“The seeds of domestic dissensions were thickly and deeply sown in the Maratha system under the Peshwas.”

The statement highlights the internal weaknesses of the Maratha polity under the Peshwas. Though the Marathas became a major power in 18th-century India, their system contained serious tensions—between central authority and regional chiefs, between personal ambition and collective strategy, and between expansion and administrative consolidation.

Domestic Dissensions under the Peshwas

Weakening of central authority:

• The Chhatrapati at Satara became largely nominal, while the Peshwa became the real centre of power.
• But even the Peshwa could not fully control powerful Maratha houses.
• Chiefs such as the Scindias, Holkars, Gaekwads and Bhonsles built semi-independent regional bases.

Confederate structure:

• The Maratha system expanded as a confederacy, not as a tightly centralised state.
• This helped rapid expansion, but it also encouraged competing interests.
• Different chiefs pursued their own territorial and financial ambitions.

Revenue-based tensions:

• Claims of chauth and sardeshmukhi gave income but did not always produce stable administration.
• Rival claims over revenue created disputes among Maratha leaders.
• Local populations often saw Maratha demands as extraction rather than governance.

Consequences

Factionalism and decline:

• Internal rivalry weakened the Marathas before and after the Third Battle of Panipat.
• Later, the British exploited these divisions through diplomacy and war.
• The Anglo-Maratha Wars exposed the weakness of Maratha unity.
• Therefore, the Maratha system under the Peshwas contained deep domestic dissensions. Its flexibility helped expansion, but lack of central discipline and competing regional ambitions ultimately weakened Maratha power.