Having read the 2 books and listened to one book by Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran, I have to admit her story telling skills are amazing. She has the ability to put things in right perspective and not amplifying things beyond required. I picked up her books for Shivaji has been a fascination since early childhood and no history book actually depicted the same properly. To that extent Medha's books are the best for anyone looking for a good clean reference to understand that time and part of history.
I agree Shivaji or Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj was a thorn in the flesh of Mughals starting from Shahjahan to Aurangzeb. Yes our history book dedicated a 2 page chapter on him and the highlight was the title bestowed by Aurangazeb of “Mountain rat” and it was glorified and was called master of guerrilla warfare. Without mentioning any details about his great cavalry or his system of tax collection. I still remember reading about Sher Shah Suri and his tax systems but not about Shivaji and his system and more importantly how his family resisted the Mughals for almost 30 odd years. In context, Aurangzeb ruled for 45 years and 2/3 of the time he spent in southern India either personally or through his generals and one can say the empire got destroyed because of the “Deccan Campaign”.
The entire book of both Sambhaji and Tara (wife of Rama Raja) reminded me that 400 years ago any life unless you are a nobility had no value, you were expendable and animals for sure suffered worse. To an extent if one sees the movie Black Hawk down, one can relate to it. Since nobility was placed so much higher than the rest, it was lot easier to make them corrupt with bribe of a rank or elevation to the next level.
Apart from Aurangazeb’s military tactics and cunningness which one can argue is his sharp mind, it was the buying out of nobility with respect to Bijapur and Hyderabad that led to their defeats. I have to give Bijapur its credit for they did stand against but Golkonda was literally surrendered without much of a fight. One thing that I am not able to understand is the fact that Aurangazeb’s hatred of Shia Muslim was known and even then the Bijapur and Hyderabad surrendered trusting the emperor will keep his promise, which he had time and again had broken. If you want to get an idea of Aurangazeb's cunningness one needs to see how he killed the prince of Mewar with smallpox.
This brings to the important aspect of history, we read all stories of how one army was better in war tactics and so on, my take is if the empire or dynasty was rotten from the inside meaning the top talents are either eliminated or have fled or the king is a rotten soul, all the external force has to do was to give a small nudge and it all falls apart. I need another post to justify my argument and maybe I will do that. Sadly, history only records the outcome of a war or event and leaves out details that led to that outcome.
Another salient aspect that came from reading the books is the fact, again not told in our school books was the fact that no Mughal emperor succeeded without a blood riot and killing his brothers and kin and some times in case of Jehangir, his own son. In a way one can argue it would lead to survival of the fittest but the cost of lives is beyond imagination. Although the Mughals were big emperors in India, the Muslim heirarchy, recognized Caliph who was in Persia and time and again the Caliph used to send reprimands to the Mughal emperor and one of Aurangazeb's son did escape to Persia hoping to get help from Caliph himself to over throw his own dad.
A thing to note, several European historians have noted that Mughals carried their harem and wives along to the battle fields and in case of Deccan campaign it was a total of 18 years when Aurangzeb came down, I am sure there must be kids born through that time and what would happen to them? I am sure someone has done a study of those.
In a way one can say Maratha's survived the Aurangazeb's onslaught for they were not a city but hill forts and hundreds of them all over Maharashtra. if they were like Bijapur or Hyderababd it would have been completely a different story.
Lastly one points to the fact that Sambhaji’s son Shahu was a weak emperor and eventually led to Peshwa’s taking over but the fact that is not told is that poor guy spent his formative years as a captive in Mughal prison.
ps: We all know Talikota war Viijayanagar was destroyed and how come we never learnt about Gilani brothers who placed religion over their kingdom loyalty.
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