Marathas, Sikhs and Jats

The Marathas were a strong force in the Deccan in the 17th and 18th centuries. They knew the Deccan's hills and valleys well and were brave and skilled fighters. In 1674 an independent Maratha state was set up when Chhatrapati Shivaji was crowned. Shivaji was one of the first to stand for swarajya: self-rule, a land governing itself, free of outside control. (In 1659, at Pratapgarh, he killed Afzal Khan.)

The long wars wore the Mughal Empire down: Aurangzeb stayed in the Deccan for over twenty years trying to defeat them. The Marathas also used alliances to build a wide network of territories that paid them tribute.

Why many forts beat one fort. Maratha country is full of hills and deep valleys, so they built forts like Raigad and Sinhagad as bases for guerrilla war. With many forts, they could strike from different directions and always had a safe place to fall back to; capture one fort and the kingdom still stood. Some forts were forward outposts, frontier forts could serve as fallback capitals, and most could survive long sieges, with walls, water and armouries. Forts were also centres of administration and justice.

The Gingee (Senji) fort in Tamil Nadu shows how strong forts could be: one gate was designed so that a small band could hold it against ten thousand. It passed through many hands (Nayakas, Bijapur, Mughals, Marathas, French, English), and in 2025 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Sikhs. Guru Nanak founded a major spiritual movement in the late 15th century: it taught devotion to one God and the equality of all people, and turned away from empty rituals. As the Gurus' influence grew, the Mughal state interfered more:

• the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Dev, was executed on Jahangir's orders; his martyrdom was a turning point;
• Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, was held in Gwalior Fort, and Sikhs came in large numbers to pay respects from outside;
• in 1675 the ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur, was executed on Aurangzeb's orders.

The Sikhs concluded that persecution had to be met with organisation and, when needed, armed resistance. Guru Hargobind set up the Akal Takht, a seat of temporal (worldly) authority for justice and governance. This gave the idea of miri-piri: piri is spiritual authority (the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple) and miri is worldly authority (the Akal Takht). In 1699 Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa, with its own martial code. As Mughal hostility went on, and even Guru Gobind Singh's sons were executed, the Sikhs formed armed groups called misals, which became a network of confederacies; many peasants became soldiers.

The Jats, a farming community of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab (a doab is the land between two rivers), suffered heavy taxes and exploitation, and resented Aurangzeb's religious policies.

• 1669: under Gokul Jat they rebelled; the Mughals took many months to suppress them.
• 1686: they rose again under the zamindars of Sinsani and Sogar, while Aurangzeb was busy in the Deccan.
• By 1691 the Mughals had the upper hand, yet the Jats kept resisting. The Italian traveller Niccolao Manucci wrote about it.