Q1.
Based on Chhatrapati Shivaji’s letter, what can you tell about his values as a ruler?
Answer
The letter shows a ruler who held that the needs of the state do not licence force against ordinary people. Even for the navy — his own most prized project — timber was to be taken by permission, and certain trees were not to be touched at all.
| What he writes | The value behind it |
|---|---|
| ‘If needed, secure permission for cutting the trees from the forest and then proceed.’ | Rule by procedure, not by power. Even a legitimate state need must go through consent — the officer’s authority does not by itself make the taking right. |
| ‘Other trees like the mango and jackfruit are also useful, but do not touch them.’ | Restraint. Useful is not the same as available. He draws a firm line the officials may not cross even when it would be convenient. |
| ‘Such trees take many years to mature, and the people look after them like their children. If you cut them, will their sorrow ever end?’ | Empathy, and an understanding of what is irreplaceable. A mango tree is not a plank of wood — it is decades of a family’s care. Compensation cannot restore it. |
| ‘If you accomplish something by oppressing others, it perishes soon, along with the oppressor.’ | A political principle, not only a moral one. He argues that gains built on oppression are unstable — so justice is also good statecraft. |
| ‘There is harm in the absence of such trees as well.’ | Foresight about resources. Stripping the countryside of fruit trees damages the country itself — an early recognition of what we would now call environmental cost. |
| ‘Therefore, do not use force in any circumstances.’ | No exceptions. The order is absolute, which is what makes it enforceable — an official cannot argue that his case was special. |
Why this is more than a kind sentiment: notice that Shivaji gives reasons, not just commands. He tells his officers why the rule exists — the years a tree takes, the family’s attachment, the instability of gains got by oppression. A ruler who explains his orders is training judgement in his officials, so that they behave well in situations his letter did not anticipate. That is the same instinct as paying salaries from the treasury and transferring officials: build a system that behaves well even when the king is not watching.
The same values appear elsewhere in the chapter, which is how we know the letter was not an isolated fine phrase:
- At Surat he took an enormous treasure but was careful not to attack religious places, and spared the house of Mohandas Parekh, a charitable man.
- He gave pensions to widows of soldiers killed in battle, and offered military posts to their sons.
- He forbade the Dutch from trading slaves in the South, when no other Indian power was opposing the practice.
- He abolished hereditary posts and land assignments so that officials could not build private power over the people they governed.
Did you know? The instruction ‘not to forcefully grab even a blade of grass’ is not a figure of speech invented by the textbook — grass was fodder, and an army’s horses needed it daily. Forbidding officials to seize fodder was a real and expensive restriction on a cavalry state.