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Nana Fadnavis (also Nana Phadanvis, May 4, 1741 - March 13, 1800) was the great Maratha minister at Pune, Maharashtra. India at the end of the 18th century.

His real name was Balaji Janardhan Bhanu; but, like many other Marathas, he was always known by a kind of nickname. Nana properly means a maternal grandfather; Phadnavis ("Ph" as in "Elephant") is the official title of the finance minister, derived from fard = an account and anvis = a writer. Incidentally, the name is often spelled "Phadnavis". He was born at Satara on the 4th of May 1741, and was the son of a Chitpavan Brahman, of the same caste as the Peshwa.

Nana escaped from the fatal Third Battle of Panipat (1761) and from about 1774 became the leading personage directing the affairs of the Maratha Confederacy, though never a soldier. This was the period when one Peshwa was rapidly succeeded by another, and there was more than one disputed succession. It was the endeavour of Nana Farnavis to hold together the confederacy in the teeth of both internal dissension and the growing power of the British.

Nana died at Pune on the 13th of March 1800, just before Peshwa Baji Rao II placed himself in the hands of the British, provoking the Second Anglo-Maratha War that began the break up the Maratha confederacy. In an extant letter to the Peshwa, the Marquess Wellesley describes^[1] him thus: "The able minister of your state, whose upright principles and honourable views and whose zeal for the welfare and prosperity both of the dominions of his own immediate superiors and of other powers were so justly celebrated."

An anecdote tells of an occasion when Nana decided to build a bridge at Karmanaki, near the town of Kashi (also known as Varanasi or Benares). The pundits in Kashi performed rituals and prayers to ensure that the project succeeded. Unfortunately, the efforts to find firm footings in the river failed despite repeated attempts and rituals by the priests. When Nana heard of this, he put a stop to all rituals, contacted a British engineer named Baker, and entrusted the job to him. Baker brought pumps to remove water and when they proved inadequate, brought additional machinery from Calcutta. With his equipment he successfully completed the project.

• Nana Phadnavis, the rationalist

1. ^ Captain A Macdonald, Memoir of Nana Furnuwees (Bombay, 1851).

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.