The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.143

v4.c21.143

Tārā Bāī still held out defiantly in Sātārā fort, and refused to come to terms until the Peshwā guaranteed her liberty under the most solemn oaths. The unfortunate Rām Rājā remained in custody, and Tārā Bāī now shamelessly declared that he was an impostor, and the son of a *gondhālī*. Imprisonment told on his reason, and he died in obscurity in 1777. Shortly before his death, he adopted a son, who received the name of Shāhū the Younger, and reigned till 1810. But after the death of Shāhū I in 1749, the kings were mere *rois fainéants*, though the Peshwās, always strict constitutionalists, professed to the last to act as their viceroys, and sent all documents for their signature to their state prison in Sātārā fort. For this change in the government, Tārā Bāī and the Marāthā nobles, rather than the Peshwā, were to blame. They had no fixed policy, and little thought except for personal aggrandisement. Shāhū had deliberately allowed the executive power to lapse into the hands of his capable and patriotic minister, and preferred to leave the young heir to the throne under the tutelage of the Peshwā, rather than expose the country to the risks of civil war. "The usurpation of the Peshwās", Scott Waring justly remarks, "neither attracted observation nor excited surprise. Indeed, the transition was easy, natural and progressive."¹ Its greatest disadvantage was that it aggravated the centrifugal tendencies of the Marāthā state, and especially the enmity between Brāhman and Marāthā, which were at least kept in check while a member of the house of Bhonsle actually ruled; after the Peshwā's prestige was shaken by the defeat of Pānīpat, the disintegration became more and more evident.