I AND MY WORDS

Peshwa Baji Rao I (Wikipedia Commons) With the death of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a period of uncertainty had hit the Maratha kingdom. The Mughals under Aurangzeb’s leadership had left no stone unturned in hitting the Marathas hard. Shivaji’s son Sambhaji was taken captive, and the torture leading to his death eventually has been well documented. His brother Rajaram ascended the throne in order to stabilize the sinking confidence of the Maratha power, though for all practical purposes it was Rani Tarabai who held the reigns of the throne, given how ill Rajaram was. Sambhaji’s son Shahu ji was still a prisoner of Aurangzeb at the time when Rajaram passed away, and Tarabai officially took over the regency. To keep the jagirdars loyal to the throne in this delicate political time, Shahu ji scrapped the key provision of not making jagirdari and other offices hereditary. When Shahu declared himself the king of the Marathas at Satara in 1708, he had to recognize these Maratha chiefta...

While much has been discussed about the decline of the Marathas in such a short span of time, one has rarely focused on the economic picture of the time as a major attribution of the weakening of the Marathas. In this multi-part series, I shall explore the economic scenario of India in general and the Marathas in particular to argue that the Maratha state was founded on a weak financial footing from the beginning, and never allowed Marathas to be strong enough to assert their control.  At the time of the rise of the Maratha power under Shivaji, historians have noted a not so favorable economic condition of the rural areas of Deccan. Fukazawa (1987) notes the decay of agriculture as the key to the rise of the Marathas, a direct result of a combination of factors like the incessant fighting between Mughal, Qutbshahi and Adilshahi kingdoms. One has to remember as Srinivasan (1944) notes that the Marathas had been since the times of the Rashtrakutas and all the way to the Qu...

Woke up at six To find a moonlit sky It was still dark out there The silences still hung bare And the roads led nowhere Switched on the phone A message beeped out loud It was you, again You tried to call, signal failed I felt real depressed I know where you were So don't try pretend otherwise "It's not what you think," you said But the lies, they dropped dead Like them birds in the sky O I've been tryin' to recover From your toxic love, and failed The venom is potent, they said But the tears, they otherwise said Betrayal by that special, code red They played Baez on the radio But I wanted Chaan instead To hear sorry, that ne'er was there The guitar kept getting picked instead And the mood lasted long And I lay there, cryin' my heart away We'll never talk again, I said Deleted all messages that were there Wiped my face dry and said "It's a new day" The sun was out, it had an orange glow that time, ...

The article by Rakesh Goyal on the ideas of democracy of ancient India , while useful in providing a theoretical construct, is inadequate in putting forward the practical constructs of these ideas in ancient India. This is problematic, since there is ample evidence in favor of the same. There are several examples of democratic traditions in practice in India. I shall be presenting two particular instances in India to highlight the thriving practices in ancient India. I shall also be putting out the actual practices adopted to safeguard interests and note the potential diversity of the democratic practices observed in ancient India. Also, while the systems have been noted by Mr. Goyal as evidence for democracy in India, his article also lacks an elaboration on the criticisms of the systems thereafter in various texts, which have been given only summary reference, which we shall also briefly touch upon. AshtaJanapada System and the Republican Democracy For those who have re...