Raja Desingh or Raja Tej Singh was a king of the

Bundela The Bundela is a Rajput clan. Over several generations, the cadet lineages of Bundela Rajputs founded several states in area what came to be known as Bundelkhand anciently known as Chedi Kingdom from the 16th century. Etymology As per Jaswa ...

Rajput who ruled

Gingee Gingee, also known as Senji or Jinji and originally called Singapuri, is a panchayat town in Viluppuram district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Gingee is located between three hills covering a perimeter of 3 km, and lies west of the ...

in 1714 CE.

Background

The

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an Early modern period, early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to ...

defeated the

Maratha Empire The Maratha Empire, also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, was an early modern India, early modern polity in the Indian subcontinent. It comprised the realms of the Peshwa and four major independent List of Maratha dynasties and states, Ma ...

at Gingee in February 1698. In return for military services, the Mughal Emperor

Aurangzeb Alamgir I (Muhi al-Din Muhammad; 3 November 1618 – 3 March 1707), commonly known by the title Aurangzeb, also called Aurangzeb the Conqueror, was the sixth Mughal emperors, Mughal emperor, reigning from 1658 until his death in 1707, becomi ...

, granted a mansab rank of 2,500 and

jagir A jagir (), ( Hindustani: जागीर/جاگیر, ''Jāgīr''), ( Marathi: जहागीर, ''Jahāgīrá'') also spelled as jageer, was a type of feudal land grant in the Indian subcontinent at the foundation of its Jagirdar ( Zamindar ...

land grant of 12 lakhs (1,200,000) to Raja Swarup Singh, a Bundela Rajput chieftain, along with the (fort commandership) of Gingee in 1700 AD. Raja Swarup Singh died of old age in 1714 AD. Hearing about the death of his father, Desingh, the newly married son of Raja Swarup Singh, started for Gingee from Bundelkhand, his ancestral home. Differing accounts have the

Nawab of Arcot The Carnatic Sultanate ( Persian: ; Tamil: ; Urdu: ) also known as Carnatic State or Arcot State was a kingdom in southern India between about 1690 and 1855, ruled by a Muslim nawab under the legal purview of the Nizam of Hyderabad, until thei ...

Saadatullah Khan I Sa'adatullah Khan I or Sa'adatullah Khan was Nawab of Carnatic (r.1710–1732). He was an adventurer from Konkan in Maharashtra. Life He was born to Muhammad Ali in Bijapur, to a respectable family of Nawayat Konkani Muslims, who inhabited ...

somewhat recalcitrant to the Mughal Empire, and the terms of the grant from Aurangzeb were disputed, nevertheless a debt was claimed after Aurangzeb's death ... a debt that the Raja refused to pay, eventually the arrears of payments due amounted to 70 lakhs rupees (7 million), and being a defaulter for ten years; the Nawab of Arcot reported this matter to the Mughal Emperor at the time,

Bahadur Shah I Bahadur Shah I (Muhammad Mu'azzam; 14 October 1643 – 27 February 1712) or Shah Alam I, was the eighth Mughal Emperor from 1707 to 1712. He was the second son of the sixth Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, who he conspired to overthrow in his youth ...

at Delhi. .

Battle for Gingee

Traditional plays and ballads are sung in and around Gingee about the gallantry displayed by Desingh at the young age of 22, against the more powerful Nawab Sadatulla Khan of Arcot in a struggle that was unmatched from the outset (Desingh’s army consisted of only 350 horses and 500 troopers, while the Nawab’s army had 8,000 horsemen and 10,000 sepoys). Desingh eventually died in battle and his small army was defeated. His young wife committed Sati on his funeral pyre. However, the fortress of Gingee lost its pre-eminent position and political importance within a few years of the extinction of the Rajput rule.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Desingh Bundelkhand 18th-century Indian monarchs