Maratha Empire

“ That some historic truth lies below the garbled tale of shipwreck and resurrection is partly proved by the physical traits of their descendants,—of those men, in fact, whose immediate ancestors, employed at first as messengers or spies of Maratha chieftains, by innate cleverness, tact, and faculty for management gradually welded together the loose Maratha confederacy and became directors of the internal and external politics of the Peshwa's dominions. ”

“ Finding no longer any employment under settled and legitimate authority in defending the life, property, and independence of the people, they were obliged to seek it around the standards of lawless freebooters; and upon the ruins of these independent kingdoms and their disbanded armies rose the Marāthā power, the hydra-headed monster which Aurangzēb thus created by his ambition, and spent the last twenty years of his life in vain attempts to crush. ”

“ By that time, also, the Marathas in South-West India were declaring themselves the champions of the Hindu religion against the Mohammedan oppression; and to the Sikhs and Marathas the dislocation of the Moghul empire may be very largely attributed. We have here a notable example of the dynamic power upon politics of revolts that are generated by [Pg 447] religious fermentation, and a proof of the strength that can be exerted by a pacific inorganic polytheism in self-defence, when ambitious rebels proclaim themselves defenders of a faith. ”

“ Thus a confederation was formed of which the Brahman pēshwa or head was at Poona, governing the adjacent territories, while the members, belonging to the lower castes, were scattered throughout the continent of India. Such was the Mahratta Empire which supplanted the Mogul Empire. The Mahratta power grew and prospered till it embraced all western and most of central India. Its culminating point was reached about 1750, or about a century after Sivaji first rebelled against his Mahommedan sovereign. ”

“ Every man who was not lost to reason and loyalty would be recovered; and the few that resisted, if any did, would soon be reduced. This mode of settlement would, it may be stated, give a triumph to the army, establish a dangerous precedent, and violate fundamental principles of the Indian Government: but it is not principles, but an empire, that is in danger: and what other course can be adopted? ”

“ The position of Sattara was defined by a treaty made on the conquest of the Marathá territory in 1818. Pertâb Sahib, the then rajá, a descendant of Sivaji, who established the Marathá power in 1644, was the nominal ruler, but for several generations the imperial authority had been allowed to fall into the hands of the peshwas or mayors of the palace. By the treaty of 1818 the greater part of the southern Marathá territory was annexed by the East India Company, Sattara being especially reserved for the rajá. ”

“ Up to the year 1757 the unwarlike inhabitants of Bengal had been the prey of the Mughal or the Maráthá. But in 1765, so far as could be judged, neither was to be feared. The Maráthá power had suffered in 1761, on the field of Pánípat, near Delhi, one of the most crushing defeats ever inflicted on a people, and Clive had no power of divining that the genius of a young member of one of their ruling families, who escaped wounded from the field, would, in a few years, raise the Maráthá power to more than its pristine greatness. As for the Mughal, his power was gone for ever ”

“ In the various Marātha services there are very little more than a bare majority who are Marāthas by caste, and very few instances occur of their ever entering into the infantry at all. The sepoys in the pay of the different princes are recruited in Hindustān, and principally of the Rājpūt and Pūrbia caste; these are perhaps the finest race of men in the world for figure and appearance ”

“ Among the Marutse the king has a despotic power extending to the land as well as to the population; until the time however of the present ruler, whose rule is that of a tyrant, it has very rarely happened that any king has stretched his right to interfere with private property. During their own lifetime the reigning sovereigns appoint their successors; these may be of either sex, provided they are born of a Marutse mother—and women are especially welcome as sovereigns among the northern tribes, on the presumption that they are less cruel than men. ”

“ The siege was raised, and the Prince's general, Kamgar Khan, led the army about the country with apparently no object but that of plunder. This suited the Marathas, but did not suit Law. On one occasion he was ordered with his own troops and a body of Marathas to capture the little fort of Soupy. The French stormed it at three o'clock in the morning, but found that the Marathas, who had carefully avoided the breach, had swarmed the walls, where there was no one to oppose them, and were carrying off the plunder. ”

“ In the history of the world there is no more wonderful story than that of the making of the British Empire in India. It was not the result of deliberate design. The early English settlers on the coasts of India thought only of protecting the small tracts of territory conceded to them against aggression from native princes and European rivals. For a long time they never dreamt even of questioning the sovereign rights of the native princes who exercised authority in the territories nearest to their possessions. ”

“ The result proved that the princes of Central India preferred the safe position they held under British suzerainty to aiding mutinied soldiers to restore a dynasty which they had been the first to trample under foot. Such thoughts did not, in those early days, present themselves to the minds of the 'irresponsible chatterers.' They believed that the expulsion of the English from Dehlí, and the proclamation of Bahádur Sháh as sovereign of India, was the consummation of the movement prematurely set on foot at Mírath. ”

“ He will hire a boy to attend him with a lantern at night, or to take care of his shoes when he goes to a friend’s house and hold them before him when he comes out. Well-to-do Marāthas have usually in their service a Brāhman clerk known as divānji or minister, who often takes advantage of his master’s want of education to defraud him. A Marātha seldom rises early or goes out in the morning. He will get up at seven or eight o’clock, a late hour for a Hindu, and attend to business if he has any or simply idle about chewing or smoking tobacco and talking till ten o’clock. ”

“ In the great scale of rank and eminence which is one peculiar feature of Hindu institutions the Marātha holds a very inferior situation, being just removed one degree above those castes which are considered absolutely unclean. ”

“ Whether the integrity of the empire could have been maintained despite the degeneracy of the later descendents of the house of Timur is very doubtful, but there is no doubt that the maintenance of the kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda as states in subordinate alliance with the empire would have been the most effective check to its enemies, the Marathas. ”

“ Yet ‘at present there are but three churches in India, the chief of which was aided in construction by Hindu contribution.’ The India Journals and Letters of Martyn must be read in the light of all this.
It was thus that the successive generations of soldiers and civilians who won for Christian England its Indian Empire in the century from Clive to Wellesley, Hastings, and Dalhousie, were de-Christianised. ”

“ In India the outbreak of war with France encouraged the Maráthás, who dominated the country from Mysore to the Ganges, in the hope of expelling the British, by acting in conjunction with Haidar Alí. Hastings found that a French agent was intriguing with them, and took prompt measures against them. ”

“ Results are always doubtful in war.”
Madras Presidency on the southeast coast of India contains the flat, spacious, sea-girt city of Madras, and Conjeeveram, the Golden City, capital site of the Pallava dynasty whose kings ruled during the early centuries of the Christian era. In modern Madras Presidency the nonviolent ideals of Mahatma Gandhi have made great headway; the white distinguishing “Gandhi caps” are seen everywhere. In the south generally the Mahatma has effected many important temple reforms for “untouchables” as well as caste-system reforms. ”

“ The occasion was worthy of so large a force, for three of the Maratha chiefs, Peshwa, Holkar and Bonsla, had thrown in their lot with the Pindaris. The Marathas were speedily weakened by three defeats at Kirki, Sitabaldi and Mahidpur; and part of the armies were then turned upon the Pindaris in converging columns, so as to break them up completely. Defeat after defeat of these free-booters followed, for every man's hand was against them. ”

“ The centre of India was occupied by the great princes of the Mahratta nation, who, though subdued by Lord Wellesley, were uneasy under their altered circumstances, and were dreaming of the restoration of their national greatness. Their nominal head was the Peishwa resident at Poonah, and now placed under a subsidiary treaty with the English. These princes kept up communications among themselves. Agents from Poonah were at all their courts, and some of them certainly engaged War with the Pindaries and Mahrattas. ”

“ In plain language, Lord Dalhousie believed that the natives of India, the princes as well as the people, had become 'entirely indifferent to the condition of the King of Dehlí or his position,' and, considering the danger of retaining an 'imperium in imperio' in the very heart of the ancient capital of India, he had desired to take the opportunity of the death of the immediate representative of the House of Taimur to sweep away all the privileges and prerogatives which had kept alive a pretentious mock royalty in the heart of the empire. ”

“ Sikhs and Rajpoots threw off its yoke; hereditary kingdoms were clutched for themselves out of the wreck by its ambitious viceroys; in 1739 the Persian Nadir Shah plundered the treasures of Delhi; after him came fresh hordes of Afghan horsemen. The greatest power in India was now the Mahratta Confederacy, under hereditary ministers bearing the title of Peshwa, who, like the Mayors of the Palace in Old France, usurped all real power, keeping Sivajee's unworthy heirs in sumptuous seclusion; a form of government that has often been brought about in Oriental States. ”

“ Meanwhile Daulat Rao Sindhya and Raghuji Bhonsla had been in communication regarding the action to be taken by them as a protest against the treaty Of Bassein, for they contested the right of the Peshwa to conclude such a treaty without consulting the other members of the Maratha confederacy. ”

“ But the real loss of Surat was not to be estimated by the booty which the Marathas carried off. The trade of this, the richest port of India, was practically destroyed. For several years after Shivaji's withdrawal from it, the town used to throb with panic every now and then, whenever any Maratha force came within a few days' march of it, or even at false alarms of their coming. On every such occasion the merchants would quickly remove their goods to ships, the citizens would flee to the villages, and the Europeans would hasten to Swally. ”

“ Satara was their original capital, but there were powerful Mahratta governments established at Poona, Gwalior, Nagpur, Indore, and Baroda; and, towards the close of the eighteenth century, they started on a career of conquest which made them masters of India from Delhi to Cape Comorin—a career which was only checked by the rising power of the British. ”

“ When the war with the Marathas was concluded, he took his family away; but Chunda Sahib left his, fearing, perhaps, the result of the intrigues, which were going on against him. These became too soon apparent; the Marathas retired; but, secretly excited by the court of Arcot, they soon returned, and surrounded Trichinopoly, which they took, after a siege of three months; and, having appointed one of their leaders, Morari Row, to be its governor, they sent Chunda Sahib, whom they had made prisoner, to be confined in a fortress near Sattarah. ”

“ From century to century the history is dreary in the extreme: and any one who studies it hears with astonishment the notions of foreign censors of the British occupation of India. That our possession of India should be blamed is natural and reasonable enough; but nothing can be wilder than the supposition that the inhabitants were a peaceful and prosperous and contented people, living under rulers who treated them well, and made a nation of them. ”

“ There was but one point regarding which he had doubts, and that was whether the proud Muhammadan nobles to whom, in the days of the glories of the Mughal empire, great estates had been granted in Bengal, would tamely submit to a system which would give to the Western invaders all the actual power, and to the chief of their own class and religion only the outer show. ”

“ Yet, in their schemes, the absence of such a programme had left the empire conquered on the morrow of the Pánípat of 1526, an empire without root in the soil, dependent absolutely on continued military success; liable to be overthrown by the first strong gust; not one whit more stable than the empires of the Ghaznivides, the Ghors, the Khiljis, the Tughlaks, the Saiyids, the Lodís, which had preceded it. That it was not more stable was proved by the ease with which the empire founded by Bábar succumbed, in the succeeding reign, to the attacks of Sher Sháh. ”

“ No Indian author makes even the faintest allusion to him, nor is there any trace of Hellenic influence in the evolution of Indian society, or in the elaborate institutions with which India was endowed by the Mauryan dynasty that followed immediately on the disruption of Alexander's empire. ”