(a) The Marathas posed a significant threat to the integrity of the Mughal Empire. Discuss. (20 marks) (b) "Haidar Ali was born…

(a) The Maratha threat to the integrity of the Mughal Empire

The Marathas were the most sustained challenge the Mughal state faced, but they were one of several forces acting on an empire already strained. Their threat came in three stages.

Under Shivaji they built a rival sovereignty inside Mughal territory. He killed Afzal Khan in 1659, sacked Surat in 1664 and 1670, escaped from Agra in 1666 after the Treaty of Purandar (1665), and was crowned in 1674. After Sambhaji's execution in 1689, Rajaram and Tarabai turned resistance into a dispersed guerrilla war. Aurangzeb spent twenty-seven years in the Deccan and died at Ahmednagar in 1707, with the treasury and nobility badly drained.

Under the Peshwas the challenge became fiscal and territorial. Balaji Vishwanath's 1719 agreement with the Sayyid brothers secured chauth and sardeshmukhi over the six Deccan subas. Baji Rao I defeated the Nizam at Palkhed (1728), raided Delhi in April 1737, and after Bhopal (December 1737) obtained Malwa by the treaty of January 1738. Raids into Gujarat, Bundelkhand and, through Bhaskar Pandit and Raghuji Bhonsle, Bengal and Orissa turned provinces into tribute-paying zones.

In the last stage the Marathas became the power behind the throne. The 1752 Ahmadiyya agreement committed them to protect the emperor, and Mahadji Sindhia held Shah Alam II from 1771 until the British took Delhi in 1803. Panipat (1761) checked their northern expansion without ending it.

A balanced judgement is needed. The Marathas did not seek to abolish the Mughal throne; they used its legitimacy. The jagirdari crisis, factional nobles, Nadir Shah's invasion of 1739 and the rise of Awadh, Hyderabad, the Jats and the Sikhs mattered as much. The Marathas exploited this disintegration and sharply accelerated it.

(b) "Haidar Ali was born to build an empire, and Tipu Sultan to lose one"

The epigram contains some truth but oversimplifies. Haidar rose from a military officer, became faujdar of Dindigul in 1755, and by 1761 had displaced Nanjaraja to rule Mysore in the name of the Wodeyars. He took Bednur (1763), Malabar (1766) and Sira, built a disciplined army with French help, and in the First Anglo-Mysore War (1767–69) forced the Treaty of Madras on the Company. He was a master of diplomacy as well, at one time allied with the Nizam and Marathas and then fighting them.

Tipu inherited a state that was already overextended. The Second War (1780–84) ended in the Treaty of Mangalore, which was a rare case of the Company accepting terms from an Indian ruler. In the Third War (1790–92), however, the Marathas and the Nizam joined Cornwallis, and the Treaty of Seringapatam took about half his territory, a large indemnity and two sons as hostages. He died defending Seringapatam on 4 May 1799.

Against the quotation, Tipu was a serious modernizer: a new calendar and coinage, state trade, sericulture, a Board of Admiralty, rocketry and embassies to Constantinople and Versailles (1787). His failures were those of a state facing a stronger fiscal-military power, in a world where Indian rivals preferred the Company to Mysore. His policies in Malabar and with the Nairs also alienated local elites, though historians dispute their scale and character. Haidar's empire rested on opportunism that required constant success, so the weakness was structural as well as personal.

(c) The rise of the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh

The Sikh rise combined a long preparation with one leader's ability. Guru Gobind Singh's Khalsa (1699), Banda Bahadur's revolt (1710) and the misls, organised under the Dal Khalsa, gave a militant peasant community with collective command. Afghan invasions by Abdali weakened Mughal authority in Punjab and opened space for Sikh expansion.

Ranjit Singh, leader of the Sukerchakia misl, turned the confederacy into a state. He took Lahore in 1799, was proclaimed Maharaja in 1801 and took Amritsar in 1802. He then extended his rule over Multan (1818), Kashmir (1819), Attock (1813) and Peshawar (1834), helped by commanders such as Hari Singh Nalwa. He got the Koh-i-Noor from Shah Shuja in 1813.

The basis was military reform. Sikh cavalry was supplemented by an infantry and artillery trained by European officers such as Ventura, Allard, Court and Avitabile, the Fauj-i-Ain, and by an arsenal at Lahore. Administration was run through the Khalsa Darbar with Hindu, Muslim and Sikh ministers, such as Dogra officers and Fakir Azizuddin, and revenue was taken through kankut and batai.

The Treaty of Amritsar (1809) with Metcalfe fixed the Sutlej as his boundary with the Company, protecting the southern flank while he turned north-west. The stable, tolerant rule made Punjab prosperous.

The limits were clear. The state depended on one person; after his death in 1839 factional fights among Dogras, Sandhawalias and the army followed, and the two Anglo-Sikh wars (1845–46, 1848–49) ended in annexation in 1849.