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 Jaswant ...

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 Sa ...

in 1714 CE.

Background

The

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

defeated the

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at Gingee in February 1698. In return for military services, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, granted a mansab rank of 2,500 and jagir 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 was a kingdom in South India between about 1690 and 1855, and was under the legal purview of the Nizam of Hyderabad, until their demise. They initially had their capital at Arcot in the present-day Indian state of Tamil N ...

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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 (14 October 1643 – 27 February 1712), also known as Muhammad Mu'azzam and Shah Alam I. was the eighth Mughal Emperor who ruled from 1707 until his death in 1712. In his youth, he conspired to overthrow his father Aurangzeb, t ...

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

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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

4 .https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.500497/page/n444/mode/2up {{DEFAULTSORT:Desingh Bundelkhand 18th-century Indian monarchs