Shivaji and His Times c7: Appendix I. Affair of Afzal Khan

Shivaji and His Times c7

Language: English

Appendix I. Affair of Afzal Khan

c7.2

Was the slaying of Afzal Khan a treacherous murder or an act of self-defence on the part of Shivaji? No careful student of the sources can deny that Afzal Khan intended to arrest or kill Shivaji by treachery at the interview. The absolutely contemporary and impartial English factory record (Rajapur letter, 10 Dec. 1659) tells us that Afzal Khan was instructed by his Government to secure Shivaji by "pretending friendship with him" as he could not be resisted by armed strength, and that the latter, learning of the design, made the intended treachery recoil on the Khan's head. This exactly supports the Marathi chronicles on the point that Shivaji's spies learnt, from Afzal's officers, about the Khan's plan to arrest him by treachery at the proposed interview, and that Afzal's envoy Krishnaji Bhaskar was also induced to divulge this secret of his master.

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Who struck the first blow at the interview? The old Maratha chroniclers (as distinct from the English-educated 20th century apologists of the national hero) all assert that it was Afzal. These genuine old historians never shrink from charging Shivaji with murder or treachery whenever they know him to be really guilty. They wrote long before Grant Duff's book had roused public indignation against Shivaji's alleged murder of an invited guest. It is, therefore, impossible to contend that the story of Afzal having struck the first blow was an invention of the modern Marathas after English education had wakened their conscience to the wickedness of pre-meditated political murders. Sabhasad (1694) and Malkare (? 1750) at least cannot be suspected of any design to whitewash their hero's character by falsifying history. In saying that Afzal struck the first blow, they truly record a genuine old tradition and not a modern nationalist invention.

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Shivaji's elaborate protection of his person before going to the interview and his placing an ambush round Afzal's forces cannot be taken as proofs of a treacherous intention. Secret assassination is the favourite weapon of decadent monarchies, and many such murders had taken place in the sultanates of the Deccan before this time, as I showed in detail in the Modern Review, (vol. I. 1907, p. 441). Shivaji was fully convinced—and with good reason, as we know,—that Afzal meant treachery. He would have been wanting in common prudence if he had not taken these precautions to save himself.

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∗ The Shiva-bharat gives a detailed and romantic description of these operations as well as the affray with Afzal Kh., which, from the character of this poem, I have been unable to accept as historical.

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A friend (Prof. A. Rahman) has asked me, "If Afzal meant treachery why did he not keep his troops in readiness for delivering an assault or at least for defending themselves?" My answer is that Afzal believed that the death of Shivaji would lead to the immediate collapse of his upstart power and no attack on his leaderless troops would be necessary. He was, moreover, ignorant of the position and strength of the enemy's forces and did not know that two large Maratha armies had arrived by rapid marches in his neighbourhood, under Netaji and Moro Pant.

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The weight of recorded evidence as well as the probabilities of the case supports the view that Afzal Khan struck the first blow and that Shivaji only committed what Burke calls, a 'preventive murder'. It was, as I wrote in the *Modern Review* in 1907, "a case of diamond cut diamond."

Linked texts (1)

Śivabhārata — Paramānanda, Sanskrit