Rajmata Jijabai

01Sindkhed to Shivneri

Jijau was born at Sindkhed Raja in the Vidarbha country, in the house of the Jadhav deshmukhs who served the Nizamshahi sultans of Ahmadnagar. She was married young to Shahaji Bhonsle, a commander who spent most of his life in the service of Ahmadnagar and then Bijapur, far to the south. Her son Shivaji was born in the hill fort of Shivneri in 1630. With Shahaji away in Karnataka, it was Jijabai who held the household together and, with the old administrator Dadoji Konddev, resettled the ruined jagir of Pune, where the plough was run over land the sultan’s men had laid waste.

02The mother behind Swarajya

Marathi bakhars remember her telling the boy the kathas of Rama and of the Pandavas, and teaching him that the land and its temples were not the sultan’s to give away. She sat in judgement over village disputes in Pune while Shivaji was still young, and in the years of his campaigns she ran the administration from Rajgad. When Shivaji was held at Agra in 1666, the kingdom was in her hands. On 6 June 1674 she saw him crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad. She died at Pachad, at the foot of the fort, on 17 June, and her samadhi stands there still.

Place · Hill with Satavahana-era caves; fortified under the SultanatesShivneri FortThe fort above Junnar where Jijabai gave birth to Shivaji in 1630, and named him after the hill’s goddess, Shivai. Its cliffs are full of Buddhist caves two thousand years old.Read →