Re-imagining the Regional Polity: Lessons in Bhrātṛbhāva and Bandhubhāva from the Baghel Kingdom.

Confronted by an increasing number of mahārājādhirājas and shahanshāhs during the period between the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, how do we characterise state-making and royal projections of authority, unencumbered by teleological impositions of "regional" and "imperial"? This paper examines the strategies used by the Baghel kingdom to consolidate its territorial and political control within a palimpsest of warring polities in early-modern North India. In contrast to other nascent Rajput polities of this period who were establishing themselves in opposition to the Sultans at Delhi, Gujarat, Malwa and Jaunpur through the articulation of a strong martial ethos, the Baghels employed strategies of friendship (bandhubhāva) and brotherhood (bhrātṛbhāva). In examining these strategies, this paper argues, the Baghels offer an alternate way of conceptualising the political landscape of the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries, one that does not solely rest on the asymmetrical relations of power associated with the study of "regional" polities. Put more directly, this paper posits the study of the regional polity during this period not in terms of language/literature/art nor in terms of successive levels of subordination, but as a politics of consolidating power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]