After Shivaji: from survival to pan-Indian empire

Detail

The crisis: Sambhaji and the Mughal push into the Deccan

• Shivaji had two sons — Sambhaji and Rajaram. Sambhaji succeeded his father as Chhatrapati (the Maratha king's title).
• At this moment the Marathas were the only obstacle to total Mughal control of the Deccan. Every other power in the south was falling.
• Aurangzeb finished off the two big Deccan sultanates first:
• Bijapur (the Adil Shahi kingdom) — annexed in 1686 [2].
• Golconda (the Qutb Shahi kingdom) — annexed in 1687 [2].

• With both gone, only the Marathas were left to fight.

• Aurangzeb's men then captured Sambhaji. He was tortured and executed — Britannica dates the ambush, capture and execution to 1689 [2].

• The Mughals also took Raigad, the Maratha capital fort. Aurangzeb believed at this point that he had finished the Marathas off [2].
• Aurangzeb also captured Sambhaji's son Shahu, who grew up in Mughal custody [2].

Rajaram and the war moving south

• Rajaram (Sambhaji's half-brother) became the next ruler and fled to Gingee in present-day Tamil Nadu. Britannica describes this as moving his base into "the Tamil country", where Shivaji too had earlier kept an interest [2].
• Result: the Mughal–Maratha war spread into south India. It was no longer a fight over a few hill forts in Maharashtra.
• The Maratha way of fighting now was fort defence plus raiding:
• They defended their fortresses staunchly, giving up ground slowly and taking it back.

• Mughal armies had to sit through long sieges far from home.

• Aurangzeb could not leave the Deccan. He spent the rest of his life there and died (1707) without subduing the Marathas. Britannica: Maratha resistance was so stubborn that even after nearly two decades of struggle Aurangzeb failed to subdue them completely [2].

Tarabai: from defence to attack

• Tarabai, Rajaram's queen, took charge after him and led the Marathas into large-scale inroads (raids) into Mughal territory.
• This is the turning point of the whole story:
• Before: Marathas fight to survive inside Maharashtra.

• After: Marathas ride out and conquer large parts of India.

• Tarabai stayed a rival power even later. Britannica notes the Kolhapur line came from Rajaram and Tarabai, and that in 1708 she refused to accept Shahu's rule and dealt with Mughal court groups to weaken him [2].

The structural change: centralised state to decentralised empire

• Shivaji had built a centralised state — the king controlled the forts, the pay and the revenue.
• After the long war this changed into a decentralised structure:
• Still nominally centred on the Chhatrapati (in name, the king is head).

• But chiefs on the ground held real power, because they had raised and paid their own troops during the war years.

• The Peshwa — a Persian word meaning 'prime minister' — became the strongest office.

• The Peshwa came to wield great influence, even over the Chhatrapati.

• Britannica calls the Peshwa the chief minister of the Maratha confederacy, and dates Bajirao I as Peshwa from 1720 to 1740, during the reign of Shahu (1708–49) [3][4].

• Bajirao I and his son Nanasaheb Peshwa (Balaji Bajirao) drove the pan-Indian expansion.

• Britannica: after Bajirao I's death in 1740, Balaji Bajirao — popularly called Nana Saheb — inherited a state that had already pushed its influence into Malwa and Gujarat [3].

Good rule, but real abuses

• Rule under the Marathas was generally good.
• But the autonomy of regional chiefs (freedom to act on their own) bred occasional indiscipline and abuse.
• The clearest bad example: the ten-year campaign in Bengal, which brought much cruelty on common people.
• This stands in stark contrast with Shivaji's values — Shivaji had strict rules against harming farmers, women and places of worship.

The northern high point and Panipat 1761

• At their peak the Marathas briefly controlled Lahore, Attock and even Peshawar — the far north-west, near the Afghan frontier.
• That reach brought them straight into the Afghans.
• Third Battle of Panipat, 14 January 1761 — a disastrous defeat.
• Fought between the Afghan Durrani chief Ahmad Shah Durrani and Sadashiv Rao Bhau of the Maratha army [5].

• Durrani won; Britannica marks the victory as the beginning of the decline of Maratha dominance [5].

• Recovery was quick, under Peshwa Madhavrao I. Britannica: after Panipat, Madhavrao I became Peshwa and helped rebuild Maratha authority in many of their core territories; he died in 1772 [3][4].

• Mahadji Shinde (Scindia) recaptured Delhi in 1771. The Marathas then held Delhi until the British took it about three decades later.

Note: Britannica says the "effective control of the peshwas ended with the great defeat of Panipat (1761) and the death of the young peshwa Madhav Rao I" [4]. The NCERT scaffold stresses the quick recovery under Madhavrao I and the recapture of Delhi in 1771 — keep the NCERT version: Panipat was a setback, not the end.

Prelims Hooks

• Peshwa is a Persian word meaning 'prime minister'.
• Aurangzeb annexed Bijapur in 1686 and Golconda in 1687 [2].
• Sambhaji was captured and executed in 1689; the Mughals took the capital Raigad [2].
• Rajaram shifted the Maratha base to Gingee in present-day Tamil Nadu.
• Tarabai was Rajaram's queen; the Kolhapur line descends from the two of them [2].
• Bajirao I was Peshwa 1720–1740, under Chhatrapati Shahu (1708–49) [3].
• Nanasaheb Peshwa = Balaji Bajirao, son of Bajirao I, Peshwa from 1740 [3].
• Third Battle of Panipat: 14 January 1761 — Ahmad Shah Durrani (Abdali) vs Sadashiv Rao Bhau [5].
• Madhavrao I led the recovery after Panipat; died 1772 [3][4].
• Mahadji Shinde (Scindia) recaptured Delhi in 1771.
• Maratha northern reach briefly included Lahore, Attock and Peshawar.

Mains Points

• Why Aurangzeb's Deccan "victory" was actually his ruin. Killing Sambhaji and taking Raigad looked like the end of the Marathas, but the war simply broke into many local wars across the Deccan and Tamil country. Aurangzeb was pinned in the south for nearly two decades and died there without a settled peace [2]. Use this to argue that the Deccan campaigns drained Mughal money and men and prepared the ground for Mughal collapse after 1707.
• Decentralisation: strength and weakness at once. The shift from Shivaji's centralised state to a Peshwa-led, chief-driven structure is what made pan-Indian expansion possible — local chiefs could act fast and far. The same freedom produced indiscipline, as in the ten-year Bengal campaign. Good answer line: the Maratha polity traded control for reach.
• Women and leadership in a war state. Tarabai's shift from defence to organised raids into Mughal land shows a queen directing strategy at the empire scale, not merely holding a regency. She remained an independent power centre after 1708 [2].
• Panipat 1761 as a setback, not a full stop. Britannica reads Panipat as the start of Maratha decline [5]; NCERT stresses the fast rebuild under Madhavrao I and Mahadji Shinde's recapture of Delhi in 1771. The honest answer holds both: Maratha power survived till the Anglo-Maratha wars ended in 1818, but the single-command, all-India ambition never fully returned.