"It is true, as some modern historians have complained, that (Jadunath) Sarkar’s patriotic voice—the voice of “the true son of India”—is sometimes hard to distinguish from other kinds of patriotism that may have been actually present in the eighteenth century. Thus, when Mirza Muhammad Shafi, a mir bakshi (army minister) to the emperor and “the last fighting army chief of the empire”, was slain through “the blackest treachery” by Muhammad Beg Hamadani, a Mughalia sardar (chief), on 23 September 1783, Sarkar has the Maratha envoy “aptly describing” the situation: “Muhammad Shafi is dead. All Hindustan is lying bare. No sword for fighting is left in India.”"