The Last Days

Tonight is a gentle night, and a little bit of a sad one, so come and sit close. Every life has an ending — even the life of a great king. Tonight we will hear, softly, how Shivaji's life came to its end. And then we will ask the most important question of all: what did he leave behind?

When Shivaji came home from the far south in 1678, he was nearly fifty years old. He had been working for swarajya since he was a boy of sixteen — for more than thirty years. And look at what had grown from that one dream at Raireshwar: hundreds of forts, a navy on the sea, a treasury, an army, eight ministers, and a crown.

He did not rest, either. Even in his last year he was still in the saddle: late in 1679 he led a raid deep into Mughal lands, to the rich town of Jalna, and his army had a hard fight on the way home. His forts were being strengthened, his letters still went out to his officers, and his eyes were always on the north, where the emperor was growing restless.

But even kings have troubles at home. His elder son, Sambhaji, was now a young man of about twenty-one, and he and his father did not agree. Late in 1678 Sambhaji did something that must have hurt Shivaji very deeply: he left, and went over to the Mughal side, to a general named Diler Khan. A year later he came back home, to the fort of Panhala. But father and son still had much to mend between them. Historians tell the reasons for their quarrel in different ways, so we will not pretend to know them all.

Then, in the spring of 1680, there was happy news on Raigad. Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram, who was ten, was to be married. And do you remember brave Prataprao Gujar, who rode out with six companions on Day 19? His little daughter, Jankibai, was the bride. In those days children were married very young — something we would never do today. The fort filled with music, guests and feasts.

But not long after the wedding, near the end of March, Shivaji fell ill. He had a high fever and a bad sickness in his stomach. The vaidyas, the doctors, did everything they knew. But for about twelve days he grew weaker and weaker.

On the 3rd of April, 1680 — the full-moon day of Chaitra, when people celebrate Hanuman Jayanti — Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj died, on Raigad, among his own people. He was fifty years old. That evening the full moon rose over the hills he had spent his whole life protecting.

The news travelled along the ridges, from fort to fort. It reached the farmers in the Maval valleys, the sailors at Sindhudurg and the soldiers far away at Gingee. Many of them wept as if they had lost their own father. For many of them, that is exactly what he had been.

His body was given to the fire on Raigad, as is the Hindu custom, and his samadhi — a memorial of stone — stands on the summit to this day, in front of the temple of Jagadishwar.

For a long time afterwards, Raigad grew quiet, and the samadhi was forgotten under grass and weeds. Then, almost two hundred years later, in 1869, the great social reformer Jyotirao Phule is remembered for climbing Raigad, finding the neglected samadhi, cleaning it and decorating it with flowers. That same year he wrote a long ballad about Shivaji, and called him Kulwadi-bhushan: "the pride of the farmers." Later, Lokmanya Tilak began gathering people and money to restore the samadhi — work that was finished years afterwards.

Today you can ride up Raigad in a cable car, but many people still climb its steps the old way, on foot. And every year on the 6th of June, the day of the coronation, huge crowds gather on the summit with flags and drums, and bow their heads at the samadhi.

Near the samadhi you will also see the statue of a dog, named Waghya. A story says he loved his master so much that he would not leave him, even at the very end. It is a touching story. But no record from Shivaji's own time mentions Waghya, and the statue was put up in 1936. So Waghya is a legend.

So — what did Shivaji leave behind? Forts and ships and coins, yes. But the most precious thing was not made of stone or gold. It was an idea: that ordinary people — farmers, shepherds, fishermen — could stand up for themselves, rule their own land and be treated fairly. Remember his seal, the Rajmudra, from Day 6? It said his rule would grow like the new moon, a little more every night. A king can die. But an idea, once people have learned it, keeps on growing.

And if you feel a little sad tonight, that is all right. It is good to be sad when someone good is gone. Do you remember what we learned when Jijau died, on Day 23? People live on in what they taught us. Jijau lived on in Shivaji. And now Shivaji would live on in his people.

Now for the honest part. Old records describe his illness in slightly different ways — a fever, a stomach sickness — and some give the date as the 4th or 5th of April. Rumours later spread that he had been poisoned, but historians have found no good evidence for them. The account told here is the one most historians accept.

Goodnight — tonight's badge: varsa, "legacy" — what we leave behind lives in other people's hearts.