Tahnaji Malusare,unsung Maratha hero

[Minho]

But here again is the interesting bit and herein lies the real truth about the subcontinent that Hindutva suppresses....

The marathas, like the nizams, like the durranis, like the mysoreans never really had this mentality of an "Indian nation". They were rivals to each other and distinct nations. They had no guilt complex about "damaging Indian unity by fighting each other" because they didn't know such a thing as "india" existed! They would have laughed at you for suggesting this nonsense.

Their alliances constantly shifted. They gladly took assistance from the British, French and Portuguese against each other.

Why should they all be a part of this fake construct of "India"? They each earned their chunks of land and the British had no real right forcing them together into the modern state of "India". Hindutva has hijacked this false construct and retroactively written a false narrative that this false construct should now be defined as a Hindu state.

Hindutva has essentially modified British horsecrap with another layer of local horsecrap.

Yes, we rightly criticise them all for betraying each other routinely, but they never saw it as a "betrayal" because they weren't each other's countrymen in the slightest.

What we call "the republic of India" should never have come into being.

No wonder it's tearing itself up.

I have to disagree with you there. The ROI was far from perfect, but it was the best option. If South Asia was broken up into smaller princely states, it would be like sub-saharan Africa. There would be a few wealthy states on the coast(Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, South India, Sindh, etc.) and many poor landlocked states constantly in states of civil war along tribal and ethnic lines(most of central and Northern India and Northeastern India.

It is because of the ROI that the BIMARU states have become more developed and why hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 70 years.

 

[Great Janjua]

Make a movie on the evil Mughals and reap the rewards in India

 

[Great Janjua]

The Marathas still did better than any Muslim empire.

Can you name me one Muslim Empire that defeated the British in even one war?


That time was the beginning of the Industrial revolution in the UK. the British simply had an overwhelming technological advantage to negate the disparity in numbers.

Obviously, the Marathas were not a "superpower," but they were still one of the most powerful states in the subcontinent's history. And it is a fact theat they were able to resist British expansion better relative to other South Asian states of the time, such as the Sikhs and Mysore.

Kid the British were given the most tough time by the Pathans balochis the Marathas can't even come close you forgot how the British tried to capture Afghanistan and the tribal regions and failed miserably and had to sign a peace treaty and guess what they were all muslims you and your Marathas are nothing but hyped soldiers

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

You are right. I should not have used that kind of rhetoric. But I was responding to another poster who is the biggest cheerleader of historical Hindu-Muslim conflicts. Such people are impossible to reason with, so I thought i would just give him what he wanted and reply using his own language.

Yes, I agree with what you have said. The period before the British became a major power in the subcontinent was quite chaotic, with the Subcontinent being divided into different powers that were constantly struggling against each other. Obviously, many states would have gladly accepted hep from foreigners who weren't viewed as threats at the time. An example is the Sultan of Hyderabad(arguably one of the most important Muslim states in India) siding with the British against Tipu Sultan, his archenemy. The Nizam also sided with the Marathas despite the fact the Marathas had previously defeated Hyderabad, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I still believe it is notable that for a time, The Marathas were able to hold their own against one of the world's greatest powers during the onset of its industrial revolution.

More importantly though, I think it is important that the Marathas checked portuguese advance and limited their expansion to Goa. The Portuguese were a far more brutal colonial power than the British, just look at what they did to the natives of Brazil and Africa. If the Portuguese were a major power in the subcontinent even for a short amount of time, they could have caused major damage to both modern-day India and Pakistan.

Also, curious to hear @Juggernaut_is_here 's thoughts

reading...my first thought would be that it makes much better historical sense to see the conflicts post Ghaznavi and pre-British as a clash of civilizations rather than a clash of religion

A clash between Central Asian horselords and local settled Agricultural Indo-Aryan population

We never had a dynasty of converted Punjabi Hindu or Punjabi Buddhists, conquering and ravishing the entire subcontinent

It was basically a fight between mobile armies that could field hundreds of thousands of finest battle horses against a civilization that could at best muster few tens of thousands sub-standard horses....Not that the Indians could not breed fine horses, the Rajputs did that....but then they would be hamstrung when it came to quantity


Local Indic civilizations would not have an answer to Central Asian horse cavalry till the Marathas and Sikhs

Marathas therefore developed the system of connected hilltop forts and made-for-purpose hardy Deccani crossbreed..They were legendary Guerilla fighters....

In the end they were locked in a battle with Central Asian nomads and not Islam....So they had to resort to quasi-nomadic tactics of raiding and melting in the background in their own country (which was not exactly the steppes of Kazakhastan)...So in the end yes, many Hindus were harmed

The battle between Hindus and Islam happened much earlier with Ummayad invasion of Rajasthan and Sindh..we all know how that turned out......Islam failing to make inroads into India proper..But hindus permanently losing everything west of the Thar desert..

Mughals were much more connected to the International chain of Turkic empires than to Islamic piety..They showed much greater kinship to Turkic soldiers of Fortune that would come riding in, than fellow Muslims from the Punjab,Kashmir or Agra...Exactly which ethnicities were considered equal to the Mughals can be seen by examining the ethnicity of the mother of each Mughal emperor..

But make no mistake...Marathas had an unified vision of Swaraj...they knew what was the extent of the natural homeland of the Indic people...

Let's put it this way, Marathas were like chemotherapy..the body itself suffered massively...but in the end won a few hundred years more of lifespan for a dying civilization

More coming later

 

[fitpOsitive]

This movie is doing excellently well...rave reviews...I am going to watch it today...
..Glad that Indian movie makers started showing real history.Goosebumps it seems..

Same muhgals who saved India from Mongols.

Here is another fun fact: The Marathas were the only South Asian Empire that defeated the British

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Maratha_War

And in 1947, Pakistan got libation from Marathas.

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

Same muhgals who saved India from Mongols.


And in 1947, Pakistan got libation from Marathas.

More appropriately from the Sikhs..The Maratha influence in Punjab was only there for a couple of years..They overextended themselves by crossing the Sutlej

any hindu who argues maratha as super power, just ask, how marathas got defeated by the british who came from thousands of miles away from a small island while maratha was super power, there will be no foreseable answer.

hinu nationalists do have something to oast about that which cannot be denied but the mughal empire was already weakened and they couldnt save dehli from nadir shah, long before marathas, if marathas were so mighty, how they got beaten against durrani empire?

regards

One word answer to your question: Enlightenment

Mughals soundly defeated pre-Enlightenment British...but were walloped by post-Enlightenment British (just like the Marathas and Ahoms)

It is the blessing of geography that helped Afghanistan and Nepal soldier on...But then Afghanistan got thorughly walloped by sub-standard British Air Power in 1919 when they got a bit frisky...

As long as Hindus and Muslims fail to grasp the enormity of European Enlightenment, they would continue to get walloped

At least the Ottomans/Turkish among the Muslims understood the significance of European Enlightenment...But Hindus are soooo far behind...they are not even on the starting blocks


Among the non-European races only the Turks and Japanese understood European Enlightenment..the Koreans were spoon fed..The Chinese are still flailing their hand in the dark,but at least trying..and the Hindus are still blissfully clueless about what exactly happened in the far west corner of Eurasia, 300 years back

Kid the British were given the most tough time by the Pathans balochis the Marathas can't even come close you forgot how the British tried to capture Afghanistan and the tribal regions and failed miserably and had to sign a peace treaty and guess what they were all muslims you and your Marathas are nothing but hyped soldiers

Same can be said of Hindu Gurkhas...Afghanistan escaped till 1919 (major defeat due to substandard british airpower) and Peshawar didnot is solely due to geography....Same religion and race in Peshawar and Afghanistan in those times as not much mixture with Punjabi Muslims had happened by then ..again Hindu Gurkhas escaped due to Geography

 

[-blitzkrieg-]

View attachment 599970

Wrong title n the map.There was no India in 1795..wrong map..Just some loose states fighting among themselves.

 

[Minho]

Wrong title n the map.There was no India in 1795..wrong map..Just some loose states fighting among themselves.

So what word would you rather use? That map was made by the British and chronicles the subcontinent as it was at the time.

 

[SIPRA]

Discussing medieval rulers, conquerors and their doings, and that too based upon the largely fabricated, lopsided and exaggerated historical accounts, with the intention of advancing certain political narratives, in the current context, appears to be quite a favorable pastime on PDF. And this is done, without regard to the fact that in those days, people thought very differently. Their mindset, as well as the information available to most of them, whether Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, was very different.

In my opinion, most of the ancient and medieval warriors, used religious, ethnic and/or racial undertones and overtones, during wars, depending upon the nature of the opponent/combatant, to raise the morale of their respective soldiers and to provide a higher moral pedestal for their pursuit; Though, most of them, in fact, fought for their personal/dynastic glory, power and/or wealth.

The fact is that temporal import and translation of ancient and medieval concepts, personalities and proceedings, in the present day dealings, is a sure recipe for destruction.