Shivaji: The Grand Rebel

by Dennis Kincaid

We discover a man who is intelligent, quick-witted, a master planner and strategist, brave and chivalrous, who unerringly seeks out his opponent’s weakness, and uses it to destroy him.

“Their manners are simple and honest. They are proud and reserved. If any one is kind to them, he can be sure of their gratitude, but if any one injures them they will take their revenge. They will risk their lives to wipe out dishonour. If any one in distress appeals to them, they will lay aside all thought of self in their anxiety to help. Even if they have an insult to avenge, they never fail to warn their enemy. In battle, if they pursue the fugitives they always spare all who surrender. . . . These men love study and there are many heretics among them.”

“Like a jewel among pebbles,” he wrote, “like a sapphire among jewels, is the excellence of the Marathi tongue. Like the jasmine among blossoms, the musk among perfumes, the peacock among birds, the Zodiac among the stars, is Marathi among languages.”

there were many saints in Hindu India, but only one man with the destiny of Shivaji; the Hindu cause now needed heroes and armies rather than minstrels and hermits.

“his life was simple even to parsimony; his manners void of insolence or ostentation; as a sovereign most humane and solicitous for the well-being of his people . . . the same principles of frugality and expense were observed in the municipal disbursements of his government; far superior himself to magnificence, none of his officers were led to expect more than competence. In personal activity he exceeded all of whom there is record. He met every emergency . . . with instant discernment and unshaken fortitude. . . . Respected as the guardian of the nation he had founded he moved everywhere amongst them with unsuspicious security and often alone.”

“He is,” wrote an English factor, “very nimble and active, imposing strange labour on himself that he may endure hardship, and also exercises his chiefest men that he flies to and fro with incredible dexterity.” There has never been so skilful a guerrilla leader as Shivaji, and the Moguls were bewildered by his tactics.

“There is no medicine against Fate,”

The revenue system of Shivaji is the basis of the present agricultural administration in British India.

It was inevitable that for lack of other intellectuals Brahmans should predominate among Shivaji’s ministers; but it was unfortunate. One day the power of the Brahman officials would grow so great that a Brahman Mayor of the Palace would eclipse Shivaji’s descendants.

It is a measure of Shivaji’s military talent that at the moment of his apparent triumph he was particularly concerned to ensure his kingdom against future reverses.

He wrote to Ramdas: “It were good if God would summon me to His feet. I cannot longer bear being separated from my mother.”