90 Facts About Shivaji

Shivaji carved out his own independent kingdom from the Sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of the Maratha Confederacy.

Shivaji offered passage and his service to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to invade the declining Sultanate of Bijapur.

Shivaji undertook military expeditions on behalf of the Mughal empire for a brief duration.

In 1674, Shivaji was crowned as the king despite opposition from local Brahmins.

Shivaji's legacy was revived by Jyotirao Phule about two centuries after his death.

Shivaji was born in the hill-fort of Shivneri, near Junnar, which is in Pune district.

Shivaji was named after a local deity, the Goddess Shivai Devi.

Shivaji belonged to a Maratha family of the Bhonsle clan.

Shivaji's father, Shahaji Bhonsle, was a Maratha general who served the Deccan Sultanates.

Shivaji's mother was Jijabai, the daughter of Lakhuji Jadhavrao of Sindhkhed, a Mughal-aligned sardar claiming descent from a Yadav royal family of Devagiri.

Shivaji's paternal grandfather Maloji was an influential general of Ahmadnagar Sultanate, and was awarded the epithet of "Raja".

Shivaji was given deshmukhi rights of Pune, Supe, Chakan, and Indapur to provide for military expenses.

Shivaji was constantly pursued by the Mughal army, and Shivaji and his mother Jijabai had to move from fort to fort.

Kondadeo died in 1647 and Shivaji took over its administration.

In 1646,16-year-old Shivaji captured the Torna Fort through stratagem or bribery, taking advantage of the confusion prevailing in the Bijapur court due to the illness of Sultan Mohammed Adil Shah, and seized the large treasure he found there.

Shivaji brought areas east of Pune around Supa, Baramati, and Indapur under his direct control.

Shivaji used the treasure found at Torna to build a new fort named Rajgad.

The conquest of Javali allowed Shivaji to extend his raids into south and southwest Maharashtra.

Shivaji adopted different strategies to subdue these powerful families, such as forming marital alliances, dealing directly with village Patils to bypass the Deshmukhs, or subduing them by force.

Shivaji told the Bijapuris to do whatever they wanted with Shivaji.

Shivaji, suspecting Afzal Khan would arrest or attack him, wore armour beneath his clothes, concealed a bagh nakh on his left arm, and had a dagger in his right hand.

At that time, Shivaji was encamped at Panhala fort with his forces.

Shivaji escaped from Panhala by cover of night, and as he was pursued by the enemy cavalry, his Maratha sardar Baji Prabhu Deshpande of Bandal Deshmukh, along with 300 soldiers, volunteered to fight to the death to hold back the enemy at Ghod Khind to give Shivaji and the rest of the army a chance to reach the safety of the Vishalgad fort.

Until 1657, Shivaji maintained peaceful relations with the Mughal Empire.

Shivaji offered his assistance to Aurangzeb, the son of the Mughal Emperor and viceroy of the Deccan, in conquering Bijapur, in return for formal recognition of his right to the Bijapuri forts and villages in his possession.

However, Aurangzeb's countermeasures against Shivaji were interrupted by the rainy season and his battles with his brothers over the succession to the Mughal throne, following the illness of the emperor Shah Jahan.

Shivaji took the nearby fort of Chakan, besieging it for a month and a half before breaching the walls.

Shivaji established his residence at Shivaji's palace of Lal Mahal.

In retaliation for Shaista Khan's attacks, and to replenish his-depleted treasury, in 1664 Shivaji sacked the port city of Surat, a wealthy Mughal trading centre and decamped with plunder exceeding Rs 10 million.

Shivaji agreed to become a vassal of the Mughal empire, and to send his son Sambhaji, along with 5,000 horsemen, to fight for the Mughals in the Deccan, as a mansabdar.

Shivaji himself wished to be excused from attending the court.

Shivaji took offence, stormed out, and was promptly placed under house arrest.

However, the order was canceled when Shivaji refused to go.

Shivaji sent most of his men back home and asked Ram Singh to withdraw his guarantees to the emperor for the safe custody of himself and his son.

Shivaji then pretended to be ill and began sending out large baskets packed with sweets to be given to the Brahmins and poor as penance.

Shivaji sacked Surat for a second time in 1670; the English and Dutch factories were able to repel his attack, but he managed to sack the city itself, including plundering the goods of a Muslim prince from Mawara-un-Nahr, who was returning from Mecca.

Shivaji sent a letter to Prataprao, expressing his displeasure and refusing him an audience until Bahlol Khan was re-captured.

Shivaji was deeply grieved on hearing of Prataprao's death, and arranged for the marriage of his second son, Rajaram, to Prataprao's daughter.

Shivaji had acquired extensive lands and wealth through his campaigns, but lacking a formal title, he was still technically a Mughal zamindar or the son of a Bijapuri jagirdar, with no legal basis to rule his de facto domain.

Shivaji was descended from a line of headmen of farming villages, and the Brahmins accordingly categorized him as a Maratha, not a Kshatriya.

When Shivaji came to know about this conspiracy, he later bribed and summoned Gaga Bhatt, a pandit of Varanasi, who stated that he had found a genealogy proving that Shivaji was descended from the Sisodias, and thus indeed a kshatriya, albeit one in need of the ceremonies befitting his rank.

Shivaji was weighed separately against seven metals including gold, silver, and several other articles, such fine linen, camphor, salt, sugar etc.

Two of the learned Brahmins pointed out that Shivaji, while conducting his raids, had killed Brahmins, cows, women, and children.

Shivaji could be cleansed of these sins for a price of Rs.

Shivaji took the title of Haindava Dharmodhhaarak and Kshatriya Kulavantas: Kshatriya being the varna of Hinduism and meaning the 'head of the, or clan'.

Shivaji's appeal was somewhat successful, and in 1677 Shivaji visited Hyderabad for a month and entered into a treaty with the Qutubshah of the Golkonda sultanate, who agreed to renounce his alliance with Bijapur and jointly oppose the Mughals.

In 1677, Shivaji invaded Karnataka with 30,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry, backed by Golkonda artillery and funding.

Shivaji intended to reconcile with his half-brother Venkoji, Shahaji's son by his second wife, Tukabai, who ruled Thanjavur after Shahaji.

Venkoji's wife Dipa Bai, whom Shivaji deeply respected, took up new negotiations with Shivaji and convinced her husband to distance himself from his Muslim advisors.

In 1678, Shivaji confined his son Sambhaji to Panhala Fort for having an addiction to sensual pleasures or violating a Brahmin woman.

British records states that Shivaji died of bloody flux, after being sick for 12 days.

However, Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad, author of Sabhasad Bakhar, a biography of Shivaji has mentioned fever as the cause of death.

Putalabai, the childless eldest of the surviving wives of Shivaji committed sati by jumping into his funeral pyre.

At his court, Shivaji replaced Persian, the common courtly language in the region, with Marathi, and emphasised Hindu political and courtly traditions.

Shivaji's reign stimulated the deployment of Marathi as a systematic tool of description and understanding.

Shivaji commissioned one of his officials to make a comprehensive lexicon to replace Persian and Arabic terms with their Sanskrit equivalents.

Shivaji was not attempting to create a universal Hindu rule.

Shivaji was tolerant of different religions and believed in syncretism.

Shivaji urged Aurangzeb to act like Akbar in according respect to Hindu beliefs and places.

Shivaji had little trouble forming alliances with the surrounding Muslim nations, even against Hindu powers.

Shivaji did not join forces with certain other Hindu powers fighting the Mughals, such as the Rajputs.

Older Maratha histories asserted that Shivaji was a close follower of Ramdas, a Brahmin teacher, who guided him in an orthodox Hindu path; recent research has shown that Shivaji did not meet or know Ramdas until late in his life.

Rather, Shivaji followed his own judgement throughout his remarkable career.

The core of Shivaji's army consisted of peasants of Maratha and Kunbi castes.

Shivaji realised that conventional warfare methods were inadequate to confront the big, well-trained cavalry of the Mughals, which was equipped with field artillery.

Shivaji realized that the most vulnerable point of the large, slow-moving armies of the time was supply.

Shivaji utilised knowledge of the local terrain and the superior mobility of his light cavalry to cut off supplies to the enemy.

Shivaji did not adhere to a particular tactic but used several methods to undermine his enemies, as required by circumstances, such as sudden raids, sweeps and ambushes, and psychological warfare.

Shivaji was contemptuously called a "Mountain Rat" by Aurangzeb and his generals, because of his guerilla tactics of attacking enemy forces and then retreating into his mountain forts.

Shivaji demonstrated great skill in creating his military organisation, which lasted until the demise of the Maratha Empire.

Shivaji's strategy rested on leveraging his ground forces, naval forces, and series of forts across his territory.

Shivaji's artillery was relatively underdeveloped and reliant on European suppliers, further inclining him to a very mobile form of warfare.

Ramchandra Amatya, one of Shivaji's ministers, describes the achievement of Shivaji by saying that his empire was created from forts.

Shivaji captured important Adilshahi forts at Murambdev, Torna, Kondhana, and Purandar.

Aware of the need for naval power to maintain control along the Konkan coast, Shivaji began to build his navy in 1657 or 1659, with the purchase of twenty galivats from the Portuguese shipyards of Bassein.

Shivaji fortified his coastline by seizing coastal forts and refurbishing them.

Shivaji built his first marine fort at Sindhudurg, which was to become the headquarters of the Maratha navy.

Shivaji was well known for his secularism, warrior code of ethics, and exemplary character.

Shivaji was admired for his heroic exploits and clever stratagems in the contemporary accounts of English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Italian writers.

Mughal depictions of Shivaji were largely negative, referring to him simply as "Shiva" without the honorific "-ji".

Shivaji's chivalry to women and strict enforcement of morality in his camp was a wonder in that age and has extorted the admiration of hostile critics like Khafi Khan.

The current academic consensus is that while these Bakhars are important for understanding how Shivaji was viewed in his time, they must be correlated with other sources to decide historical truth.

Phule's 1869 ballad-form story of Shivaji was met with great hostility by the Brahmin-dominated media.

Shivaji portrayed Shivaji as the "opponent of the oppressor", with possible negative implications concerning the colonial government.

One of the first commentators to reappraise the critical British view of Shivaji was M G Ranade, whose Rise of the Maratha Power declared Shivaji's achievements as the beginning of modern nation-building.

In modern times, Shivaji is considered as a national hero in India, especially in the state of Maharashtra, where he remains an important figure in the state's history.

Hindutva activists are noted for appropriating Shivaji by presenting him as "Hindu king" who "fought against Muslim rulers", contrary to historic accounts that show he belonged to a marginalised caste and held secular values.

Shivaji is seen as a hero by regional political parties and by the Maratha-caste-dominated Indian National Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party.

In 1993, the Illustrated Weekly published an article suggesting that Shivaji was not opposed to Muslims per se, and that his style of governance was influenced by that of the Mughal Empire.

Statues of Shivaji are found in every taluka in Maharashtra as well as in many places across India, including Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Surat, and Yellur.