- Lived:
- 19 February 1630 by the officially accepted reckoning — an older scholarly tradition argues for 1627 — in the hill fort of Shivneri above Junnar; the life happened in the Sahyadri hills and Konkan coast of Maharashtra, and ended at his capital of Raigad, 3 April 1680
- Field:
- king and state-founder — the Maratha svarājya, "own rule": a sovereign Indian kingdom built from a leased estate
- The Big Idea:
- In a subcontinent where kingdoms were inherited, he manufactured one — forts, army, navy, revenue survey, cabinet, treasury, even a coronation and a calendar — and proved that sovereignty is a thing that can be built.
- In their words:
- "Verily, Islam and Hinduism are terms of contrast. They are used by the true Divine Painter for blending the colours and filling in the outlines." (from the celebrated 1679 letter to Aurangzeb against the jizya, in Jadunath Sarkar's translation — a letter whose actual drafting, by which secretary or even which court, historians still debate)
- If you remember one thing:
- A sixteen-year-old took one hill fort; thirty years later there was a state with its own navy, its own tax survey, its own eight-minister cabinet and its own era of dates — the proof, delivered in one lifetime, that an Indian kingdom could be made and not merely inherited.