NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 3 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

The Marathas were a people of the Deccan plateau, more specifically of present-day Maharashtra, identified with the language they speak — Marathi, which has had a rich and continuous literary history since the 12th century. They became the largest pan-Indian power because three separate advantages came together: a cultural foundation laid before them, a military method suited to their own land, and an administration that kept power with the state rather than with individuals.

1. The foundation was cultural before it was political. Between the 7th and the 17th centuries, saints across India preferred the path of bhakti to merely external ritualism and composed in the languages of the masses. In Maharashtra, Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram and Ramdas translated texts like the Upaniṣhads and the Bhagavad Gītā into Marathi; some also worked on social organisation and political awareness, much as the Sikh gurus did. The chapter is explicit about the result: society ‘acquired a solid cultural foundation, which later helped the Marathas to organise themselves into a political power’. Earlier Maratha chiefs had tried for sovereignty in the 17th century and failed — what they lacked was not courage but unity.

2. Chhatrapati Shivaji turned that foundation into a state. Born in 1630 in the Bhonsle clan to Shahji and Jijabai, he began campaigning at just sixteen, first taking neglected and unoccupied forts around Pune and strengthening them. Against the Bijapur Sultanate and then the Mughals he used guerrilla warfare — small groups, speed, surprise and knowledge of the terrain. He founded a navy in 1657, something neither Bijapur nor the Mughals maintained properly, was crowned at Raigad in 1674, and in 1677 carried out the dakṣhiṇa-digvijaya into present-day northern Tamil Nadu and parts of Karnataka.

3. The state survived the hardest test. Aurangzeb conquered Bijapur and Golconda, executed Sambhaji and captured Raigad — and still could not finish the Marathas. Rajaram simply moved the war south to Gingee; the Marathas held their forts, often had the upper hand in battles and skirmishes, and Aurangzeb died in the Deccan without subduing them (1682–1707). Twenty-five years of resistance is what turned a regional kingdom into a battle-hardened power.

4. Then it expanded across India. Tarabai, Rajaram’s queen, saw that with the Mughal army pinned in the Deccan north India lay unprotected, and sent large armies northward — the chapter calls her the architect of the northward Maratha expansion. Peshwa Bajirao I and his son Nanasaheb drove the pan-Indian expansion; Maratha control over Delhi began in 1754; Mahadji Shinde recaptured Delhi in 1771 and held it for three decades. At its widest the Maratha reach touched Lahore, Attock and even Peshawar.

Maratha governance had six clear features: a salaried and transferable civil service, a council of eight ministers, a protection-for-revenue tax system outside the directly ruled area, a three-armed military built around forts, a local and appealable justice system, and active state support for trade and transport.

1. Civilian administration. Chhatrapati Shivaji set up a relatively centralised administration. He abolished hereditary posts — normal practice under the Sultans and the Mughals — and abolished land assignments, paying every government official a salary out of the state treasury instead. Many officials were periodically transferred. He also gave pensions to widows of soldiers killed in battle and offered military posts to their sons.

2. The aṣhṭa pradhāna manḍala — the council of eight ministers who assisted the Chhatrapatī, the sovereign king (Fig. 3.13):

3. Revenue beyond the borders. From provinces not directly under them — in the Deccan and in north India — the Marathas levied chauth (25 per cent) and sardeshmukhi (a further 10 per cent). In return they protected those provinces and did not interfere in their internal administration. The Mughals approved the arrangement through various treaties, and over time some of these provinces became part of the Maratha Empire.

4. Military administration. The armed forces had three parts — infantry, cavalry and navy. The cavalry had two kinds of soldier: bārgīrs, whose horses and equipment the state paid for, and shiledārs, who paid for their own. Swords and lances were preferred, but guns were used in sizable numbers; rockets were used from Shivaji’s own days, and metal tube rockets by 1770. In the 18th century the Marathas noticed the superiority of European-style disciplined troops and artillery and tried to raise such units — Mahadji Shinde had a large European-style army. Underlying all of it were the forts, which controlled important routes and sheltered the army during guerrilla warfare.

5. Judicial system. It was efficient and remarkable for its moderation in using capital punishment. The panchāyat — a local gathering of officials and prominent men, not today’s governmental Panchayat — delivered justice, and an unsatisfactory verdict could be appealed to a Maratha chief. In prominent towns such as Pune and Indore, a kotwāl (police) maintained law and order.

6. Trade and public works. Shivaji encouraged trade and took part in maritime foreign trade himself: he and his officials owned ships that sailed to Mocha in Yemen, Muscat in Oman and Malacca in Malaysia, carrying cargo such as gold and textiles. Roads were built and maintained, bridges were thrown across rivers and streams, and in places such as Odisha a network of ferries was kept up for riverine transport in the 18th century.

The Maratha impact was political, administrative, cultural and finally inspirational — and the chapter ends by saying the last of these mattered most.