Car ownership has increased so rapidly over the past thirty years that many cities in the world are now 'one big traffic jam'. How true do you think this statement is? What measures can governments take to discourage people from using their cars?

Shivaji

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was descended from a line of prominent nobles. India at that time was under Muslim rule: the Mughals in the north and the Muslim sultans of

Bijapur

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and Golconda in the south. All three ruled by right of conquest, with no pretense that they had any obligations toward those who they ruled.

Shivaji

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, whose ancestral estates were situated in the Deccan, in the realm of the

Bijapur

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sultans, found the Muslim oppression and religious persecution of the Hindus so intolerable that, by the time he was 16, he convinced himself that he was the divinely appointed instrument of the cause of Hindu freedom—a conviction that was to sustain him throughout his life. Collecting a band of followers, he began about 1655 to seize the weaker

Bijapur

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outposts. In the process, he destroyed a few of his influential coreligionists, who had aligned themselves with the sultans. All the same, his daring and military skill, combined with his sternness toward the oppressors of the Hindus, won him much admiration. His depredations grew increasingly audacious, and several minor expeditions sent to chastise him proved ineffective. When the sultan of

Bijapur

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in 1659 sent an army of 20,000 under Afẕal Khan to defeat him,

Shivaji

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, pretending to be intimidated, enticed the force deep into difficult mountain terrain and

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killed Afẕal Khan at a meeting to which he had lured him by submissive appeals. Meanwhile, handpicked troops that had been previously positioned swooped down on the unwary

Bijapur

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army and routed it. Overnight,

Shivaji

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had become a formidable warlord, possessing the horses, the guns, and the ammunition of the

Bijapur

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army. Alarmed by

Shivaji

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’s rising strength, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb ordered his viceroy of the south to march against him.

Shivaji

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countered by carrying out a daring midnight raid right within the viceroy’s encampment, in which the viceroy lost the fingers of one hand and his son was killed. Discomfited by

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reverse, the viceroy withdrew his force.

Shivaji

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, as though to provoke the Mughals

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, attacked the rich coastal town of Surat and took immense booty.