Episode 22 The Mughals and Marathas

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Alamgir, son of Shah Jahan and also known as Aurangzeb, was the sixth emperor of the  Mughal Empire, ruling from July 1658 until his death in 1707. Under the skilled leadership of Alamgir’s famous general Shivaji, the Mughal empire eventually spanned most of the Indian subcontinent.

Alamgir was an orthodox Sunni Muslim, who regarded hunting, music, painting and poetry as frivolous. He also restored restraints on Hinduism and levied a tax on Hindu festivals. He only destroyed the temples of rebellious provinces and helped fund temples in regions that remained loyal to his regime.

In addition to fighting more or less continuous guerilla warfare in various Hindu regions, he also struggled to put down a Sikh* rebellion in the Punjab. The Sikhs eventually established their own independent state in the early 18th century.

Alamgir spent the last 26 years of his life fighting the Marathas in Deccan, while struggling with continuous raids by the British and Portuguese navy, as well as pirates, on his western coast. As the emperor had no navy, he was virtually helpless to prevent them raiding his merchant ships and coastal cities.

The Marathas started as independent Hindu farmers who attracted many followers after sacking the prosperous city of Sarat (in Gujarat). Alamgir’s campaigns against them were largely unsuccessful. Towards the end of his life, the empire’s growing indebtedness (owing to continual war) led to increasing political fragmentation. When he couldn’t pay his generals, they became warlords and began keeping tax revenues for themselves.

In 1674 Maratha leader Chhatrapati Maharaj carved out his own independent kingdom from sultanate of Bijapur and proclaimed himself emperor of the Maratha Empire. Renaming himself Shivaji, he replaced Persian with Barati as the official language. By the time of his death in 1680, he ruled over 50,000 square miles, enabling the Marathas to remain the predominant rulers in Deccan.

The Maratha generals eventually became the predominant ruling force in the Delhi region, as well. As such, they engaged in three major wars against the British (1775-1782, 1803-1805 and 1817-1818). The British victory in the final war ended the Marathas’ dream of controlling all of India.

* Sikhism, drawing on both Hindu traditions and Islamic monotheism, arose as a separate religion in the 16th century

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