Like a person’s life, even a nation’s life has many events of happiness and misery. Some of these incidents are of extreme victory and glory, while some others are of terrifying defeats and ignominy! It is difficult to digest victories, but it is further difficult to emerge out of an incident of defeat. The virtues like resolve, perseverance, capacity for hard work, unity, the desire for independence, that are resident within any nation or a society, get actually tested at the time of extreme duress. A society rich with the presence of these virtues, defeats the failure, washes off its stain, and achieves greater power and glory than before, on the power of self-confidence.
Such a terrible event in the Maratha history took place in year 1689. This event was not just the defeat, but it was an incident that hurt the nation’s self-esteem. It was almost a national calamity. It is really interesting to observe how the Marathas behaved in such an unprecedented situation, which extraordinary virtues their leaders expressed, and how they behaved as inheritors of the legacy of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
Badshah Aalamgir Aurangzeb attacked Deccan in the year 1681 along with his huge army, to completely uproot the rising Maratha power that had challenged the Mughal Empire in the south. The Badshah had a tremendous confidence, that the founder of this Maratha power, Shivaji, had died; it was not long that his young son Sambhaji would be able to sustain in front of him; he would be able to vanquish his kingdom in a snap of his fingers. Naturally, he ordered his fresh forces to attack the Hindavi Swarajya from all sides. But due to his misfortune, the Maratha king resisted him with such valour, that the Badshah himself went into depression day-by-day. So much, so that in the year 1685, he dumped his pursuit of trying to vanquish the Marathas and went to the Carnatic to capture Bijapur’s Adilshahi Sultanate. In 1686, he won Bijapur and vanquished Adilshahi. The next year, he won Golconda and destroyed Qutubshahi! Capturing one Sultanate each year, consigning their Sultans to life-long captivity, in all heady victorious hysteria, he attacked Maharashtra back to vanquish the Maratha kingdom.
However, this time, the Badshah was favoured by his fortune. He sent his sardar Sheikh Nizam alias Muqarrab Khan towards Kolhapur to capture Panhala. The Shirke family elements, who had left Hindavi Swarajya and joined the Mughals, gave information to this Khan, that Sambhajiraje was staying at Sangameshwar and was in and around Vishalgad. Sambhajiraje had especially been present in the region to resolve the issue of the revolt by these Shirkes and was on his way to Raigad from Vishalgad. On his way, he had halted at Sangameshwar for some time, along with Kavi Kalash, Sarnaubat (Infantry Commander-in-Chief) Mhaloji Ghorpade, Santaji Ghorpade, and Khando Ballal, apart from two to three hundred infantrymen. The main part of his army had travelled ahead. In such a situation, Muqarrab Khan suddenly raided them, and arrested Sambhajiraje and Kavi Kalash (3 February 1689), and equally quickly, he got out of that difficult region of the Sahyadri with his political prisoners. He presented them in front of the Badshah on 15 February 1689.
Before that, they were paraded all over the camp as prisoners of war and subjected to ridicule! When the Mughal officials threatened Sambhajiraje to bow his head in front of the Badshah, this self-respecting Maratha king did not bend it even one bit! On the same night, Sambhajiraje was blinded with red-hot iron rods. After this, he was subjected to constant inhuman torture for thirty-nine days, and finally was chopped off limb-by-limb along with Kavi Kalash and was slaughtered! The enemies hoisted Sambhajiraje’s head on a spearpoint, and in their frenzy, paraded it from Aurangabad up to Burhanpur!
In the skirmish at Sangameshwar, many of the Maratha soldiers were killed. Sarnaubat Mhaloji Ghorpade fell in that combat. Santaji Ghorpade and Khando Ballal were able to save their own lives but could not save Sambhajiraje. Somehow, they reached Raigad. They were probably the ones who first brought the news of Sambhajiraje’s capture to Raigad.
To be continued…
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