पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

good But the Marathas would not sit idle if there was no stır amongst them
They would do the work themselves irrespective of the cost
Aurangzib wanted to enrol the valiant Marathas as his loyal servants
like the Rajputs in the north To avoid that fate they waged a continuous
war and went through untold sufferings for two generations And now Shahu
became a Mughal servant without a struggle! He never struck his own coins but
only those of the Mughal emperors His generals and ministers spread all over
India but only as Mughal grandees or governors Even all the Marathas never
became his subjects and why should they be when they knew Shahu to have
been a Mughal subject like themselves albeit styled Chhatrapati? All who
felt dissatisfied with the Maratha kingdom crossed over the border and got them
elves employed under the Mughal viceroy of the Deccan on better terms than
Shahu could hope to offer This support was utilized by the cunning viceroy
to stop the payment of Chauth in the first instance and later for buttressing
his own independent rule in defiance of Delhi Shahus ministers and gen
erals had to fight for their very existence many a time when the viceroy
(Nizam) had grown strong with outside support or the Marathas had become
weak by internal dissensions This struggle was carried on intermittently for
full three quarters of a century and though the Marathas triumphed on most
occasions the Nizams rule came to be stabilized in the Deccan But the fun
damental cause of this consummation was the primary mistake committed by
the Prime Minister of Shahu in accepting the Mughal service on behalf of his
guileless master which was later on continued by his successors in office Even
Justice M G Ranade has misconstrued this point in his Rise of the Maratha
Power because the material before him was scanty Others have fallen into
the same error because they have blindly accepted Ranade as their guide Be
cause the Peshwas throughout their career tried to act as agents of the Mughal
emperors others more clever played the same game and outwitted the Marathas
by securing the orders of the puppet emperors set up by themselves
The second short sighted step taken by Balaji Vishwanath has also been
similarly misconstructed by Ranade and others In the worst days of the
Maratha kingdom during 1690 1700 when king Rajaram had gone to the
Madras coast and ruled from Gingee (Jinji) the Maratha ministers as a tem
porary policy offered fabulous rewards in land and money to the wavering
Marathas so that they might not go over to Aurangzib Many of these grants
under duress were afterwards resumed by Tarabai whose ministers would
have again reverted to Shivajis far sighted policy of awarding no spoils or
jagirs but paying in cash from the central treasury Shahus return as a
Mughal protege and the outbidding of his clever but short sighted Peshwa put
a premium on disloyalty to Tarabai the de facto ruler and thus weakened the
very basis of Shivajis modern state Ramachandrapant Amatya who knew at
first hand Shivajis state craft has put down for posterity Shivajis ideas and
ideals in his unique Rajaniti Balajis policy of awarding a share in the con
quered lands to ministers and generals created semi independent barons who
ultimately overshadowed the central government after Panipat Balajis pre-
caution—lauded as a unique invention—against these barons growing strong
and uncontrollable by the central authority viz not to bestow contiguous lands
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