Maratha Empire: Successors and Peshwas

When the Mughals captured and executed Sambhaji in 1689, his younger brother Rajaram was hastily crowned at Raigad. As Zulfiqar Khan closed in on the capital, Rajaram slipped away to the extreme south in disguise, helped by the commanders Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav, and found refuge in the great triple-hill fortress of Jinji (Gingee), between Arcot and Tiruchirappalli in present-day Tamil Nadu. There he set up his court, while Ramchandra Pant Amatya held the home territories. Aurangzeb sent Zulfiqar Khan to besiege the fort, and the siege of Jinji dragged on from 1690 to 1698. Shortly before the final assault, Rajaram escaped to Vellore, moved north and set up his court at Satara around 1698, where the struggle continued until his death at Sinhagad in 1700.

Shahu was the son of Sambhaji and Yesubai and the grandson of Shivaji. When Raigad fell in 1689, the young prince and his mother were captured, and he spent nearly eighteen years in the Mughal camp, treated with royal courtesy and married into Maratha families in Mughal service. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the Mughals released him on conditions, hoping that a rival claimant would divide the Marathas, and Shahu at once challenged Tarabai, who was ruling as regent for her son Shivaji II. Many Maratha sardars joined him, Dhanaji Jadhav went over to him at Khed, and he went on to take Satara, where he was crowned on 12 January 1708. In 1713 he appointed Balaji Vishwanath as Peshwa, the beginning of the Peshwa ascendancy. The false statement is the one that makes him Rajaram's son: he was Rajaram's nephew, and it was Tarabai's son Shivaji II who was proclaimed in 1700.

Tarabai, née Mohite and the queen of Rajaram, took charge of the Maratha state on her husband's death in March 1700, proclaiming her infant son Shivaji II as Chhatrapati and acting as regent. She personally directed the war against Aurangzeb's forces, and Jadunath Sarkar judged that in 1700-1707 the supreme guiding force in Maharashtra was not any minister but the dowager queen. The Mughals then released Shahu, Sambhaji's son, after Aurangzeb's death in 1707, hoping to divide the Marathas. Shahu defeated her forces at Khed and was crowned at Satara, so Tarabai set up a rival court at Kolhapur in 1709. Statement 3 is false: in 1714 it was Rajaram's other widow, Rajasbai, who deposed Shivaji II and installed her own son Sambhaji II; Sambhaji II then imprisoned Tarabai and her son.

Shahu died without a son in 1749. In his last years Tarabai had presented to him a young man whom she claimed to be her grandson, and Shahu adopted him; he succeeded as Rajaram II. Real power, however, now lay with the Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao (Nanasaheb). In 1750, while the Peshwa was away campaigning, Tarabai urged Rajaram II to remove him from office; when the young king refused, she imprisoned him in a dungeon at Satara on 24 November 1750 and declared him an impostor. With the support of Umabai Dabhade, Damaji Gaekwad marched to her aid but was defeated by Peshwa loyalists. Finding herself isolated, Tarabai made peace with the Peshwa, and on 14 September 1752 the two swore mutual peace at the Khandoba temple in Jejuri. The episode confirmed that after Shahu the Peshwa, not the Chhatrapati, was the effective head of the Maratha state.

With Rajaram far away at Jinji and Aurangzeb holding most of the old swarajya, the Maratha war became a war of moving columns. Its two most celebrated leaders were Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav. In 1689 they attacked the Mughal force besieging Panhala; in 1690 they helped Ramchandra Pant Amatya defeat and capture Sarza Khan near Satara; in late 1692 they came south, took Dharwad and captured Ali Mardan Khan, and forced back Zulfiqar Khan's lines around Jinji. Santaji later killed the Mughal general Himmat Khan in 1696, but he quarrelled with Rajaram, was attacked by Dhanaji on the king's orders and was later killed in an ambush. Dhanaji went on to become Senapati, raided Gujarat in 1705 and, through the mediation of Balaji Vishwanath, went over to Shahu at the time of the Battle of Khed. The other pairs belong to earlier or later generations.

The four events trace the Maratha state from its darkest hour to the settlement of the royal succession. First came the execution of Sambhaji at Tulapur on 11 March 1689, after his capture at Sangameshwar; Raigad fell in the same year and Rajaram fled south. Next, the long siege of Jinji ended when Zulfiqar Khan's forces stormed the fort in January 1698, although Rajaram had already escaped and moved his court to Satara. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the Mughals released Shahu, who defeated Tarabai's forces and was crowned at Satara on 12 January 1708. Last came the Treaty of Warna of April 1731, by which Shahu and Sambhaji II of Kolhapur recognised each other's thrones and fixed the Warana river as their boundary. The order is therefore 4-2-3-1.

On Balaji Vishwanath's death in 1720, Shahu appointed his son Bajirao I as Peshwa, and with that the office passed from father to son. Over the next twenty years Bajirao carried Maratha arms northwards. In Bundelkhand, where Chhatrasal had been besieged by the Mughal commander Muhammad Khan Bangash, he marched in March 1729 with 25,000 horse and forced Bangash to withdraw; Chhatrasal rewarded him with a share of his territory, and Mastani, Chhatrasal's daughter, became his wife. In 1737 he made a sudden dash on Delhi, and although he left the city quickly, the raid caused great dismay and showed how weak the imperial government had become; the defeat of the Nizam at Bhopal followed, and Malwa was ceded. Statement 4 is false. During Nadir Shah's invasion (1738-40) he asked Chimaji Appa to send reinforcements, but he did not fight Nadir; worn out by ceaseless campaigning, he fell ill with fever and died on 28 April 1740, and was cremated on the bank of the Narmada.

The siege of Jinji was one of the longest operations of Aurangzeb's Deccan wars. Zulfiqar Khan, son of the wazir Asad Khan, arrived before the triple-hill fortress around October 1690 and directed the siege for most of its nine-year course. The fort was too large to be encircled effectively, the Raja of Thanjavur supported Rajaram, and Maratha forces kept supplies moving in. In 1692 Santaji Ghorpade and Dhanaji Jadhav came south, captured the Mughal general Ali Mardan Khan and beat back Zulfiqar's lines. The isolation of the Mughal camp bred rumours that the old emperor had died, and in 1693 Kam Bakhsh opened negotiations with Rajaram with a view to his own succession. When Aurangzeb ordered an all- out attack in 1697, Rajaram escaped to Vellore before the final assault, and the fort fell in January 1698; only some of his queens and children were captured. Statements 1, 2 and 4 are correct.