Daulat Rao Sindhia

• 1. Introduction

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  Daulat Rao Scindia ruled the Maratha kingdom of Gwalior from 1794 until his death on the 21st of March 1827. He also held the title The Defender of Delhi. Born in 1779, he inherited a kingdom locked in a struggle for supremacy inside the Maratha Empire. At the same time, the East India Company was pushing its own borders deeper into central India.

  Yet on the 16th of February 1832, five years after his death, a witness named Mill testified before a British parliamentary committee. Asked about the status of Scindia's kingdom, he said simply that "he was independent." The committee's own report went further, telling Parliament that "within the Peninsula, Sindhia is the only prince who preserves the semblance of independence." By then almost every other Indian ruler had submitted to British authority. Gwalior was different: it kept collecting chauth, a form of tribute, from neighbouring states, including the Mughals, all the way until 1886. What allowed one Maratha house to keep that claim alive so long after its founder had died? And what had Daulatrao actually done on the throne to leave that kind of impression in a British committee room?

• 2. Throne And Tribute

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  On the 12th of February 1794, at the age of 15, Daulatrao Scindia ascended the Gwalior throne. He succeeded Maharaja Mahadji Scindia, who had died without an heir. According to the writer Malcolm, Daulatrao inherited "a greater, if not more consolidated power than any Indian Prince had attained since the days of Aurangzeb."

  Daulatrao was the grandson of Tukoji Rao Scindia, Mahadji's elder brother. Tukoji Rao had been killed at the Third Battle of Panipat, on the 7th of January 1761. That same defeat had halted Maratha expansion toward the northwest decades earlier. It split real power among five houses: the Peshwas of Pune, the Sindhias of Gwalior, and the Holkars of Indore. Two more, the Pawars of Dhar and Dewas and the Bhonsles of Nagpur, joined the Gaekwads of Baroda in that arrangement. The Satara Chhatrapati and the Peshwa formally installed Daulatrao on the 3rd of March 1794. Two months later, on the 10th of May 1794, Shah Alam II conferred two titles on him. He became Naib Vakil-i-Mutlaq, Deputy Regent of the Empire, and Amir-al-Umara, Head of the Amirs.

  Shivaji had founded the Maratha Empire in the 17th century. Real control later passed to a line of hereditary prime ministers called peshwas, who expanded the empire into former Mughal territory across the 18th century. As the empire grew, Maratha army commanders won the right to collect chauth, a tribute, from the territories they conquered on the Peshwa's behalf. Daulatrao's ancestor Ranoji Sindhia had taken territory in the Malwa and Gird regions from the Mughals. He built a state first based at Ujjain, later renamed for the Gwalior fortress. Daulatrao's wife, Baiza Bai, was known as a powerful and intelligent woman of her time. She took an active hand in running Gwalior's affairs. In the decades after that defeat, Mahadji Scindia had rebuilt Gwalior into the empire's chief military power. He built a well-trained, modern army under the command of Benoît de Boigne. Daulatrao, inheriting that force, saw himself less as one Maratha ruler among equals and more as the chief sovereign of India.

• 3. Rivals Within

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  In 1795, the young Peshwa Madhavrao II died, and the resulting turmoil unsettled the whole Maratha confederacy. Tukojirao Holkar's death and the rise of his volatile successor, Yashwantrao Holkar, added to the disorder. The intrigues of a Maratha minister, Nana Farnavis, threw the confederacy into further confusion and let Sindhia take the upper hand.

  Sindhia had by then fallen under the influence of Sarjerao Ghatge, a man Marathas themselves viewed with suspicion. He married Ghatge's daughter in 1798. Urged on by his father-in-law, Daulatrao pushed to expand his own territory, seizing land from the Maratha Ponwars of Dhar and Dewas.

  Yashwantrao Holkar's growing power in Indore alarmed Daulatrao. In July 1801, Yashwantrao marched on Sindhia's capital at Ujjain. He defeated battalions commanded by John Hessing and extorted a large sum from the townspeople, though he spared the town itself. That October, Sarjerao Ghatge took revenge by sacking Indore, razing much of the city and inflicting every form of atrocity on its people.

  Then, on the Diwali festival of 1802, Yashwantrao Holkar defeated the combined armies of Scindia and Peshwa Bajirao II near Pune. The fighting spread across Hadapsar, Ghorpadi, and Banwadi. That defeat opened what came to be called the gardi-ka-wakt, the period of unrest. Sindhia's and Holkar's armies, along with Pindari raiders under Amir Khan, overran central India for years.

  Benoît de Boigne had already retired as Gwalior's army commander in 1796. His successor, Pierre Cuillier-Perron, favored French officers so openly that it bred resentment within the regular ranks. That resentment inside Sindhia's own army would matter soon, when a different, better-organized force began testing Gwalior's defenses.

• 4. War With The Company

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  On the 31st of December 1802, Peshwa Bajirao II signed the Treaty of Bassein, recognizing the East India Company as the paramount power in India. Sindhia's continual evasion in negotiations pulled him into open conflict with the British. Major defeats at Ahmadnagar, Assaye, Argaon, Asirgarh, and Laswari broke his power across both western and northern India. His campaigns of this era also included the Battle of Malpura.

  On the 30th of December 1803, he signed the Treaty of Surji Anjangaon. Under it he gave up his lands between the Yamuna and Ganges rivers, South Haryana, the district of Bharuch, and other southern territories. Soon after, the Treaty of Burhanpur bound him to maintain a subsidiary force, funded from the revenues of the territory he had just ceded.

  The ninth article of the Surji Anjangaon treaty stripped him of the fortresses of Gwalior and Gohad itself. That condition nearly caused a rupture: the Resident's camp was plundered, and the Resident himself was briefly held prisoner. Those two forts, signed away on paper, would not stay in British hands for long.

• 5. Redrawn Borders

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  In 1805, under a new policy from Lord Cornwallis, Gohad and Gwalior were restored to Sindhia. The Chambal River then became the state's northern boundary, and certain claims on Rajput states were dropped. The Company also promised not to enter into treaties with Udaipur, Jodhpur, Kotah, or any chief owing tribute to Sindhia in Malwa, Mewar, or Marwar.

  In 1811, Daulat Rao conquered the neighbouring kingdom of Chanderi. By 1816, Sindhia was asked to help suppress the Pindaris, and for a time it was unclear which side he would take. He eventually signed the Treaty of Gwalior in 1817, promising full cooperation. He did not fully honor that promise. Sindhia quietly allowed the retention of the fort of Asirgarh, even though the treaty had required its surrender. A fresh treaty in 1818 redrew the boundaries once more, and Ajmer, along with other lands, passed out of his hands. Ajmer, once part of Sindhia's sphere, now belonged to lands the treaty had carved away. Gwalior's borders had shifted by treaty nearly as often as by battle.