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Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c29.s3: § 16. Foreign relations of Marwar, 1761-1767

Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c29.s3

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§ 16. Foreign relations of Marwar, 1761-1767

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Marwar enjoyed a long peace so far as freedom from foreign incursion could give it peace. Bijay Singh's unwarlike character and failure to bind his nobles to his side by bold leadership and politic treatment prevented him from entering into any ambitious scheme of conquest or defensive coalition. His one absorbing anxiety was to

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8 lakhs in cash, and 25 lakhs in gold, silver, jewels and orders on tributary chiefs. For the balance (30½ lakhs) the districts of Jawad Jiran Nimach and Morwan were set aside, to be administered jointly by the officers of the Maharana and the Peshwa. This arrangement continued till 1774. (Tod, i. ch. 16.) The Rajput version puts the indemnity at 60 lakhs for the Peshwa and 3¼ lakhs for Sindhia's secretaries; and adds that Zalim Singh was ransomed for Rs. 60,000, and Ratan S. got jagirs yielding Rs. 75,000 a year in Mandesor. Full terms in Ojha, 962-967. I follow the contemporary Marathi records.

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guard himself from Madho Singh of Jaipur who had given refuge to Ram Singh, the dethroned king of Marwar, and was openly threatening to restore him by force. But the Jaipur Rajah’s entanglement with the Marathas and the Jat king and thereafter with his nobles, made it impossible for him to undertake any expedition against Bijay Singh, and the latter breathed freely. Quarrels with his headstrong and disloyal nobles weakened Bijay Singh no less than his enemy of Jaipur, and left both an easy prey to Maratha aggression. Every time a Maratha army entered their territory, the Rajput Courts without a single exception, held parleys with it, gained as much time as possible, and finally agreed to a subsidy the actual payment of which was beyond their capacity and against their real wishes. Something was paid after long higgling and threats by the Maratha residents and the invaders were bought off for the time.* “Procrastination is the sole policy of these States,” as one of these tribute-collectors wrote with bitter truth. Ajmir had been ceded to the Marathas in 1755 and continued to be held by them. This inglorious and monotonous course of Marwar history was varied in 1767 by the visit of Jawahir Singh to Pushkar, where Bijay Singh met him by invitation (6 Nov. 1767.) On the bank of the lake sacred to the Divine Creator, Jawahir and Bijay Singh exchanged turbans in sign of full brotherhood and vowed to wage a joint war of Rajputs and Jats for crushing the Marathas and Najib Khan in Hindustan. Bijay Singh invited Madho Singh to come to Pushkar for cementing this coalition. But the proud Kachhwa chief replied, sternly rebuking the head of the Rathor clan for having degraded himself by sitting on the same bench with “a silly Jat, a tenant of the house of Jaipur, who had always come to our feet on the receipt of our summons. Only the Maharana, the Rao Rajah and yourself are my peers.” This letter threw Jawahir into a paroxysm of rage and he plunged headlong into a war with Jaipur which nearly ruined him. [Vam. Bh. 3720, SPD. xxix. 162.]

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∗ In Nov. 1765, Achyut Ganesh (Sindhia’s diwan) installed, by order of the Peshwa, Govind Krishna as qiladar of Ajmir fort (vice Bāpuji Tākpir, dismissed for defalcation) and was about to set out for Marwar, when Yashwant Bāblé intervened for a peaceful settlement; Chāran Alā Karn agreed to pay 10 lakhs, which Bijay Singh ratified, and gave bonds for the tribute due, and thus averted the invasion. Before Achyut could collect any portion of this money, he had to hasten to Jaipur to help Madho S. against a combined Sikh-Jat army, and thereafter he was hurriedly summoned to Sindhia’s side in the Gwalior district. [SPD. xxvii. 109, xxix. 99, 102.]

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§ 17. Reflections on Rajput decadence.

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The impact of European civilization and of the European military system on India in the middle of the 18th century hit the Rajput warrior class hardest of all. [Ch. 6 § 1.] Their arms and method of fighting proved manifestly out of date. Their strict isolation within the narrow and obscure nooks of their homeland prevented them from acquiring the new knowledge or moving with the times. In their ignorance some of their princes vainly sought to strengthen themselves by hiring mercenaries with a thin tincture of European military knowledge and led by officers with second-hand European training. Every Portuguese half-breed, or even a pure Native Christian of Goa when dressed in a cast off European military costume, was believed to be a master of the new war, and was commissioned to raise a sepoy battalion for the local Hindu prince and thereby deepen the insolvency of his State, without really adding to its strength in any way.

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For the Rajput chief or *thākur*, cooped up within his ancestral fort, nothing now remained, but to nurse his ‘pride, poverty, and pedigree a yard long.’ But to the famished Scottish laird salvation came in the course of the expansion of the British empire in this very second half of the 18th century. Many a Scottish estate was freed from encumbrances, more than one barony endowed in that rugged land out of the spoils of Seringapatam and Bharatpur, Lucknow and Delhi, or from the princely remuneration of high office filled in the East under less stormy circumstances. Such a door of relief was, however, closed to the stay-at-home caste-bound Kshatriya lordling of Hindustan. The houses of Jaipur and Bikaner had sprung to first-rate rank in Rajasthan as helpers in the making of the Mughal empire; but this race supplied not one lieutenant in England’s conquest of the East.

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