Frontiers

by Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran

  On his way home, Raghunath thinks about the vanished Hindu kingdoms. The kings of the Deccan had lived in their mythological world. They followed the war etiquette observed by their gods and god-like people from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Even the time to begin the battle was fixed by astrologers and the position of the planets influenced their moves and countermoves. Civilian lives were spared. Three centuries ago, Alauddin Khalji’s army had invaded the Deccan, flouting all the rules of war. At the end of the thirteenth century, he had brought his armies into the bedrooms, slaying and slaughtering. Even the newborns were not spared. Soon, the Hindu dynasties of the south—the Cholas, the Cheras, the Pandyans, the Hoysalas and the Kakatiyas—were flattened under the hooves of Alauddin’s heavy cavalry. In the fourteenth century, two empires were born in the Deccan. Another Alauddin had arrived from Turkistan. Alauddin Hasan Bahaman Shah had swiftly conquered northern parts of the Deccan. He, the descendent of the Persian king Kai Bahaman, named his new kingdom the Bahamani empire. Deeper in the south, in the regions of Tamil Nadu and south Karnataka, a Hindu empire of Vijayanagara was founded by a Harihara and Bukka of Sangama Dynasty. The new empires clashed over the fertile regions around the Tungabhadra, Krishna and Godavari rivers. The sixteenth century saw the rise of Krishna Deva Rai, one of the greatest Hindu rulers of the Vijayanagara empire. After his untimely death, the last of the Deccan’s Hindu empires started shrinking. Even the Bahamani empire had by then broken into many fragments. History was changing in the north. The late sixteenth and early seventeenth century had witnessed the steady and continuous rise of the Mughal empire as it flourished and grew under the rule of Emperor Akbar. In the years that followed, his son Jahangir and then Jahangir’s son Shah Jahan expanded the empire in all directions except the south where the Muslim shahis and bits of the Vijayanagara empire had managed to survive. The Nizamshahi was eventually swallowed by the joint armies of the Mughal empire and the Adilshahi, and the remnants of the Vijayanagara empire were devoured by the Qutbshahi. And today, in the middle of the seventeenth century, his master, Raja Shivaji, had asked him to break an unwritten law for a bigger purpose.

  Raghunath looks at the clear sky through the window of his palanquin. The stars twinkle in the night sky, charting his future according to his birthdate, time and place. But Raghunath diverts his gaze to his hands; he needs to refresh his moves with daggers and swords. His destiny is his doing, his karma. He has been blind all along; now he longs to see the world hidden inside of Raja Shivaji’s vision.

  3

  Thirty-five kos south of Pune, the village called Jawali seems oblivious to the outside world. Trapped in the mountains and valleys, the jagirdar, Chandrarao Morey, can feel his temper rise to boiling point. Fuming, he looks out of the window of his den on the second storey of his walled fortress. Beyond the small village, cramped between vertical hills, more hills rise to unbelievable heights, thus forming a natural wall around his valley. He does not need to bother about men like Shivaji. Still, when he looks at the crumpled paper in his hand, the message from Shivaji, he has an urge to read it again and again:

  Ten years ago we had helped the barren widow of the then legitimate Jawali ruler to adopt you—you, the then thirty-five-year-old man without any worthy achievements. Our word, we being the jagirdars of this region for years, carried weight. All the worthy landlords voted for you. In turn, you had promised your unflinching loyalty to us. The sudden rush of power has made you deliberately forget your promise. You have ignored our hand of friendship. We are aware of your deeds. You call yourself a king and send your revenue collectors into our jurisdiction, our jagir, to fleece our peasants. Merchants from Konkan are forced to use the mountain tracks passing through your valley. You demand unreasonable taxes from the traders. If they refuse, your goons kill them. You are also trying to thwart our policy of bringing the watandars of the region together. We hear that you have gone ahead and made an anti-Bhosale coalition in the king’s court. Remember, your duty is to serve us in our struggle to establish a swaraj, a state not ruled by external powers. Decide today, else, tomorrow, we will annex your valley and haul you out in shackles.

  The letter has Shivaji Bhosale’s seal and the message therein is provocation beyond all fairness.

  Chandrarao jerks his head in disgust and something makes him glance back. His brother, Prataprao, stands near the door, his hands resting on his large waist.

  ‘Vakeel Raghunath Korde is coming with armed men,’ Prataprao says, his gaze fixed on Chandrarao.

  ‘Not in large numbers though.’ Chandrarao frowns and continues, ‘Let us see how far they go with their verbal threats.’

  ‘Do you think they can really march in and cut right through the heart of this valley?’ Prataprao Morey sounds concerned.

  Chandrarao does not nod. This over-aggressive son of Shahji Bhosale has been trying to bully them for years. In the beginning his letters were polite, but later the words turned threatening and then outright mean. First he had ignored the arrogant young man who had forced many big landlords to join him to form a united sovereign Maratha state, a Maratha kingdom!

  ‘I doubt it,’ Chandrarao barks.

  Prataprao nods pensively and asks, ‘Shall we ask Murarbaji to stay till the vakeel and his men are here?’

  ‘No, let him guard his post. Our usual security is enough,’ he waves his hand and dismisses his brother’s idea. ‘Allow only the vakeel and one more man to enter the fortress.’

  A hundred years ago, Jawali had belonged to the Wai province of the Adilshahi. It was granted to the then head of the Morey family as jagir. The then king, Ibrahim Adil Shah, had bestowed upon the jagirdar the title of Chandrarao, meaning the ruler of the moon. The first Chandrarao and his men had slaughtered the tribals and flattened their habitats, cleared part of the forests and tilled the land. The valley was very near to the port city of Dabhol in coastal Konkan, a rich trading centre under the Adilshahi. Essentials like salt, spices, textiles and wood came to Dabhol from other ports. The goods were then transported to Bijapur, the capital of the Adilshahi, through the mountains. In the region are several ghats, the tracks skirting the hills. Only two were wide enough for the merchants and both passed through Jawali. Thousands of oxen entered his valley every day. The money from toll taxes had made him rich, very rich.

  All this has not come to him easy and free. Born in a poor family remotely related to the Moreys, he had burrowed his way into the heart of the barren widow of the last Chandrarao. He had cleverly outwitted the young men from her family who were vying to be her adopted son and had taken that title, making sure that the adoption was done with all the rituals and protocols. Documents holding his new mother’s palm prints were safely locked away in his vaults. Now Shivaji was threatening to take away all that.

  Let him try; I’m not a fool, Chandrarao Morey thinks to himself.

  ‘This is the last time I will entertain Shivaji’s vakeel,’ he looks up and says.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  This is Raghunath’s second visit. Morey’s residence, surrounded by high walls and strengthened with bastions, stands tall. Countless men wielding swords, axes and spears wait in its huge courtyard. The entrance of the house is lit by a number of torches kept in iron brackets nailed to the walls. The assembly chamber is enormous, with divans covered in rugs and carpets spread over the floor. Pillars support the ceiling which has teak beams. Silver chandeliers and glass urns holding oil lamps hang from gilded chains. Around twenty men rest at one end of the room, idly lounging on the divans, their hands resting on the bolsters and listening to their master, occasionally breaking into a collective laugh.

  Chandrarao Morey, wearing a large yellow turban, gestures animatedly. He seems comfortable on a high platform with his legs tucked under him. Two men with vacant faces fan him with fluffy feathers fixed to silver sterns. Raghunath, standing at the entrance of the chamber, is surprised by the unhealthy pallor of Morey’s skin, usually noted in heavy drinkers. On
Morey’s right, a wiry scribe sits behind a writing desk and fiddles with his feather nib. On his left, near but not on the platform, a man rests his back on a bolster and sniffs tobacco. Raghunath has seen him before—Hanumanth, the administrator of the jagir. Fortunately, the captain of Morey’s army, Murarbaji, is not in the room.

  ‘Come, come, sit,’ he hears Chandrarao Morey call out to him. The ruler of Jawali has finally noticed his guests.

  Raghunath and his aide bow deep while their host accepts their greetings by nodding lightly and waving his stubby fingers. They choose to be away from the Morey clansmen and sit near the exit. From here Raghunath can see the armed sentries who guard the entrance to the house.

  ‘You are back,’ Chandrarao says sarcastically.

  ‘It is my fortune,’ Raghunath mumbles.

  ‘And who is the man accompanying you?’

  ‘He is Sambhaji Kavji, captain of the cavalry squadron accompanying us,’ Raghunath replies glancing at his aide, a dark-skinned man wearing a fine jacket.

  Chandrarao Morey keeps mum, letting the silence grow between them. Raghunath too does not bother to open his mouth. After a while, an obviously irritated Morey asks, ‘What happened to Shivaji Bhosale’s plan to annex Jawali? Or you have come back for the bangles?’

  Raghunath remembers his last visit. After reading Raja’s message, Chandrarao in a fitful rage had asked his scribe to write an immediate reply. While dictating the letter, the words had frothed in his mouth as he had changed them repeatedly to make them more and more demeaning:

  You are just an ignorant son of a jagirdar. What do you know? We are the hereditary owners of this region, and not just mere jagirdars. A hundred years ago the Adilshahi rulers honoured us with a throne, and gave us the title of Chandrarao. I am the undisputed king of Jawali. You are welcome to annex it but you will die like a hunted beast on the very soil of my valley. I am not one of your deshmukhs whom you can tame. Why are you waiting till tomorrow? Come today if you are a real man. If not, wear bangles, I will send you some as a gift.

  That was a month ago.

  At this very moment Raghunath needs to take stock of things. What had happened yesterday and what would happen today? Last night, after they had arrived, he and his men were not allowed to enter the courtyard. They had spent the night in the barracks built in the midst of animal stables and sheds behind the fortress. The people tending to the animals had given them food and water. The morning was spent in anxiety, and only in the late evening had a grim-looking servant suddenly appeared and rudely announced, ‘Only two may come with me, the third will be kept waiting outside the gate.’ As Raghunath and Sambhaji Kavji had followed him, darkness had settled in. Outside the barracks, men who had come with him were relaxing around small fires, bantering loudly. Raghunath wonders if they realize that they are in a death trap called Jawali! He also hopes that they manage to enter the Morey house by killing the entrance guards in time.

  Reaching this place was an ordeal; escaping might be equally bad. At places, the ghats had narrowed down to slim trails with mountain on one side and ravines on the other. Even in the afternoon it was ominously dark under the teak and jamun trees. The hills loomed over them, blocking the sunlight. The men could barely avoid their horses getting entangled with the woody vines of liana. Twice he had spotted leopards, sitting on the edges of the cliffs. Countless times, their horses had panicked when snakes slithered in their paths. The only thing that had made the place less sinister was the calls of parakeets, bulbuls and slurred whistles of orioles. The air had smelt sharp and pungent with the aroma of wild berries. At places, brooding bamboo forests had replaced the trees. Here only tiny babblers hopped around making a ‘churr churr’ sound. What Raja had said was right. Heavy cavalries would be like ships stuck in sand dunes in this valley.

  Raghunath gathers himself and says softly, ‘I have another letter for you from Raja Shivaji Bhosale.’

  ‘Before I read the letter, explain: why a swaraj?’ Chandrarao snaps, thumping his wrists on the wooden platform that he is sitting on. ‘I had asked you the last time and you had never bothered to explain. You owe me an answer now.’

  Raghunath takes a few deep breaths before he opens his mouth. The answer needs to be diplomatic, the vaguer the better.

  ‘At the end of the thirteenth century, Muslim invaders set foot in the Deccan. The mighty Hindu dynasties, the Yadavas of Devagiri, Kakatiyas of Warangal, Pandyans of Madurai and Hoysalas of Dwarakamudra, vanished. The invaders turned into ruthless rulers, killing innocent people under the name of religion, abducting our women and children as spoils-of-war to feed their slave trade. Now it is time to fight them. And I suppose, to fight them, we need to unite.’

  There is a long silence in the chamber. Chandrarao regards the intelligent vakeel for a while and then suddenly throws his hands excitedly in the air and says, ‘Brilliant rhetoric! But you have still not answered my question. All these lofty explanations are good to impress a child with milk teeth still hanging on his gums. You tell me, why is your Shivaji interested in my valley?’

  Raghunath thinks hard. Chandrarao might be a drunkard but he is cunning.

  ‘Raja Shivaji is interested in powerful men like you. Also, we believe that the hills in your valley are the best in the region to build hill forts; they can be the sentinels of the Maratha kingdom.’

  ‘Do you think of us as brainless? Now let me tell you your Shivaji’s ulterior motive. The Mughal prince Aurangzeb has taken Hyderabad. I see the entire Deccan being swallowed by him in the near future. Even your master’s jagir will soon be khalisa, a part of the Mughal empire.’ Chandrarao speaks slowly so that the vakeel can decipher his Marathi accent.

  ‘Your Shivaji Bhosale needs this valley to hide when the Mughal armies march in—just to buy some more time and keep himself alive. If he had a little dignity, he would come marching to the valley with his army and claim it like a warrior.’ Chandrarao winks at his officer and says, ‘What say, Hanumanth?’

  ‘I have a letter for you from Raja Shivaji,’ Raghunath persists and gets up holding an epistle. Even before he steps forward, a servant comes running from somewhere, seizes it from him and hands it over to his master.

  Chandrarao holds the epistle between two fingers as if holding a dead scorpion and shouts, his voice gruff. ‘Look at the audacity of the man! His lofty seal reads, “Like a crescent moon grows the kingdom of Shivaji, son of Shahji, always seeking the welfare of the people”!’

  Chandrarao stops for a moment to breathe. Oh! The man’s arrogance! When everyone’s seal is in Farsi, his is in Sanskrit!

  The silence in the room is interrupted by the new entrant who walks in with a swagger.

  ‘Read, brother, read it,’ a man who resembles Chandrarao Morey declares with scorn. Raghunath guesses the man is Prataprao, the younger of the Morey brothers.

  Chandrarao throws the epistle on the desk of his scribe, who picks it up, opens it carefully and starts reading loudly:

  We have given you enough time and warnings. This is the last one. Remove all your titles, abandon the throne, stop calling yourself a king, tie your hands and come to me as a servant. We leave you with no option. Join us in our struggle for swaraj or die.

  The words resound in the chamber like granados from cannons. A deathly silence fills the air for a few moments before the brothers, red in the face, explode in verbal infernos. Chandrarao again thumps his wrists on the platform while Prataprao grits his teeth and dredges his brain for the right words to express his fury. He turns in fury towards the vakeel, jerks his head in disgust and screams, ‘Who does Shivaji think he is? The emperor of Hindustan?’

  A flurry of voices filled with scorn rattles the air. Prataprao has started laughing, but he stops abruptly as if blessed with a divine vision and barks, ‘The leaves of Shivaji Bhosale’s dream will soon be swept away by the gales of the Mughals’ might!’ The Morey clansmen take cue, and debate among themselves.

  ‘Egregious!’ Prataprao screams.
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  ‘In uncertain times like these, Shivaji Bhosale must scramble to help our esteemed king, Ali Adil Shah of the Adilshahi. Shivaji’s father is the Adilshahi’s regent. Their Pune jagir falls in the sultanate’s terrain. That makes serving the Adilshahi Shivaji Bhosale’s duty, his karma. And as you Brahmins say, it is his opportunity to attain moksha if he is killed defending his true masters!’ Prataprao rants.

  Raghunath smiles bitterly. The four ways that lead to moksha, the cosmic freedom from the circle of life, have become ways to either divide or fool others. The word karma, especially, is used like a whip, to make weak men do what powerful men want them to do, even if it means dying in the battlefields of the invaders. To die for them is the easiest way to live. At least the servants of the invaders die with titles and their children remain alive and wealthy. The rebels of the land are hunted down like rabid dogs, their heads displayed as trophies, their families captured, wives molested and children sold as slaves.

  Chandrarao claps loudly, trying to draw attention towards what he is about to say. His eyes shine with malice. ‘Tell him: if he is a warrior, he must stop sending us vakeels. And tell him what I think of the piece of paper on which he has written his letter.’

  The scribe takes clue, jumps out from behind the desk and hands his master the letter. The master, his face scrunched up in disgust, crushes the paper into a ball and throws it in the vakeel’s direction. Raghunath has not expected this. He misses the catch and turns to pick up the paper fallen behind him. ‘I am just a humble vakeel; pardon me if we have hurt your sentiments,’ he says after moments of silence, and fingers the hilt of his knife under his clothes.

  ‘You are a Brahmin. You wear your red turban, silk robes, fat gold earrings and that sandalwood paste on your forehead to show your supremacy. But you could have done something more, put some sense in your master’s head, let him follow his father and serve Adil Shah!’ Chandrarao shouts as if he has lost his head.