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This pledge, it should
be remembered, Shivaji took when the whole of Hindusthan was held
under the firm and suffocating strangle hold of the Moghals ruling
at Delhi, of the Adilshahi and Kutubshahi in the South and of the
West Coast. It was these almost superhuman challenges that Shivaji
had accepted even as a teenaged boy.
The challenge posed
to him by Maratha chieftains themselves who had joined the Muslim
camp was no less formidable. The Hindu generals of Rajasthan like
Jaisingh and Jaswant Singh also had cast their lot with the Delhi
Moghals in order to crush Shivaji.
The secret of
Shivaji's success lay chiefly in motivating the people to strive and
sacrifice for the establishment of a free Hindu State and not for
the sake of any individual king or chieftain. He transformed the
idea of personal loyalty to some particular chieftain into one of
loyalty to the entire nation and ins liberty. The ruling belief of
those times was that whoever ruled from the established thrones of
the Muslim dynasties like Delhi, Bijapur or Bhagyanagar were alone
the legal masters of the land, and any attempt to assert the freedom
of the Hindus was dubbed as merely an anti-State revolt and sought
to be put down. There existed no legally constituted Hindu throne to
which the entire Hindu world could offer its loyalty.
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