Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c44.s1.9

v4.c44.s1.9

Nānā Fadnis was obsessed by the narrow ideas of the age of Bālāji Rao, the third Peshwā, when Maratha armies were irresistible and every expedition brought back vast amounts of treasure or fertile new territory. He could not realise that North India had been sucked dry by ceaseless civil war, foreign invasion, and rebellion, ever since 1752. He could not adequately recognise that the balance of power in the North had shifted completely in consequence of the English rushing in to fill the vacuum caused by the Maratha eclipse at Pānipat. He knew not that the old Maratha policies of war and diplomacy which had succeeded under Bāji Rao I and Bālāji Rao (1720-1760) were now hopelessly out of date and that an entirely new orientation of Maratha policy in Hindustan and a new type of Maratha generals and administrators were required for carrying out the new policy. Nānā Fadnis lived blind to the moving outer world, like the proverbial frog in the well, and yet the central power of the Maratha Government during these eventful twenty years (1775-1795) was wielded by him with dictatorial authority.