हिंदीOn this day

Battle of Barsana

VictorMughal imperial armyMirza Najaf Khan
1773vs
Jats of BharatpurNawal Singh

In the hills of Barsana, Shri Radha’s village in Braj, the Mughal general Najaf Khan beat the Jat army of Bharatpur and began the undoing of Suraj Mal’s kingdom.

Date: 1773Where: Barsana, Mathura district, Uttar PradeshType: Battle
Photo: Kridha20 · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Cite

MLA

“Battle of Barsana.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-barsana-1773/. Accessed .

APA

Hindu History. (2026). Battle of Barsana. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-barsana-1773/

Result

Najaf Khan defeated the Jat army near Barsana and went on to strip Bharatpur of its lands around Agra and Braj.

01Najaf Khan’s revival

After the Marathas left Delhi in 1773, Mirza Najaf Khan set about winning back the emperor’s lands around the capital. The richest of them had been taken by the Jats of Bharatpur in Suraj Mal’s day: Agra, Mathura and much of the Doab. Nawal Singh, who now ruled Bharatpur, led out the Jat army. The two forces met in the broken, hilly ground around Barsana.

02The Jats lose Braj

Najaf Khan’s trained infantry and guns beat the Jat army, which fell back towards Dig. In the following months the imperial army took Agra fort and the Braj country, and Nawal Singh died in 1775. Najaf Khan then stormed Dig itself in 1776. Bharatpur survived as a much smaller state; the towns and temples of Braj changed hands again and again until the Marathas under Mahadji Scindia returned in the 1780s.

Maharaja Suraj Mal
Person · 1707–1763 CE; ruled 1755–1763Maharaja Suraj MalSon of Badan Singh, Suraj Mal built the mud-walled fort of Bharatpur that no army ever stormed, held a kingdom from the Chambal to the outskirts of Delhi, and took Agra fort in 1761. He fell in an ambush near the Hindon on 25 December 1763.Read →
Why it matters

Barsana was the turning point in Bharatpur’s fortunes, the first great defeat of the Jat kingdom after Suraj Mal.

People 1

Maharaja Suraj MalRuler
1707–1763 CE; ruled 1755–1763

Maharaja Suraj Mal

Jat king of Bharatpur

Places 1

Shri Radha Rani (Ladli ji) Temple, BarsanaStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Shri Radha Rani (Ladli ji) Temple, Barsana

The temple of Radha on Bhanugarh hill above Barsana, the village of her father Vrishabhanu. It is the centre of Radhashtami and of the Lathmar Holi that draws all Braj each spring.

Places near the battlefield 8

Nand Bhavan (Nand Baba Temple), NandgaonStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Nand Bhavan (Nand Baba Temple), Nandgaon

The house of Nanda Baba on Nandishvar hill, where Krishna is worshipped as a cowherd boy with his foster parents and his brother. With Barsana it makes the pair of villages of Braj’s Lathmar Holi.

GovardhanStanding
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Govardhan

The low sandstone ridge of Braj that Shri Krishna held up on his little finger for seven days to shelter the people of Vraja from Indra’s rain. Pilgrims walk its 21-km parikrama barefoot, and the hill itself is worshipped as Giriraj.

Deeg Palace (Jal Mahal)Standing
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Deeg Palace (Jal Mahal)

The summer palace of the Jat rajas of Bharatpur, with halls set between two tanks and hundreds of fountains, built by Maharaja Suraj Mal in the 1750s and 1760s. In 1804 Yashwantrao Holkar’s army fought the British under its walls.

Prem Mandir, VrindavanStanding
Independent Bharat

Prem Mandir, Vrindavan

The white marble temple of Radha-Krishna and Sita-Rama raised by Jagadguru Kripalu Maharaj on a 55-acre site at the edge of Vrindavan. It opened in February 2012 and is now one of the most visited places in Braj.

Sri Krishna Balaram Mandir (ISKCON), VrindavanStanding
Independent Bharat

Sri Krishna Balaram Mandir (ISKCON), Vrindavan

The ISKCON temple at Raman Reti, opened by Srila Prabhupada in 1975, where he spent his last days and where his samadhi stands. It brought pilgrims from every continent to Vrindavan.

Radha Madan Mohan Temple, VrindavanStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Radha Madan Mohan Temple, Vrindavan

The tall red sandstone temple on the Dwadashaditya mound above the old Kaliya Ghat, the oldest standing temple of Vrindavan’s Goswami age. The original murti, worshipped by Sanatana Goswami, was carried to Rajasthan in the 17th century and is now at Karauli.

Banke Bihari Temple, VrindavanStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Banke Bihari Temple, Vrindavan

The most visited temple of Vrindavan, home of the murti that appeared to the singer-saint Swami Haridas in Nidhivan. Krishna stands here in the tribhanga pose, bent in three places, and the curtain is drawn every few minutes so that no devotee looks too long.

Radha Raman Temple, VrindavanStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Radha Raman Temple, Vrindavan

One of the seven old Goswami temples of Vrindavan, home of the Radha Raman murti that manifested from a shaligram shila for Gopal Bhatta Goswami in 1542. Unlike the other old murtis, it never left Vrindavan.