mAdanna akkanna

Intro

  • madaNNa and akkaNNa, who protected the dharma as powerful ministers under qutub shAhis, collaborators with shivAji.
  • “The family of mAdaNNA came from the town of Hanamkonda, Northeast of Bhaganagari, where under rudradeva kAkatIya a large temple of viShNu and sUrya had been constructed. The father of the brothers, bhANu-jI paNDita was a revenue administrator of the town and was named after one of the deities of the town. The son mAdhava paNDita (mAdaNNA) and arkarAja paNDita (akkaNNa) were also named after the two deities of the temple. They had other siblings, one of whose sons was rAmadasa, the legendary South Indian classical musician whose tale is told in every traditional South Indian brAhmaNa household.”
  • “Based on various lines of evidence it is clear that the brothers were polyglots who were fluent in Sanskrit, Hindi/Urdu, Marathi, Telugu and Persian [the fact they used the Modi script by default has been taken as the strongest support for their origins in mAhArAShTra]. There is an account of the Dutch agents regarding how mAdaNNA used to translate documents extempore between different languages in the court.”

Rise to power

  • “They two brothers were initially appointed to aid the Persian official Sayyid Muzaffar in administration. It was then that they initiated the Hindu subversion of the Sultanate. In 1674 they intrigued with the new Sultan who had come to throne after the death of his father Abdullah Qutbshah to get Muzaffar dismissed from office and divested of his weapons and troops. The Mohammedan faction, especially backed by Turks and Persians, tried to restore Muzaffar but mAdaNNA maneuvered to keep him out and had himself appointed as Vazir. He quickly dismissed many of the powerful mullahs in the court and appointed Hindus to key positions.”
  • “He then induced the Sultan to place his cousin yengaNNA paNDita as a military general so that he could get a handle over the army, which was still dominated by the Mohammedans. By the treaty of Gulbarga he moved to place his brother akkaNNA to keep a tab on the Adilshahi sultanate too. "
  • He appointed nephews lingaNNa and gopaNNa (aka rAmdAs) as district admins.

Plan to save dharma

  • “An year later (1675) he formulated the plan to restore peninsular India under Hindu control so that it could be a bulwark against the Mogol incursion to the South. He realized that he needed a Hindu military arm and saw that shivAjI was the man in this regard – an ideal brahma-kShatra alliance of yore could be forged. He right away contacted shivAjI and his brAhmaNa minister aNNAjI paNDit to devise a plan whereby shivAjI would be the mighty protector of the whole south against the Afghans and Mogols. shivAjI, raghunAth hanmante and aNNAjI reasoned that as soon as the Mogols were engaged in the North by other conflicts he could conquer the South completely.”
  • He built many temples and awarded grants to hindu institutions.
  • He ably aided shivAjI in his southern campaign and getting acqueisance of qutb shAh by a combination of territorial enticement and reminding of the mogol threat.

Tax reforms

“The Islamic agents had their goons who would bash the tax collectors if they did not rake in the money, and in turn the local tax collectors would terrorize the local population to extract the money. In the reform by the brothers, firstly the Moslem agents were dismissed and replaced by Hindu agents under honest brAhmaNa-s. The tax administrators were then given attractive and regular salaries and a fixed schedule to remit their taxes directly to the revenue office under mAdaNNA. The taxes were assessed based on productivity to the locality and the collectors were kept under multiple layers of surveillance to cut out embezzlement. The Sultan was kept as a pensioner by the brothers and the treasury was to a good measure controlled by them. The revenue reforms by mAdaNNA found a remarkable resonance in a parallel move by shivAjI. He destroyed the old Adilshahi and Mogol system of administration under jAgir-s. Instead, he appointed a regular revenue office that would assess tax and have it remitted directly to the royal treasury. The military was then paid directly from the royal treasury. "

Sea power

" akkaNNA realized by studying the Europeans closely that their power derived from controlling sea trade. He decided that best policy was to create his own merchant navy that could operate directly in the open seas for trade – a Hindu answer of the East India companies. He initiated this by launching three large merchant ships under the Hindu entrepreneur li~NgaNNA that would directly operate off Pulicat. It was this point which greatly alarmed the mlechCha-s, especially the Dutch and the English. In particular akkaNNA took up the cause of the merchants from the tamiL country who were being harassed by the English and sent li~NgaNNA to provide them protection.”

Fall

  • " In 1683 after the release of the Mogol ambassador to the Qutubshah from imprisonment, he set about instituting an internal counter-revolution with fellow Mohammedans to destroy the brAhmaNa-s. He unleashed a reign of terror on brAhmaNa-s and as Muazzam invaded Bhaganagari he conspired with the internal Moslems to kill mAdaNNA and akkaNNA. The Qutbshahi Begums themselves arranged for African assassins to kill the brothers when they were returning home from court. The severed heads of the two paNDita-s was send to Muazzam, while their mutilated corpses were put on display in Bhaganagari.”
  • “Immediately after their murder, a major pogrom was launched against the brAhmaNa-s with every one of their houses looted and for a radius of 50 miles around Golconda and numerous brahmANa-s were slain.” MT