Bharat Ek Khoj | Episode-38 | Shivaji, Part II

Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India
A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster
Episode 38: Shivaji, Part II

With Naseeruddin Shah as Shivaji, Om Puri as Aurangzeb, Achyut Potdar as Shahfi, Sunila Pradhan as Jiiabai, Ahmed Kahn as Afzal Khan, Sudhir Kulkarni as Gopinath Pant, Chandrakant Kale as Shridhar Pant, Ravindra Sathe as Sampat Rao, Vishwajit Pradhan as Rustam Khan, and Ayub Khan as Yaqub Khan. Playback by Ravindra Sathe, Chandrakant Kale, and Madhuri Purandhare. Script by Govind P. Deshpande.

Nehru noted that Shivaji, having openly raised the standard of revolt, sacked the city of Surat, sparing the English and their factory, and enforced the Chowth (one-fourth) tax payment, as he did in other distant parts of the Mughal dominions in western India.

Since the Marathas stood no chance of driving them off, there is negotiation conducted by Afzal’s trusted envoy Krishnaji Shastry. Shivaji would make a token recognition of Bijapur’s suzerainty and Afzal would leave Shivaji in undisturbed possession of his forts. In making Shivaji’s personal submission, the two men meet at the foot of the Pratapgarh hill after supposedly dispensing with their individual attendants and weapons. When they embrace, Shivaji lethally sinks a hidden weapon into Afzal’s abdomen killing him, and leads the Marathas to victory.

The Mughal army relentlessly harries every fort and captures Pune, Shivaji’s capital, where Shaista takes residence. As the ballad describes the events, Shivaji enters the heavily fortified city in disguise, crawls into Shaista’s bedroom, and injures him. Shaista escapes, and the raiders withdraw without plunder but the affair is a blow to Mughal pride.

Breaking out of the hills in 1664, Shivaji leads his forces north into Gujarat and ransacks the great port of Surat for forty days, sparing only the well- defended English ‘factory’ (fortified warehouse). Aurangzeb now sends another large Mughal army, under the valorous Jai Singh who secures fort after fort. By 1665, Shivaji, cornered near Purandhar, sues again for terms. A sincere jai Sigh counsels Shivaji to combine Shakti (might) with Yukti (logic). jai Singh also advises him to travel to Agra to attend the emperor in person, and sends his son Ram Singh as a surety for Shivaji’s safety. Shivaji feels slighted at Aurangzeb’s court where his presence is barely acknowledged as a 5000-Mansabdar. After an angry encounter with the emperor, he is detained in a virtual house arrest. True to form, the mortified Shivaji escapes buried in a basket of confectionary and reaches Maharashtra unharmed.

In 1674, Shivaji appoints himself as Chhatrapati (king) and remains an independent sovereign till his death in 1680, leaving a Maratha kingdom of great but ill-defined extent. In the early decades of the 18th century, the Marathas act collectively, but by 1740, the big Maratha families begin to peel away, although they recognise the authority of the Peshwa of Pune. In the wake of Ahmed Shah Abdali’s plunder of Delhi in 1756 and subsequent withdrawal, Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao pushes into the Punjab. But without the support of the Rajputs and Jats, the political advantage is lost and the Marathas go under decisively to Abdali’s Afghan army at Panipat in 1761.

As Nehru comments, the Panipat defeat of the Marathas weakened them no end, just when the British East India Company was emerging as an important territorial power of India.

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