Question

information of nanasaheb Peshwa​

Answer 1

Balaji Baji Rao

Former Peshwa

Thumbnail image

Shrimant Peshwa Balajirao Bhat, also known as Nana Saheb, was the 8th Peshwa of the Maratha Empire in India. He was appointed as Peshwa in 1740 upon the death of his illustrious father, the Peshwa Bajirao I. During his tenure, the Chhatrapati was reduced to a mere figurehead.

plss mark me in brainylist.

Answer 2

History, at times, lends itself to several versions. The riddles it throws up invariably remain insoluble and this is the tragedy of history.

Facts can become distorted, as they have with regard to the life of Maratha ruler Nanasaheb Peshwa, the failed hero of India's first war of independence against the British in 1857.

No one knows with certainty what happened to the daring commander, who rode alongside Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi and Tatya Tope and shook the British, after the failed uprising and the announcement of a reward on his head.

Social activist Navalbhai Mehta, who has long campaigned on the matter, recently raked up the issue again. In a statement at Bhavnagar, he asked the Gujarat Government to take an interest in the case and take cognisance of the "evidence" that had come light.

He is hopeful that Chief Minister Narendra Modi will take up the cause. At one stage, it had seemed that the controversy would soon be over. In the early 1970s three documents were recovered from an old chest in the house of Keshavlal Mehta, the grandson of Nanasaheb.

G.N. Pant, former director of the National Museum, was convinced about the authenticity of the papers and expressed his opinion in 1992. However, no definitive stand has been taken all these years.

Apathy has ensured the unanswered questions about Nanasaheb's life continue to remain a mystery long after his death. Did the Peshwa, as early government records maintain, die in Nepal after a tiger attacked him during a hunt in September 1859?

Or, was he still in the Himalayan kingdom two years later as revealed by a Maharashtrian Brahmin named Venkateshwar to the British in the 1860s? More importantly, did he live in the guise of Yogindra Dayanand Maharaj, an ascetic, for 46 years in a cave temple near Sihor, a speck of a town in coastal Gujarat?

Nanasaheb's great grandsons seek a scientific probe
Significantly, it is the Sihor connection that has been strongly indicated by the documents - two letters written by Nanasaheb to his guru and Sanskrit scholar Harshram Mehta and a diary maintained by Harshram's brother Kalyanji Mehta, who was a confidant of Nanasaheb and protected him and his family from the wrath of the British.

Kalyanji is believed to have raised Nanasaheb's son Shridhar - later renamed Giridhar - who, as it turns out, was the father of Keshavlal. In the picture also are Keshavlal's four sons - Kamal, 48, Vijay, 44, Janak, 42 and Harshad, 38 - who all live in Sihor in abject poverty, their lives belying their rich Peshwa lineage.

According to the letters written by Nanasaheb - in old Marathi and in black ink - it is evident that Harshram, to whom they were addressed, also acted as adviser to the Peshwa. The first letter, written in 1856 before the revolt, gives a graphic account of Nanasaheb's preparations for the war, while the second, sent after the failure of the uprising, reveals a commander vowing to fight the British till his end.

Both are signed by "Baloo Nana", a name known to Harshram, who had taken lessons in Sanskrit from Nanasaheb since childhood. Kalyanji's diary jottings also refer to Nanasaheb by the same name.

Meticulously recorded and in old Gujarati, they talk of how Nanasaheb came to Sihor with his colleagues Baldev Thakur, Rambhau Dalvi, Khani-Khanan Yakin Shah and Koktalshah after his failure to oust the colonial rulers. He continued to live here as a recluse for over four decades.

The jottings also reveal how Kalyanji visited Maharashtra several times from Sihor via the sea and how he reared Nanasaheb's son Giridhar as his own son to keep his identity a secret and then got him married into a Sihori Brahmin family.

It was only in 1903, the diary points out, that Nanasaheb died, away from his hideout and in Kalyanji's house in Dave Sheri of Sihor. To date, the modest abode displays some articles that people say belonged to Nanasaheb.

These include two deer skins, a sword, a wooden sandal and a red Peshwai headgear. There is also a map, which is believed to have been left behind by Nanasaheb, roughly indicating the whereabouts of a yet-to-be-traced treasure buried by him near his hideout. Giving further credence to Nanasaheb's Sihor link is a letter written by Jadiben, Kalyanji's daughter, to Giridhar in 1923 informing him that his uncle Bhausaheb, the younger brother of Nanasaheb, had died in Hardwar.

The letter implores Giridhar to carry out the "shradha" ceremony every year as Bhausaheb did not have any sons of his own. It was Jadiben who declared in 1952 that Yogindra Dayanand Maharaj had indeed been Nanasaheb.