Shahu Maharaj

Shahu was taken by the Mughals at seven when his father Sambhaji was executed, was held for eighteen years, and was released to become the Maratha ruler under whom the state expanded across most of India while its actual government passed to his ministers. He was raised at Aurangzeb's court, treated with a certain courtesy, given a Mughal rank and a Muslim education alongside a Hindu one, and released in 1707 after Aurangzeb died - by a successor who calculated that a rival claimant would split the Marathas, which it did. His aunt Tarabai had been running the war in his absence for her own son, and the succession was settled by fighting rather than agreement. What Shahu did with the throne was to delegate it. He appointed Balaji Vishwanath as Peshwa, or chief minister, in 1713, and the office became hereditary in that family; the Peshwas ran the state, the diplomacy and the armies, and Shahu presided at Satara. Under that arrangement the Marathas took Malwa and Gujarat, raided into Bengal, extracted revenue rights across the Mughal empire and effectively replaced it as the dominant power in India by the 1750s. He was known for religious tolerance and for a mildness that his critics called weakness. He had no surviving son, and the succession dispute after his death in 1749 confirmed the Peshwas as the real government of the Maratha confederacy. The Peshwa office he made hereditary lasted until the British defeated the confederacy in 1818. He adopted an heir shortly before dying, and Tarabai produced a rival claimant she later admitted was an impostor. Satara remained the formal capital while Pune became the real one.

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