Why did Maratha soldiers pillage Sringeri Mutt along with other temples in Karnataka?
Research and author: Ameen Ahmed
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| The centuries' old Sri Vidyashankar Temple at Sringeri town. The Sringeri Mutt, among Hinduism's holiest sites, was ransacked by Peshwa Maratha soldiers in mid-1791 CE. By Irrigator at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57547533 |
Background
In 1791 CE, the world of Hinduism trembled in horror. A bunch of horse riding ruffians pillaged Sringeri, in south-western India. The town is home to Sri Sringeri Sharada Peetham, popular as Sringeri Mutt, one of the four education sites originally established in 8th century CE by Adi Shankaracharya to spread the faith (1). A mid-20th century Hindu nationalist historian described this attack as ‘an affront to Hindu religion by a brother Hindu, the sad memory of which long remained fresh in Maratha memory’ (2). On Jul. 6, 1791, Tipu Sultan, wrote a letter to Sri Sachidananda Bharati Swamy, the head of this institution, condemning this attack by the Maratha cavalry. Tipu was ruling Mysore Kingdom then, in whose domains this holy site was situated. According to AK Shastry, historian, and translator of historical correspondence of the Sringeri Mutt, Pindaris and looters accompanying Maratha army plundered the holy town. It resulted in desecration of the centuries’ old holy idol of Sharadamba- Hindu Goddess of knowledge, massacre of priestly Brahmins and looting of about sixty lakh rupees worth of objects. The Peshwa, Chief of the Maratha Empire, asked Parshuram Bhau, his general, to compensate for the damage and have the looted articles returned to the Mutt, to which the later agreed. Shastry, who translated and published Tipu’s above and other letters to the Sringeri Swamy, concluded that this gave an 'impression that the foolish plunder of Sringeri was not due to deliberate intention on his part, but a result of the predatory habits of the Pindaris in his contingent' (3). But was that the case?
Let us look at the military events associated with the presence of Maratha armies in Mysore Kingdom, during the Third Anglo Mysore War, in the run-up to the Sringeri massacre, as well those in the immediate aftermath. Let us also understand the wider context, that of the century long Maratha invasions of Karnataka. I refer to contemporary, eye-witness accounts of English soldiers who invaded Mysore Kingdom during this war alongside Maratha Peshwa's regular army and hired soldiers, and a few secondary sources, to narrate the story.
At the onset of the Third Anglo Mysore War, a detachment of Bombay Army led by Captain Little joined Parshuram Bhau led Maratha Army on 19 Jun. 1790 (4) near Tasgaon, in present day Maharashtra. It is to be noted that the combined armies were led by Parshuram Bhau, as agreed by the Marathas and the British. The other Maratha General Hari Pant or Haripant Phadke, with an army of 12,000, started his march to Srirangapatna from Pune, taking the route of Gooty, Rayadurgam and Sira.
On Sep. 14, Bhau’s army had swelled to a cavalry of 15,000 and an infantry of 3,000, as it crossed the boundaries of Mysore Kingdom and approached the town of Dharwad (Dharwar) and the adjoining fort. The armies camped near Narendra village about five miles north-east of Dharwad. The Mysorean forces at the fort and the town were commanded by its Qilledar Badruzzaman Khan, one of Tipu Sultan’s most loyal soldiers and ‘a man of science’ according to Edward Moor, an English soldier who participated in this war and wrote a detailed account of it (5). There were 10,000 men defending the fort and the town with an array of weapons, from matchlocks to cannons and Mysorean rockets. Probably realising the scale of invasion, the Mysoreans seem to have focused on defending the big town, instead of meeting the enemy at the kingdom’s borders. The nearby town of Hubbali (Hubli) was attacked the same day. Although its inhabitants resisted initially, the next day they surrendered to Bhau after paying him protection money. The town and its inhabitants were therefore left unharmed. Meanwhile at Dharwad, skirmishes began between the invaders and defenders.
On Dec. 13, after a bloody hand-to-hand combat, Mysorean troops quit the town. Bhau’s eldest son Appa Saheb entered it with his troops, who started setting it afire at various places. After a few skirmishes, Bhau's men got complete control of the town on 18th and plundered it 'so completely that not a piece of wood was left standing'. For over a century, this had been the custom of Peshwa Maratha soldiers with towns and villages that resisted them. The adjoining Dharwad fort continued to hold off the combined armies’ assault. Running out of provisions, and upon hearing the devastating news of the fall of Bangalore fort on Mar. 21, Badruzzaman finally surrendered on Apr. 4. For six long months, he had held off the combined might of the Marathas and the British Army and prevented their attack on the heart of Karnataka.
The attack on Sringeri probably happened between then and Jul. 6 of the same year, when Tipu wrote the letter about it to the Sringeri Swamy. The raid is mentioned in the correspondence of the Indian contemporaries of these two men. It has been attributed to a detachment of cavalry commanded by Raghunath Rao, a brother of Parshuram Bhau (6).
There is a possibility Raghunath Rao knew of the attack, for two reasons:
1) Pindaris, as the English soldiers eye-witnessed at many places during this war, operated upon the orders of Maratha chieftains. They would be let loose on those towns whose residents refused to pay them ransom.
2) The Maratha cavalry was under the command of various chieftains. While most took direct orders from Bhau, some chieftains bypassed him and acted upon the war plans of the Peshwa council that accompanied Bhau.
Either way, the Pindaris or the cavalry could not have acted without knowledge of their masters.
Need, greed, and Maratha style of warfare were reasons for the attack on Sringeri
Armies those days were accompanied by camp followers- non-fighting men and women, who were many times numerous than the combatants. Their pay varied too. During their campaign in 1790-92, English irregular troops were paid half the salary of a regular soldier. Soldiers had to not only buy their own grain and food, but also feed their horses and animals, if they had any alongside. Whenever a siege was prolonged, soldiers and their animals would suffer from want. This was seen a few times during the Maratha campaign, particularly during the siege of Dharwad, between Sep. 1790 and Apr. 1791, and also when the armies of Marathas, Nizam and Cornwallis united near Srirangapatna in May 1791. About the latter place, since the main Madras Army and its camp followers had exhausted their supplies unable to penetrate Tipu’s defences, they had no option but to buy the same from the Maratha Camp, who sold them at exorbitant prices.
It is to be noted that throughout their history, from Shivaji’s plundering of Karnataka's towns and trading centres in 1660s and 1670s (7) to the Bargis’ laying waste to countryside in Bengal in 1740s (8), and the devastation of a prosperous Mysore Kingdom during this war, Maratha armies were known for their indiscipline and excessive plundering of enemy territory.
Evidence of this was seen everywhere during this Maratha invasion right from the start. As soon as they entered Mysore Kingdom and marched from Saundatti to Betgeri village, north of Dharwad town, on Sep. 10, Bhau’s Pindaris attacked the village. But, the residents beat them back. An angry Bhau then unleashed his Rohilla Gardee troops, who plundered the village without mercy and captured many of its residents. Four days later, a nearby village was burnt by Marathas. David Price, an English soldier who was part of the siege of Dharwad wrote this on the evening on Sep. 14, 'To complete the interest of the scene, that ordinary accompaniment of Mahratta warfare, an unfortunate village in flames, embellised the back ground, like the moon among the stars of Heaven.'
Moor observed something similar during the armies' march from Chennagiri to Holehonnur, in Dec. 1791, “This part of the country was the richest we had yet seen, abounding in villages and towns, so thick that the night we came to this ground we counted ten villages in flames at the same time. It was by no means uncommon to see six or eight burning at once in several parts of this fine country. In this style do the Mahrattas carry on a war: it is indeed the only way in which, as enemies, they are at all formidable; they can pour on an enemy's country an inundation of a hundred thousand horse; and when we consider the ruin and devastation spread by such a host of locusts, we are inclined to think that the curse of God could not have fallen on Egypt in a more destructive form.”
Prolonged sieges and resolute defense by villagers meant the invading armies required more investment of time and resources, often at the risk of life. Why would the Maratha soldiers attack a fortified town, when they could get easy money by plundering a defenseless temple? Even the fact that the Sringeri Mutt was the centre of Smartha Brahmins and that the Peshwas were Brahmins themselves, did not save the Mutt. The need, or perhaps, the greed for money was so great.
That said, it needs to be remembered that the Maratha Chiefs almost always had control over the Pindaris. In Aug. 1791, when Raghunath Rao and Bala Saheb captured Rayadurgam, in present day Andhra Pradesh state, they showed mercy to the people around. Except to sustain their cattle, they did not destroy the countryside. They ensured that towns and villages were neither looted nor burnt.
Sringeri plunder by Maratha soldiers was waiting to happen by design, or by
an accident.
It is indeed an irony that during this war, the Marathas observed many Brahminic rituals including celebrating Hindu festivals like Diwali and awaiting for an auspicious time before venturing into a battle. There was an instance, in October 1791, when even a Sati was practiced in Bhau’s camp. Yet, on the other hand, the Marathas had no qualms about the English soldiers slaughtering cattle for beef throughout the campaign (9). On one such occasion, on Christmas 1791, Captain Little’s detachment celebrated the festival by slaughtering an ox and consuming it amidst the Peshwa Brahmins.
This brings us to the following questions:
b) Were there no earlier precedents and similar attacks on Hindu temples in Karnataka, that made it certain that something like this was waiting to happen?
c) In its aftermath, and after its acknowledgement by the Peshwa, were there no attacks by his soldiers on other Hindu holy sites in Karnataka?
d) Did the Peshwa’s Maratha war generals make any attempts at all to prevent harm to Hindus elsewhere in Karnataka after this barbaric attack, let alone not actively participate in more such massacres?
The answer is a 'No!' to each of these. There were dozens of towns and villages, populated by Hindus, including two Hindu temple towns, that were looted/ burnt by Maratha soldiers in 1790-92, particularly after the Sringeri temple ransacking. This does not include dozens of unnamed villages that were burnt and looted during this time.
India is a nation of many histories. Heroes of one state are many a time villain in the neighbouring state or even some parts of the same state. One such controversial entity is the erstwhile Maratha Empire. The origins of Maratha Empire can be traced to Shivaji, a master guerilla fighter who troubled his contemporary Alamgir Aurangzeb, the Mughal Emperor. Just like Shivaji, the later Maratha soldiers raided non-Maratha territories across India. From present day Bangladesh and West Bengal in east to present day Punjabs of India and Pakistan in east. And, from present day Haryana in north to Tamil Nadu in south, the Maratha raids resulted in largescale deaths of civilians and non-combatants and destruction of towns, agriculture, and places of worship, often belonging to Hindus. In Karnataka, Sringeri was not the first temple town to be destroyed by the Peshwa Maratha soldiers, nor the last. Hindu temples at Melukote town were burnt in 1772 by Peshwa Madhava Rao’s men led by Triumbak Mama. The Hindu temple town of Devarayandurga was looted and burnt just a month or two after the Sringeri attack, so was Kudli Mutt a few months later. To understand Sringeri attack, one needs to go through similar Maratha Empire invasions of Karnataka in 17th and 18th centuries and see the larger context of the brutal attacks by this entity on non-Maratha Hindus across India.
1) Website of Dakshinamnaya Sri Sharada Peetham, Sringeri. Downloaded on Oct. 13, 2020 from this link https://www.sringeri.net/history.
2) Shastry, A.K., ‘The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana’, Sringeri Matha, Sringeri, 2009.
3) Sardesai, Govind Sakharam., ‘New History of The Marathas’, Vol. 1 of 3, Bombay, 1946.
7) Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. XV, Part 2 - Kanara, 1883.
8) Sarkar, Jadunath., ‘Fall of Mughals’, vol. 1, 1964.
9) Dirom, Alexander., 'A narrative of the campaign in India, which terminated the war with Tippoo Sultan in 1792', published in 1793.
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Acknowledgement: I thank the scholars whose works have helped me research and write this document. I am, in particular, grateful to Nidhin George Olikara, Shivamogga, India.
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