Raja Man Singh

Everybody know about the battles Raja Man Singh fought, and the great victories he achieved against often daring odds, but, what we should really remember him for is turning the invading Mougal horde into a local Indian security system acceptable to all Indians, specially the Hindus. This security system protected the Hindus from forced Islamization for centuries until the rise of Aurangzeb.

Ignorantly, Raja Man Singh is painted as a hired gun for the Mougal dynasty. Nothing can be further from truth. Yes, Raja saheb fought and won many battles for Delhi’s Turkic rulers, as many as 67, but there is more to it.

Prior to the introduction of Mougals into the sub-continent, Rajputs and Afghans have been fighting for centuries to mould the sub-continent into their own image. Rajputs represented the finest height of the Indian culture, heritage, and religion, the Afghans brought with them the melting-pot of various central and west asian cultures with a thoroughly Indic vessel. The threat of Afghanisation was such that, the Rajputs believed could digest the subcontinental mainstream.

Before Babur fought Maharana of Mewar, he turned the centuries of Afghan rule in Delhi into dust. The rulers of Jaipur saw Mougals as useful weapons against their traditional Afghan rivals. The 67 battles Raja saheb fought from Kabul to Bengal cemented the security arrangement where Mougals not only have to tolerate the Indic system, but foster and promote it.

Raja saheb’s early career started by crushing the zealot revolt against Akbar. The revolt was against the arrangement Raja saheb had made with the Mougals, angered by the Indianisation, the zealots supported by the foreign settlers challenged the Imperial authority. They were all crushed. Afghans were the only major source of military challenge against the re-Indianisation of India following the end of Delhi Sultanate.

Raja saheb funded grand Hindu temples across the India, and patronised many religious scholars including Tulsi Das. Vaishnavism of Mathura become prominent under his patronage.

All of us can go and look into the particulars of battles and wars he fought, both as a prince, and later as a king. But what we should really remember him as is, the man who undid the centuries of cultural damage under first the Turkic and later the Afghan rulers of Delhi Sultanate. He is the man who undid the Rajput defeat at Tarain and rebuilt the cultural and religious soul of India, which had seen centuries of depletion.

I, Arsalan Khan, present the artwork of Raja Man Singh, the father of Modern India.