हिंदीOn this day
Rebuilt

Lal Mahal, Pune

The red house Shahaji built in Pune for Jijabai and the boy Shivaji, where Shivaji grew up and where, on the night of 5 April 1663, he fell upon the Mughal general Shaista Khan in his own bedchamber.

Built: c. 1640, Shahaji Bhonsle, for Jijabai and Shivaji; rebuilt in the 1980sWhere: Maharashtra18.52° N, 73.86° E
  1. c. 1640
  2. 1660
  3. 5 April 1663
  4. 1980s
Photo: Sachin More · CC BY-SA 4.0

01Jijabai’s house

Pune had been burnt by an Adil Shahi general around 1630. When Jijabai came to live on Shahaji’s jagir with the young Shivaji and Dadoji Kondadev, Shahaji had this house built for them near the Kasba Ganapati, around 1640. Here Jijabai told her son the kathas of Rama and the Pandavas, and from here he rode out into the Maval valleys with the boys of the hill villages who would become his first soldiers. He left it for the forts as a young man, and Torna and Rajgad became his seats.

02The night raid of 1663

In 1660 Aurangzeb’s uncle Shaista Khan took Pune and made the Lal Mahal his quarters, with a large army camped round the town. On the night of 5 April 1663, in Ramzan, Shivaji entered Pune with a small band, mingling with a wedding party, cut through a wall of the house and reached the Khan’s rooms. Shaista Khan escaped through a window but lost three fingers to Shivaji’s sword; his son was killed. Aurangzeb, angered, sent him off to Bengal. The old house later decayed and vanished. The Lal Mahal standing today was built by the Pune Municipal Corporation in the 1980s on part of the old site.

The life of this place

  1. c. 1640Shahaji builds the Lal Mahal for Jijabai and Shivaji.
  2. 1660Shaista Khan occupies Pune and the Lal Mahal.
  3. 5 April 1663Shivaji’s night raid on Shaista Khan.
  4. 1980sThe present Lal Mahal is built by the Pune Municipal Corporation.
Visiting

The Lal Mahal is in the old city near Shaniwar Wada and the Kasba Ganapati; all three can be seen on one walk.

People

Chhatrapati Shivaji MaharajRuler
1630–1680 CE; crowned 1674

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj

Founder of Hindavi Swarajya, crowned Chhatrapati

Nearby

Kasba Ganpati, PuneStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Kasba Ganpati, Pune

The guardian Ganapati of Pune, whose temple Jijabai built when she came to resettle the ruined town with the boy Shivaji. In the immersion procession of Ganeshotsav he always goes first.

Nana Wada, PuneStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Nana Wada, Pune

The town house that Nana Phadnavis built for himself in 1780, a few steps from Shaniwar Wada, from which the Peshwa’s chief minister ran the Maratha state for a quarter of a century.

Shaniwar Wada, PuneRuined
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Shaniwar Wada, Pune

The palace-fort of the Peshwas, from which the Maratha confederacy was run for nearly ninety years. A fire in 1828 left only the walls and gates.

PuneStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Pune

The town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.