While its consequences were politically decisive, Akbar’s siege of Chittor culminated in mass slaughter and a tragedy that haunted Mewar for generations. Akbar shoots the Rajput commander, Jaimal using a matchlock, illustration from the Akbarnama, 1590–1595. There is a sanctity in the very name of Chittor, wrote Col. James Tod in his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (1829-32), which from the earliest times never failed to animate its defenders. Chittor’s fame rests not upon an unbroken succession of victories but upon the terrible price its defenders were prepared to pay rather than surrender their independence. “No place on earth,” wrote the Baltic German philosopher Count Hermann von Keyserling about Chittor Fort in his 1925 work, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, “has been the scene of equal heroism, knightliness, or an equally noble readiness to die.” Keyserling was deeply moved by the tragic yet defiant history of Chittor Fort, especially its grim history of the three legendary sieges in 1303 CE, 1535 CE and 1567-68 CE, where its Rajput defenders, rather than surrender, donned saffron robes and fought to the death (a practice known as Saka) while the Rajput women (and several children) performed Jauhar (mass self-immolation) to preserve their honour and avoid enslavement. Iconic view of the Gaumukh Kund and ramparts. | Pic: Shoumojit Banerjee The third, conducted by Akbar the Mughal Emperor, was perhaps the most apocalyptic of the three, culminating in a massacre that claimed, by contemporary estimates, some 30,000 lives and left Chittor’s storied citadel a monument to both Rajput defiance and the terrible cost of resisting Mughal expansion. As we approach the 459th anniversary of the siege, Chittor’s tragic history once again invites reflection on the price of resistance. Savage Conquest In September 1567, Akbar resolved upon what Vincent Arthur Smith, in his Akbar the Great Mogul (1917), describes as “one of the most famous and tragically interesting” of the emperor’s martial enterprises: the siege and capture of Chittor. Interior view of Chitor, photo by Donald Macbeth, reproduced in Col. Tod's 'Annals of Mewar'. Akbar was twenty-five, intensely ambitious and already possessed of the military resources of an expanding empire. The fortress before him, however, represented a form of authority that conquest alone could not easily extinguish. Chittor was the principal stronghold of Mewar, whose Sisodia rulers had long resisted the expansion of the Sultanate of Delhi and its succeeding Muslim dynasties. Its reduction was as much a political necessity for Akbar as a military objective. Gopinath Sharma, in Mewar and the Mughal Emperors (1954), places the struggle in its larger context. No indigenous state in medieval India, he argues, had figured so prominently in the country’s chequered annals, or played so valiant a role in resisting imperial expansion, as the small principality of Mewar. Its population and revenue were modest beside the resources commanded by the Mughal Empire, yet it continued to resist a power whose sovereign was among the most formidable rulers of his age. Babur’s victory at Khanua over Rana Sanga in 1527 had shattered the Rajput Confederacy and shifted the sovereignty of Northern India from the latter to the Mughals. It was the beginning of a Stygian night for Mewar and Chittor. Chitor ruins. | Pic: Shoumojit Banerjee Akbar, more ambitious than his grandfather and determined to establish his authority across northern India, could scarcely tolerate an independent Sisodia ruler who refused to acknowledge his supremacy. The immediate circumstances were complicated: Rana Udai Singh (father of the great Maharana Pratap) had sheltered Baz Bahadur, the fugitive ruler of Malwa, and an insubordinate chief of Narwar. Akbar regarded this asylum as a challenge to imperial authority. Smith also recounts an episode involving Shakti Singh, a son of Rana Udai Singh, who was in attendance upon Akbar at Dholpur. The emperor reportedly remarked jestingly, that since almost every great landholder had paid his respects, he proposed to march against the Rana and punish him. Shakti Singh, failing to appreciate the humour in such a declaration from the master of many legions, fled to Mewar and warned his father. Whether this exchange was decisive is uncertain. As Smith observes, it is unnecessary to seek a special provocation for the attack. Akbar’s determination to become undisputed master of northern India was itself sufficient explanation. He could not brook a chief who was “proud of his steep mountains and strong castles and turned away the head of obedience from the sublime court”. Chittor and Ranthambhor were the two great fortresses whose possession would immeasurably consolidate Mughal supremacy over Rajasthan. Gopinath Sharma, in a key assertion, refutes later narratives by a number of historians who claim that every other important Rajput house had already submitted before Akbar marched on Chittor. The submission of Mewar, Akbar calculated, would weaken the resolve of the other Rajput states and encourage them to accept his authority. Before the siege of Chittor, except the Kachhwahas of Amber, no principal Rajput family of note had entered into an alliance with Akbar. The conquest of Chittor, therefore, was intended to demonstrate the futility of resistance to the Mughal state. The Ironclad Rock and the Siege As the Cambridge History of India, vol. IV (1937) vividly describes, Chittor stands on a solitary hill three miles and a quarter long and about 1,200 yards wide in the centre, rising 1,889 feet above sea-level (four to five hundred feet above the plain), “presenting to the modern eye the appearance of a vast ironclad in a sea which is represented by the plain from which the fortified hill rises.” The natural elevation and massive defences had made Chittor a symbol of Mewar’s independence. Approach to Chittor. | Pic: Shoumojit Banerjee As Akbar’s army approached, Udai Singh summoned a council of nobles, chiefs, merchants and leading citizens to deliberate upon the defence. The council, after considering the circumstances, decided that the Rana should withdraw to the defiles of western Mewar. While Col. Tod and V.A. Smith (among others) have dubbed Udai Singh a ‘coward’ in abandoning the fort at such a critical moment in Mewar’s history, G.N. Sharma strongly refutes this version. The council’s decision, Sharma writes, was a startling suggestion, and Udai Singh did not initially welcome it. Yet he eventually bowed to the decision. In Sharma’s judgement, the Rana’s withdrawal demonstrated loyalty to the feudal order and a willingness to adopt a different military strategy. Tod is less forgiving. “Scarcely had Akbar sat down before Chitor,” he writes, “when the Rana was compelled (say the annals) to quit it; but the necessity and his wishes were in unison.” The fortress had already been twice taken and sacked by Muslim kings - by Ala-ud-din Khalji in 1303 and Bahadur Shah of Gujarat in 1535. The Burning of the Rajput women during the siege of Chitor. But, as Tod vehemently says, “never before had the ancient race of Kusa been disgraced by an Udai Singh, who abandoned his capital, leaving its defense to Jaimal Rathore, and sought safety at Kumbhalgarh.” Whatever the precise balance between strategic prudence and personal inclination, the Rana did not leave Chittor undefended. Its garrison contained some eight thousand Rajput warriors, supported during the siege by thousands of peasants and other inhabitants. The nobles and their contingents prepared to resist an army vastly superior in numbers and resources. Of them, two names – that of Jaimal Rathore of Bednore and the young Patta Sisodia of Kailwa - have become (to quote Tod) “household words in Mewar and will be honoured while the Rajput retains a shred of his inheritance or a spark of his ancient recollections.” Another prominent defender was Rawat Sahidas, who held the Suraj Pol (the ‘Gate of the Sun’) and would fall resisting the enemy. Other chiefs including the Tomara prince of Gwalior and the Rao of Jhalawar contributed their contingents. While the defenders fought without the advantage of the Rana’s presence, they did not lack commanders willing to die at their posts. Nor were the women of Chittor passive spectators. Tod records that many threw the buckler over the scarf and led desperate sorties. The defence of Chittor in this hour of its most terrible storm, was sustained by a society in which the obligations of clan, ancestry and homeland had become inseparable. The first assaults by the Mughal army failed. Akbar’s forces suffered heavily before the walls, and the emperor turned to the methodical destruction of the fortress’s defences. Three principal batteries were established. One stood opposite the Lakhota Gate on the northern side of the fort; a second faced the Suraj Pol in the east, under Shujat Khan, Raja Todar Mal and Qasim Khan; a third was erected in the south near Chittori Burj. A large mortar capable of hurling a ball weighing forty pounds was cast on the spot in Akbar’s presence. As Mughal cannon fire battered the walls, miners prepared charges beneath the bastions. But the Rajputs, working frantically, repaired the damage while repelling assaults and firing upon the men who were labouring to bring the besiegers closer to the fort. Ingenious Technology The Mughal army constructed sabats, or protected approaches designed to shield the attackers from the defenders’ guns and muskets. Their precise form has been debated by historians. Sharma, drawing upon the contemporary descriptions, argues that they were not simply trenches dug into the earth, but covered passages built largely above ground, with earthen walls and a roof of planks and other materials. They could be broad enough to allow several horsemen to ride abreast. Smith describes one such approach as so spacious that ten men could pass along it abreast and a mounted elephant could be ridden through it. The besiegers advanced under this protection, gradually bringing their works closer to the fortress walls. The labour was immense, and the mortal hazards were blood-curdling. G.N. Sharma writes that nearly five thousand workers were employed in constructing the approaches, more than a hundred of whom were said to be killed daily by Rajput fire. Every breach in the walls had to be held against defenders who understood that the survival of their homes and families depended upon the resistance. On December 17, 1567, the Mughal besiegers attempted to bring down two bastions near the Lakhota Gate by detonating two mines packed with gunpowder. The charges, Smith records, were intended to explode together. While the first mine exploded, the second was delayed. The storming party rushed forward through the breach, only to be caught when the other charge went off. Men of the Mughal attacking force were blown apart while the explosion inflicted casualties on the besiegers and defenders alike. Smith puts the Mughal losses at about two hundred, including roughly a hundred officers, while the defenders lost about forty. The Rajput garrison swiftly repaired the breach. In this lethal war of attrition, Akbar recognised that impatience would not suffice. He devoted himself to perfecting the protected approaches and continued to direct operations in person. On one occasion, a cannonball fired from the Chittori battery killed twenty of Akbar’s men and narrowly missed the emperor himself. For four months, the Rajput garrison held the Mughal army at bay with suicidal courage. Its men fought with swords, spears, stones and catapults; its walls were battered by artillery and undermined by mines. But the balance was gradually shifting. The blockade depleted the garrison’s supplies, while the continuous bombardment and mining operations wore down the defences. The struggle was becoming one of endurance, and the defenders’ reserves of food, men and hope were finite. Heroic Resistance Tod writes that the names “Jaimal and Patta” were “as household words in Mewar”, inseparable in the memory of the people. They would be honoured, he predicted, as long as the Rajput retained even a fragment of his inheritance or a spark of his ancient recollections. Patta’s father had died in the previous siege, leaving him the sole heir of his house. His mother had survived to rear him, only to face the prospect of losing him in the defence of Chittor. Tod’s account of what followed is among the most affecting passages in the annals of Mewar. “Like the Spartan mother of old, she commanded her son to put on the saffron robe and die for Chittor. But, surpassing the Grecian dame, she illustrated her precept by example. Lest thoughts for one dearer than herself should diminish the lustre of Kailwa, she armed Patta’s young bride with a lance. The [Rajput] defenders saw the fair princess descend the rock and fall fighting beside her mother-in-law.” It is difficult to imagine a more terrible expression of the code that governed the defenders’ understanding of honour. As the defences deteriorated, Jaimal continued to direct the resistance. On Tuesday, February 23, 1568, Akbar noticed a figure in a chief’s cuirass directing the defence near a breach. The emperor raised his well-tried musket, Sangram and fired. He did not then know the identity of the man he had shot. When the figure failed to reappear, the besiegers concluded that the shot had been fatal. Less than an hour later, reports arrived that the defences had been abandoned and fires were burning within the fortress. The dead commander, it was discovered, was Jaimal Rathor. His death dealt a devastating blow to the garrison and the fall of the fortress seemed imminent. The next morning, the fires in the fortress told their own story. Raja Bhagwan Das in the Mughal camp, told Akbar that the terrible rite of jauhar had begun. The Rajput ceremony of Jauhar (holocaust), 1567, illustration from 'Hutchinsons History of the Nations', c.1910. Vincent Smith records that fires were kindled in three places, associated respectively with the Sisodia, Rathor and Chauhan clans. Nine queens, five princesses and their daughters, two infant sons, and the families of chiefs who had not been away on their estates perished in the flames or in the fighting. Abu’l Fazl, as cited by Smith, estimated that three hundred women were burnt. In G.N. Sharma’s anguished description, Rajput matrons and virgins engaged in the “awe-inspiring self-immolation ‘Jauhar’ with a courage and self-possession, that makes us wonder.” The women, he says, were conscious of the honour they sought to preserve and suppressed every tender emotion that might stand in its way. As the fires consumed Rajput families and infants who could neither understand their fate nor defend themselves, the surviving men in the garrison prepared for their last sortie by donning saffron robes and resolving to fight to the death. Jorla Pol | Pic: Shoumojit Banerjee At dawn on February 24, 1568, amid the sound of cymbals, war drums, barbaric horns, and shouts of “Har-Har-Mahadev,” the gates of the fort were thrown open. A fierce struggle erupted between Hanuman Pol and Bhairo Pol, in which the warrior Kalla Rathore met his death. As Mughal troops poured through the gates like a relentless tidal wave, around three hundred war elephants – among them Madhukar, Jangiya, Sabdaliya and Kadira - carrying swords in their trunks, were let loose on the Rajput garrison. Mounted on one such elephant, Akbar rode through the fort, when near the Kumbh Shyam temple, Patta’s mortally wounded body, trampled underfoot, was presented before him just as life ebbed from him. The Massacre The fall of Chittor was followed by a slaughter whose scale and character darkened the triumph of the Mughal emperor. Smith writes that Akbar, exasperated by the obstinate resistance, treated the garrison and town with merciless severity. The eight thousand Rajput soldiers who formed the regular garrison had received extensive assistance during the siege from peasants, whom Smith numbers at forty thousand. The emperor ordered a general massacre, which, according to Smith, resulted in the deaths of 30,000 people. Sharma likewise records that a population of 30,000 inside the fortress, mostly civilians, was put to the sword on the emperor’s orders. The slaughter continued through streets, lanes and temples. Ill-armed inhabitants faced soldiers whose weapons and military organisation they could not match. Pic: Shoumojit Banerjee “The fort which once glowed with wealth and splendour, was changed to a charnel house…the Mughal fury was the fire which consumed them to ashes.” The massacre was among the most monstrous in Mewar’s blood-stained history. The destruction, argues Sharma, left a deep stain on Akbar’s memory and character. “The triumph of the Great Mughal was indeed sullied by this act of disgraceful cruelty,” he writes, describing it as a grave violation of the laws of humanity and justice. There was, moreover, a particular bitterness in the fate of the marksmen who had helped sustain the defence. Smith records that a thousand expert sharpshooters from Kalpi had inflicted heavy losses on the besiegers and endangered Akbar’s life. The emperor was eager to destroy them, but they escaped by a stratagem. Passing themselves off as imperial troops, they marched out of the fortress with their wives and children, whom they represented as prisoners. The gates of Chittor were also removed from their hinges and carried to Agra. Tod describes them as among the symbols of regality, objects whose seizure proclaimed the humiliation of the defeated house. Yet Chittor’s story did not end with the Mughal occupation. Udai Singh had withdrawn into the Girwah valley of the Aravalli hills, and Mewar survived beyond its ruined capital. Frightful Memory The slaughter entered the memory of Rajasthan through stories, customs and symbols. Col. Tod, and later Vincent Arthur Smith, record a tradition that Akbar estimated the dead by collecting and weighing the sacred threads worn by high-caste Hindu men. The recorded quantity was said to be 74½ maunds. The number has since acquired a terrible significance. According to the tradition Smith recounts, 74½ became a tilak, or accursed mark, invoked as the strongest of seals on a banker’s letter in Rajasthan. The “sin of the slaughter of Chitor” was called down upon anyone who violated a letter protected by that number. Whether understood as a historical measurement or as a later expression of collective grief, the tradition reveals the depth of the wound. Chittor’s fall in 1568, like the disaster Panipat in 1761 that shocked the Maratha nation, was remembered as a catastrophe that had entered the moral imagination of the Rajputs. Smith writes that the fortress “became accursed” in the eyes of Mewar, and that no successor of Udai Singh would dare to set foot within the limits of the ancient stronghold. And yet, the victors themselves could not forget the courage of the defeated. Smith records that statues of Jaimal and Patta were erected in honour of their resistance. There is some disagreement in the accounts over their precise history and location. There is also considerable controversy over Akbar’s intent – on whether he actually intended to commemorate them. The Dutch traveller van den Broecke, writing in 1629 or 1630, stated that Akbar had ordered statues of the two warriors mounted on elephants and placed beside the principal gate of the fort at Agra. The French traveller François Bernier wrote that they were the figures of Jaimal and Patta at the entrance to the fortress of Shahjahanabad in Delhi in 1663, while Thévenot also described the elephant-mounted warriors a few years later. The statues were subsequently destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders as idolatrous. Bernier’s account is remarkable. He describes the statues as memorials to the men who, with their mother, had opposed Akbar with extraordinary resolution and preferred death in battle to submission. The elephants and their riders, he writes, inspired an awe and respect he could scarcely describe. Whatever the nature of the debate, it appears that the Mughal emperors had honoured warriors who had fought against their own armies, acknowledging courage that brutal conquest could not extinguish. Later, Akbar’s son and successor, Jahangir, who too launched an expedition against Mewar, ordered statues of Rana Amar Singh (Pratap’s gallant son) and his son Karan after their submission in 1615. But such honours cannot undo the terrible events of Akbar’s siege. Militarily and politically, Akbar’s victory was decisive indeed and a major turning point in Indian history. According to Gopinath Sharma, the rest of the Rajput clans and fortresses - Ranthambor, Jaisalmer, Bikaner – swiftly submitted to Mughal arms in order to avoid the terrible fate of Chittor and became Imperial vassals. Col. James Tod and Guru Gyanchandra riding elephants near Udaipur. Nearly three centuries after Akbar’s apocalyptic siege, Col. Tod, walking the ruins of Chittor during a visit in February 1821, abandoned himself to melancholic contemplation as the sun’s last beam fell upon “the ringlet of Cheetore,” illuminating its grey and grief-worn aspect like “a lambent gleam lighting up the face of sorrow.” Gazing listlessly until the shades of evening gradually enshrouded the abandoned temples, columns and palace, Tod, in a haunting lament worthy of Gibbon, wrote of Chittor: “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become a widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!”
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