Volume 4 — Pindāri
Reading edition
List of Paragraphs
1. Origin of the name
2. Rise of the Pindāris
3. Their strength and sphere of operations
4. Pindāri expeditions and methods
5. Return from an expedition
6. Suppression of the Pindāris. Death of Chitu
7. Character of the Pindāris
8. The existing Pindāris
9. Attractions of a Pindāri’s life
1. Origin of the name
2. Rise of the Pindāris
The Pindāri bands appear to have come into existence during the wars of the late Muhammadan dynasties in the Deccan, and in the latter part of the seventeenth century they attached themselves to the Marāthas in their revolt against Aurāngzeb. The first mention of the name occurs at this time. During and after the Marātha wars many of the Pindāri leaders obtained grants in Central India from Sindhia and Holkar, and were divided into two parties owing a nominal allegiance to these princes and designated as the Sindhia Shāhi and Holkar Shāhi. In the period of chaos which reigned at this time outside British territories their raids in all directions attended by the most savage atrocities became more and more intolerable. These outrages extended from Bundelkhand to Cuddapah south of Madras and from Orissa to Gujarāt.
When attached to the Marātha armies, Malcolm states, the Pindāris always camped separately and were not permitted to plunder in the Marātha territories; they were given an allowance averaging four annas each a day, and further supported themselves by employing their small horses and bullocks in carrying grain, forage and wood, for which articles the Pindāri bazār was the great mart. When let loose to pillage, which was always the case some days before the army entered an enemy’s country, all allowances stopped; no restraint whatever was put upon these freebooters till the campaign was over, when the Marātha commander, if he had the power, generally seized the Pindāri chiefs or surrounded their camps and forced them to yield up the greater part of their booty. A knowledge of this practice led the Pindāris to redouble their excesses, that they might be able to satisfy without ruin the expected rapacity of their employers.
In 1794, Grant-Duff writes, Sindhia assigned some lands to the Pindāris near the banks of the Nerbudda, which they soon extended by conquests from the Grassias or original independent landholders in their neighbourhood. Their principal leaders at that time were two brothers named Hiru and Burun, who are said to have been put to death for their aggressions on the territory of Sindhia and of Rāghuji Bhonsla. The sons of Hiru and Burun became Pindāri chiefs; but Karīm Khān, a Pindāra who had acquired great booty at the plunder of the Nizām’s troops after the battle of Hurdla, and was distinguished by superior cunning and enterprise, was the principal leader of this refuse of the Marātha armies. Karīm got the district of Shujahalpur from Umar Khān which, with some additions, was afterwards confirmed to him by Sindhia. During the war of 1803 and the subsequent disturbed state of the country Karīm contrived to obtain possession of several districts in Mālwa belonging to Sindhia’s jāgirdārs; and his land revenue at one time is said to have amounted to fifteen lakhs of rupees a year. He also wrested some territory from the Nawāb of Bhopāl on which he built a fort as a place of security for his family and of deposit for his plunder. Karīm was originally a Sindhia Shāhi, but like most of the Pindāris, except about 5000 of the Holkar Shāhis who remained faithful, he changed sides or plundered his master whenever it suited his convenience, which was as often as he found an opportunity. Sindhia, jealous of his encroachments, on pretence of lending him some gems inveigled him to an interview, made him prisoner, plundered his camp, recovered the usurped districts and lodged Karīm in the fort of Gwalior.
A number of leaders started up after the confinement of Karīm, of whom Chitu, Dost Muhammad, Namdār Khān and Sheikh Dullah became the most conspicuous. They associated themselves with Amīr Khān in 1809 during his expedition to Berār; and in 1810, when Karīm Khān purchased his release from Gwalior, they assembled under that leader a body of 25,000 horse and some battalions of newly raised infantry with which they again proposed to invade Berār; but Chitu, always jealous of Karīm’s ascendency, was detached by Rāghuji Bhonsla from the alliance, and afterwards co-operated with Sindhia in attacking him; Karīm was in consequence driven to seek an asylum with his old patron Amīr Khān, but by the influence of Sindhia Amīr Khān kept him in a state of confinement until 1816.
When the Marāthas ceased to spread themselves over India, the Pindāris who had attended their armies were obliged to plunder the territories of their former protectors for subsistence. To the unemployed soldiery of India, particularly to the Muhammadans, the life of a Pindāra had many allurements; but the Marātha horsemen who possessed hereditary rights or had any pretensions to respectability did not readily join them. One of the above leaders, Sheikh Dullah or Abdullah, apparently became a dacoit after the Pindāris had been dispersed, and he is still remembered in Hoshangābād and Nimār in the following saying:
Niche zamīn aur upar Allah, Aur bīch men phiren Sheikh Dullah,
or ‘God is above and the earth beneath, and Sheikh Dullah ranges at his will between.’
3. Their strength and sphere of operations
4. Pindāri expeditions and methods
5. Return from an expedition
6. Suppression of the Pindāris. Death of Chitu
7. Character of the Pindāris
8. The existing Pindāris
9. Attractions of a Pindāri’s life
The freebooting life of the Pindāris, unmitigated scoundrels though they were, no doubt had great charms, and must often have been recalled with regret by those who settled down to the quiet humdrum existence of a cultivator. This feeling has been admirably depicted in Sir Alfred Lyall’s well-known poem, of which it will be permissible to quote a short extract:
When I rode a Dekhani charger with the saddle-cloth gold-laced,
And a Persian sword and a twelve-foot spear and a pistol at my waist.
It’s many a year gone by now; and yet I often dream
Of a long dark march to the Jumna, of splashing across the stream,
Of the waning moon on the water and the spears in the dim starlight
Then the streak of the pearly dawn—the flash of a sentinel’s gun,
The gallop and glint of horsemen who wheeled in the level sun,
The shots in the clear still morning, the white smoke’s eddying wreath,
Is this the same land that I live in, the dull dank air that I breathe?
And if I were forty years younger, with my life before me to choose,
I wouldn’t be lectured by Kafirs or bullied by fat Hindoos;
But I’d go to some far-off country where Musalmāns still are men,
Or take to the jungle like Chetoo, and die in the tiger’s den.