Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c33.s5.38

v3.c33.s5.38

After returning to Punā, Ramchandra Ganesh tried to show his resentment at his supersession and to throw public odium on his master, by following the Muslim trick of "turning faqir." He stripped himself naked, with only a towel tightly drapped round his waist, took a beggar's bowl in his hand like a *sannyasi*, and went through the streets of Puna for two days, making a parade of begging alms of grain from the citizens, who were more amused than shocked by this mummery (July 1772. Khare, iv. 1904.) The Peshwa sternly forbade him to make a fool of himself in public. Ramchandra long kept up the hope that another turn of Fortune's wheel would overthrow Visāji Krishna, whose place in Delhi he would then get. But Madhav Rao's death that November and the murder of his successor ten months later, dashed all his hopes to the ground. Visāji Krishna amassed a fortune in the North, which he devoted to the cause of his patron Raghunāth Dādā in the war for the Peshwaship that began in 1774.