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The failure of parleys and the defiance of the Rana made Akbar decide on war. This and other rancorous exchange led to Mān leaving the feast abruptly, with the ominous warning ‘’Abide then in peril, if such be your resolve but remember- I shall come again and if I do not humble your pride, my name is not Mān!’’ as Tod records, to which the Rana replied ‘’he should always be happy to meet him’’ while someone-Dodiya Bhim according to Kesri Singh- added in plainer parlance desiring Mān not to forget to bring his ‘Phoopha’ (father’s sister’s husband), Akbar, along! Mān demanded in no uncertain terms that Pratap himself join the feast, to which the Rana responded in the negative. The rulers of Amber had until recently theretofore been vassals of Mewar, and at the feast that was laid out for the parley Pratap would not condescend to treating Mān as an equal, and instead sent his son Amar Singh to join in at the ceremony, expressing his regret under the pretext of being indisposed. Perhaps the most famous of episodes in such parleys as preserved in folklore is that of Mān Singh meeting Maharana Pratap with a proposal for an alliance on the banks of the lake Udaisagar. Peace was pursued by both sides in repeated parleys in years preceding the battle- through Mughal envoys such as Raja Bhagwan Das, Todal Mal and Jalal Khan meeting the Mewaris, but inevitably ending in a deadlock for Maharana Pratap although unfailingly courteous and hospitable, was resolutely disinclined to accepting Mughal supremacy. While the Mughals had risen from being rulers who had to flee their ancestral lands in strife to getting firmly entrenched in and thereafter constantly expanding their suzerainty over large parts of northern, western and central India, Mewar had reduced from being the leader of Rajput confederacy in India to one left fighting to retain control of its independence while getting encircled by subjugated provinces brought under the Mughal fold. The fortunes of the Mughals and the Mewaris had swung inversely proportional in the decades preceding the battle of Haldighati. Kesri Singh Barath of Soniyana authored a detailed work entitled ‘Pratap Charitra’ and perhaps the best-researched work on the subject of the Battle of Haldighati in modern times is his namesake Kesri Singh Mundiyar’s assiduously compiled treatise entitled Maharana Pratap- The Hero of Haldighati, 1976, a scholarly work that brings forth details on the locale, the protagonists and events of the battle. Based on studies of the above, historians of note such as James Tod, Kavi Shyamaldass, Gauri Shankar Ojha, Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Professor G N Sharma and others have expressed their own interpretations of the battle, its prelude and aftermath. In parallel, important grains of subject-history are carried in the verses of contemporary poets of eminence such as Dursa Adha, Prithviraj Rathore, Mala Sandu and Rama Sandu, whose spontaneous and lavish outpourings, though rich in admiration are markedly devoid of hyperbole, and those of later poets such as Ranchhod Bhatt and Sadashiv Bhatt. Another contemporary and important account is the official record dispatched to the Mughal court by Mān Singh shortly after the battle, from whence Abu Fazl has recorded in his Akbarnama.
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The courage of the protagonists and the glory of the day that kindled the heart of generations has been enshrined in evocative verses of folklore, which afford careful comparison with, and scrutiny of contemporary accounts, principally left by Mughal chroniclers.įrom the available contemporary accounts of the famous battle, the only eye-witness record is the one authored by Abdul Qadir Al-Badayuni, historian and chronicler of Akbar’s court who participated in the battle, as recorded in his ‘Muntakhab ut Tawarikh’. Few battles of Indian history have captivated the collective psyche of modern India as the Battle of Haldighati, fought from dawn till noon on a hot summer day of the 18 th of June, 1576 between the hegemony-seeking Mughal forces of Akbar, then 34, led by the 26-year-old Kuwar Mān Singh of Amber and the forces of Mewar striving to preserve their freedom and independence, led by Maharana Pratap Singh, aged 36.