June 20th is The Hindu Samrajya Diwas

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June 20th is The Hindu Samrajya Diwas

Shivaji blazed the trail of a new victorious Hindu era

By H.V. Seshadri

 

IT is on this day—the Jyes-htha Shukla Triodashi of 1674—named

Anandanama Samvat that Shivaji was coronated. The grand function took

place atop the 5,000-ft high Raigadh fort in Maharashtra. He became

thereafter a full-fledged chhatrapati—a Hindu emperor in his own

right.

 

In Maharashtra, the day is celebrated as Shiva Rajyarohana Utsav—the

day Shivaji was coronated. However, the RSS celebrates it as the

Hindu Samrajya Dinotsav. The reason for this is simple. Shivaji

himself, as a teenager, had taken the pledge to establish Hindavi

swaraj and not his own kingdom. He had also declared that it was the

will of God that the move should succeed. On his royal seal, he had

declared that this auspicious raja mudra of Shivaji, the son of

Shahji, would grow like the moon on the first day of Shukla Paksha

and be venerated by the entire world.

 

Evidence of the all-Hindu character of the function came in abundance

even at the time of the coronation. Jayaram, a gifted teenaged poet,

came all the way from Tamil Nadu to pay his poetic tributes to

Shivaji. Gaga Bhatta, a Vedic scholar of great repute, arrived from

Kashi and prepared a new scriptural text to install Shivaji as a

sovereign Hindu king. Waters from the seven sacred rivers of the

country were brought for his holy bath.

 

Even prior to this event, when Shivaji went to meet Aurangzeb at

Agra, people cutting across all barriers of caste, language and

religious customs, thronged throughout the route to pay respects to

him. Evidently, the Hindu population groaning under the inhuman

Muslim reign, looked upon him as their new ray of hope.

 

When Shivaji went to meet Aurangzeb at Agra, people cutting across

all barriers of caste, language and religious customs, thronged

throughout the route to pay respects to him.

 

Shivaji had written a long letter to Raja Jaisingh of Rajasthan, who

as a commander of Aurangzeb's army had descended on the south to

subdue the former. In it, Shivaji had appealed to him to take up the

role of freeing Hindusthan from the Muslim yoke while he himself

would join him as his junior partner. But Jaisingh was too strongly

yoked to the Mughals to heed this higher appeal of patriotism.

 

Later on, Raja Chhatrasal from Bundelkhand (presently in Madhya

Pradesh) came to Shivaji to fight under him for acquiring swaraj. But

Shivaji advised him to go back and build a powerful Hindu force, so

that they could launch a multi-pronged Hindu attack on the Muslims.

 

More than any other incident, as the successors of Shivaji, the

Peshwas had carried the Hindu (bhagawa) flag right up to Kabul and

ultimately crippled the Mughal seat of power—which had remained

unchallenged for several centuries—never to rise again. They had

rightly grasped the life mission of Chhatrapati Shivaji.

 

Swami Vivekananda once remarked that Shivaji was an ideal Hindu king

born to establish Dharma on the lines of Shri Ram and Sri Krishna.

 

Finally, what was the signifance of the elaborate ceremony performed

in the coronation of Shivaji? Firstly, as we have already noted, it

denoted the all-India Hindu character and thrust of the new kingdom.

More importantly, till then many of the Hindu chieftains were rajas—a

mere title conferred upon them by some Muslim emperor. Even Shivaji's

valiant father was one such. None of them except those from Mewar and

Bundelkhand were kings in their own right. Even these two did not

have the vision of establishing an all-India Hindu kingdom.

 

However, Shivaji's case was totally different. Even as a small raja

under the Bijapur Sultan, he had challenged the Delhi ruler by

attacking the latter's strongholds in the south. He was the first to

recognise the supreme importance of sea warfare and built forts on

the western sea-front meant for plying ships. Recognising the

impending threat of conversion, he warned the English missionaries

and beheaded four of them for disobeying his command. His son

Sambhaji and the later commanders continued with Shivaji's tradition

and strove to dislodge the hold of English and Portuguese

missionaries on the western coast.

 

More than any other step by Shivaji, the developments following his

passing away and the unbelievably inhuman martyrdom of Sambhaji

denoted the vision and mission that Shivaji had bequeathed to

posterity. Finding that the dreaded Shivaji was no more, Aurangzeb

himself descended on his kindgom and over-ran it forcefully. But soon

enough, the whole area seemed to be on fire. Every house became a

fort and every able-bodied youth a soldier of Hindavi swaraj. New

commanders displaying unparallel heroism and ability in guerilla

warfare rose up to launch fierce attacks on the enemy's force. One,

Dhanaji, pierced right upto Aurangzeb's royal tent, but as luck would

have it, the latter was away, so Dhanaji carried away the golden

insignia on his royal tent! In spite of a four-year long struggle

with a vast army and able war veterans, Aurangzeb succumbed to the

attack to eat the dust of swaraj and was buried at Aurangabad in

south, now named Sambhaji Nagar. Along with him lay forever buried

the glory and power of the mighty Mughals. It also heralded the

saffron morning of the rising sun of swaraj.

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