A kingdom that paid its soldiers and spared the farmer
Episode 4 of 6 in Shivaji Maharaj: the story of Swarajya.
Narrated with an AI voice.
- Reading time
- 7 min
- Listening time
- 9 min
- By
- DharmikStudio Originals
- Narration
- AI voice
Read along
Namaste. Last time we climbed the forts of the Sahyadri and went down to the sea, where Shivaji Maharaj built a navy. Today we stay on the ground, in the fields and the offices and the army camps. Forts can be taken and lost. What kept Swarajya standing was the way it was run. So today is about administration. It may sound like a dry word. I promise you, the stories inside it are anything but dry.
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Let us start with a question every ruler of that time had to answer. How do you pay your soldiers and officers?
In the Deccan of the seventeenth century, the usual answer was land. A commander would be given a district as a **jagir**, or a **mokasa**. He collected the revenue from it and kept his troops from that income. It was simple, and it was dangerous. Over a generation or two the commander began to think of the district as his own. He passed it to his son. He answered to the king only when it suited him. The farmers in that district had two masters, and often the nearer one was the harsher one.
Shivaji Maharaj chose another way. The earliest Marathi chronicle of his life, written by **Krishnaji Anant Sabhasad** in 1697, says that he did not give districts to his soldiers. They were paid from the treasury, in cash or grain, on fixed terms. Revenue was collected by the state's own officials and brought to the state's treasury. There were exceptions, and historians have noted them, but the direction was clear. A soldier served Swarajya. He did not own a piece of it.
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Now think about what this meant for a farmer in the Maval valleys. He paid his share to an official of the state. That official had a record to keep and a superior to answer to. The land was measured. Sarkar and Sardesai both describe how **Annaji Datto**, one of Shivaji's senior ministers, carried out a survey of land in the Konkan and the Desh. Fields were measured with a standard rod, their soil and crops were noted, and the share owed to the state was fixed on that basis. Farmers who had nothing could be given help with seed and cattle, and allowed to pay it back over time.
None of this is exciting in the way a battle is exciting. But ask any farmer, then or now, what he wants from a government. He wants to know what he owes. He wants to pay it once. And he wants to be left in peace to grow his crop.
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That brings us to a letter. It is one of my favourite documents from the period, because in it you can hear the king's own voice.
In the early 1670s, a part of Shivaji's army was stationed for the rainy season near **Chiplun**, in the Konkan. Soldiers waiting out the monsoon can become restless, and restless soldiers can become a burden on the villages around them. Shivaji Maharaj wrote to the officers in charge. The letter is long and practical. It talks about grain stores and fodder, and about taking care that no fire breaks out in the stores. And then it comes to the farmers.
In our own words, this is what he said. Do not trouble the ryot. If you need grain, grass, firewood or vegetables, buy them at the market price. Do not take even a stalk of vegetable from a farmer's field by force. If you behave badly, the people will say that the Mughal soldiers who came before were better than you, and that would be a shame on all of us.
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Think of that. A king who had fought for years, who had forts and horses and a navy, writing to his officers about a bunch of vegetables. He understood something simple. Swarajya would last only if the people felt it was theirs. A farmer who lost his crop to our own soldiers would not care whose flag flew on the fort.
Sabhasad also records the rules of the army on the move. Soldiers were not to take women captive, and there was strict discipline in the camp. We should be honest and say that war in that century was hard on ordinary people everywhere, and Shivaji's campaigns were no exception. But the rules he made were unusual for their time, and people remembered them.
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He was also quick to act when someone in his own service wronged the people. There is a document from early in his career about the headman of a village called **Ranjhe**, near Pune. The man had wronged a woman of the village. Shivaji, still a young man, had him brought, heard the matter, punished him severely and removed him from his post. The message to every village headman was plain. Power in Swarajya was a duty, not a licence.
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Now we come to a part of the story that is often told wrongly, in one direction or the other. So let us stay close to the record.
Shivaji Maharaj was a devout man. He worshipped Bhavani, the goddess of Tuljapur, and he honoured the saints of Maharashtra. He also respected the faith of others, and we know this from people who had no reason to flatter him.
**Khafi Khan** was a historian on the Mughal side. He was not an admirer of Shivaji and wrote sharply about him in many places. Yet he recorded this, and Jadunath Sarkar quotes it. Shivaji, he says, had made it a rule that wherever his men went, they were to do no harm to mosques, to the Book of God, or to any woman. When a copy of the holy **Quran** came into his hands, he treated it with respect and gave it to one of his Muslim followers.
We also know that Muslims served him in positions of trust. **Siddi Hilal** was a cavalry commander. **Daulat Khan** was one of the commanders of his navy. The names of **Ibrahim Khan** and **Qazi Haidar** are also recorded in his service. There are records of grants he made to temples, and also to the shrine of the Sufi saint **Baba Yakut** at Kelshi in the Konkan.
And there is a letter, sent in 1679 to the Mughal emperor **Aurangzeb**, against the jizya tax that had just been imposed. Jadunath Sarkar held that it was written on Shivaji's behalf. Some historians have questioned this, so we tell it with that care. The letter's central argument is simple. God is the lord of all people, not of one group alone. A ruler who stands in God's place should treat all his subjects alike.
That idea, a king who looks at every subject with the same eye, runs through everything we heard today.
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So let us gather it.
Shivaji Maharaj paid his soldiers and officials from the treasury, so that no officer could make a district his own. His ministers measured land and fixed the farmer's share fairly. He wrote to his officers that not a stalk of vegetables was to be taken from a farmer by force. He punished people in his own service who misused their power. And even historians on the other side recorded that he respected mosques, the Quran and every woman, and trusted Muslim officers with high posts.
**One thing to take with you.** Shivaji Maharaj cared about the smallest thing a soldier might take from a farmer. This week, notice one small thing you take from someone without thinking: their time, their patience, a seat, a word of credit. Give one of them back.
In the next episode, Shivaji Maharaj goes to the Mughal court at Agra, and finds that the hardest test of courage can be to wait quietly.
**Credits (read out):** Written by the DharmikStudio team from the Sabhasad Bakhar, Shivaji's letters as published, and the histories of Jadunath Sarkar and G.S. Sardesai, with Khafi Khan's account as quoted by Sarkar. Narrated with an AI voice. If you hear a mistake, please use "Report a mistake" on this episode.