01Counsel from Shivaji
Chhatrasal was born on 4 May 1649. His father Champat Rai had fought the Mughals and died hunted, and the boy grew up poor. As a young man he served in the Mughal army in the Deccan. Around 1671 he went to meet Shivaji, hoping to fight under him. Shivaji told him to go back and free his own land. Lal Kavi’s Chhatraprakash, written by Chhatrasal’s own court poet, tells the meeting. With a handful of horsemen Chhatrasal began raiding Mughal posts in Bundelkhand, and year by year the posts fell.
02Panna and the Peshwa
Chhatrasal made Panna his capital. He was a disciple of Mahamati Prannath, whose teachings he spread, and the Prannath temple at Panna still draws the Pranami faithful. In 1728–29, when he was nearly eighty, Muhammad Khan Bangash, the Mughal governor of Allahabad, overran Bundelkhand and besieged him at Jaitpur. Chhatrasal sent to Bajirao I for help. Bajirao marched north and drove Bangash out in 1729. In gratitude Chhatrasal gave him about a third of his kingdom, around Jhansi and Sagar, and treated him as a son. He died on 20 December 1731.
