Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s2: § 6. Factious nobles overthrow the Raja's government in Mārwār
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c47.s2
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§ 6. Factious nobles overthrow the Raja's government in Mārwār
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During the second half of the eighteenth century the kingdom of Mārwār was in as unhappy a condition as that of Udaipur, or rather worse. In both the countries the royal government was paralyzed and the sovereign became powerless to control his nobles and enforce his authority. And yet these two rajahs were not cruel or licentious, their only vice was that they were too soft, almost imbecile in a stormy world that called for strong and decisive leadership in the head of the State. Each of them had come to the throne when very young,—the Udaipur Mahārānā in 1778 at the age of eight, and the Jodhpur Maharajah in 1752 when 22 years old; and each was burdened by the load of a disputed succession which called in the mercenary aid of the Marāthas and by destroying the royal power enabled their vassals to become independent. Each of these two kings had a long reign,—Bhim Singh of Udaipur for 50 years and Bijay Singh of Jodhpur for 41 years, but it only meant the prolongation of their people's misery.
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We have seen (Ch. 7 § 12) how Bakht Singh had seized the throne of Jodhpur in 1751 by ousting the lawful heir Rām Singh. His own death came about a year later, after which his son Bijay Singh succeeded and had to fight to keep his uncle Rām Singh out. In the phrenzy of domestic feud each side made reckless bids for the armed aid of the Peshwā by promising impossible subsidies. In the end, Bakht Singh's heir maintained himself on the throne with Holkar's support, and Rām Singh after fighting twenty-two battles for his heritage, ended his days in exile, in 1772. But this quarter century of civil war (1750-1772) made the nobles who had sided with Bijay Singh independent in all but the name.
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The Chāmpā-ot clan of Rāthores, at whose head stood the chieftain of Pokaran, with their allies seized the capital and its palace-citadel and conducted the government themselves, reducing the king to a puppet. But Bijay Singh’s nurse’s son Jagoo and spiritual director Atmārām, under the sage counsel of Govardhan Khichi, contrived to hire a band of 700 mercenaries from Sindh and thus form a royal bodyguard independent of the baronial levies, who used to obey their own lords even against the king. In February 1760, these “king’s friends” contrived the treacherous murder of most of the usurping barons. “This was a tremendous sacrifice, for the maintenance of authority, of men who had often emptied their veins in defence of their country ;” but the crime had immediate success: “for a time, the feudal interest was restrained, anarchy was allayed, commerce again flourished, and general prosperity revived.... Bijay Singh took the best means to secure the fidelity of his chiefs by finding them occupation. He carried his arms against the desultory hordes of the desert, the Khosās and the Sahrās, .... which ended in the conquest of Amarkot. He also curtailed the territories of Jesālmir on his north-west frontier.” (Tod, ii. Marwar, ch. XIII.)
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§ 7. Jodhpur Rajah’s female favourite dominates his government and humiliates the nobles.
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But the Rajah’s character was his greatest enemy. He was a harmless weak man, and as such naturally fell under the domination of some stronger-willed favourite. When just past his youth, Bijay Singh in 1765 initiated himself as a Vaishnav of the Epicurean Vallabhāchāri sect, took Gosain Gokulastha of Nāthdwārā as his spiritual director (guru), gave up animal food and wine, and passed most of his time in religious devotion. The Marātha envoy at his court aptly likens him to a *nirmālya* or a flower-garland offered to a god but thrown away as worthless on becoming stale.
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The Vaishnav's creed (like the Shākta's) enjoins the duty of having a female companion in practising devotions. She represents Rādhā, while he is the counterpart of Krishna, and these two combined typify the Primeval Parents—called Purusha and Prakriti, whose union, according to Hindu philosophy, has created the Universe. Bijay Singh's mate was a girl of the Oswāl caste, evidently procured by the high priest of Nāthdwārā, and their union may fairly be called a morganatic marriage; it was in no sense an illicit amour, scorned by society and denounced by religion, though the offsprings of such unions are not entitled to the throne nor counted as of pure caste.* The imperious spirit of this female favourite made her take advantage of the Rajah's infatuation and control the government through her faithful man of business Bhairo Sāni, a horse-tamer (chābuk sawār), who acted in concert with Sawāi Singh, the chief of Pokaran. The barons of Marwar resented her domination, as she took away the estates that many of them had transferred to themselves by force or fraud during the long years of anarchy. Worst of all, she was planning to perpetuate her own power after the death of the king, by taking a step which would put a stigma upon the Kshatriya race. She had borne her royal lover a son, named Tej Singh, to whom the king agreed to grant the fief of Mertā and thus make him a baron almost next to the sovereign. But the boy died (late in 1785) and his mother turned to the plan of ruling the State through an adopted son.
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∗ Such morganatic wives are known by the Persian title of Pāsbān (popularly, Pāsbāni or Pāsbānin) and were found in every class of Rajput society which had the money to keep one. Anand Rao Gangadhar, [18 April 1792, Satara H.P. i. 341] gives her the name of Gulāb Rāi (Flower Queen); but Gulāb Rāi, as we know from the Maratha envoy's despatch (p. 8) was also the name of the Jodhpur vakil in Sindhia's camp, and his son Nawal Rāi offered to secure from that Maratha chief a confirmation of the fief of Nāgor to her son Tej Singh. Pandit Reu calls her a Jāt, Tod an Oswāl by caste.
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By the year 1791, Bijay Singh had grown very old and was visibly breaking up, and it was necessary to declare his heir. The choice of the discontented barons was Bhim Singh (the son of the Rajah's fifth son), but his fierceness and proud spirit made him unfit to play a secondary part. The Pāsbāni found a tamer instrument in a younger grandson of the king, named Mān Singh,* the son of the sixth son of the Rajah. Her plan was to formally adopt Mān Singh as her son, and then make the king summon all the barons to do homage to him as their future sovereign, so that she might rule the State as his adoptive mother after Bijay Singh's death,—"exactly like what Ahalyā Bāi was doing in the Holkar State."
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The ceremony of the public recognition of the heir to the throne was timed for 7th November 1791, after several previous changes of date. As soon as the doting king called upon his nobles to attend, there was a mutiny among them; the barons who were the king's kith and kin however distant, refused to stultify themselves by saluting as their sovereign "the son of a slave-girl, the son of a demi-wife"—for that was Mān Singh's legal position after he had accepted the Pāsbāni as his "mother by adoption." The nobles left the city in a body and formed a rebel camp in another town.
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The former anarchy broke out again and was accompanied by a rapid succession of murders. The Mārwār royalty and nobles had specialised in assassination as a short cut to their personal objects. Already, about 10th August 1791, the aged and devoted minister Khub-chand Singhavi had been murdered by the Pāsbāni when attending her darbar†, and Khub-chand's brother Bije-chand and eldest son were killed and their women and children imprisoned and beaten. Gumān Singh (a younger son of the king) was poisoned by the same woman. (Sep. 1791, J.Y. p. 63.)
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∗ The Marātha envoy's despatches carelessly name Sher S. as her choice, but Tod is right in saying that she wanted to adopt Mān Singh (the son of Gumān S.) whom his uncle Sher S. had adopted. The letter from Holkar's camp in Jaipur (4 May 1792) clearly says that the king's grandson (and not son) was proposed to be declared his heir. (Chandrachud D. ii. 91.)
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† And his body thrown to the dogs,—such was Rajput chivalry in 1791. (Jodh. Y. p. 63.)
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§ 8. Death of Bijay Singh of Mārwār, 1793
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Retribution soon overtook her. Her royal partner being old and infirm, she consoled herself with a Chāmpā-ot noble who bore the same name as the Rajah and exercised his privilege of visiting her at night. She had recently made him the chief minister. At this the Rathor nobles' indignation burst forth; they complained, "Our master's wife, even when she is a slave-girl, is like a mother to us. This (minister) Bijay Singh has laid a stigma on us all. The shameless woman must be given a fright." So, they sent to the minister one of his kinsmen who stabbed him to death on 4th January 1792 and escaped in safety to the rebel camp.* The Rajah was shut out of the capital on 13th April 1792; but after wandering about for some months he returned to the Jodhpur palace on 20th March 1793, and there died from natural decay on the 8th July following.
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Meantime, his Pāsbāni had been murdered by the nobles, on 16th April, 1792, but the fact was kept from him till a week before his own death. The account of the crime that reached the camp of Holkar at Tonk in the Jaipur State runs thus: "Raja Bijay Singh was entirely under the influence of his kept woman and at her request seated his grandson in her lap and declared him (the future) king. So all the Rajputs united and decided not to salute one who had been adopted as a son by a concubine. They gave the throne to another grandson of the king, named Bhim Singh, who had been confined in Jodhpur citadel. Bhim Singh's rule was proclaimed through the capital. The king's concubine, there called the Pāsbānin, was living in a garden outside the city with her own body-guard of a thousand or twelve hundred soldiers. The Rajputs asked them to take their due pay (from the barons) and leave her. They refused. So there was a fight between them, some ten or twelve men fell on the two sides taken together, and at last the soldiers agreed to go away if their salary was paid. They got it and left her. On hearing of it, the Pāsbānin took poison and died.” (*Chandra*, ii. 91). In the story that Tod was told about twenty-five years after the event, she is said to have been living in the citadel during the Raja’s absence and to have been induced to come out by a false message that he wanted her company, but that “at the moment she entered her litter, a blow from an unseen hand ended her existence.” (*Annals*, Marwar, ch. XIII). This is the true account, because the Maratha envoy in Jodhpur wrote on the day after the King’s death, “On 3rd July, the Raja returned to the fort-palace after visiting the Bālkrishna temple in the city. . . . At a quarter and a half of the night, he called the two female attendants of his favourite (Pāsbānin), and heard from them the story of how the sardārs had killed her. The narration went on till midnight, all the three weeping, when the Raja began to gasp and fainted.” (*JY*. 24).
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∗ Murder of Khub-Chand and family, JY. p.
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⁶³ Bijay Singh Chāmpā-ot's acts and death, JY. p. 60 and 64.
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§ 9. *Sindhia’s relations with Mārwār after Patan, 1790-1793.*
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Such was the domestic history of Mārwār on the background of which we must study the course of that State’s dealings with the Marathas and the payment of the subsidy promised by its Government to the Peshwā after the murder of Jayāpā Sindhiā in 1755 (Ch. 18 § 7.) To the unpaid balance of that subsidy and compensation other grievances had been added. Ajmer fort which the Marathas had taken on 21 February 1755, had been recovered by the Rajah of Jodhpur on 24th December 1787,—the city below it having been occupied by him on the 27th August before.
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The immediate effect of the annihilating defeat at Mertā (10th Sept. 1790) was to throw the Rajah and people of Jodhpur into despair and alarm. Envoys were at once sent to Mahādji’s generals offering to pay the arrears of subsidy and to restore Ajmer fort, provided that they did not penetrate further into Mārwār territory. But Sindhia’s power was soon afterwards paralysed by the open defection of Tukoji Holkar’s contingent and that of the Punā Government’s direct agent Ali Bahādur from Sindhia’s side. Mirzā Ismail Beg, whose contingent had escaped destruction by reason of its absence from Mertā, was now welcomed and equipped by the Jodhpur Government, which thus regained heart and evaded payment. (*Chandrachur*, ii. 82. *DY*. S. 47.)
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When Mahādji reached Sambhar (c. 20 December 1790), a Jodhpur envoy waited on him, offering to pay 50 lakhs (minus the value of the crops damaged in the war, the spoils taken from Mertā town, and the plunder made by Sindhia’s troops on the way), and to restore Ajmer fort. When this envoy came back to Jodhpur with permission for clearing certain points, the Rajah called up Ismail Beg from Nāgor to his side and got ready for fighting. But the Rathors were very much afraid of artillery fire,—as the Maratha envoy reported,—this lesson having been burnt into their memory by the slaughter at Mertā. At the same time a long continued drought and severe famine was desolating Marwar and the people were migrating elsewhere to escape starvation. It became impossible to provision Mahādji’s armies in Rajputana (*DY*. S.I.)
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After their victory at Patan (20th June 1790), Sindhia’s generals had by-passed Jaipur city, entered Kishangarh territory and taken Parbatsar, Sambhar and some other places on the Jaipur-Mārwār border, where they set up their own posts. Thence they proceeded to Ajmer, took the city (below the fort) at the gallop, dominated the Ānāsāgar lake and began to exchange fire with fort overlooking it. (August. *DY*. S. 37). The battle of Mertā, fought less than a month after this, destroyed all Rathor hopes of raising the siege of Ajmer, and so, at last, on 3rd January 1791, Budh Singh, the Jodhpur envoy in Mahādji’s camp made the following settlement through Sindhia’s minister Ābā Chitnis: The Maratha dues were fixed at sixty lakhs of Rupees, and a memorandum admitting this claim was signed by the envoy. Out of this sum, 7½ lakhs were to be paid at once; for 20 lakhs Sambhar, Parbatsar and two other mahals were mortgaged, but their revenue was to be collected by the Rajah’s men and paid to the Marathas, and the full amount was to be cleared in four years; 22½ lakhs were to be provided in kind, i.e., in jewels, clothing, horses, elephants &c. to be delivered by instalments in four months. The remaining ten lakhs were written off as compensation for the trampling down of crops by the invading army. In addition, Ajmer fort was to be restored to the Marathas, who would then hand Mertā back to the Rajah. (DY. S. 4.)
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Mahādji sent a message through this vakil to the Jodhpur Rajah, warning him against entertaining Ismail Beg in his dominions, interfering with the Maratha policy in Jaipur, and disturbing the Kishangarh territory.
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The Jodhpur Government paid only four lakhs out of the first instalment of 7½ lakhs, and “there was no chance of their paying the balance of 3½ lakhs.” Sindhia was at last put in possession of Ajmer fort on 7th March 1791. (H.P. 592.)
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The first capture of Ajmer by the Marathas (in February 1755) had been accompanied by a tragedy: the wife and children of the commandant (qiladār) slew themselves in fear of disgrace. A second tragedy attended the second transfer of this historical fort to Maratha hands (in March 1791): Rajah Bijay Singh had entrusted Ajmer to Dumrāj, a Rajput Jain (Oswāl), who had vowed at the time never to yield his charge to an enemy so long as he lived. When, therefore, the Rajah’s order for the surrender of Ajmer to Sindhia arrived, Dumrāj chose the only possible way of resolving the conflict between his duty as a servant and his duty as a man of honour, and it was over his self-slain body that the Marathas entered the gate of Ajmer. (Tod, ii. Marwar, ch. 13. R. Tagore’s exquisite ballad.)
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Mahādji Sindhia paid a visit to Ajmer (about 21st March 1791) and made his own arrangements for the administration of the fort and district. Then he moved on to Pushkar, where he spent some days in celebrating the Holi festival (27th March). (DY. S. 19 and 18.) Next, after marching through Kishangarh territory and dictating peace to that small kingdom which was being torn by a war of succession, he was personally called to Mewār to save it from the utter collapse of its lawful Government. At the same time, urged by the Peshwā, he put pressure on Bijay Singh to wind up his Gujrat adventure by recalling his own contingent under Shovā-chand and the mercenary captain Ismail Beg, who had been threatening the north-eastern frontier of the Maratha dependency of Barodā. The trouble ended of itself, when, about 12th August, Shovā-chand, on learning of the murder of his brother, the minister Khub-chand Singhavi, at the royal Court, hurried back to Mārwār and Ismail Beg had to follow him, (H. P. 597.) A little later the Mughalia leader was finally evicted from Mārwār.
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In September a Jodhpur vakil visited Mahādji with 1½ lakhs worth of jewels as part of the payment in kind (DY. ii. 9.) Thereafter baronial revolt entirely broke up the Mārwār Government, as we have seen already. The civil war was aggravated by the succession disputes which broke out even before the death (on 8th July 1793) of Bijay Singh and rendered the realisation of the Maratha dues absolutely impossible.