Maratha Murder Most Foul: Raghoba and the Fall of the House of Bhat

In Dr. Uday S. Kulkarni’s hands, the 1773 assassination of Peshwa Narayan Rao becomes a window into Maratha power politics, imperial fragility and the grandeur of historical craft.

Few episodes in Indian history are cloaked in such tantalising whispers of conspiracy and blood as the assassination of Peshwa Narayan Rao in August 1773. Just 18 at the time, he was murdered in the inner chambers of the Pune’s Shaniwar Wada allegedly on the orders of his own uncle, Raghunath Rao, or Raghoba, under whose watch (and, some believed, at whose behest) a band of Gardis - the Peshwa’s own Praetorian Guard - cut down the teenaged sovereign.

For nearly two-and-a-half centuries, the echo of this crime has reverberated through both folklore and archival record, infamously manifested in the words “Kaaka, maalavaachva” (“Uncle, save me”) that have long haunted the walls of the Shaniwar Wada. Folklore has long attributed the killing to a sinister twist of language, a doctored order turning a call to capture into a command to kill Narayan Rao. And for generations, this tale has flickered in the popular imagination like a candle guttering in a draughty fort: part myth, part mystery and wholly macabre.

Now, in ‘Raghoba: The Assassination of Narayan Rao,’ eminent Pune-based historian Dr. Uday S. Kulkarni lifts the shroud off the infamous murder to offer a gripping and definitive account of the episode.

His book, grounded in stupendous archival research, is a model of how a scholar can transform local legend into serious history without stripping it of drama or depth. Kulkarni exhumes the grisly tale of Narayan Rao’s assassination and the currents that shattered the Maratha empire in tits twilight with a scholarly diligence that would have made Leopold von Ranke or Sir Jadunath Sarkar proud.

A retired naval surgeon and one of India’s most scrupulous historians at work today, Dr. Kulkarni resurrects not just the murder but the baroque architecture of intrigue that preceded and followed it. His forensic narrative is a study in both moral ambiguity and methodological precision set amid the crumbling façade of a once-ascendant Maratha Empire.

The young Peshwa’s assassination, says Kulkarni, was a watershed moment in Maratha history after which the Peshwa became little more than a figurehead, with real power devolving to the third echelon of ministers and military satraps across the Maratha confederacy.

After the death of Madhavrao I, who had restored Maratha prestige following the debacle at Panipat in 1761, his brother, the teenage Narayan Rao was installed as Peshwa. but Pune’s politics were anything but tranquil as his uncle Raghoba (the younger son of the great Baji Rao I) nursed ambitions of his own to become Peshwa.

Pune was a searing crucible of factional rivalry with Raghoba, Nana and MorobaPhadnis, SakharamBapu and other noblemen expertly wielding the blade of opportunism. The Peshwa’s court resembled the intrigues of the Roman and Byzantine palaces chronicled so masterfully by Edward Gibbon. Besides the antagonistic powers of the South in form of the Nizam and HyderAli, and the internecine feuds of the sardars in the Maratha Confederacy, looming large was the shadow of the English East India Company.

Caught in this whirlpool was the impetuous Narayan Rao and his nine-month regime. The court was also riven by caste tensions. The rule of the Peshwas had come to be perceived, especially by non-Brahmin elites, as a ‘Brahman-shahi, ’a theocratic overreach in which members of a priestly caste had donned the mantle of warrior-rulers. This eroded the proto-nationalist promise of the Maratha Empire with Raghoba’s combustible ambition lighting the fuse.

Kulkarni weaves a Rashomon-like tale that is at once granular and panoramic while being morally complexity. He does not flatten Raghoba into a villainous caricature. The latter comes across less a Machiavellian schemer than a man besieged by forces larger than himself. Likewise, Anandibai, often caricatured as a scheming shrew, is shown to be sharp, politically aware and dangerously underestimated. Kulkarni superbly etches in shades of grey the Barbhai Council, the duplicity of the British and the inertia of a decaying confederacy.

His refusal to moralise, to deal in absolutes, is what elevates his work into the realm of serious historical inquiry. The story of how a clerical alteration turned “dharaa” (hold) into “maaraa” (kill), often attributed to Anandibai, has long passed into Marathi folklore.

Kulkarni, however, resists the temptation of theatrics. He digs deep into contemporary letters, Marathi chronicles, British East India Company records and Bakhar literature to trace the web of motivations and machinations.

Narayan Rao’s death set off a domino effect that would eventually lead to the First Anglo-Maratha War and Raghoba’s fateful alliance with the British. What began as a family feud became a prelude to colonial dominance. But this is a story which resonates far beyond the Shaniwar Wada. Its global relevance lies in its theme of political succession gone wrong. While rooted in the specificities of late 18th-century Pune, Kulkarni captures this universality.

Much like the Princes in the Tower (Edward V and his brother, Richard, Duke of York), whose alleged murder by their uncle Richard III in the 15th century has long haunted English folklore and historiography, Narayan Rao’s killing has acquired a spectral weight.

In both cases, the fog of dynastic ambition and the absence of irrefutable evidence turned fact into legend. While England has a well-developed tradition (from Thomas More to Alison Weir) of scrutinising its royal murders, India’s court intrigues have often remained buried under the weight of myth or regional memory.

Even the fictional Macbeth, driven to regicide, finds a shadowy cousin in Raghoba. In fact, Macbeth has ranged over the retelling of this dark tale. Kulkarni quotes P.V. Mawjee, an early and prominent figure in the field of Maratha history who wrote strongly against Anandibai, dubbing her the ‘Lady Macbeth of Pune.’

Kulkarni’s achievement is in placing Narayan Rao’s murder on the same analytical pedestal, without surrendering the emotional gravity that makes it so memorable.

Historical writing, when done well, is less about dates and more about decisions - how men and women contended with uncertainty, and what consequences flowed from their choices. By that measure, ‘Raghoba’ is not just a murder mystery but a case study in the politics of succession and the perils of concentrated power.

Such longue durée thinking is rare among regional historians, many of whom treat Maratha history as an insular epic. Kulkarni’s broader lens reminds one of Theodor Mommsen’s panoramic treatment of Rome, where personal ambition often collided with national fate.

From ‘Solstice at Panipat’ (2011) to ‘The Mastery of Hindustan’ (2022). Dr. Kulkarni has constantly striven to remind us that the Maratha Confederacy was not merely a footnote to Mughal decline or British rise, but the last indigenous empire - an intricate and self-aware world of its own.

The sheer range of archival material that Kulkarni marshals is astounding. Beyond the oft-cited diaries of British officials like Thomas Mostyn and James Forbes (whose ‘Oriental Memoirs’ gives us contemporary portraits of Raghoba and Narayan Rao), he unearths obscure bakhars, family correspondence and administrative letters that have languished in Marathi archives. His command over both the colonial and indigenous documentary record gives the narrative an exceptional granularity.

This archival doggedness places Dr. Kulkarni in the grand tradition of Maharashtrian historians, a lineage that began with Vishwanath Kashinath Rajwade. There is also in Kulkarni a distinct humility as a chronicler of history. He has imbibed Ranke’s ideal of ‘wie es eigentlichgewesen’ (to show history as it ‘actually happened’) which the great German historian enumerated in his ‘History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations’ (1494–1514). In doing so, Kulkarni lets the documents speak for themselves.

If history is a mausoleum of memory, then Kulkarni has given Narayan Rao’s ghost a dignified resting place. Long after the tourist guides at Shaniwar Wada stop reciting ghost stories, it is Dr. Kulkarni’s account that will endure, standing beside the best works of empire and upheaval.