01The shepherd from Hol
Malhar Rao was born on 16 March 1693 at Hol, a Dhangar village on the Nira in the Pune country; the family took its name from it. His father died young and his mother took him to her brother Bhojraj Bargal in Khandesh, where he grew up among horsemen and married his uncle’s daughter Gautamabai. He served the Kadam Bande chiefs and then came to Bajirao’s notice in the early 1720s. Bajirao trusted him with the Malwa campaigns, and in 1733 the Peshwa granted him the lands round Indore.
02Forty years in the saddle
He was at Palkhed in 1728, at the ride on Delhi and the encirclement of the Nizam at Bhopal in 1737, and at Vasai in 1739. With Ranoji Shinde he shared the Maratha revenue of Malwa, and the two houses of Indore and Gwalior grew from that division. In 1754 his only son Khanderao was killed at the siege of Suraj Mal’s fort of Kumbher. In 1758 he rode with Raghunathrao across the Punjab to Attock, and the Maratha flag went up on the Sindhu.
03Panipat and after
At Panipat on 14 January 1761 Malhar Rao was nearly seventy. He had urged Sadashivrao Bhau to fight the Afghans in the old Maratha way, by raiding and cutting supplies, rather than in a fixed camp. When the line broke that afternoon he left the field with his men. Some Maratha accounts blame him; others say Bhau had told him to save the women of the camp. He spent his last years restoring Maratha power in the north and died at Alampur, near Bhind, on 20 May 1766. Ahilyabai, his daughter-in-law, built the chhatri over his ashes.
