Prabhu was in charge ‘of the stores and repairs., This arrangement was more or less followed in the plains also.
In each unit of the general army under Maratha commanders, there were Brahman and Prabhu colleagues as well as in the forts. Brahmans were also .appointed to high command of large armies.
In the Council of Ministers there was a Brahinan Minister of Religion called Panditrao who looked after all religious matters, enforced the rules of caste and custom and the civil and criminal laws, -and had control of the royal charities.
All the Brahmans received .annual Dakshina or .allowances according to their learning and it is said .that no Brahman had to go outside the kingdom for a maintenance. The permanent endowments alone made for this purpose yielded an annual income of Eve lakhs of rupees when the English took possession of the country.
After over thirty years of incessant warfare Shivaji had established an unquestionable right to be considered as an independent sovereign. Such a -recognition was also necessary for putting his government on a legal basis. He was anxious to have his coronation celebrated in a fitting manner according to the Hindu Shastras. This was another opportunity for Brahmans to reduce Shivaji to the -position of an obedient Kshatriya ruler always respectful to the Brahman. Learned Brahmans were invited from all parts of the country and ii,o00 of them making a. total of 545,o0o with their wives and children, assembled at the capital, and Shivaji feasted them with sweets for four months besides giving them costly presents of gold and ‘money. The chief priest, Gaga Bhatta, alone is said to have -received nearly a lakh of rupees. The whole ceremony involved an expenditure of not less than fifty lakhs of rupees, according to Sir jadunatli Sarkar,, while some others put it down at the incredible_ figure of seven crores. The Brahmans said that coronation according to the Shastras could be performed only of a Kshatriya ruler. A genealogy was therefore invented by the priests and it was made out that Shivaji was a Kshatriya, descended from the Rajput rulers of Udaipur. He was- then invested with the sacred thread for which he had to pay large-sums to the priests. The latter then demanded another 8,000 rupees for the forgiveness of the slaughter of Brahmans during Shivaji’s expeditions. In spite of these lavish gifts, they refused to initiate him into the Vedic Mantra, and- continued_ to speak of him as a Sudra, though he was a noble born Maratha, and no more or no less. “Shivaji keenly felt his humiliation at the hands of Brahmans-to whose defence and prosperity he had devoted his life. Their insistence on treating him as a Sudra drove him into the arms of Balaji Avji, the leader-of the Kayasthas.”*
The fanaticism of the Brahmans created conti-nuous dissensions in their own community and the different sects kept quarrelling among themselves, each trying to lower the status of the other. “The-head of the state, though a Brahman, was despised by his other Brahman servants, because the first. Peshwa’s great-grand father’s great-grand father had once been lower in society than the Desfr Brahmans’ great-grand fathers’ great-grand fathers.. While the Chitpavan Brahmans were waging social war with the Deshastha Brahman’s, a bitter jealousy raged between the Brahman ministers and governors and the Kayastha secretaries.”
The Prabhus had rendered yeoman service in
*Page 431, Shivaji and His Times, by Jadunath Sarkar. 1-Page 430, Shivaji and His Times, by Jadunatb Sarkar.
all the wars of Shivaji In spite of the Raja’s order not to interfere with the traditional social status of the Prabhus, Brahmans are said to have interpolated new verses into old Puranas to lower the caste prestige of the Prabhus. After the Peshwas began to rule, the Prabhus were practically ignored and hardly any important office was held by them.
The Rajas and the Peshwas exercised legislative, judicial, administrative and executive functions in religious and social matters and brought into force all the sinful provisions of the Shastras. The Peshwa established in Poona a court of religions jurisdiction presided over by Brahmans. “A sort of ecclesiastical court and one for the administration of criminal justice were acknowledged in the city.
learned Shastri assisted by other Shastris sup-posed to be acquainted with Hindu law was at the head of the first. It took cognizance of all offences .against the ordinances of religion and breaches of rules of caste. It was also referred to for judgment in intricate civil and criminal cases, particularly when Brahmans were the parties concerned.”*
Muhammadan rulers of Bijapur and other -places used to enforce the decisions of Brahman Pandits of Benares. Child marriage and burning of widows were encouraged more than before. Not only the actual widows, but the concubines of the deceased were also induced to :immolate themselves on the funeral pyre.
Nor were the saints immune from the persecution of the Brahmans.. Ekanath and Tukaram had to endure great troubles because they dared to translate into Marathi the Ramayana, the Maimbharata and the Bhagavad Gita. An outcaste saint,
* Page 243, A History of the Maratha People, by C. A. Kincaid a
- B. Parasnis, Vol. III.
Chokhamela entered in the Pandharpur temple for worship under some inspiration. The Brahmans, took the matter to the Mussalman officer who ordered the saint to be punished by being tied to and ‘driven by a team of bullocks and by being torture& to death. He was, however, saved by a miracle.
On the death of Shivaji the Peshwa and his friends wanted to overlook the claims of the eldest son and install the second son as Raja. This brought all the slumbering ill feelings and disruptive forces, to the front. The Raja became a puppet of the Peshwas, and a prisoner in his own palace. The Peshwas ruled as hereditary princes. Disgusted with this arrangement the Rajput chiefs became independent in their own districts. The Council of Ministers ceased to function. In order to counteract the influence of the Maratha chiefs of the North,. new Brahman commands were created in the South. Within nine years of Shivaji’s death his work had been all but destroyed.
No means was considered too wicked for amassing wealth; wholesale plunder and blackmail were-the usual methods, treacherous murders were common occurrences; the promises and agreements of ministers and rulers ceased to have any value, as they could be violated without scruples. Even women became notorious for intrigues, , murderous plots-and military aggression. “They did not realise that without a certain amount of fidelity to promises no society can hold together. Stratagem and falsehood may have been necessary at the birth of their state,, but it was continued during the maturity of their power: No one could rely on the promise of a Maratha minister or the assurance of a Maratha_ general.”*
*Page 435, Shivaji and His Times, Jaduriath Sarkar.
Nothing worth mentioning was done for the prosperity of the .subjects; they had no security from the avarice of their own rulers. Rich men were mercilessly squeezed for money. The last Peshwa had accumulated five crores of rupees at the time of his downfall.
“There was no attempt at well-thought out organized communal improvement, spread of education or unification of the people, either under Shivaji or under the Peshwas.”*
The officers were openly corrupt. “Contem-porary travellers have noticed how greedy of bribes the Brahman officers of the Maratha state were, even under the great Shivaji.”f Under the Peshwas the evil assumed frightful dimension so much so, that it is said of a Brahman superintendent of Poona -police, Ghashiram Kotwal, that “once in an independent post he took advantage of it to indulge in -a series of abominable crimes. His practice was to seize strangers who came to Poona and to rob and murder them.”
Except for the magnetic personality of Shivaji who by his heroic spirit welded together the -Marathas into a nation, there is hardly anything in -their history of which the • nation may be proud. “The period of Maratha ascendancy has not left India richer by a single grand building or beautiful picture or finely written manuscript.”§ On the contrary, we have a never-to-be-forgotten example of the enormities of Brahman domination.
“The first danger of the new Hindu kingdom established by him in the Deccan lay in the fact that
*Pap, 432, Shivaji and His Times by Jadunath Sarkar. tPage 17, Shivaji and His Times by Jadunath Sarkar. :Page 175, A History of the Maratha People, Vol. III, Kincaid and
Parasnis.
$Page 8, Shivaji and His Times by Jadunath Sarkar,
the national glory and prosperity resulting from the victories of Shivaji and Baji Rao I, created a reaction in favour of Hindu orthodoxy; it accentuated caste distinction and ceremonial purity of daily rites which ran counter to the homogeneity and simplicity of the poor, and it politically depressed early Maratha Society.”*
“Caste grows by fission. It is antagonistic to national union. In proportion as Shivaji’s ideal of .a Hindu Swaraj was based on orthodoxy, it contained within itself the seed of its own death.” As Rabindranath Tagore remarks: “A temporary enthusiasm sweeps over the country and we imagine it has been united; but the rents and holes in our body social do their work secretly; we cannot retain any noble ideal long. Shivaji aimed at preserving the rents; he wished to save from Mughal attack a Hindu society to which ceremonial distinctions sand isolation of castes are the very breath of life., He wanted to make his heterogeneous society triumphant all over India. He wove ropes of sand; he attempted the impossible. It is beyond the power of any man, it is opposed to the divine law of the -universe, to establish the Swaraj of such a caste-ridden, isolated, internally-torn sect over a vast continent like India.” It was with these rotten -materials that the Poona Brahmans of the 18th (century attempted to build a Maratha empire extending over all India. When Nationalists like Mr. Rajwade and Prof. Bijapurkar in the 20th century, .delighted to call Shivaji’s descendant at Kolhapur a Sudra, who can say that the Congress Nationalists of the present day will not repeat the folly of their -hero of Maharashtra?
The people groaned under the iniquities of a priestly domination which crushed all their national
*Page 429, Shivaji aril His Time Jaeu lath Strkar. tPages 430431, Shivaji and His Ti Jinnah sarkar.
aspirations and ideals, forced upon them the in-dignities of caste servility, impoverished them for the aggrandisement of Peshwas, Brahmans, temples and chief taips, and destroyed the last shreds of security and freedom. They seemed to welcome the British conquerors. `.(The conquest had been achieved with little difficulty because of the general indifference of the Maratha population”* The disgusting picture of disunion, conspiracy and exploitation was at last removed from sight by the new rulers, and the country was saved for the time from the ravages of Brahmanism. The nation heaved a sigh of relief and passed on to another chapter of its tragic history.
*Page 233, A History of the Maratha People, Vol. III by Kincaid and Parasnis.
