Holkars of Indore

The house

Malhar Rao Holkar, a shepherd's son who rose as a cavalry commander under Bajirao I, was granted territory in Malwa in 1731. The Holkars became one of the four principal houses of the Maratha confederacy, and their rivalry with the Scindias did as much as British arms to break it.

Malhar Rao's son died young, and on Malhar Rao's own death in 1766 the succession passed, after a further death, to his widowed daughter-in-law.

Ahilyabai

Ahilyabai Holkar ruled from 1767 to 1795 from Maheshwar on the Narmada. She heard petitions daily in open court, kept the state solvent, and led its armies through her commander Tukoji Holkar. Her administration is one of the few in eighteenth-century India that contemporaries of every party praised.

Her lasting work was religious building. She financed the construction or restoration of temples, ghats, wells and rest houses at sites across the subcontinent — Kashi Vishwanath at Varanasi, Somnath, Vishnupad at Gaya, Grishneshwar at Ellora, the ghats at Varanasi and Maheshwar, and dharamshalas from Rameswaram to Badrinath and Kedarnath.

The scale is remarkable: a ruler of a medium-sized Malwa state rebuilding the pilgrimage infrastructure of the entire country, at a moment when no single power controlled it. Much of what pilgrims use today at these sites is hers, and the present Kashi Vishwanath temple was built by her in 1780.

Maheshwar is also where she established the weaving workshops that produce Maheshwari saris.

After

Yashwant Rao Holkar fought the British in the Second Anglo-Maratha War with some success before being isolated. Indore became a princely state, moved its capital from Maheshwar, and acceded to India in 1948.