Chhatrasal

Chhatrasal fought the Mughal empire for fifty years, founded the Bundela state of Panna, and left a third of it to Bajirao I for saving him at eighty. His father Champat Rai had rebelled against Aurangzeb and been driven to suicide; Chhatrasal served briefly in the imperial army, met Shivaji around 1670, and was advised by him to go home and raise his own people rather than fight for someone else's empire. He did, from about 1671, with a handful of men and a borrowed sword, and by the 1700s controlled most of Bundelkhand between the Yamuna and the Narmada - diamond country, the Panna mines being the only significant diamond source in India. He fought dozens of engagements, mostly small and mobile, and was never decisively beaten. In 1728, at nearly eighty, he was besieged by the Mughal governor Muhammad Khan Bangash and sent a verse appeal to Bajirao comparing himself to the elephant seized by the crocodile; Bajirao came, broke the siege, and Chhatrasal adopted him as a son and left him a third of the state, along with his daughter Mastani. He was also a poet of some standing in Braj Bhasha and a follower of the Pranami sect. Panna remained a princely state until 1950. The Pranami sect he followed is monotheistic and drew on both Hindu and Islamic devotional traditions, which is part of the context for his daughter s parentage. His memorial at Chhatarpur, a town named for him, still stands. Bundelkhand poetry celebrates him as a founder.

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