What Schools don’t teach you about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj? : Case study

chatrapati is foreign [Music] on 2nd of September 2022 the prime minister of India unveil the new Naval flag on ins vikrant and this flag Bears the Seal of the legendary chatrapati shivaji Maharaj himself why because chaturbati built one of the most extraordinary naval fleets in Indian history and this Navy was so so powerful that it sent Jitters down the spines of the Brits and Portuguese who are trying to control our coastlines since the 17th century itself and legends have it that had it not been for chatrapati we would have been looted by the bridge for another 200 years extra so if you're deeply curious and fascinated by the case study of chatrapati shivaji Maharaj let's go deep down and try to understand what was so special about chatrapati's Naval strategy that he's being honored even after 3 40 Years of his existence how did he lay the foundations for the powerful maratha Empire and most importantly as students of business what are the lessons that we need to learn from this legendary King of India this video is brought to you by cuckoo FM but more on this at the end of the video [Music] to understand the vision of chakrapati let's go back to 1650s India back then chatrapati had just taken his oath of swaraji in 1646 and the marathas had a very small region in their control but like I told you in the previous episode if you look at the map of India you will see that the Dutch Portuguese and Brits had already started approaching the coastlines of India as you can see damanandi was under Portuguese Bombay and Madras were with the Brits and pulikat was with a Dutch and you know every time I heard that these Brits and Dutch were coming into India I always wondered how did it not bother the rulers now whether he was the mughals nizams or the rajputs isn't it strange that these foreigners were minting money at the king's backyard and yet they were not bothered by these Traders and strangely so if you look at Indian history very few Kings have actually built a powerful navy in spite of having the most valuable Commodities to trade the question is why well that is because most of the kingdoms in India were land-based units as in the rulers always consider themselves rulers of a piece of land and not over the seas this led to a rigid definition of kingdom where expanding and defending land boundaries was given the greatest of importance and it's not just us even the khiljis and mughals did not take the Navy seriously this was because if you look at their Origins the Turks and mughals actually came from regions that were mostly landlocked as in they did not have a sea in close proximity and before the scentilation stepped in in Hinduism there was a strange taboo that stated that crossing the Seas to foreign lands causes the loss of Social respectability and cultural character so obviously the Sea Coast was ignored as a maritime Frontier this is the reason why the rulers including the giant mughals did not take the entry of the Europeans seriously by the way the exceptions over here are the parlavas cholas and tipu Sultan who built incredible navies I'll make separate episodes on them later but for now in the 17th century there were barely any Kings who had a strong naval fleet but this is why ladies and gentlemen chatapati shivaji maharaj's extraordinary foresight of having a naval fleet came in now you see in the 1650s chatrapati did not have vast lands or hundreds of forts under him the maratha kingdom was still in its initial stages and chaturbati was just a little boy in his twenties but what's absolutely stunning is that he did not have a fraction of the exposure that the mughals had while the mughals had ministers and advisors to bank on Shiva grew up with Village Boys in difficult rugged terrains of the sayadri and Tekken but even then somehow he had the foresight to understand the importance of Navy the question is how is that even possible well as it turns out chatrapati was an Ardent student of geography and from the beginning itself back when we did not have sophisticated maps and contour drawings he was sharp enough to understand the nature of deep valleys hilltops narrow plateaus and rivers and due to this Keen interest in geography he had prepared detailed maps of many regions of India in fact whenever any Foreigner visited him razi used to talk to him and understand the trends economics and geography of the foreign lands and through these countless conversations that he had with these Traders and people from different regions chatrapati realized that there was something very very important happening in the oceans with the ships so after consolidating his position in Tekken razi set his eyes on the coastal Waters of konkan for those who don't know the Concan region of India is this region that extends throughout the western coast of Maharashtra Goa and Karnataka it is bounded by the Western ghats in the East the Arabian Sea in the west and the Daman ganga River in the north and this region was extremely important to chatrapati for three specific reasons number one from the geographic standpoint chatrapati was ruling over an unproductive rain shadow tract of Deccan so to feed his army he needed control over the productive regions of konkan number two konkan was a trained link for important Commodities so these items used to be transported to Deccan via the passes in the gods so from the trade standpoint control over konkan and the connecting routes were absolutely necessary for a stable trade revenue and thirdly from the security standpoint even if chatrapati occupied vast territories in the Deccan if the enemy saw him as a major threat they could surround the entire area cut all the Food Supplies and starve the entire Kingdom into submission but if he had command over the seas he could get an abundant Supply from the ports of the South even if the land roots of the country were completely blocked and lastly chaturbati saw the colonizing motives of the foreigners way before any other king in India now I don't know if you realize this but then for a boy in his 20s who grew up with Village boys during a time when there was no newspaper internet or encyclopedia the foresight of colonizing is nothing short of extraordinary these were the reasons why he started his quest for the konkan coast but back then although it fell in the Mughal territory it was occupied by the Portuguese so firstly since the marathas were an expert in Mountain terrain they quickly took control of the eight vital passes that travels the ghats from the interior to the konkan coast apart from that a part of Kalyan was also brought under his control now as far as I could find there isn't much known about how exactly did chhatrapati conquer the concentrations but from what we know until now the possible reasons are the lose control of the mughals over the coast because of their ignorance of the naval fleet and the oceans and secondly the maratha has constantly raided the Portuguese territories so since the Portuguese were terrible on land and mountains it became very difficult for them to control the marathas so by 1660s South konkan came under rasi and soon enough the entire konkan came into his hands with an agreement that he made with the mughals went ahead with building his naval fleet and now he had three major challenges in front of him firstly before chatrapati only the cholas had the expertise to build the naval fleet so although he had the territories he now needed skilled Engineers for the task secondly the funding of the kingdom was not enough to create a big and powerful naval fleet and thirdly someone actually had to strategize the sea Frontiers in the most efficient manner to defend against any kind of invasion so to tackle the first challenge chatrapati got the European Engineers themselves to design his ships now the question we hear is chatrapati was taking the territories from the Europeans right then how did these European Engineers actually help chatrapati well this is where you have to understand the nature of the European Traders back then you see back then they knew for a fact that if they positioned themselves as Invaders and attacked chatrapati they would lose hold over their trade so they cleverly masqueraded themselves as traders who traded with anyone who was in power in fact in this book by Ranjit Desai there's actually a scene where after the conquest of a particular region the very same Europeans who supplied cannons to the opposition had the audacity to stand in front of razi and offer him gifts for winning the exact same battle so raje took advantage of their cunningness and forced them to build the ships for the marathas along with that he even sent his trusted soldiers to secretly learn the ship building technique so that he could build his own naval fleet secondly for the funds the maratha has constantly raided the richest regions around kunkan classic example was the city of Surat which was by far the richest city in the country so as and when needed the marathas conducted a blitzkrieg operation whereby they would come out of nowhere take the golden valuables and move out without harming the common people and lastly the building of the Navy and force was done by some phenomenal Architects and shatapati himself oversaw its construction and what started as a small Fleet with 10 to 15 ships then expanded over the next 15 years to a full-fledged flotilla of 350 ships to give you a glimpse of the same one of the most marvelous structures is this Seafood called the Sindhu Durk which was the main maratha headquarters to prepare for Wars and battles with almost 100 Architects and a Manpower of 3000 it took three years to build it spread over an area of 48 acres and has 32 towers and what blew my mind is that this magnificent Fort has an underwater passage yes an underwater passage was constructed in the 17th century it starts from one of these temples that looks like a water reservoir goes under the fourth Beneath the Sea and opens up 12 freaking kilometers away into a nearby Village furthermore the marathas build rebuilt and captured important Force like swarna Durga durg and Padma durg eventually conquering a large portion of konkan and Beyond secondly they will Master the art of ship building classy examples being an iconic warship named sangameshwari this warship was designed such that it could crawl through the shallow Waters so while the much bigger British ships had to remain in the Deep see sangameshuri could get very very close to the shores as a result the marathah Army could quickly attack the Brits and get away and the bridge was so annoyed at the maratha warships that after their defeat in 1679 the British Governor wrote to the East India Company trust saying he as in chatrapati has ships that can go where we cannot go so you can imagine the foresight and craftsmanship that they had and lastly by strategically Conquering the forts in locations chatrapati established three lines of Defense which kept the maratha kingdom well protected the first line of defense extended from the asheri fort in the Northwest to vishalgar in the South and passed through purandar this was at the core of chatrapati's Kingdom the second line of defense passed through kunkan incorporating forts like sindhudurg Padma durg Vijay Durga and swarnadurga both these defense lines established by satrapati even helped the peshwas after his coronation the third line of defense was built from vishalgar to jinji in Tamil Nadu this line enabled Swift military operation between rigard and xinji this is how chatrapati laid out an intricate framework of defense for the maratha Empire to prosper and eventually these foundations kept the foreigners away for almost two centuries this is one of the many many reasons why chatrapati shivaji Maharaj is considered to be one of the greatest Kings in Indian history and this brings me to the most important part of the episode and that are the business lessons that we need to learn from this iconic story of the legendary chatrapati shivaji Maharaj meanwhile if you are someone who wants to know more about chatrapati and the marathah Empire you can listen to audio shows on chatrapati on the cuckoo FM app cuckoo FM is India's leading vernacular audio learning platform with over 1000 plus hours of Content Library with 4.5 plus rating and a huge library of non-fiction content in this case you could listen to the maratha Empire show and a show named chatrapati shivaji ke management Sutra so if these kind of subjects Intrigue then go ahead and download the cuckoo FM app from the link in the description and use the code think50 to get a 50 discount on the subscription fees and this is applicable only for the first 250 users so go ahead and download the cuckoo FM app now moving on the first lesson that we need to learn from chatrapati is to never ever be the prisoner of your own mind in this case we saw very clearly how the mughals never took the Navy seriously and our rulers in the 17th century didn't consider it Bound by a baseless myth but chatrapati never ever curbed his knowledge or foresight to either of them and ended up laying the foundations of one of the greatest empires in Indian history lesson number two conversations with the right people in the right way could give you the most valuable insights that no book or website ever will in this case chatrapati didn't have the internet or an encyclopedia to study right but even then he understood the importance of ships because of his conversations with the foreign Traders and as you can see it turned out to be a game changer for the maratha Empire and lastly never ever underestimate someone due to their age all terminal because a baby shark is still a freaking shark in this case the underestimation of a 15 year old boy gave rise to one of the most legendary Kings of India who went by the name chatrapati shivaji shaji post Lake that's all from my side to today guys if you learned something valuable please make sure to hit the like button in order to make YouTuber happy and for more such insightful business and critical case studies please subscribe to our Channel thank you so much for watching I will see you in the next one bye bye [Music]

Channel: Think School

Views: 810,212

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Id: ST53gYEX_nY

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022