Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Shivaji had to face opposition from the big Deshmukhs.
Reason (R) : These Deshmukhs were n

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Shivaji had to face opposition from the big Deshmukhs.
Reason (R) : These Deshmukhs were not in favour of an independent Maratha State and wanted to remain as feudal lords of Bijapur.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A). The Assertion is true: Shivaji's hardest early fighting was not against the Mughals but against fellow Marathas. The great deshmukh houses of the Deccan — the Mores of Javli, the Ghorpades of Mudhol, the Nimbalkars of Phaltan, the Sawants of Sawantwadi, the Shirkes, Manes and Mohites — held hereditary deshmukhi rights and repeatedly stood against him; in 1656 Shivaji had Chandrarao More, described in the sources as a fellow Maratha feudatory of Bijapur, killed and seized the valley of Javli. The Reason is true as well, and it is precisely why the opposition happened. A deshmukh's authority was a watan — a hereditary lease over a pargana carrying a share of its revenue plus policing and magisterial duties — and those watans had been granted and confirmed by the Deccan sultanates, Bijapur above all. Under the Adil Shahi the deshmukh was in practice the little ruler of his own tract; under a sovereign Maratha kingdom, whose offices (the Ashtapradhan and its subordinates) were appointive, transferable and not hereditary, he would have been reduced to one servant among many. Their loyalty to Bijapur was therefore a defence of their own hereditary standing, which makes (R) a genuine explanation of (A) rather than an unrelated true statement.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The Assertion is not false. Shivaji's campaigns against the Mores of Javli (1656), the Ghorpades of Mudhol and other watandar families are among the best-attested episodes of his early career, and his standard methods against them — force, marital alliance, or dealing directly with the village patils so as to bypass the deshmukh altogether — only make sense because that opposition was real.  (c) This is the trap option in every assertion-reason set: it concedes both facts but denies the causal link. Here the link is direct. The deshmukhs opposed Shivaji *because* an independent Maratha state threatened the hereditary watan they held from Bijapur; the Reason states the motive behind the Assertion, so it does explain it.  (d) The Reason is well documented, not false. Families such as the Sawants of Sawantwadi, the Ghorpades of Mudhol, the Nimbalkars of Phaltan, the Shirkes and the Mohites served the Adil Shahi of Bijapur, many of them with deshmukhi rights, and it was that position they were defending against Shivaji's new state.

Concept: A deshmukh was the hereditary chief of a pargana in the Deccan — originally a revenue collector, later carrying magisterial and policing duties as well, and entitled to a fixed share of the revenue he gathered. Over time such an assignment hardened into a watan, a hereditary lease that the family regarded as property, and the Deccan sultanates (Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Golconda) granted and confirmed these watans in return for service and troops. The big Maratha deshmukhs were therefore not free-floating patriots but stakeholders in the Adil Shahi order, with forts, retainers and revenue rights to lose.

State PCS 2024 Q18 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q18 — History PYQ with Answer