Shivaji The Grand Rebel

by Dennis Kincaid

It was on the allegiance of the Rajput clans that Akbar had based the stability of his empire. Rajput nobles were tempted to court and appointed to high office, Rajput princesses were accepted in marriage by the Emperors. Rajput dress was copied and the Rajput style and idiom sensibly affected the art of the Imperial capital. But the Rajputs had never accepted as inevitable the Mogul domination. And Jai Sing, with his Rajput’s age-old traditions of an almost endless crusade against Islam, accepted the command against a Hindu leader with a heavy heart; perhaps only his soldier’s oath of allegiance to the Emperor overcame his hesitation. The Emperor had assured him in phrases as cordial as they were rare in Aurangzeb’s mouth that only he could restore the military situation on the southern frontier. He had risen from the Peacock Throne and placed round Jai Sing’s neck his own pearl necklace. Yet, like so many Rajputs of that time, Jai Sing felt increasingly uneasy at the position of Hindus in the Empire; the tolerance of former reigns had given place to hardening discrimination. Jai Sing must have felt like a pagan general in the days of Theodosius, serving without enthusiasm in his old age under the lengthening shadow of the Labarum, but tied by a lifetime of memories and associations to the profession of arms.