The Military System of the Marathas, with a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities c18.12

c18.12

Shivaji had urged racial unity on a religious basis. He had attempted to suppress all separatist tendencies by doing away with old feudal institutions. But new ideas require persistent propaganda before they are accepted and popularised. Such propaganda was ably carried on by Ramdas in Shivaji’s time, but as Shivaji stands unique among his countrymen so does Ramdas. Neither of them found able successors to carry on their work, and the idea of nationality, which might have one day taken root in Maharashtra, died away in the uncongenial environments of feudalism. When the Maratha empire expanded across the Narmada, things became still worse. The first settlers in Central India had still some sentimental tie with the Deccan, the home of their childhood, but chiefs like Daulat Rao Sindhia and Jaswant Rao Holkar were Marathas by birth but not by breeding, and they could not be expected to have that sentimental respect for Poona or Satara which characterised Mahadaji Sindhia and Malhar Rao Holkar. The cleavage between the different parts of the empire therefore became wider and wider until it became impossible to bridge.