মারাঠাদের সম্পর্কে জগন্নাথ সরকার

10. Atrocities and devastation committed by the Marathas,

All over the country from which the Nawab’s authority

had disappeared, the Maratha hordes committed wanton

destruction and unspeakable outrage on the roads and

villages. Utter terror raged throughout Bengal in consequence of

their atrocities. The state of the country is thus graphically

described in the English factory letters : “The Marathas

are plundering Birbhum (July, 1742) which has put a stop

to all business, the merchants and weavers flying whenever

they can. "

An eye-witness, the Bengali poet Gangaram, thus des-

cribes the sufferings of the people : “The Bargis began to

loot the villages. Every class of men took to flight with

their property, when suddenly the Bargis came up

and encircled them in the plain. They snatched away gold

and silver, rejecting eversrthing else. Of some people they

cut off the hand, of some the nose and ears ; some they kill-

ed outright. They dragged away the beautiful women, tying

their fingers to their necks with ropes. When one Bargi had

done with a woman, another seized her;(1) the women

shrieked in the agony of ravishment. The Bargis after thus

committing all sinful acts, set these women free. Then

after looting in the open, the Bargis entered the villages.

They set fire to the houses, large and small, temples and

dwelling-places. After burning the villages they roamed

about on all sides plundering. Some victims they tied up

with their arms twisted behind them. Some they flung down

and kicked with their shoes. They constantly shouted, 'Give

us Rupees, give us Rupees, give us Rupees.' Where they got

no Rupee, they filled their victims' nostrils with water or

drowned them in tanks. Some were put to death by suffoca-

tion. Those who had money, gave it to the Bargis; those

who had none had to give up their lives. It was only after

crossing the Bhagirathi that people found safety."

Another contemporary, Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the

Pandit of the Maharajah of Bardwan, wrote in November,

1744 : "Shahu Rajah's troops are niggard of pity, slayers

of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor,

fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of every one

and in committing every sinful act. They created a local

cataclysm and caused the extirpation of the people of the

Bengal villages like an (ominous) comet .... In one day

they can cross a hundred yojans. They slay the unarmed,

the poor, women and children. They rob all property and

abduct chaste wives. If it comes to a battle, they secretly

flee away to some other country. Their main strength lies

in their marvellously swift horses. Such was the tumultu-

ous ocean of Bargi troops."

The Muslim historians Salimullah and Ghulam Jiusain

Salim confirm this account. They write, “The Bargis cut off

the ears, noses and hands of multitudes of people, or killed

them with many kinds of torture and suffering, — by gag-

ging their mouths with bags of dust or drowning them.

They destroyed the honour of the people’^ (z.c. outraged the

women). The letters from the French factory at Chandar-

nagar and the English settlement of Calcutta tell the same

tale of oppression.

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*(1) Bargi is a corruption of Bdrgir (a Persian loan-word in

Mar&thi), meaning a horseman supplied with his mount and arms

by Government, as opposed to a sildddr who was equipped and

mounted at his own expense. The Martha soldiers were notorious for their practice of gang-rape in invaded territories from a very early time. In 1688 when they invaded the Goa districts under the eyes of their king Shambhuji, they committed this kind of outrage. A contemporary Portuguese account of that war states : “These enemies were so barbarous that when a woman appeared very beautiful (lit., best) to them,

five or six of them violated her by lying with that woman alone. Up to now nowhere else in India has such barbarity been seen, nor even among the Kafris (Negroes). For this reason, many women of Margaon . . . threw themselves into pools, where they died of drowning. Others who bravely resisted the lewd intentions of some of the enemy soldiers, were killed with strokes of the broadsword, and of some others the breasts were cut off.” (Tr. from Pissurlencar's Portugu98eB e MaratoB, ii. 49. There is another Eng. tr. in O. L. Portuguese Records , Noticias da India, vol. i. part 2). For similar outrages in Tanjore, Bertrand’s Mission du Madure, iii. 270.

[ Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Vol I, Orient Longman Ltd., Reprint 1971, pp. 54-56. ]