Tribute to Durgadas Rathore on his Punyatithi. He served as a minister in the court of Raja Jaswant Singh, the ruler of Marwar. He reclaimed the throne of Marawar from Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb, through his clever tactics, made Marwar a vassal kingdom of the Mughals and involved Raja Jaswant Singh in a campaign in Afghanistan where he died. His two queens were then already pregnant. Aurangzeb saw this as an opportunity to completely annex Marwar into the Mughal dominion and impose Mughal rule and thereby destroy Hinduism, a fact also described in Henry Herbert Dodwell’s book ‘The Cambridge History of India’. Aurangzeb brought the Rajput queens of Marwar to his palace and kept them under Mughal captivity. Each of the two widow-queens of Jaswant Singh gave birth to a son. One of the infants died and the other Ajit Singh was thus heir to the Marwar throne. Aurangzeb having declared Marwar as jagir of the Mughal empire promised to give the Marwar throne to Ajit Singh only if he converted to Islam and raised as a proper Muslim in his harem. What happened next? Durgadas Rathore rescued Ajit Singh from the clutches of Aurangzeb; many Rajputs attained martyrdom during the act. He preserved the Marwar throne, involving in wars against the Mughals, and made Ajit Singh the ruler. Durgadas Rathore’s story of valor of saving the Marwar throne is described in #SaffronSwords (https://www.amazon.in/Saffron-Swords…/dp/B07Q139493). Hail Durgadas Rathore and all the Veer-Veeranganas of Bharat.
– Manoshi Sinha; image sourced from Google.