Shivaji Crowned Chhatrapati

June 6, 1674

In an elaborate Hindu ceremony at Raigad Fort, the Maratha warrior Shivaji was crowned Chhatrapati, paramount king, of an independent Hindu state carved out of the western Deccan. He had fought the Mughals for two decades. The Maratha Confederacy he founded would outlast and eventually supplant the Mughal empire, becoming the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent by the eighteenth century.