mAna siMha

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Capitulation to mogols

Gradson of Bharmal, son of Prithviraj. The kachChAva-s capiulation came due to the following factors:

  • Unlike the Amer kingdom – which was mere days march away from Agra and Delhi – Mewar had a strategic upper hand, the Aravalli range - so the latter could afford to resist.
  • Raja Bharmal of the same line faced a desperately dangerous challenge – Muhammad Sharifuddin Hussain, the Mughal governor of Mewat, who was very keen on extending his territory at the cost of Amer. Raja took to the alliance with Mughal emperor Akbar in 1562. Akbar ordered Sharifuddin to return war booty, hostages and leave the kingdom of Amer. Raja Bharmal’s eldest son and grandson, Bhagwant Das and Man Singh, were given high offices in imperial nobility.

The capitulation was unusually abject: Most Rajput treaties with Akbar had a clause that they would not be asked to join arms against Mewar. Prof K S Gupta shows how 1569 Bundi-Mughal treaty which has only two stipulations from Bundi side. One of those is that Bundi army will never help Mughals should they fight against Mewar. Jodhpur, Jaisalmer etc states also had more or less the similar conditions, some times explicitly in the treaties.

Pro-hindu activity

  • the enslavement of war captives was forbidden, Hindu pilgrimage tax remitted and Jiziya abolished courtesy of the Kachhawaha influence.
  • In haldighATi - Imperial forces had the chance to pursue Maharana and his soldiers too, but Man Singh didn’t allow it.
  • after winning the day at Haldighati, prevented any plundering or destruction in Maharana’s territory as Tabaqat-i-Akbari noted. He also forbade the soldiers to loot Maharana’s territories, despite his own army starving from food, about which we know from Haqiqatha-i-Hindustan. Man Singh prevented the repeat of 1568’s Chittor.
    • “Akbarnama mentions Akbar’s suspicion and anger at Man Singh & his Rajputs’ conduct. Man Singh was recalled and Shahbaz Khan was sent to command in his place. Not only this, Man Singh’s admission to the imperial court was withheld and the imperial honours and mansabs, not only of Man Singh but also of his father, was forfeited.”
  • mAn singh saved around 7,000 temples throughout India from present Pakistan to Bengal and built/rebuilt numerous dharmik places at a pace not seen in history. He built a seven-story Govind dev temple at Vrindavan costing 1 crore at that time. He built the Jagat Shiromani temple at Amer for the Mewari queen and Sant Meerabai. He built around ‘1000 temples in Benaras’ and made it a city of temples again which were left in dilapidated condition after the destruction caused by earlier Muslim rule. Among the many temples he built some prominent ones are – Kashi Vishwanath Temple; Ramkot temple, Islamabad; Shiladevi of Amer; Laxminarayan temple and Shiv temple of Baikunth, Bihar.
  • The Afghan rule in Bihar, Bengal and Orissa was one of the darkest moments of Hindu history. Man Singh defeated and subdued the Afghans, freed the people and temples out of Muslim tyrannical clutches and built hundreds more. One of the most well-known instances of it comes in 1592 when Raja Man Singh, after freeing the temple of Puri Jagannath from the clutches of Afghans, washed his blood-stained sword in the water of the sea at Puri.