Unity demands more than swords. It demands that we confront the fractures inside ourselves—before someone else exploits them.
The Rajput Sangh’s Dilemma
Victory, when stretched too long, begins to feel like a question.
Months had passed since the Accord of Malwa. Trade flourished. Southern and northern engineers built together. Children from Malwa had arrived in Hampi and Chittorgarh, learning two tongues and two ways of pride.
But in the Rajput Sangh, restlessness stirred.
Rao Balwant of Bundi grumbled that Vijayanagar’s presence in the northern war council was growing too strong. Raja Prithviraj of Amber, now bolstered by his role in the Malwa negotiations, wanted greater control over troop rotations. In Bikaner, smaller kingdoms began asking—when would they get more than garrison duty and grain?
The unity, once forged by fear, was now strained by ambition.
At the center of it all stood Maharana Sanga. He had become more than a leader. He was a myth still breathing. His wounds were legends, his silences policy. Even the Deccan allies deferred to him. And perhaps that was the problem.
The Sabha did not fear each other. They feared losing him.
And far away, in Agra, Babur knew it.
He no longer attempted to breach borders. He now studied hearts. And every empire has one heart that holds it together.
So he sent not armies—but whispers.
To a mercenary from Kabul, he gave a dagger made of Persian steel. To a court musician traveling to Mewar, he gave a scroll hidden in a sitar’s hollow. To a disillusioned Rajput noble with debts and rage, he gave gold—and the illusion of purpose.
Someone, somewhere, would betray.
And in Chittorgarh, the protectors around Sanga tightened. Rao Maldeo placed his own men at Sanga’s side. The women of the zenana—queens, sisters, daughters—began carrying coded messages between regions, their palanquins now bearing the weight of strategy.
It was Rani Karnavati of Mewar who noticed the falcon. Karnavati had long sensed that the empire’s enemies would not come with banners, but with gifts and glances.
A hunting bird sent from Delhi, bearing a golden tag and a ring unfamiliar to the royal stables. She intercepted it. Hidden inside the bird’s feather wrappings: a map of Sanga’s chambers, marked with a crescent moon.
“The night he prays,” the note read. “That is when the blade must fall.”
She did not scream. She simply walked into the war council and placed the ring before them.
“Kings can be targeted,” she said. “But no one sees a queen coming.”
Legend holds that the women of the zenana, often underestimated, became key players in silent resistance.
Assassins were hunted. Traitors exposed. The zenana turned into a command post no man dared underestimate again.
One evening, in the moonlit palace courtyard, Sanga stood beside Rani Karnavati.
“You saved my life,” he said.
“I protected a future,” she replied. “A life is only part of it.”
He looked at her—not as ruler to queen, but as warrior to equal. “You’ve become the blade I never saw coming.”
“And you,” she said softly, “have become the cause I’ll never let fall.”
In the palace gardens, where once poetry echoed, Sanga now walked with shadows trailing him—not ghosts of enemies, but warriors in silk, women with knives in their sleeves.
Unity was not perfect. But it was now protected by something deeper than fear.
It was protected by love.
Historical Anchoring
Historically, Rani Karnavati was known for her political influence and eventual defense of Mewar. Though no recorded instance places her in espionage, women often played invisible but pivotal roles in Rajput resistance—through alliances, coded communication, and protective diplomacy. This article reimagines that power, giving form to what history often overlooks: the silent strength that holds nations together.
This is no longer just the Sabha’s dilemma.
It is everyone’s war.
The First Betrayal
It did not come with thunder.
It came with a smile.
A minor noble from Marwar, Kunwar Raghav Singh, had long felt invisible. He had fought at Khanwa. He had bled beside Rao Maldeo. But at court, he was offered no post, no title, no land. Only thanks.
And thanks, he believed, was the coin of fools.
He had debts. Enemies. A wife who would not speak to him, and a father who had once called him “excess baggage.”
So when the silver came—stacked in a caravan chest under false sandalwood—he took it.
Not out of greed.
Out of hunger.
He slipped into the corridors of Chittorgarh with a message from Agra. A small thing: maps of supply routes, false alarms planted in war council scrolls. But the damage was quiet and deep.
A Mewar garrison moved too late. A Deccan supply chain was ambushed near Khandwa. Four commanders died. And for a moment, the Sabha turned on itself.
Rao Balwant blamed Vijayanagar intelligence. Prithviraj of Amber accused Maldeo of withholding men. Voices rose. The Sabha fractured into words sharper than steel.
But then came the letter.
An anonymous scroll, slipped beneath Rani Karnavati’s chamber door. Not from a spy. From a maid who overheard Kunwar Raghav speaking too loudly to a drunk court musician.
The letter named him. Described the coin. Even listed the crest carved into the sandalwood.
He was arrested within the hour.
But when they found him, he was already dead—poisoned. Babur’s agents were not just planting betrayal. They were erasing evidence.
Sanga stood over his body, eyes unreadable.
“We are not betrayed because they hate us,” he said. “We are betrayed because we forget who still feels forgotten.”
The Rajput Sangh convened that night in silence.
No grand declarations. No vengeance.
But from that day forward, no member sat unguarded. Every minor noble was given voice in weekly forums. Every soldier’s letter home was read, archived, remembered. Even the servants of the palace were honored with coded tokens—to remind them: you are seen.
The Sabha had tasted betrayal.
It would not forget again.
The silence
It began not with a sword—but with silence.
In the border town of Kumbharia, where the Aravallis dip into the salt plains of Gujarat, a patrol caravan vanished. No signs of blood. No cries. Just the echo of hoofprints ending in sand.
Three days later, a trader loyal to Bikaner was found outside a garrison—tongue cut, hands bound in silk.
A message.
In Chittorgarh, the Rajput Sangh convened in urgency. Maps were unfurled. Messengers dispatched. Rao Maldeo believed it was a Mughal test. But Prithviraj disagreed.
“No imperial coin was found. No Mughal pattern in the binding. This wasn’t Babur. This was one of us.”
Sanga said nothing at first.
He knew. The whisper had become a wound.
The first betrayal had come not from a sword across the border—but from a soul within the Sabha.
That night, under the flickering oil lamps of his private chamber, Sanga stood beside Karnavati. Her presence was quiet, but constant.
“It begins,” he said.
“Then so shall we,” she replied.
By dawn, ten emissaries were riding. Not to the enemy—but to allies. Not to command—but to listen.
And in the shadows, the hunt for the traitor had begun.
They began with the fringe.
Bikaner, Jaisalmer, and the desert outposts were watched closely. Letters were read in mirror ink, alliances tested over ceremonial wine. The Deccan lords were interrogated not with questions—but with absence. Invitations stopped arriving. Silence spoke volumes.
It was not long before suspicion fell on Raja Udaykaran of Dungarpur.
He had long been bitter about his seat in the Sabha—a minor vote among giants. His coffers had been strained from months of unpaid troop upkeep. And two months earlier, his second son had vanished under mysterious circumstances. Some said the boy was taken to Agra.
Rao Balwant wanted immediate action.
“Strip him of command,” he said. “Let one betrayal be punished in full sight.”
But Sanga raised his hand. “If we punish a brother without proof, we sow more fear than unity.”
It was Karnavati who proposed a different path.
“Invite him to Chittorgarh,” she said. “Honor him. Let him taste the power he thinks he’s denied. And then… let him speak.”
A royal invitation was sent.
When the scroll arrived from Chittorgarh, he nearly burned it. But men who have crossed a line rarely stop walking—unless someone offers a way back.
And so, under banners of peace, Raja Udaykaran arrived in Chittorgarh. The fort welcomed him with garlands and music—but its walls watched with sharpened silence.
On the third day, as the Sabha gathered in the Hall of Mirrors, Sanga turned to him and asked only one question.
“Why has your silence grown louder than your voice?”
Udaykaran trembled.
It was not the question.
It was the fact that he had no lie ready.
He had not meant to betray them—only to be seen. But somewhere between silence and ambition, he had wandered too far from his own voice.
Historical Anchoring
Rajput alliances were deeply susceptible to pride and perceived slights. Smaller kingdoms often felt marginalized, and betrayal in the form of secret talks, defections, or withheld support was not uncommon. Dungarpur was historically a minor power often caught between loyalties. This fictionalized betrayal mirrors real tensions that existed among the fractious Rajput states.
This is the first tremor.
The war has not broken.
But the walls have started to whisper.
Shifting Shadows
Betrayal does not echo like thunder. It seeps like damp into stone.
The Rajput Sangh did not fall apart. Not yet. But something unspoken settled between its members—a hesitation, a second glance, the quiet weighing of every word.
In the weeks that followed Udaykaran’s unmasking, no ruler resigned. No kingdoms withdrew. Yet in the corridors of Chittorgarh, the old laughter dulled.
Scribes began keeping two ledgers—one official, one private.
Meetings grew shorter. Eyes met less.
Sanga watched it all. He did not rage. He did not command. He simply began walking the fort each night—pausing by the barracks, the kitchens, the outer ramparts. Listening.
Karnavati walked with him on most nights. On others, she remained in the zenana, coordinating quiet inquiries of her own.
One evening, she found Sanga staring at the moonlit tiles of the Sabha Hall.
“The wound isn’t the betrayal,” he said. “It’s that I look at old friends and wonder who else is waiting to be seen.”
Karnavati sat beside him, unwrapping a parcel. Inside were handwoven anklets from a Rajputani widow in Kumbharia—the same village where the patrol disappeared.
“No one noticed her,” Karnavati said. “But she noticed everything.”
They pored over the beads and knots, finding coded threads. It was not treason—but it was warning.
The whispers had not stopped. They had simply shifted.
In the shadows, Babur waited.
He had learned what he needed. That the Sabha was strong—but not uncrackable.
He changed tactics. No more assassins. No more messages.
Now, he sent envoys to smaller courts with promises of autonomy. He promised poets land, generals glory, and exiles forgiveness. He played on longing.
“Tell them,” he said, “that the road back to Delhi is paved not with war—but with forgotten songs.”
And in Bikaner, in Jalore, even in parts of Bundi, the seeds took root.
Not all would bloom.
But Babur knew this: sometimes shadows move before the storm.
And in Rajputana, the winds had begun to shift.
To be continued
This article by Shailaza Singh was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 20 April 2025.
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