Mdhava Rão Sindhia and the Hindú reconquest of India

Contents

PAOEtf

Pedigree of Sindhia 10

Chap. I. Introductory r n~33

II. Sindhia at Panipat 34-57

III. From the Restoration of the Emperor to the

Peace of Salbai . . . . . . 58-86

IV. Delhi Politics under the Restored Empire . 87-103 V. Sindhia's First Administration . . . 104-131

VI. Sindhia and Ghulam Kadir .... 132-144

VII. Sindhia and General de Boigne . . . 145-162

VIII. Sindhia in Apogee 163-181

IX. Last Days, Death, and Character. . . 182-203

NOTE

The orthography of proper names follows the system adopted by the Indian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That system, while adhering to the popular spelling of very well-known places, such as Punjab, Poona, Deccan, &c, employs in all other cases the vowels with the following uniform sounds : —

a, as in woman : a, as in father : », as in kin : % as in intrigue : 0, as in cold : w, as in bwll : u, as in rwle.

PEEFACE

In the following pages an attempt has been made to interest the reader in a remote and, at first sight, unattractive subject. The excuse is hinted on the titlepage. The man of whom we treat was an Indian ruler of exceptional capacity in times of exceptional difficulty. Born before the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah he lived to within ten years of Lord Lake's occupation of the same imperial city. His life, therefore, exactly corresponds to the hour between the darkness of anarchy and the dawn of order, while his labours helped to make it pass. Himself a lover of order, he did what in him lay to clear away the worst havoc of war and rapine, and the consequent demoralisation: and to prepare the shattered fabric of society for restoration and reform. Hindustan, by which we are to understand the Northern Provinces of the Mughal Empire, had for a time been civilised and prosperous. Ta vernier, writing about 1669, speaks of Shah Jahan, then lately dead, as ' that great king during whose reign there was such a strictness in the civil government, and particularly for the security of the highways, that there was never any occasion to put any man to death for robbery/ A hundred years ] ater it was observed that ' The country was torn to pieces by civil wars and groaned under every species of domestic confusion. Villainy was practised in every form ; all law and religion were trodden under foot, the bonds of private friendship and connection, as well as of society and government, were broken ; and every individual, as if in the midst of a forest of wild beasts, could rely upon nothing but the strength of his own arm.' (Dow ; quoting native authority.) Such was the moral chaos that had followed the decline of the Empire ; and, if the British rule has obliterated those marks of ruin and brought back civilisation, it is in some degree to Sindhia that the subjects of that rule are indebted for the first preparatory step.

Short as is the narrative, it has been found impossible to avoid the introduction of some extraneous matter. A mere biographical memoir, even if the materials of such were forthcoming, would not convey much instruction or pleasure to the reader. The French historical doctrine of the milieu may have been somewhat over-indulged of late years. In Mr. Russell Lowell's Essay on Milton we have an amusing account of a learned Professor's biography of that poet ; in which historical pages are rarely diversified by occasional appearances of Milton: and the accomplished critic says that the reader is only reconciled when he calls to mind that this fair-haired stranger is, in fact, the protagonist. In the drama before us the protagonist is almost identified with the scenes in which he moved and the events in which he bore an influential part. He belongs at once to the faded Court of the Mughals and to the busy camp of the Marathas : and the whole of his career is visible in the light of such relations. A man like Sindhia has no private life ; and to understand what he was we must be shown what he did.

We must therefore endeavour to realise what was the Empire at whose agony our hero assisted and to whose estate he, for a time, administered; and we must seek some samples of the anarchy from which he delivered Hindustan. At the same time, we shall have to remember that Sindhia was not, originally, a native of Hindustan ; and we must study, however briefly, the nature of that strange community in Southern India which, taking up the lapsed greatness of the old kingdom of Karnata, almost succeeded in uniting the entire Indian peninsula in a universal Hindu Empire.

To do all this requires that we should be prepared to find copious and variegated materials digested into a result which may be found undesirably narrow. A small book may be found hard to read — as it, proverbially, is to write.

Our foundations have gone wide if not deep. Among the authorities to which those desirous of further information, or extended treatment, may profitably refer, may be named the undermentioned : —

(i) History of the Mahrattas. James Grant Duff. 3 vols. 1826.

(2) Memoir of Central India. Sir John Malcolm. 2 vols. 1820.

(3) Memoirs of Col. Jas. Skinner, C.B. Baillie Fraser. 2 vols. 1851.

(4) Memoire du Comte de Boigne (by his son). Chamb^ri. 1829.

(5) Siar-ul-mut&kharin (Ghulam Hosain Khan, translated by a French Creole employed in the office of Warren Hastings : his name was Raymond, and his notes are interesting). 3 vols.

(6) Tdrikh-i-Muzafari. (Untranslated MS. by a Muhammadan gentleman in the service of the famous Muhammad Raza Khan, Naib Suba of Bihar, whose title, 'Muzafar Jang/ is preserved in the title.) Some account of these works will be found in Dowson's Elliot, viii.

(7) Col. Malleson's Final French Struggles (London, 1884) gives a good account of the doings of Gen. de Boigne and some of the minor European adventurers.

(8) Constant reference is made in the text to the Imperial Gazetteer of India; and the spelling of Oriental words is taken, generally, from the spelling adopted in the xivth vol., or Index, of that valuable work.

[The account of the campaign of 1 760-1 is chiefly derived from the narrative of Pandit Kasi Rai (iii, Asiatic Researches, 91 ff.). The writer was a

Secretary of the Oudh Nawab, and present, both in the preliminary negotiations and on the field of battle : his description is remarkable as a unique narrative of military events by a Hindu civilian *.

In Forrest's Selections from the State-papers of the Government of India, 3 vols., Calcutta, 1890, will be found a valuable series of minutes and despatches by Warren Hastings. See, also, Captain Trotter's monograph in this series.]

1 A detailed account of the campaign, based on a collation of this and other contemporary narratives, will be found in my Fall of ihe Moghul Empire (3rd edition, 1887). Holkar's point of view will be seen to have been occasionally taken in Grant Duff (vol. ii, pp. 140-156).

The omission to cite Tod's Rajasthan may be thought to demand explanation. It is a noble book, full of priceless information and inspired by a fine enthusiasm. But this very inspiration renders the author an unsafe guide in regard to the relations and dealings of the Rajputs with other tribes.

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Chapter I

The Hindu confederacy of which the subject of this book was, in his time, a prominent member, indicates an episode in that perennial struggle which has been going on for eight centuries in India between the social and religious system of the Hindus and that of their Musalman compatriots. Neither Musalman nor Hindu society can be considered c national/ though, as earlier conquerors who have associated and assimilated with the original inhabitants, the Hindus naturally appear now to represent whatever may be found at all deserving the name of an Indian nationality.

Maharashtra, meaning the tract bounded on the west by the ocean, on the north by the Narbada, on the east by the Wainganga, and on the south by the Krishna rivers, was a Hindu kingdom in the time of Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese pilgrim (640 a.d.), of which the capital was at Kalyani, or Kalyan, near the modern city of Bombay. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese obtained a considerable footing in Maharashtra, of which fragments are still in existence, notably the town and territory of Goa. The people, however, had been known for some time from the name of their country : for the name Marked occurs in the history of Sultan Juna (or Muhammad Tughlak) who invaded Southern India in the middle of the fourteenth century ; and before long we find mention of them in connection with the Musalman kingdom of Bijapur. Yusaf cAdil Shah, the first of the cAdil Shahi dynasty, is said to have given command of 1 2,000 infantry to a Hindu Chief from that country ; and in the reigns of his successors they freely shared in public employment. They were known as light cavalry, and they seem to have taught the Bijapur Musalmans that system of guerilla warfare to which the kingdom owed its ability to resist its enemies for nearly two hundred years.

So much has this system of war been celebrated that we have fallen into a wTay of thinking of the people of Maharashtra as all homogeneous and a mere tribe of predatory riders. The facts, however, do not altogether affirm this view. On the contrary we find them divided, like Hindu societies elsewhere, into distinct classes : the Brahmans, who have been the most distinguished in public affairs ; an ordinary class of fighting men claiming to be descended from Rajput immigrants ; the Kunbis, or agriculturists ; and a mixed multitude of townsmen and artisans, often called, locally, Shankarjdti, probably sprung from marriages between the pure Hindu immigrants and the aboriginal women. Their state appears to have at once adopted the character of a federal common-

wealth and a military monarchy ; where the king was assisted by Brahman counsellors, and the rural Communes sent the flower of their young men to serve in a more or less embodied militia. These peasant warriors were despised by the arrogant and luxurious Muhammadans, both for their lack of pomp and splendour, and for something business-like and unchivalrous in their manner of fighting. But those were the very qualities which led to the first successes of the people of Maharashtra when the Musalman power ran to seed. Could the Mughals have stayed their own degeneracy, and at the same time could they have employed the Marathas as the Cossacks and Uhlans of their unwieldy armies, they might have used them with irresistible effect in the conquest of the Deccan; and might, possibly, have succeeded in the scheme, in itself not unreasonable, of consolidating the whole peninsula of India into one Empire.

But Dis aliter visum ; and when the great but mistaken attempt of the Emperor 'Alamgir, commonly known as Aurangzeb, had ended in disaster, the destruction of the southern Musalman kingdoms only swept a clear field for the Maratha enterprise. Then they found the opportunity for which they had been so long waiting : they adopted wider aims, and a more imposing style ; adding to their direct possessions while they extended their indirect sway and influence in every direction. As this extension proceeded they organised their habits of levying contribution on the subjects of other States. At last their system of

14 MADHAVA RAO S1NDHIA

tribute came to spread over almost the whole of the peninsula. It was not so much an Empire as an Anti-empire. Let others, they seemed to say, undertake the task of administration and of watching for the welfare of the multitude. They will be making honey not for themselves; on their most prosperous towns and parishes, we will, without unnecessary violence or mischief, make our regular and understood claim of twenty-five per cent, of the revenues, surely not an exorbitant commission for abstaining from disturbing their enjoyment of life and property. ' Do thou/ said Virgil, ' remember, O Roman, to rule the peoples/ The Pax Maratica was founded on the opposite principle : — ' Take pay for not ruling.'

The modern power of this extraordinary race arose in the reign of the Emperor Shah Jahan, and owed its origin to the strenuous efforts of that Mughal monarch to annex the territory of Bijapur and abolish its sovereignty. We need not here go into the detailed history of the Bijapur State ; it will be enough to say that it grew out of a satrapy of the old Southern Musalman Empire of the so-called 'Bahmani' dynasty, which became independent under a Turkman governor named Yusaf cAdil about the end of the fifteenth century a.d. In the time of Shah Jahan the nominal ruler was a minor, and the Regency was for some time held by a Maratha captain, named Shahji Bhonsla, who aided the Emperor to overthrow the neighbouring power of the Nizam Shah, at Ahmadnagar, and is famous as the founder of the

family afterwards elevated to a brief but bright eminence by his son. Shahji's great title to distinction is that he was the father of the still more distinguished Sivaji.

That remarkable man went early to a far greater length than his father ; possessed himself of forts, organised a regularly-paid army, both horse and foot, and finally assumed the functions and insignia of a king. He shook off his connection with Bijapur and with the Mughals ; and laid the foundation of that inveterate system of depredation and hostility which, under his successor, finally wore out the courage of Aurangzeb and introduced the germ of decay into his empire. His grandson, having been in his youth a captive at court, adopted Mughal manners : and the power of the State fell into the hands of a dynasty of Brahman ministers under whom the civil administration became organised, and the military system was raised to much pomp and splendour. The robes of empire now hung not ungracefully on the limbs of a Hindu, and one of two things was bound to happen ; either there would be a new empire, doomed to rise and fall after the usual manner, or a federal India must be born, under the protection of a new and foreign power. The subject of the present narrative becomes the necessary man of an epoch of transition when this point was still undetermined ; a transition between guerilla foraging and scientific war.

Madhava Bao, or ' Madhoji,' Sindhia has been described, on good authority, as {a statesman and soldier of almost unsurpassed ability ' (Imp. Gazetteer of India, v. 230). He rose to rule in Hindustan without altogether losing touch with the distant and difficult politics of the Maratha State. Like other unusually successful men, he was partly the child of his time and partly its creator. Ordinary average success is often produced by the qualities of the commoner class, such as docility and power of adaptation ; but this mans was another, and a fairer kind of success. He changed the habits of men, gave a new direction to their thoughts, and prepared a social revolution. He did so because his aims were clear and reasonable, definitely conceived and resolutely pursued, without ignoring the continuity of human interests.

But, before proceeding to support these claims by an examination of Madhava's record, it will be desirable to say a few words concerning the scene on which he played his part, and the events which preceded his appearance. India, in his time, was 'a geographic expression/ just as, then and long after, was the case with Italy. The Alpine and Subalpine region of the peninsula was peopled by hardy races with whom he, as much as possible, avoided contact. From the Sutlej river to the Narbada is a bilateral region sending mighty streams to the Arabian sea and the bay of Bengal. Within its points are old nations, with their forts, and cities, and fields, where the shepherd and the husbandman contend as in the days of Cain and Abel. Beyond the Narbada is a further region of hill and plain and river, inhabited by races of less contentious habits and a more recent civilisation. In both of these last-named regions our hero played a conspicuous part for more than a generation.

India's three great natural divisions, thus hastily delineated, are described by modern European geographers as cardinal sections ; and they are, moreover, known to Orientals ; by whom, however, they are more usually subdivided, the subdivisions being called by many names. The first contains several regions ; omitting Afghanistan, Kashmir, and the Punjab, which will not enter into our narrative, there remain two to be specified in the lower, or alluvial, portion. The northernmost is known as Hindustan, a name often given by Europeans to the whole peninsula, but reserved by the natives to the tract bordered on the north by the Sutlej river, and on the south by the Chambal. Its eastern slope, between the Ganges and the Jumna, is known as the Doab, or, as might be said in Latin, ' Mesopotamia/ but it also includes the Trans -Gangetic Provinces of Katahr (or Eohilkhand) and Oudh. South of the Chambal, and partially draining to the west, is the hill-country of the Aravalli and Vindhya ranges, in whose embraces lie the states of the Rajputs, old tribes of the Hindus driven thither before the early Musalman invaders. To the east of these, and southward to the Narbada, the country is called Central

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1 8 MADHAVA RAO S1NDHIA

India; and here lie the original fiefs of M&lwa and Gwalior, acquired in the eighteenth century by the clans of Sindhia and Holkar and still held by the respective chiefs of those Houses. Still further to the eastward lie the minor provinces of Bhopal and Bundelkhand. The last region is south of the Narbadd, called in history * The Deccan ' ; containing likewise many provinces, divided by limits which have fluctuated as one dynasty or tribe has advanced or receded \

Nevertheless, throughout this vast and varied peninsula, a tendency towards union has been observed in many stages of its history. Mythical monarchies of all India had floated vaguely in popular tradition when, in the sixteenth century, one of those movements so frequent in cold countries drew the ' Mughals ' from Kabul down upon the sunny south2. It cost them two hard struggles ; but scarcely was their empire consolidated under the great Akbar when the idea was revived of * bringing all India under one chhatri ' (umbrella, the symbol of Empire).

The reduction of ambitious feudatories and rebellious officials once accomplished, the process began. Radiating from Agra and Delhi the emperors slowly extended their power: building their palaces at

1 The name of 'Deccan* is as old as the Greek geographer Ptolemy. Etymologically, the word is Dakhin = ' South' (' righthand * is the same in Sanskrit, and supposing the face to the East).

2 For some account of this race and its conquests see the author's

Sketch of the History of Hindostan.

Allahabad, Ajniere, Lahore, and Kashmir. Nevertheless, the Rajput Chiefs remained, as they remain to this day, virtually autonomous in their remote fastnesses ; though two of their States became completely friendly and even feudatory to the Empire, showing the sincerity of their submission by giving their noblest sons to command in the Imperial armies and their fairest daughters to furnish brides for the Imperial households. In the Deccan, likewise, the Imperial arms made some genuine progress. The old Hindu kingdoms of that region had broken up, between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, to be succeeded by a number of Musalman States which the Mughals, from Akbar onwards, were constantly battering and shattering, first reducing them to the tributary condition, and then rendering them mere dependencies.

In 1637 a further step was taken: Shah Jahan, the grandson of Akbar, destroying the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmadnagar by complete annexation of the state over which that dynasty had ruled for nearly two centuries. In 1686 his son, cAlamgir, commonly known to Europeans as 'Aurangzeb,' carried on the same process against the cAdil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur. In the following year the last of the great Musalman States was overthrown, that of the Kutab-Shahi line in Golconda. The area of these conquered kingdoms went to form the new province, or Subah, of the Deccan, great part of which is still held, under the Sovereignty of the Queen Empress,

B 2 by the powerful vassal of the Crown who is popularly known as ' the Nizam/ and who is descended from the first Viceroy who shook off his dependence on the Empire. For it should be observed that, as the extension of the Mughal Empire was made without adequate means, so the process of integration was interrupted as soon as the central power began to relax ; and the contrary process of disintegration almost instantaneously set in, and acted with extreme rapidity. As happened a thousand years ago in the somewhat analogous case of the Karling Empire of Europe, each great satrapy became a separate nation in less than two generations after the Empire attained its full extent.

The mention of these satrapies suggests another comparison. The Mughal Empire of India is, chronologically, not very far remote from modern times. It was seen in its glory by a school-fellow of Moliere ; the description of its glories fired the imagination of Milton; its palace-halls, but a few years ago, made ball-rooms for the present Heir-apparent to the British Empire ; its last representative has not been long dead. Yet that Empire was, in all essential characteristics, a fragment of the ancient world ; a counterpart, in all but its religious system, of the mighty monarchies of Babylon and Persia. There was the same awe -breathing distance between the grovelling subject and the exalted despot; the same sinister contrast between the squalor of the cottage and the splendour of the throne; the might of the monarch was haunted by the menace of the remote rebel and the shadow of the domestic traitor. In such an Empire there could be no 'Act of Settlement' or ' Responsibility of Cabinets ' ; but the sovereign, after a longer or shorter period of uncontrolled despotism, falls into the insanity of power or drivels into the dotage of decay. Provinces fall off from their allegiance, the despot crushes, or is crushed ; at last he disappears, perhaps killed in battle, perhaps poisoned in a palace-intrigue. He is succeeded by a courtier, a slave, or one of his own fratricidal sons ; and the hideous business begins anew. In such revolutions the Empire is often weakened, sometimes quite dissolved. In its incoherent way, however, it comes together again, some old parts lost, some new members gained ; and once more the booty of conquered neighbours and the wealth wrung from helpless subjects are concentrated on the person and palace of the ruler. It is still a shifting scene of contrast, the monarch of one moment becomes the victim of another, or the puppet of an able minister. But always there remains the sinister glare of unbridled luxury and unprofitable decoration. The autocrat — no better, saner, or happier than the meanest of his peasants — swathes his perishable frame in brocade and jewelry, and takes his daily seat upon a couch of gold1; surrounded by obsequious kinsmen and tributary princes. In ordered ranks beneath thd

1 The throne of an oriental monarch takes the form of a square bedstead, on which he sits with crossed legs.

elevated platform are marshalled the courtiers, ministers, generals, the chiefs of peace and war, and the messengers and representatives of those who are absent in the distant regions, ruling the provinces of the Empire or commanding its military forces. The same eternal picture was presented to Daniel the Hebrew, to Ctesias the Greek, to Ta vernier the French jewelmerchant, and Bernier the correspondent of Colbert. The last-named traveller visited almost all the great Musalman courts. He had seen the court of the ' Roi- Soleil,' the sumptuous Louis XIV, and those of the Sultans of Syria and Egypt ; and this is his account of the display that he found at that of the ' Great Mogul.'

1 The king appeared, sitting upon his throne, in the bottom of the great hall of the Am-kas, splendidly apparelled. His vest was of white flowered satin and raised with a fine embroidery of gold and silk. His turban was of cloth of gold, having a bird worked upon it, like a heron, whose foot was covered with diamonds of an extraordinary bigness and value, with a great oriental topaz, which may be said to be matchless, shining like a miniature sun. A collar of great pearls hung about his neck and down to his breast, after the manner in which some of the heathen [Musalmans] wear here their rosaries for prayer. His throne was supported on six high pillars, or "feet, said to be of massive gold, and set with rubies, and emeralds, and diamonds. I am not able to tell you aright, either the number or the price of this mass of precious stones, because it is not possible to come near enough to count them or to judge of their purity and value. Only this I can say, that the big diamonds are there in profusion and that the throne is estimated to be worth four krors of rupis, each worth a demi-eeu1.' [This was the 'Peacock Throne' of Shah Jahan, the value of which, by Bernier's estimate, was ^"2,400,000 ; though Tavernier, an expert, afterwards doubled the sum.] 'So that the throne is valued at forty millions of rupis . . . about sixty millions of francs. . . Beneath there appeared all the Omras in splendid apparel upon a raised ground shaded by a great canopy of purfled gold-cloth with golden fringes, enclosed by a silvei balister. The pillars of the hall were hung with tapestries, having a gold ground- work; and the ceiling was covered with canopies of flowered satin fastened with cords of red silk ornamented with tassels of silk, mixed with gold, that hung down from them/

Such is Bernier's account of the throne and its surroundings. In another place he adds : ' Thence he sees beneath him the Lords, Rajas, and representative envoys, who are all standing upon a raised space enclosed with silver rails, with down-cast eyes and arms folded upon their breasts ; somewhat further off he sees the lesser lords, or Mansabddrs, also standing in the like posture of reverence; and, somewhat

1 The rupee of those days was therefore worth no more than .fifteen pence. , further off still in the remaining part of the hall, &nd in the open court-yard, he can see a great crowd of the commonalty. For there it is that the king, every day about noon, gives universal audience.' This was a general lev^e, where the Badshah not only received his chiefs, but acted the old oriental part of the father of his people, sitting at his tent-door to administer justice. It need hardly be added that much of the pageant was symbolical ; the sovereign's court was not a real court of law, and he had not much more personal connection with the administration than Her Majesty, with us, exercises in the ' Queen's Bench.' Nevertheless the peerage of the Amara and Mansabddrs mentioned by Bernier was a very real institution, and one whose reality contained an undoubted germ of development.

By 'omras' Bernier meant the courtiers, in especial favour and constant attendance, perhaps most conceivable to us as 'Ministers/ or ' Lords-in-waiting.' Their chief went by the title of Amir-ul-amara= premier noble, and was next to the Wazir in dignity; sometimes also in power, or even actually, in practice, superior. The Mansabddrs were nobles too, but of a more military character; whose rank was expressed by the number of men-at-arms that they were supposed to lead. In strict nomenclature these also were amirs if their patents were for more than 500 horsemen ; above 5000 was the highest grade of all, reserved originally for princes of the blood. Of the ranks between these two limits there were, in Bernier's time, 580 nobles of which number about one-fifth consisted of Hindus, the remainder being either native Musalmans or immigrants of distinction from Persia and Central Asia, known in India, though not very accurately, as ' Mughals.'

Ranking immediately after the princes of the blood and the great officials these mansabdars formed a military peerage like the paladins of Charlemagne or Cromwell's Major-Generals. But their titles were not meant to be hereditary, such transmission of grandeur being quite opposed to oriental notions. A blacksmith or a water-carrier, there, has sometimes risen to the command of armies ; a successful slave has often ascended the throne at whose foot he once ministered. The sons of deceased amirs might have an indefinite right to employment, but it would never be in the command of their father's mansabs : the best that they could expect would be to begin life as ahdis, or unattached cavaliers, perhaps with a slender following, perhaps, if they were very poor, alone: these gentlemen-cadets would at first rank as private troopers, but would be excused from sentry and fatigueduties, until they were deemed worthy of promotion. A choice body of ahdis formed the mounted body-guard of the monarch K