The Rise of the Marathas

Why This Matters

Picture a small group of soldiers. They have no huge army. They have no rich treasury. Around them are mighty empires with thousands of soldiers, cannons and elephants.

Now imagine this small group grows. It grows until it becomes the largest power in all of India. Bigger than the Mughals. Strong enough to make the British work hard to defeat them.

This really happened. The people who did it were the Marathas, and the man who began it all was Chhatrapati Shivaji.

How does a small group become the biggest power in the land? Not by luck. They did it with clever ideas — using mountains and forts, building a navy, treating people fairly, and never giving up. There is a deep “why” behind each of their successes. That is what makes their story worth learning.

The Marathas also gave India a powerful idea: Swarajya, which means self-rule — the idea that a land should be ruled by its own people. Long after the Marathas, this idea inspired Indians fighting for freedom. So their story is not just about old battles. It is about an idea that shaped our country.

In this chapter, we will watch the Marathas rise, see how they ran their state, follow them as they spread across India, and understand why they finally declined.

The Big Idea

In the 17th century, Chhatrapati Shivaji united the Marathas — a people of the Deccan who speak Marathi — into a strong kingdom built on the idea of Swarajya (self-rule). He won not by brute strength but by being clever: guerrilla warfare in the hills, hundreds of forts, a bold navy, and a fair, salaried administration that the people trusted. After him, the Peshwas (prime ministers) led the Marathas to spread across most of India, becoming the largest Indian power before the British. But as the empire grew, power spread to many chiefs, unity weakened, and after the Anglo-Maratha wars the better-organised British ended Maratha power in 1818.

Let’s Break It Down

Who were the Marathas?

The Marathas are a group of people from the Deccan plateau — mostly present-day Maharashtra. (A plateau is a large area of flat, raised land.) They are known by the language they speak: Marathi. Marathi has a rich history of writing that goes back to the 12th century.

Before the Marathas rose, who ruled this land? In the 13th century, most of Maharashtra was ruled by the Yadava dynasty, with its capital at Devagiri (today called Daulatabad). In the early 14th century, the Khilji Sultanate from Delhi defeated the Yadavas. After that, the region was ruled by various Sultans.

So how did the Marathas, who served these Sultans, suddenly become a power of their own? A big part of the answer is culture. Long before they had an army, they had something that held them together as a people.

Between the 7th and 17th centuries, many saints across India followed the path of bhakti. (Bhakti means deep love and devotion to God, instead of just performing outer rituals.) In Maharashtra, saints like Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram and Ramdas became very popular. They did two important things:

• They translated great texts (like the Bhagavad Gita) into Marathi, so common people could understand them.
• They wrote devotional songs in the everyday language, so their message spread far and wide.

This gave the Marathi-speaking people a shared culture and pride. Why does that matter for an empire? Because a people who already feel like “one” are far easier to unite into one political power later. The culture came first; the kingdom grew on top of it.

Many ideas in this chapter build on the world of the Mughals and Sultanates you met earlier. Let us refresh that quickly.

Shivaji’s rise and his ideals

In 1630, Shivaji was born in the Bhonsle clan. His father was Shahji and his mother was Jijabai. Shahji served the Deccan Sultanates and was often away. So Shivaji grew up in the family’s jagir (land grant) at Pune, raised by Jijabai and trusted officials. They gave him strong values and a good education.

Around Pune, the Deccan Sultans were always fighting each other. This caused great hardship for ordinary people. Shivaji saw this. A dream began to grow in him — a kingdom ruled by its own people, free from this chaos. He called this dream Swarajya, which means self-rule.

When Shivaji was just 16, he began capturing forts. He took over neglected and empty forts near Pune and made their defences strong. Step by step, his small territory grew.

Two of Shivaji’s choices show how clever he was — and there is a clear “why” behind each.

Why a navy? Shivaji’s kingdom reached India’s west coast. To protect the coast and its trade, he did something revolutionary: he built a navy (a fighting force of ships) in 1657. Why was this so special? Because almost no Indian power had a real navy. The Bijapur Sultanate had merchant ships but no full-time fighting fleet. Even the Mughals barely used a navy. By building one, Shivaji could guard his coast and trade from sea attacks — something his enemies could not do.

Why guerrilla warfare? Shivaji’s enemies often had bigger armies. A small force cannot win a straight, head-on battle against a huge one. So Shivaji used guerrilla warfare. This means small groups attack quickly, by surprise, then disappear into land they know well — and strike again. In the hills of the Deccan, with its forests and steep forts, a small fast group could beat a big slow army. The big army gets tired, lost and surprised, while the small group stays safe in the mountains.

Figure 3.1 below gathers all the reasons the Marathas rose into one picture, so you can see how they fit together.

Tap to zoom

Shivaji’s cleverness showed in famous events too. The Bijapur Sultanate sent a veteran general, Afzal Khan, to crush him. The two met for a face-to-face meeting near Pratapgad fort, in thick forest. There Shivaji killed Afzal Khan, and his soldiers, hidden in the mountains, routed the Khan’s army with guerrilla attacks.

Later, the Mughal noble Shaista Khan attacked Shivaji’s lands for three years. One night, with only a few soldiers, Shivaji raided Shaista Khan’s own camp. The Khan barely escaped, losing a few fingers, and quickly left Maharashtra. (This daring raid is like a modern surgical strike — a focused attack on just one target.)

To hit back, Shivaji sacked Surat, a rich Mughal port. He took treasure worth almost one crore of rupees — a huge sum then. But notice his values: he did not attack religious places, and he spared the house of a charitable man named Mohandas Parekh. This care for ordinary people was part of his idea of Swarajya.

Sacking Surat insulted the Mughals. So Aurangzeb sent a strong Rajput general, Jai Singh, against Shivaji. Shivaji was defeated at Purandar fort and had to sign a treaty, giving up part of his kingdom. Jai Singh then persuaded Shivaji to visit the Mughal court at Agra. There Aurangzeb insulted him, and put him under house arrest.

How did Shivaji escape? Cleverly, as always. He began sending out big baskets of fruits and sweets as gifts to holy men and generals. At first the guards checked the baskets. Soon they stopped bothering. That was the plan. Shivaji and his son Sambhaji hid inside the baskets and escaped. Aurangzeb never captured him again.

In 1674, Shivaji was crowned king at the mountain fort of Raigad, with full Vedic rites. His title became “Shri Raja Shiva Chhatrapati”. This coronation marked the formal beginning of the Maratha Empire. Soon after, he led a conquest of the South (called the dakshina-digvijaya), which later gave the Marathas extra room and depth to resist the Mughals.

Shivaji died of a fever at fifty. By then his fame had spread across India and beyond. Europeans compared him to ancient generals like Alexander. He had shown something powerful: that a mighty empire could be challenged, and that Indians could build and run a great state of their own.

The Maratha military and administration — and why it worked

Shivaji did not just win battles. He built a state that ran well. Two parts of it stand out: the army and the civilian administration.

The military. The Maratha forces had three parts: infantry (foot soldiers), cavalry (soldiers on horseback) and the navy (ships). The cavalry had two types of soldiers:

• Bargirs — the state paid for their horses and equipment.
• Shiledars — the soldiers paid for their own horses and equipment.

Their favourite weapons were swords and lances, but they also used guns and even rockets. But the true backbone of Maratha power was forts. Shivaji built and controlled a huge number of forts. Why were forts so important?

A fort on a hill controls the roads and passes around it. An enemy cannot move freely past it. A fort also shelters the army between guerrilla attacks. Shivaji’s finance minister, Ramachandrapant Amatya, wrote in his Adnyapatra (“The Royal Edict”) that “Forts are the core of the state.” He explained that even when a great enemy like Aurangzeb invaded for decades, the Maratha state survived because of its forts. The forts let a smaller power outlast a bigger one.

The civilian administration. Here Shivaji made smart choices that kept his state honest and under control. He did three key things:

• He abolished hereditary posts. Under the Sultans and Mughals, many official jobs were passed from father to son. Shivaji stopped this.
• He paid every official a salary from the state treasury, instead of giving them land to live off.
• He transferred officials from place to place from time to time.

Why do these three choices matter so much? Think about the “why”. If a job is passed from father to son, that family slowly builds its own power and stops listening to the king. If an official lives off land instead of a salary, he starts treating that land like his own little kingdom. And if an official stays in one place forever, he builds a local network that the king cannot control. By paying salaries, ending hereditary posts and moving officials around, Shivaji made sure no official could become too powerful to control. The state stayed answerable to him.

To help him rule, Shivaji had a council of eight ministers called the Ashtapradhan (which means “eight ministers”). Figure 3.2 below shows this council and what each minister did.

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The Marathas also raised money in a clever way through two special taxes:

• Chauth — about 25 per cent (one-fourth).
• Sardeshmukhi — an extra 10 per cent on top.

They collected these from provinces that were not directly under their rule. In return, the Marathas protected those provinces and did not interfere in their internal matters. Over time, some of these provinces even became part of the Maratha Empire.

The Marathas also had a fair judicial system (a system for delivering justice). It used the death penalty very rarely. The main body that gave justice was the panchayat, a local gathering of officials and respected people. (This is not the same as today’s government Panchayat.) If someone was unhappy with a verdict, they could appeal to a Maratha chief.

There was one more clever piece: the navy and trade. Shivaji’s navy protected the west coast. In the 18th century, the admiral Kanhoji Angre won many sea battles using clever tactics and his knowledge of the coast, even though Maratha ships were less advanced than European ones. At the time, Europeans forced Indian ships to buy a naval pass (the cartaz); any ship without one was seized. The Marathas turned this around and started demanding passes from the Europeans themselves — which annoyed the Europeans so much that they called Kanhoji Angre a “pirate”!

Expansion under the Peshwas

After Shivaji died, the Marathas faced their hardest test. His son Sambhaji became Chhatrapati. Aurangzeb himself marched into the Deccan and conquered the Bijapur and Golconda Sultanates. He captured Sambhaji, tortured him brutally, and executed him in 1689. He then seized Raigad, the Maratha capital. Things looked finished for the Marathas.

But they were not. Sambhaji’s brother Rajaram became Chhatrapati and fled to Gingee in the far south. The Marathas defended their forts fiercely. Aurangzeb got stuck in the Deccan for years and finally died there without ever subduing the Marathas. Their forts had saved them once again.

Then came a turning point led by a remarkable woman. After Rajaram died, his queen Tarabai took charge. She realised that while Aurangzeb was busy in the Deccan, north India was left unprotected. So she organised large armies and sent them north to invade Mughal lands. In this way she became the architect of the northward Maratha expansion. The Marathas went from defending themselves to attacking and conquering large parts of India.

During this rapid growth, the Maratha state itself changed shape. Earlier, under Shivaji, it had been centralised — power held tightly at the centre. Now it became more decentralised — power spread out among many chiefs. The Chhatrapati was still the king in name, but the real power moved to the Peshwa.

What is a Peshwa? Peshwa is a Persian word for prime minister. Over time, the Peshwa became more powerful than the Chhatrapati himself. Two Peshwas led the great expansion across India: Peshwa Bajirao I and his son Nanasaheb Peshwa.

The Marathas spread far and wide. In the north, they briefly controlled Lahore, Attock and even Peshawar (in today’s Pakistan). They fought the Afghans and suffered a terrible defeat at the Battle of Panipat in 1761. But they recovered quickly under Peshwa Madhavrao I. Led by Mahadji Shinde (also called Mahadji Scindia), they recaptured Delhi in 1771 and held it for about thirty years.

But here is the catch with all this growth. As the regional chiefs gained more power and freedom, they sometimes acted with indiscipline and cruelty — very different from Shivaji’s values. For example, the Marathas’ long campaign in Bengal caused great suffering to ordinary people. So decentralisation had a cost: it allowed fast expansion, but it weakened the discipline and unity that Shivaji had built.

The Maratha confederacy

By the 18th century, the Marathas were less like a single tight kingdom and more like a confederacy — a group of powerful families who shared a common cause (the Maratha state) but each ruled their own large region.

The Peshwas led this confederacy. Under them were several great families, each with its own territory. Figure 3.3 below shows how power flowed from Shivaji down to these families.

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Two of these families produced famous leaders, and one of the most remarkable was a woman, Ahilyabai Holkar of the Holkar family. After losing her husband and son, she governed her state around Indore wisely for thirty years, caring deeply for the common people. She built and restored hundreds of temples, ghats, wells and roads across India, from Kedarnath in the north to Rameswaram in the south. She famously rebuilt the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and the Somnath temple in Gujarat. She also boosted the Maheshwar handloom weaving industry, which still thrives today.

The Marathas also revived culture far and wide. In the south, Shivaji’s half-brother Ekoji conquered Thanjavur, where the Thanjavur Marathas became great patrons of art. Their ruler Serfoji II even started a printing press — the first by an Indian ruler — and helped shape modern Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam.

Decline — and why the British won

So why did this huge, powerful empire fall? The “why” has two parts, and they work together.

Part 1: internal disunity. Remember how the empire became decentralised? Power had spread out among many chiefs — the Peshwas, the Holkars, the Shindes, the Gaekwads and others. Each had grown strong and independent. That helped them expand fast. But it also meant they did not always pull together. They sometimes quarrelled and competed. A house divided is easy to push over.

Part 2: a better-organised enemy. The British were not stronger in numbers. But they were better organised and had superior military methods and technology. A disciplined, united force can defeat a larger but divided one. (Some Maratha leaders, like Mahadji Shinde, did try to build European-style disciplined armies, but it was not enough across the whole confederacy.)

These two parts met head-on in the three Anglo-Maratha wars, fought between 1775 and 1818. The Marathas even won the first war. But over time, their internal disunity plus the superior British organisation decided it. By 1818, after the third war, Maratha power was over.

There is one striking line to remember: the British took India from the Marathas more than from the Mughals or any other power. This is because the Marathas, not the Mughals, were the largest Indian power standing in the British way by the late 18th century.

Figure 3.4 below puts the whole story on one timeline, so you can see the rise, the peak under the Peshwas, and the fall in order.

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The Maratha story left a lasting legacy. They built the largest Indian empire before the British. They ran an efficient administration and revived local traditions without religious discrimination. Most of all, their ideal of Swarajya showed Indians that they could govern themselves. Much later, this idea helped inspire India’s freedom movement.

Common Mistakes

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Quick Check

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Practice Problems

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Summary

Here is everything you can now explain to a friend:

• The Marathas are a people of the Deccan (Maharashtra) who speak Marathi. A shared bhakti culture united them before they became a political power.
• Chhatrapati Shivaji (born 1630) founded the Maratha kingdom on the ideal of Swarajya (self-rule), and was crowned at Raigad in 1674.
• Shivaji won by being clever, not just strong: guerrilla warfare in the hills, hundreds of forts, a bold navy, and a fair administration.
• His administration ended hereditary posts, paid officials a salary, and transferred them — so no official could grow too powerful. The Ashtapradhan was his council of eight ministers.
• After Shivaji, the Peshwas (prime ministers) like Bajirao I led a huge expansion across India; Tarabai was the architect of the northward push.
• The state became a decentralised confederacy of great families (Holkars, Shindes, Gaekwads, Bhonsles), which allowed fast growth but caused disunity.
• The Marathas were defeated at Panipat (1761) but recovered. In the end, internal disunity plus the better-organised British ended Maratha power in the Anglo-Maratha wars (by 1818).
• The British took India from the Marathas more than from any other power, and the Maratha ideal of Swarajya later inspired India’s freedom movement.

What’s Next

You have now seen how the Marathas became the largest Indian power, and how the British finally defeated them. But how did a trading company from across the seas end up ruling all of India?

In the next chapter, Chapter 4 — The Colonial Era in India, we will follow the British as they turn from traders into rulers. We will see how colonial rule changed India’s economy, society and people’s lives. Get ready to find out what happened after the Marathas fell.