Jijabai

Jijabai raised Shivaji almost alone in the Pune lands and is credited in Maratha tradition with giving him the idea of an independent kingdom. She was the daughter of Lakhuji Jadhav, a nobleman in Ahmadnagar service, and married Shahaji Bhonsle; the two families quarrelled violently, and her father and brothers were murdered at the Nizam Shahi court in 1629, which she is said never to have forgiven and which shaped her view of what service to a sultanate was worth. Shahaji was given jagirs in the north and the south and spent his career campaigning in Karnataka, so from about 1637 she administered the Pune estate herself with the steward Dadaji Kondadev, rebuilding a district that had been burned twice and settling cultivators back on it. Shivaji grew up there rather than at a Bijapur court, which is generally taken as the reason he thought in terms of a Maratha state rather than a career. She educated him in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and, according to the chronicles, in the specific proposition that the forts of the Sahyadris could be held against anyone. She acted as regent when he was away, including during the campaign that ended with his escape from Agra in 1666, and she administered justice in his absence. She lived to see him crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in June 1674 and died twelve days later. Statues of her with the boy Shivaji stand across Maharashtra, and she is a figure in modern Marathi politics as much as in history. Her name is given to a park and a hospital in Mumbai and Pune. The Bhosale family had been in Maratha service for generations before her marriage. Shivaji built the fort of Pratapgad near her residence.

• Lived: 1598 CE – 1674 CE
• Nationality: Indian
• Roles: royalty