05-13-2008, 01:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-14-2008, 01:04 AM by Bharatvarsh.)
I think its naive to consider him anti muslim bigot even if he had no Muslim in his army because that means he rightly foresaw from history the propensity of Muslim soldiers to switch sides and bertray Hindu kings during crucial moments of battle, this has happened many times, and Hindu kings being naive never learnt their lessons.
The most famous of these was during Talikota, during Panipat some Pathans who joined Marathas also bertrayed them, later Hyder Ali gradually took control and imprisoned the Hindu ruler and his family who employed him in the first place, and we got Tipu Sultan because of the kings naive thinking.
In fact I would say this was one of Shivajis bad decisions that fortunately didn't backfire, I can understand if he did it during the early days when he was in need of soldiers, but it was dangerous to hand over control of something crucial like the Navy to a Muslim, all that was needed was one betrayal and a decisive defeat to set back or totally crush the fledgling Hindu movement. There were a few Muslims like Ibrahim Khan Gardi and Shamsher Bahadur who fought and died on the Maratha side in Panipat but these were exceptions in the long history (anyway Shamsher was related by blood being the son of Mastani and Baji Rao, he was only brought up as a Muslim because of the myopic insistence of Hindu orthodoxy, otherwise Baji Rao wanted his thread ceremony performed).
If you want modern examples, just look at what happened when the Indian army invaded Hyderabad or Kashmir, you will hear of many defections of Muslim soldiers.
The only Hindu parallels I can think of were Khusrau Khan who breifly restablished Hindu rule in Delhi, he was a slave boy of Aladdin Khilji who was sodomised, he waited for the right moment and when it came seized the kingdom after putting Aladdins son to death in concert with Devala Devi who was also a former Hindu queen kidnapped, all the Mosques in and around Delhi were sacked or converted into temples in retaliation to Muslim atrocities, cow slaughter was also banned and so on, unfortunately his rule was short and he was defeated and killed by Ghiyasuddin Tughlak who founded the Tughlak dynasty. The other case of Hemachandra Vikramaditya is more well known. But most Hindus know neither of them and are busy worshipping the tombs of Salar Masud and Afzal Khan.
The most famous of these was during Talikota, during Panipat some Pathans who joined Marathas also bertrayed them, later Hyder Ali gradually took control and imprisoned the Hindu ruler and his family who employed him in the first place, and we got Tipu Sultan because of the kings naive thinking.
In fact I would say this was one of Shivajis bad decisions that fortunately didn't backfire, I can understand if he did it during the early days when he was in need of soldiers, but it was dangerous to hand over control of something crucial like the Navy to a Muslim, all that was needed was one betrayal and a decisive defeat to set back or totally crush the fledgling Hindu movement. There were a few Muslims like Ibrahim Khan Gardi and Shamsher Bahadur who fought and died on the Maratha side in Panipat but these were exceptions in the long history (anyway Shamsher was related by blood being the son of Mastani and Baji Rao, he was only brought up as a Muslim because of the myopic insistence of Hindu orthodoxy, otherwise Baji Rao wanted his thread ceremony performed).
If you want modern examples, just look at what happened when the Indian army invaded Hyderabad or Kashmir, you will hear of many defections of Muslim soldiers.
The only Hindu parallels I can think of were Khusrau Khan who breifly restablished Hindu rule in Delhi, he was a slave boy of Aladdin Khilji who was sodomised, he waited for the right moment and when it came seized the kingdom after putting Aladdins son to death in concert with Devala Devi who was also a former Hindu queen kidnapped, all the Mosques in and around Delhi were sacked or converted into temples in retaliation to Muslim atrocities, cow slaughter was also banned and so on, unfortunately his rule was short and he was defeated and killed by Ghiyasuddin Tughlak who founded the Tughlak dynasty. The other case of Hemachandra Vikramaditya is more well known. But most Hindus know neither of them and are busy worshipping the tombs of Salar Masud and Afzal Khan.