A section from the journey

Shivaji and Hindavi Swarajya

As the great empire of the Mughals begins to age, new powers rise in the land. The most famous of them begins with one man in the western hills: Shivaji. From hill-forts and quick, clever war, he carves out a self-rule he called Hindavi Swarajya. In 1674 he is crowned at Raigad as Chhatrapati, a paramount king. We will tell it plainly, as the rise of a free kingdom, not as a banner to wave.

Picture a land of steep green hills, with grey stone forts perched on the high ridges. Mist sits in the valleys at dawn. This is the western , the country of the Marathi people. Our last long chapter of this age begins here, among these hills.

But first, look up at the wider sky. The Mughal empire, which we saw at its kindest under Akbar, is growing old. Its grip is slowly loosening. And whenever a great power begins to fade, new powers rise to fill the space. Across the land, in this age, several do. The most remembered of them all begins with a single man in these hills.

His name was Shivaji. He was born around the year 1630, into a family of soldiers who served the kings of the . He grew up among the forts and the valleys, and from a young age he had one bold idea. The people of this land could rule themselves. They did not have to live always under a distant throne.

He did not have a great army at first. So he fought in a clever way, suited to his hills. His men struck fast and slipped away. They knew every path and pass. And above all, they held the forts. A fort on a high crag is very hard to take, and Shivaji took fort after fort, and built new ones, until he held a country of his own.

He gave his kingdom a name worth remembering. He called it Hindavi . The last word, swarajya, means self-rule, your own rule, in your own home. It was a plain and powerful claim: that this land and its people could govern themselves, by their own law and their own faith.

Then came the day that set it in stone. In June of the year 1674, on the high fort of Raigad, Shivaji was crowned. The title he took was , which means lord of the umbrella, the paramount king. The royal umbrella was the old sign of a true sovereign. By taking it, he declared that he was no one's servant. He was a king in his own right, answerable to no emperor above him.

This was kingship in the old dharmic spirit. A king was meant to be a shelter, one who guards the order of the world and the worship of his people. Remember that thread of we have carried through this whole age, dharma as steadiness, the thing that keeps its shape under pressure. Here it takes the form of a throne built to protect a way of life.

Around Shivaji breathed a warm world of devotion. These were the very hills of the Marathi saints, of the poet Tukaram, who sang to God in the plain speech of the people, and of the teacher Ramdas. You will sometimes hear that Ramdas was Shivaji's own guru. Here we must be careful and honest: that is a beloved tradition, but historians are not sure it is so. It is fairer to say the king lived within that devotional air, than to claim a bond we cannot prove.

Let us hold this rightly, in the spirit of our whole journey. We are not waving a banner here. We are telling, plainly and with dignity, the rise of a free kingdom in a changing age: a man who built self-rule out of stone forts and a steady idea, and was crowned a sovereign in his own land. That is the fact, and it is enough.

Shivaji's word was swarajya, the rule of your own self in your own home. Before it was ever about a kingdom, it was a simple idea: that a people may stand on their own feet. Where in your own life do you feel that quiet wish to govern yourself, to stand by your own law and faith?