Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c48.s2: § 2. How Tukoji Holkar tried to thwart Mahadji Sindhia
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c48.s2
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§ 2. How Tukoji Holkar tried to thwart Mahadji Sindhia
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The quarrel about the relative prestige of the two families might have been put to slumber or simmered harmlessly, but a source of more active friction was the Peshwā's faulty partition of the Maratha acquisitions in North India among his generals. Here was something very material that had to be fought for. No clear cut territorial division was made among these agents by the Puna Government, but Holkar and Sindhia—with sometimes the Pawār added—were told to collect different percentages of the tribute from the *same* prince in Rajputana or Malwa.
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Peace and effective collection of tribute from Rajputana could have been enforced only by the presence there of an officer of the Peshwā—such as his brother or uncle—with authority to override Holkar and Sindhia alike. But such a legate plenipotentiary was not then available. On the contrary, Nānā Fadnis, the regent of the boy Peshwā, almost openly set up Tukoji Holkar and Ali Bahadur to thwart Mahadji and humiliate him before the public in Hindustan.
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For example, when in August 1790, Mahadji Sindhia, in an atttempt to placate the Peshwā, secured from the Emperor of Delhi a *khilat* for the Peshwā and a *farmān* appointing the latter as the Imperial Regent (with Mahadji as his deputy in that office), and according to the practice of the Mughal Government a royal pavilion (technically called *farmān-bāri*) was erected outside Mathura to receive the imperial gifts with due honour and ceremony, and all the Maratha generals at the place were invited to attend, as they were bound in duty to do,—all came except Tukoji Holkar who sent his *diwān* to represent him, as if this officer was Sindhia’s equal and Tukoji his superior. Mahadji took this public insult to heart and vowed to oust the Holkar competition from Hindustan by increasing his army. Rānā Khan pacified him.
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∗ In November 1789, Mahādji Sindhiā, in view of his projected invasion of Rājputānā, did not deem it wise to keep both the other great Marātha chiefs then in the North estranged from him. So, he gave Tukoji Holkar, as his share of the Marātha conquests in Hindustan, 15 mahals, besides promising him two others (namely Kosi and Shergarh) later. These fifteen mahals were Garh Mukteshwar and three others on the bank of the upper Ganges, Khurjā, Sikandrā, Hāpur and four others in the middle Doab, and Dholpur, Achnerā and two others south of Agra. Ali Bahādur was offered, but never actually put in possession of the Aligarh-Koil district, and his demand of 24 lakhs of Rupees a year for his military expenses could not possibly be complied with by Sindhiā, who gave merely evasive replies. (*Kālé Akhbārāt*).
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Every enemy of Mahadji Sindhia found shelter and support in Holkar’s camp, whose close ally was Ali Bahadur, who had openly defied Mahadji at Mathurā in July 1789 and was now thwarting him in Bundelkhand. Every Rajput prince who wanted to evade the payment of his tribute to Sindhia, sent his minister to Holkar to intrigue against Sindhia with Holkar’s diwan. In 1790 while Mahadji was openly campaigning against Ismail Beg and the Rajahs of Jaipur and Marwar, the envoys of these three enemy Powers were living in the camp of Tukoji though a very small contingent of Holkar’s horse had been sent to Mahadji to assist in his campaign! Above all, every anti-Sindhia plot in Rajputana was hatched under Holkar’s leadership. The situation at last became intolerable, as Mahadji again and again complained to Nānā Fadnis, but the Regent of Puna took no action.
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The local Rajahs, seeing this incurable division among the Maratha authorities in Northern India, stiffened in their attitude and evaded paying their promised war contributions and the tribute due to the Emperor, knowing full well that adequate force could not be brought to bear on them.
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In fact, the hoarded wealth of the Rajput Governments had been grossly exaggerated in the imagination of the Marathas. Their annual revenue even had sunk to one-third of the normal amount, through lavish grants to the feudal barons or usurpations by them and poor collection owing to maladministration and anarchy. Hence a debtor State which Holkar’s men had first sucked dry could yield nothing to Sindhia’s collectors coming after. This hunt for gold kept alive the quarrel between the two Maratha agents of the Peshwā in Hindustan.
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Apart from the jealous quarrel about parity in landed possessions and revenue between the houses of Sindhia and Holkar, there was a basic conflict of policy in their attitude to the Rajput princes. We have seen how in the pre-Panipat days and even during the Maratha return to the North after that disaster, Malhar Rao Holkar I had always worked at cross purposes to Dattaji and Mahadji Sindhia. While the Sindhias nursed a deadly feud with Najib-ud-daula’s family, Malhar Holkar had made Najib his “adopted son” and always thwarted the Sindhias by supporting the Ruhela cause in the Peshwa’s council and their joint operations in Hindustan.
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So, too, Tukoji Holkar now (1789) argued with Nānā Fadnis that unless the two great Rajput chiefs of Jaipur and Marwar were kept friendly (by relaxing Mahadji’s pressure on them for the tribute due to the Peshwa), they would be driven for self-preservation to join the Mughalia party and thus raise against the Maratha position in the North a formidable opposition on two fronts at the same time. Mahadji replied that the Rajputs would never come out of their own countries to fight elsewhere. (*Aiti. Tip.* iv. 13.)
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Tukoji’s idea of amity with the Rajputs amounted only to this that he would monopolise all the tribute and land surrenders made to the Maratha State by the Rajputs during Mahadji’s absence from that scene, as his compensation for Sindhia’s appropriating all the Maratha gains in the Agra-Delhi country and the Doab.
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In fact, the eternal conflict between these two irreconcilable interests ruined the Maratha hope of establishing an empire in the North. The British-Indian leaders noticed this fact very early. Resident W. Palmer wrote on 23
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March 1789,—"I do not think that joining in authority two Chiefs of such equal strength and discordant views as Sindhia and Holkar, is well calculated to ensure such a system. It is probably the expectation of the Puna darbār to preserve the influence of the State by the check which each Chief will be upon the other. But in my opinion, more will be lost by their dissensions than can be gained by the mutual jealousies, and that the Maratha interests are exposed to be totally annihilated by such a delegation to them." [PRC. i. Nos. 246, 255.]