पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

INTRODUCTION SHIVAJI founded the Maratha State for doing good to the Maratha people But he was also conscious of his role in Indian history as a defender of the Hindus against the onslaught of Islam At the same time he was no crusader against Islam as an alien faith, he only wished to divest it of its political role in India In the first part of his life, he was not sure of his line of action or final goal He made up his mind finally after his return from Agra in 1666 The establishment of an independent Hindu State as a rallying point for all Hindus became his aim thereafter Compromise with Muslims or service under an Islamic State he found incapable of rousing the Hindus from their age long stupor These would neither defend Hinduism in the long run, nor allow the Hindus to grow to their full stature Only a direct challenge to the Islamic idea of State—that Islam only is to live and grow while others must wither away and die—was the surest way of defending Hinduism and the Hindus Aurangzib wished to unite India under one sceptre, that of Islam under the Mughals Shivaji girded his loins to establish an independent Hindu sovereignty in India free from the shackles of the Mughal octopus He succeeded in his determination and crowned himself as the Chhatrapati in 1674 He forged new weapons to gain his ends at the cost of his enemies While his subjects were well protected, he made the enemy subjects pay for his wars against their state by the imposition of the Chauth, to escape which the only remedy was to come under his rule Aurangzib revived the Jizya in the Mughal dominions after a lapse of a hun dred years, to propagate Islam and weaken the infidels Shivaji hurled back the missile with the aim of meeting the new menace by his demand for Chauth from the enemy lands Aurangzib pulled down the temples and desecrated the Hindu shrines Shivaji replied by reviving the temples turned into mosques by the Muslims in the south While Aurangzib's manner was aggressive and bigoted, Shivaji's was defensive and moderate This distinction should be borne in mind when judging Shivaji and Aurangzib, a distinction which marks the modernity and secularism of the one and the medievalism cum ecclesi asticism of the other Not understanding this difference, Toynbee in his Study of History (3 203) has classed Shivaji with Ivan the Terrible, Saladin and Suleyman the Magnificent as champions of alien (non western) civilizations Shivaji was not only a champion of old-world Hinduism, but its modernising reformer also He not only endowed temples or patronized Hindu learning, he also (and primarily) built new forts on the sea coast for protecting his newly established navy on the European model, and sent his own ships to Arabia for direct trade He would not turn his new state into a closed, hermit kingdom after the manner of Japan in the sixteenth century, but left it open to all foreign influences in all walks of life, after due regulation to guard his independence Had Shivaji's ideas and ideals been properly understood and followed by his successors, there would have been no occasion for a Panipat in 1761 ix