Rana Sanga
The kingdom of Mewar boasted of a long
line of heroic kings. One such king was Maharana Sangram Singh (1482-1528), who
ascended the throne in 1509. He was better known as Rana Sanga.
Rana Sanga was an ambitious and shrewd
man. Though he had lost an arm and an eye in battle, he fearlessly waged wars
against Mewar’s traditional enemies in Gujarat and Malwa, and formed strategic
alliances with them.
Distressed by Rana’s exploits, Ibrahim
Lodi, the Sultan of Delhi, sent a huge army against Mewar. The Rana was
undaunted and he attacked and defeated the Sultan’s forces. Lodi’s commander
barely escaped, with the Rajput soldiers giving him chase right up to the
border of Rajputana. The Rana’s victory against Ibrahim Lodi was his crowning
achievement.
Buoyed by his success, the Rana began
eyeing the throne of Delhi. He invited Timurid military adventurer, Babur, to
launch an attack on Ibrahim Lodi from Kabul.
He hoped that Babur would retreat from
India after trouncing Lodi at Panipat (1526) so that he could establish his
rule in Delhi. But that was not to be.
Babur did oust the Lodis from Delhi,
but he showed no inclination to return to Kabul. Undeterred by this setback,
the Rana formed a confederency of local chieftains and marched against Babur at
the head of a formidable army of 80,000 cavalrymen and 500 elephants.
The two armies met at Khanwa on 16
March, 1527. Babur only had a army of 50,000 men, but when he unleashed his
artillery power, the Rana’s army was capitulated.
With the Rajput’s defeat, the Battle
of Khanwa paved the way for Babur’s conquest of Northern India. Rana Sanga died
shortly after bringing a glorious chapter in Mewar’s history to an end.
