Narayanrao

Narayanrao was Peshwa for nine months and was murdered in his own palace at eighteen, and the killing is the hinge on which Maratha independence turned. He was Balaji Bajirao's third son and succeeded his brother Madhavrao I in November 1772, inheriting a state that had just been rebuilt and an uncle, Raghunathrao, who had spent a decade trying to take it. The young Peshwa confined his uncle, which was prudent and was not enough. On 30 August 1773, during the Ganesh festival, a body of Gardi troops under Sumer Singh entered the Shaniwar Wada; Narayanrao ran through the palace calling for his uncle to save him and was cut down in front of him. The surviving order is the famous detail: Raghunathrao is said to have written an instruction to seize him, and his wife Anandibai to have altered a single Marathi letter, turning dharaave - hold him - into maaraave - kill him. The story cannot be documented to the letter but the substance was accepted by the enquiry Ram Shastri Prabhune conducted, which found Raghunathrao guilty and prescribed a penance he never performed. His posthumous son Madhavrao II was born in 1774, and the regency that governed for him is what the British eventually broke. Ram Shastri Prabhune s verdict is remembered in Maharashtra as the standard of judicial independence, since he pronounced against the man then holding power. The Shaniwar Wada burned in 1828 and only the walls and gates survive. A tradition holds that the palace is haunted by the boy calling for his uncle.

• Lived: 1755 CE – 1773 CE
• Nationality: Indian
• Roles: politician