The Marathas were the last indigenous empire-builders of India. They leapt intry prominence suddenly and swiftly. In the third decade of the seventeenth century the Marathas were unknown to the world at large, three decades later they inspired terror in the hearts of the rulers of the land! In the second decade of the eighteenth century, the Emperor of Delhi had to recognize their de facto supremacy in the Deccan by granting them Chauth and Sar-Deshmukhi of six provinces of the South. But their activities were not long confined to their immediate neighborhood. Balaji Vishwanath entered Delhi in the train of Syed Husain Ali, Balaji's son Baji Rao I appeared in its environs at the head of his victorious army, Balaji's grandsons became arbiters of the fate of the Mughal empire and carried the Maratha banner to the banks of the Indus. while their cavalry scoured the country from Lahore to Murshidabad, from Delhi to Shrirangapatanam. The rapid expansion of their empire was arrested by the defeat at the third battle of Panipat on 14 January 1761.
At Panipat, the Marathas faced a formidable adversary in the form of Ahmad Shah Abdali (also known as Durrani, gilcha or mahayavan in the Marathi letters). Even though the battle was considered a form of Jihad (Muslims vs. kafir Marathas) by some in Abdali's camp, the Marathas did not receive much help in the military matters from the Rajput Kings of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur or the Jat King Suraj Mal who were Hindus. In fact, Madho Singh of Jaipur, along with Bije Singh' of Marwar played an active role in inviting Abdali to come to India to fight the Marathas. The Shia Nawab of Avadh, Shuja-ud-Daula, considered a heretic by orthodox Muslims, also joined Abdali even though his father Mughal wazir Safdar Jung had been helped immensely by the Marathas in the past. Abdali's wazir Shah Wali Khan and noble Shah Pasand Khan played important roles on the battlefield of Panipat. On the Maratha side, flush with victory over the Nizam at Udgir, Sadashiv Rao Bhau and Vishwas Rao" led the Maratha army even though Peshwa Nana Saheb had sent Raghunath Rao in the North for earlier campaigns. Bhau's army contained several nobles such as Satvoji Jadhavrao, Janakoji Shinde, Antaji Manakeshwar, Naro Shankar, and Ibrahim Khan Gardi who led the French trained infantry and artillery. Govind Pant Bundele was responsible for cutting off supplies going to Abdali's camp and providing money and all kinds of material to Bhau.
The focus of this book is to track the visual and documentary history of the northward expansion of Maratha power at its zenith and on the battlefield of Panipat through a few paintings and the manuscripts not known to the researchers of the Maratha history, and through its principal characters who helped to shape the history of the decade of 1750-60. Unfortunately, not much visual history of this important decade has survived." This book attempts to identify several previously unknown or mis-attributed paintings related to the Maratha military expeditions in North India. It also consolidates viewpoints of the battle of Panipat from Abdali's side as seen in the Persian sources with the texts from the Maratha side. Additionally, it provides a brief narrative of what happened on that fateful day of 14 January 1761 along with a new unpublished painting of the aftermath of the third battle of Panipat.
The exhaustive biography of each principal character is a vast domain beyond the scope of this book. Rather, this book briefly introduces each person and highlights his or her role in the third battle of Panipat, along with noteworthy observations on the paintings themselves. Many narratives of the third battle of Panipat believe in the role of heroes in history whereas the modern history prefers sociological explanations over literary ones. Fables of heroes have been replaced by institutional analysis." Into the list of things to be analyzed fell economy, institutions, parties and politics at the royal courts, money, wages, exploitation, histories of the state and of revenue crisis, peasant revolts, provincial autonomy, and so on. At the same time the so-called heroes were the critical decision makers on the battlefield of Panipat on 14 January 1761, so some attention needs to be paid to the tactical decisions and strategies used by them, thereby consolidating both the viewpoints, because history is, ultimately, about the clash of perspectives. For many, the personal qualities of Bhau or other Maratha nobles were the key reasons behind the momentous defeat," but a systemic analysis of the combatant armies and their nobles, beyond just the heroes has rarely been done. This book attempts to offer a consolidated narrative along with the visual context on what these colliding armies were made of and how they fought on the fateful day of 14 January 1761, thereby changing the course of the history of India.
As Dipesh Chakrabarty writes," "In India, again, history has acquired a strong but different public life. Universities in general do not carry much social authority here, and members of the 'public' outside do not much depend on what history professors say to make up their own minds about what 'really happened in the past. Such popular reconstructions of history-often tied to identity politics associated with regions, religions, caste, or sects-end up fueling activism on the streets, a form of politics that, for good and bad, has become an integral part of Indian democracy. The fundamental concepts, institutions, and practices that define history as a discipline-facts, truth, evidence, bias and objectivity, research, the weighing of evidence, public archives-were actually hammered out in India through lively contestations and exchanges across the public domain and the institutional space of the university." This book is a part of such a contestation in public domain. It doesn't claim to uncover the absolute truth nor it is a popular reconstruction of history, but it is a step forward in the systemic and the tactical analysis of arguably one of the most important battles of eighteenth-century India. The analysis done in this work is not exhaustive; rather, it's just a beginning. This work is mainly a rich collection of primary sources that would be very much useful for further analysis by researchers of Maratha history.
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