The Deccan and the South

Battle of Talikota, 1565 — a confederacy of the Deccan Sultanates (Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, and Bidar), setting aside their usual rivalries, combined their armies against the Vijayanagara Empire, then ruled in practice by the regent Rama Raya on behalf of a figurehead king. At Talikota (also called the Battle of Rakshasi-Tangadi), the Sultanates' forces — reportedly aided by the defection of two Vijayanagara commanders during the battle — decisively broke the Vijayanagara army; Rama Raya was captured and beheaded on the battlefield. The victorious Sultanate armies then marched on and sacked the Vijayanagara capital of Hampi, subjecting it to months of systematic destruction from which the city never recovered. This battle marks the effective end of Vijayanagara as a major imperial power, even though the dynasty itself limped on in a reduced, fragmented form from other capitals for roughly another century, and its Nayaka successor states would go on to shape Tamil and Telugu regional politics well into the 18th century.

Battle of Colachel, 1741 — the kingdom of Travancore, under its ambitious ruler Marthanda Varma, confronted a Dutch East India Company force that had landed near Colachel on the Malabar/Travancore coast intending to punish Travancore for interfering with Dutch trading interests. Marthanda Varma's forces, employing disciplined infantry drilled partly under a captured Dutch officer, Eustachius De Lannoy (who was taken prisoner and later became a valued commander in Travancore's own army), inflicted a decisive defeat on the Dutch. This is the first time an Asian power decisively defeated a European colonial power's organised military force in a pitched battle on Indian soil, and it effectively ends serious Dutch ambitions to expand territorially in India, redirecting the Dutch East India Company's regional focus toward Ceylon and the East Indies instead. It is a frequently-missed fact precisely because it doesn't involve the British and predates Plassey by sixteen years, making it a favourite "which European power" distractor in MCQs.