsle clan to Shahji and Jijabai. His father Shahji served the Deccan sultanates and was often away, so Chhatrapati Shivaji grew up in his jāgīr (a piece of land given by a king as a reward for service, entitling the holder to collect its taxes) at Pune, under the watchful eyes of Jijabai and trusted officials, at a time when constant infighting between the Deccan sultans caused much hardship for the common people.

At just 16, he launched military campaigns, first consolidating the Pune region by capturing neglected forts and strengthening their defences; his vision of a sovereign kingdom, or Swarājya, grew over the years to cover political, economic, and cultural aspects.

As his kingdom expanded to India's west coast, Chhatrapati Shivaji founded the Maratha Navy to secure access to coastal resources — a revolutionary step, since neither the Bijapur Sultanate nor even the Mughal Empire maintained a real naval force. To protect his people from more powerful enemies, he relied on guerrilla warfare — small, fast-moving groups using surprise and terrain knowledge to defeat much larger armies.

When the Bijapur Sultanate sent its veteran general Afzal Khan against him, Chhatrapati Shivaji and his advisers arranged a one-on-one meeting at the foot of Pratapgad fort, where he killed Afzal Khan, and the hidden Marathas routed the Khan's army with guerrilla attacks.

When the Mughal noble Shaista Khan invaded Chhatrapati Shivaji's territories for three years, Chhatrapati Shivaji raided his camp at night with only a few soldiers — the Khan escaped, losing a few fingers, and promptly left Maharashtra, in a daring raid resembling the modern-day surgical strike (a military attack intended to damage only a specific target, with minimal wider damage).

In retaliation for the three-year assault, Chhatrapati Shivaji sacked Surat, a wealthy Mughal port city, obtaining treasure worth almost a crore of rupees, while carefully sparing religious places and the house of the charitable Mohandas Parekh. The event was reported even in London's newspapers.

Aurangzeb, insulted by the sacking of Surat, sent the distinguished Rajput general Jai Singh against Chhatrapati Shivaji, who was forced to concede defeat at Purandar Fort, give up part of his kingdom, and send his son Sambhaji into Mughal service.

Persuaded to visit the Mughal court at Agra, Chhatrapati Shivaji was made to stand before Aurangzeb and a general he had defeated; incensed, he stormed out and was put under house arrest. He escaped by distributing gift baskets of fruit and sweets to holy men and Mughal generals until the guards stopped checking them — then hid himself and Sambhaji inside the baskets and fled. Aurangzeb never captured him again.

In 1674, Chhatrapati Shivaji was coronated with full Vedic rites at the mountain fortress of Raigad, taking the formal title "Shri Raja Shiva Chhatrapati" and starting his own era, the Rājyābhisheka shaka. He then embarked on a conquest of the South (the dakṣiṇa-digvijaya), gaining strategic depth against future Mughal invasion.

A fever claimed Chhatrapati Shivaji's life at fifty.

Within his lifetime his exploits had already become legendary:

• Europeans compared him to ancient generals like Alexander.
• The Bundela prince Chhatrasal was so inspired that he carved out an independent kingdom in Bundelkhand.
• The Hindi poet Bhushan travelled to Maharashtra to compose poems in his praise.

The Marathas after Chhatrapati Shivaji

After Chhatrapati Shivaji's death, his son Sambhaji became Chhatrapati. Aurangzeb invaded the Deccan, conquered the Bijapur and Golconda Sultanates, then captured, tortured, and executed Sambhaji before capturing the Maratha capital Raigad. Sambhaji's brother Rajaram fled to Gingee in present-day Tamil Nadu, and though Aurangzeb was unable to subdue the Marathas — who staunchly defended their forts and often had the upper hand — he died in the Deccan still trying.

No longer on the defensive, the Marathas, led by Rajaram's queen Tarabai, made large-scale inroads into Mughal territory, eventually conquering large parts of India.

During this rapid expansion, Chhatrapati Shivaji's centralised state gave way to a more decentralised structure, still nominally centred on the Chhatrapati but with regional chiefs holding more power. The Peshwa (a Persian term for "prime minister") wielded especially great influence, even over the Chhatrapati himself; Peshwa Bajirao I and his son Nanasaheb Peshwa were instrumental in the Marathas' pan-Indian expansion, though the growing power of regional chiefs also brought occasional indiscipline and abuse in stark contrast to Chhatrapati Shivaji's own values.

In their northward expansion the Marathas briefly controlled Lahore, Attock, and even Peshawar, and fought the Afghans; despite a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Panipat in 1761, they recovered quickly under Peshwa Madhavrao I, and Mahadji Shinde recaptured Delhi in 1771, holding it until the British took it three decades later.

In the latter half of the 18th century the Marathas were the British's chief rivals in India, and three Anglo-Maratha wars were fought between 1775 and 1818; owing to increased Maratha internal disunity and the British's superior organisation and technology, the British succeeded in ending Maratha power. In effect, the British took India from the Marathas more than from the Mughals or any other power.

Maratha Administration

Civilian administration

Chhatrapati Shivaji ran a relatively centralised administration:

• He abolished hereditary posts and land assignments common under the Sultans and Mughals.
• Every official was paid a salary from the state treasury.
• Officials were periodically transferred so none accumulated enough power to dictate terms to the king.

He also gave pensions to the widows of soldiers killed in battle, sometimes offering their sons military posts.

In one surviving letter to his officials, he wrote that trees like mango and jackfruit, which take years to mature and which people tend like their own children, should never be cut without genuine need — "if you accomplish something by oppressing others, it perishes soon, along with the oppressor" — a rare direct window into his values as a ruler.

Chhatrapati Shivaji was assisted by an aṣhṭa pradhāna maṇṁala, a council of eight ministers:

• Pradhān — prime minister
• Amātya — finance
• Sachiv — land revenue
• Nyāyādhīsh — chief justice
• Mantrī — intelligence
• Sumant — foreign affairs
• Senāpatī — commander-in-chief
• Pandiṭrāo — head of religious affairs

Beyond running these ministries, the Marathas also raised revenue from provinces not directly under their control, through two kinds of tribute:

• chauth — 25 per cent
• sardeshmukhi — an additional 10 per cent

In return they protected those provinces and left their internal administration untouched — an arrangement the Mughals themselves approved through treaties, and through which some of these provinces eventually joined the Maratha Empire outright.

Military administration

The Maratha armed forces had three parts:

• Infantry
• Cavalry — of two types: bārgīrs, whose horses and equipment were paid for by the state, and shiledārs, who supplied their own
• Navy

In the 18th century the Marathas noticed the superiority of European-style disciplined troops and artillery and tried to raise similar forces themselves; Mahadji Shinde in particular commanded a large European-style army.

Their weaponry included:

• Swords and lances, their preferred weapons
• Guns, in sizable numbers
• Rockets, used in campaigns from Shivaji's own time, with metal-tube rockets in use by 1770

Forts, meanwhile, remained the mainstay of Maratha power throughout, controlling strategic routes and sheltering the army during guerrilla warfare; as Chhatrapati Shivaji's finance minister Ramachandrapant Amatya put it in his treatise Ādnyāpatra, "Forts are the core of the state… a great enemy like Aurangzeb conquered great empires like Bijapur and Bhaganagar […] but it was due to forts that the [Maratha] state survived despite decades of onslaught."

Maritime supremacy

In the 18th century, Kanhoji Angre guided the Marathas to victory in many naval battles through clever use of geography and tactics, despite Maratha ships being less technologically advanced than European ones. European naval strength at the time rested partly on forcing Indians to purchase costly naval trade passes (called cartaz in Portuguese), confiscating any ship without one; the Marathas challenged this practice and began demanding passes from the Europeans themselves, who responded by labelling Kanhoji Angre a "pirate."

Judicial system

The Marathas ran an efficient judicial system notable for its moderate use of capital punishment. Two institutions administered it:

• Panchāyat — a local gathering of officials and prominent men (not to be confused with today's governmental Panchayat), the main body delivering justice, with an appeal possible to a Maratha chief if a verdict felt unsatisfactory
• Kotwāl — a police officer deployed in prominent towns to maintain law and order

Trade networks

Chhatrapati Shivaji encouraged trade and personally took part in maritime foreign trade, sending his own ships as far as Mocha in Yemen, Muscat in Oman, and Malacca in Malaysia carrying cargo like gold and textiles.

He also invested in trade infrastructure:

• Roads, built and maintained
• Ferries, kept up for riverine transport in places like 18th-century Odisha
• Bridges, built over rivers and streams

Cultural Revival

Chhatrapati Shivaji's own seal carried a Sanskrit inscription rather than the prevalent Persian style, declaring his authority as one that "waxes like the new moon, revered by the world, reigns for the welfare of the people." He also commissioned the Rājya-Vyavahāra-Kośa, a treatise providing Sanskrit equivalents for the Persian words common in diplomatic exchanges, considerably reducing foreign loanwords in Maratha diplomacy.

As a devout Hindu who respected other religions, he:

• Adopted a saffron flag for all Marathas
• Rebuilt desecrated temples
• Promoted Sanskrit and Marathi literature, religious institutions, and traditional arts

Perhaps his greatest cultural contribution, though, was simply demonstrating that mighty empires could be defeated, and that Indians could build and administer one of their own.

Two Maratha women left an especially notable cultural mark:

• Tarabai, a fearless warrior queen who ruled in the early 18th century after her husband Rajaram's death, organised the large Maratha armies that invaded Mughal territory in the north — the architect of the northward Maratha expansion, preserving Maratha independence through a critical period
• Ahilyabai Holkar, of the Holkar dynasty ruling around present-day Indore, governed her state wisely for thirty years after losing her husband and son — building and restoring hundreds of temples, ghats, wells, and roads across India (from Kedarnath to Rameswaram), including rebuilding the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and the Somnath temple in Gujarat, both earlier destroyed, and promoting the Maheshwar weaving industry that still thrives today

Elsewhere, the Bhonsles of Nagpur became enthusiastic supporters of local culture, and the Marathas revived the worship of Jagannath at Puri, often interrupted under Mughal rule.

In focus: Thanjavur

Ekoji, Chhatrapati Shivaji's half-brother, conquered the Thanjavur region (present-day Tamil Nadu) in the late 17th century, beginning Maratha rule there and helping create a rich, syncretic culture in which the local Tamil culture, the Telugu culture of former rulers, and the Marathas' own Marathi culture mixed freely; the Thanjavur Marathas were great patrons of the arts, with many rulers themselves poets and dramatists.

Of these, Serfoji II stands out most — well-versed in many Indian and European languages, he:

• Wrote a Marathi play describing world geography
• Patronised musicians during the period when modern Carnatic music took shape, alongside the early stages of Bharatanatyam
• Took a strong interest in medicine, founding the Dhanwantari Mahal, which offered free treatment using both Indian and Western medicine
• Started the first printing press run by a native Indian ruler
• Had the history of the Bhonsle family inscribed on the walls of the Brihadishwara temple — one of the largest single inscriptions in India

The Maratha legacy

Maratha rule challenged Mughal dominance and established the largest Indian empire before the British took over the subcontinent, controlling much of central and northern India. They built an efficient new system of governance, revived local Hindu traditions without religious discrimination, and fought bravely against oppressive and foreign power, driven by the fierce ideal of Swarājya — later inspiring many Indians to believe they could govern themselves, planting early seeds for India's freedom movement.