Shahaji Bhonsle

Shahaji Bhonsle spent his career as a general in the service of one Deccan sultanate after another, held a kingdom of his own for two years, and was the father of Shivaji. He began in Ahmadnagar service, and when the Mughals destroyed that state he kept its resistance alive from 1633 to 1636 by installing a boy of the royal family as puppet sultan and governing in his name, which is the first attempt by a Maratha commander to hold independent power in the Deccan. Shah Jahan came south personally with a large army to end it, and Shahaji surrendered on terms: he entered Bijapur service and was given jagirs, land assignments, including Pune in the north and Bangalore in the south. That split is the making of his son. Shivaji was left in the Pune lands with his mother Jijabai while Shahaji campaigned in Karnataka, and he began seizing hill forts there in his teens. Bijapur arrested Shahaji in 1648 to force his son to stop; he was released after about a year and after Shivaji had appealed to the Mughals, and the episode taught both of them what the other was worth. He is generally held to have given his son the administrative model, the trained officers and the money, while keeping his own formal loyalty to Bijapur to the end. He died in a hunting accident in 1664, the year Shivaji sacked Surat. Shivaji was crowned an independent sovereign ten years after that. His elder son Sambhaji, Shivaji s half-brother, was killed in battle in Karnataka in 1654. His second wife Tukabai founded the Bhonsle line that later ruled Thanjavur in the far south, which lasted until 1855. A samadhi marks his death place at Hodigere.

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