Shivaji was religious, and from all accounts seems to have been proud of being a Hindu. He awarded large gifts to temples as well as priests. However, his pride in his religion does not seem have been grounded in hatred for other religions. Even in those medieval times, his faith seems pragmatic, if not outrightly rational.
Khafi Khan’s Muntakhabu-l Lubab notes, “Shivaji had made a strict rule that wherever his soldiers went they were not to harm mosques, the Quran or women. If he found a volume of the Quran, he would show respect to it and hand it over to a Muslim servant. If any helpless Hindu or Muslim were found, Shivaji would personally look after them until their relatives came to take them.” Likewise, Shivaji’s chief justice, Raghunath Pandit Rao, in a letter of November 2, 1669, writes, “Shrimant Maharaj has ordained that everybody is free to follow his religion and nobody is allowed to disturb it.”
In contrast, Aurangzeb had imposed the ‘jizya’, a mandatory tax intended for non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, in 1679. As the contemporaneous fatwa declares, this amount was to be paid “regardless of whether they agree or disagree, consent to it or not”.
Shivaji’s response to this was bold and clear. Contending that Hinduism and Islam, while different from each other, are equal creations of God, he wrote in a letter to Aurangzeb: “They are different hues used by the true Divine Painter for blending the colours and filling in the outlines of His [God’s] picture of the entire human race.”
“If it be a mosque, the call to prayer is chanted in remembrance of Him. If it be a temple, the bell is rung in yearning for Him only. To show bigotry for any man’s own creed and practices is equivalent to altering the words of the Holy Book. To draw new lines on a picture is equivalent to finding fault with the painter,” he contended.
A ruler’s responsibility
Reminding Aurangzeb of a ruler’s duty towards his subjects, Shivaji writes, “Your peasants are downtrodden; the yield of every village has declined, in the place of a lakh only a thousand, and in the place of a thousand only ten are collected.” He reminds the Mughal autocrat that under his rule “the army is in a ferment, the merchants complain, the Muslims cry, the Hindus are grilled, most men lack bread at night and in the day inflame their own cheeks by slapping them in anguish.”
Not one to back off from a righteous battle even when beseeching for fair play, Shivaji reminded Aurangzeb that many of the forts and provinces “have gone out of your possession, and the rest will soon do so too, because there will be no slackness on my part in ruining and devastating them”.
In his Travels in the Mogul Empire: AD 1656-1668, French traveller Francois Bernier testifies to Shivaji’s conciliatory attitude towards Catholic clergymen he encountered. “I forgot to mention that during pillage of Sourate [Surat], the Holy Seva-ji, respected the habitation of the reverend father Ambrose, the Capuchin missionary. ‘The Frankish Padres are good men’, he said, ‘and shall not be attacked’. He spared also the house of a deceased Delale or Gentile broker, of the Dutch, because he was assured that he had been very charitable while alive. The incident is corroborated by De Thévenot in his Voyages. “All the rest of the town [Surat] was plundered except the monastery of the Capuchins.”
Shivaji’s liberal and progressive attitude with regards to the various religions under his rule, particularly when contrasted with Aurangzeb’s attitudes in this regard, is something that contemporary India can learn from.
The once and future king
Shivaji died on April 3, 1680. That, however, did not stop the project he had set afoot. Despite many setbacks, the discipline and zeal of those who followed managed to rout out the numerically powerful yet otherwise hollow Mughal empire. In less than a century after his death, the empire that Shivaji had brought into existence had taken over much of the erstwhile Mughal territory.
Over two decades after Shivaji had shuffled off his mortal coil, an aged Aurangzeb wrote in a deathbed letter: “The escape of the wretch Shiva took place through [my] carelessness, and I have had to labour hard [against the Marathas] to the end of my life, [as the result of it].”
Shivaji continues to fascinate the politics both of Maharashtra and India at large. During the struggle for independence, revolutionaries from across political stripes drew inspiration from him.
Mahatma Phule’s ballad Chhatrapati Shivaji Raje Bhosale Yancha Powada reflects on Shivaji’s opposition both to the orthodoxy of savarna Hindus in his age as well as Islamic fundamentalism.
The term ‘Svarāja’ was employed by the likes of Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahatma Gandhi et al to champion their causes. “Svarājya is my birth right,” was a popular maxim by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The anti-caste agitation of the Mahad Satyagraha, which took place in Shivaji’s erstwhile capital Raigad, witnessed protestors chanting ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj ki Jai!’. Dr. Ambedkar had extensively covered the coronation controversy in his Who are the Shudras? explaining in detail how the contrivance of the caste Hindus almost stopped Shivaji’s project from becoming a reality. The subject was recounted in Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam founder and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai’s play Shivaji Kanda Hindu Rajyam, which got its lead actor the nom de guerre Shivaji Ganesan. Subramanya Bharati extolled Shivaji in his 190-line poem of the same name exhorting Indians to rise against British tyranny just as Shivaji had risen against the one in his age.
In his statement in the Sessions Court, on June 6, 1929, Bhagat Singh said that a new movement which “has arisen in the country, and of that dawn we have given a warning, is inspired by the ideal which guided Guru Gobind Singh and Shivaji, Kamal Pasha and Riza Khan, Washington and Garibaldi, Lafayette and Lenin.”
From vituperative declamations by his opponents while he lived to overtly hagiographical accounts by his followers, the memory of the man who once wrought havoc on the Mughal empire is now a plaything for politicians hoping to garner votes by extolling his bravery, his intelligence, and his drive. A whole cottage industry of sorts has sprung up to make budget movies and pulpy novels on Shivaji; sometimes verging on the ludicrous, with the gods themselves appearing as characters therein. Many a contradiction is evidenced as self-declared democrats laud a king who ruled in feudal times.
But few visit upon what made Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj such a magnetic figure both while he lived and in centuries hence.
It was not through divine providence but through human will that he fought against a quantitatively larger enemy and wrought a just rule in place of an unjust one, albeit under the auspices of monarchy. It was not merely that he fought well but that he fought for what was right; to empower those who were destitute and to liberate those who were enslaved.
This is the second of a two-part series on Shivaji’s reign.
Published – April 03, 2025 08:30 am IST