Purandar & Murarbaji

Two nights, two stinging blows to the emperor: his uncle attacked in his bedroom, and his richest port emptied. Now Aurangzeb sends the very best general he has. Tonight is a different kind of story — a story about a hero who would not give in, and about Shivaji learning one of the hardest lessons of all: sometimes you must bend, so that you do not break.

The general's name was Mirza Raja Jai Singh. He was a Rajput king from Amber, near today's Jaipur — an old, wise and very experienced commander, who had fought in campaigns all over India. He was a Hindu, and he served the Mughal emperor faithfully, which reminds us that the wars of those days were not simply one religion against another. With him came a huge army, and a fierce commander named Diler Khan.

Jai Singh was not like Afzal Khan or Shaista Khan. He did not brag, and he did not set clever traps. He was slow, patient and thorough. He did not chase Shivaji into the hills, where Shivaji was strongest. Instead he quietly made friends with Shivaji's rivals so that no one would help him, and sent his soldiers out to burn the villages around Shivaji's forts, so that Shivaji's people suffered and his lands grew poor. And then he chose one great fort to squeeze: Purandar.

Purandar is a tall, strong fort on a mountain south-east of Pune. Right beside it stands a smaller twin fort called Vajragad. Jai Singh's clever move was to attack the little twin first. In April 1665 his soldiers took Vajragad, dragged cannon up onto it, and began to fire across into Purandar.

Purandar was a very special fort to Shivaji. Eight years earlier, in 1657, his eldest son, Sambhaji, had been born there, high on that mountain. So the cannonballs crashing into its walls were striking the very place where his little boy had come into the world.

Inside Purandar, the commander was Murarbaji Deshpande. Day after day the cannon pounded the walls, and the enemy crept closer. Many commanders would simply have waited behind the walls and hoped. Murarbaji did not.

One day in May 1665, he flung open the gates and charged straight out of the fort, with about seven hundred men, right down into Diler Khan's camp! The Mughal soldiers were astonished. The Mavlas fought so fiercely that the enemy fell back in confusion, and for a while it seemed that this small band might break the whole siege by themselves.

The story goes that Diler Khan, amazed by such courage, called out to Murarbaji to stop fighting — to come over to the Mughal side, where he would be given a high rank and great riches. And Murarbaji refused. He was not fighting for riches; he was fighting for swarajya. (That offer is told in tradition, and only some accounts mention it.)

Murarbaji fought on, to the very end, until an arrow from Diler Khan's bow struck him down. He fell on the slopes of Purandar, still facing the enemy. But even then the fort did not give in: the defenders he left behind kept on fighting from the walls.

Now Shivaji faced the hardest choice of his life so far. His villages were burning. His people were suffering. Purandar could fall any day, and many families had taken shelter inside its walls. He could fight on stubbornly, and perhaps lose everything — his men, his forts, the dream itself. Or he could bend, and save what could be saved. Shivaji chose to bend.

He asked to meet Jai Singh face to face, with a solemn promise that he could come and go in safety. On the 11th of June, 1665, he walked into the Mughal general's camp. Picture it: the old Rajput general and the young Maratha king, sitting together in a great tent, talking long and seriously about war and peace.

The agreement they made is called the Treaty of Purandar. Shivaji gave up twenty-three of his forts — among them Purandar itself, and Kondhana, the fort from Day 7 and Day 13 — and kept only twelve, including his capital, Rajgad. He promised to help the Mughals fight against Bijapur. And his son Sambhaji, only a boy of about eight, was to be made an officer of the Mughal empire. It was a heavy, heavy price: most of what Shivaji had built over twenty years.

Was it a defeat? In many ways, yes, and it must have felt bitter. But remember Day 7, when young Shivaji gave up a fort to save his father, and then waited patiently. A tree that bends in a great storm survives, and grows again when the wind has passed. Shivaji kept his life, his army, his capital and, above all, the dream.

Now for the honest part. The accounts agree on the big things: the siege from spring into June 1665, the fall of Vajragad, Murarbaji's charge and his death, and the twenty-three forts given up by the treaty. They do not agree on everything else — exactly how many men fought, whether Diler Khan really made that offer, and just how much money the treaty involved. So we keep to what is certain.

And there was one more thing. Jai Singh persuaded Shivaji to do something even more daring, and even more dangerous: to travel all the way north to Agra, to the court of the emperor Aurangzeb himself. Tomorrow night, the lion walks into the emperor's palace.

Goodnight — tonight's badge: tah, "the treaty" — give up ground today, so that the dream can grow again tomorrow; and remember Murarbaji, who gave everything he had.