#DemocracyOfStories Edition 17
‘Lord Vulture…’
So now we are in 1757[1].
Siraj-ud-Daulah has fled the battlefield and is heading back to Murshidabad, the capital of Bengal. Some of his men have fled before him, some have fled with him, but Murshidabad is under a pall of impending doom. He needs these soldiers for his safety, for him to take a breather and decide on the future course of action. He opens his treasury to any one to lay a claim upon against outstanding dues, as an incentive for their continued loyalty and service. By the morning, there are few left, having helped themselves to the treasury; Siraj is left alone to his own reflections and fears. Not along after, he sets for Patna, with his wife and principal consort, Lutf-un-Nisa, and some “favourites” with as much gold, and as many jewels as possible. He doesn’t reach very far; close to Murshidabad itself, he is identified by one of Mir Jafar’s men, arrested and executed quite brutally.
This leaves the British East India Company, quite unexpectedly, in charge of the richest province in India — Bengal[2].
During my reading of all the events surrounding India’s colonial history and our freedom struggle, the one thing that left me utterly fascinated was that, a joint stock company, perhaps one of the earliest in the world, that came to India in 1599 for the purposes of exploring trade, ends up not only enriching its shareholders and employees, to the extent that some of them such as Robert Clive began to be called “Nabobs” themselves, but expands its remit to being in control of the vast swathes of north India, economically, socially and politically for over 150[3] years. The British Crown and Government rules India for 90 years thereafter — the Company had already been in India for over 250 years by then!
Robert Clive’s loot of gold, jewels, and artefacts (also called Clive of India and Lord Vulture for the immense riches he amassed in India) can be seen at Powis Castle in Wales, today a National Trust monument, and includes Siraj-ud-Daulah’s palanquin that he abandoned as he fled from battle and Tipu Sultan’s tent, among other items. (Note to Myself: must add Powis Castle to Things to See/Do in the UK along with the British Museum!).
India saw many Governor Generals over the course of British rule in India, but to me, Clive is perhaps the most important name to keep in mind — with him began the considerable change In India’s fortunes. From being the[4] largest economy in the world, accounting for approximately 25% of world GDP in 1700, India’s share plummets to 4% by the time the British leave[5]. Incidentally, and no surprise, Britain’s fortunes change dramatically too. From lagging behind its European counterparts, Britain’s per capita GDP grows from about £1,700 to about £7,500[6] or ~4.5 times over the same period — this is after all the turmoil in Europe and two World Wars, enabling it to not only dress its aristocracy in the finest cottons and silks and jewels, but also to finance its wars and conquests, and most importantly spur the Industrial Revolution.
Additionally, we suffered not one but two Clives. Edward Clive, Robert’s eldest son married Henrietta[7], the daughter of the Earl of Powis. Edward was appointed Governor of Madras in 1798 and it was during his Governorship that the East India Company forces fought the third and last war and defeated Tipu Sultan definitively in 1799 at Seringapatnam. The British army swept into the city, Tipu’s treasury of precious objects and artefacts was seized, some of which are now in the Clive Museum at Powis.
But back to Clive. Clive is of melancholic disposition — it is said that he attempted to commit suicide twice as a young man. In 1743, he is sent to Madras when he is just 18, out of the assumption perhaps that a stint in the colonies would set him right. In Madras, he comes into his own not so much as a Company trader and official but as a military man. French and British hostilities have broken out and through some great guerrilla tactics, Clive’s army of Europeans and Indians seize Arcot and begin establishing their might across the Carnatic. (Note here that both the British and French East Companies have armies of European and Indian soldiers with the balance shifting considerably in favour of a larger Indian contingent as we get into the late 1700s and early 1800s).
Clive’s ambitions are big. He wants to be in Parliament and play a big role in Government, an early case of lobbying from within. The British East India Company is getting too big to ignore; many MPs in Britain are shareholders of the Company and have immense wealth; the Company is the largest employer and “too big to fail” and is adding millions of pounds each year to the British treasury. Clive heads back to England in 1753 but his bid for Parliament is unsuccessful and sets out for India again in 1755. The events at Plassey make him seriously rich. There are differing accounts of his wealth, but it is believed that, from being indebted before he set sail for India in 1743, on his return after his second stint in 1760, his loot made him the richest self-made man in Europe with a fortune in cash and jewels and artefacts valued at £100 million in today’s money.
It is also interesting that the Company’s employees were paid a pittance for their services — one piece I read said that they were paid just a little more than domestic servants in England. In Bengal, they could make a fortune. Juxtaposed with low pay and risk of death by disease, the incentive was considerable — company employees could engage in private trade! And so began a culture of bribery and corruption that even Clive struggled to control.
While Clive’s first stint in Madras reveal his talents as a military commander, and his second enables the East India Company to establish a strong political and economic foothold in India, it is his third stint that unveils a systematic pogrom of the asset stripping of India.
But I am getting ahead of myself. First, we must understand Mir Jafar and the Battle of Buxar and the interesting characters of Shah Alam II, the Mughal Emperor of Delhi and Shuja-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Awadh, he of 7ft height and moustaches he lovingly tended to!
After Plassey, in a deal previously agreed, Mir Jafar becomes Nawab of Bengal. We know so much about the goings-on at the Company because everything was recorded by Company clerks in triplicate (sounds familiar?); we can find copies both in the National Archives of India in New Delhi and the British Museum. Some accounts are differently represented for the bosses in India as opposed to those back in London; historians believe that the Indian records were perhaps more accurately representative of the time.
Anyway, relations between Jafar and the Company are rocky from the start. Disputes emerge after Dutch ships are seen on the Hooghly; Jafar is suspected of double-dealing. British demands also keep escalating — the pressures on Bengal’s treasury and widespread corruption among Company officials compel Jafar to engage in extortion of his own peasantry and artisanry on a vast scale. The Company proposes that Mir Qasim, Jafar’s son-in-law be appointed Deputy Subehdar and in 1760, Jafar is made to abdicate and Qasim appointed Nawab; this doesn’t last long either — disputes over trade policies re-surface and Mir Jafar is re-appointed Nawab in 1763.
Meanwhile, Clive returns to England in 1760 with the large fortune he has amassed; his health is failing. Back home, he is given an Irish peerage as Baron Clive of Plassey in 1762 and knighted in 1764. On his departure, a contemporary writes that “it was as if the soul was departing from the Government of Bengal”. But Clive has his succession ready — among his subordinates, he chooses a young Warren Hastings as Resident in the Nawab’s Court.
Mir Qasim has no illusions about the true intentions of the Company. In fact, he is in some ways both responsible for, and the beneficiary of (for some time at least, and as long as he did the bidding of his British masters) the stealthy expansion of Company mandate from trade to military expansion to political administration. Now, he wants to make a large and final assault on the Company to drive it out of Bengal. But he can’t do it alone. So he approaches the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Shuja-ud-Daulah and believes that the Company would be no match for the combined might of Delhi, Awadh and Bengal.
Shah Alam II, the sixteenth Mughal Emperor is more a poet than a ruler and administrator. Ascending the throne in 1760 at the age of 42, he sees before him a crumbling Empire, which gets even more depleted during his reign of nearly 46 years. His pen-name is Aftab which means the Sun or Sunshine, authoring his own Deewan of poems, and one of the earliest and most prominent books of prose in Urdu, Ajaib-ul-Qasas. But the joke about his power led to a saying in Persian: Sultanat-e-Shah Alam, Az Dilli ta Palam, meaning, ‘The empire of Shah Alam is from Delhi to Palam’, Palam being a suburb of Delhi.
Shah Alam is a somewhat reluctant co-conspirator — he still gets his tribute from Bengal and Awadh; he is aware of the expansionist agenda of the British but has good relations with them who cannily acknowledge his throne as the ultimate authority as Emperor. Shuja-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Awadh on the other hand is the firebrand. 7 feet tall with swirling mustaches outstretched like an eagle’s wings, he exudes brute strength and courage. But as the historian of the time, Ghulam Hussain Khan writes, there were doubts as to whether his intelligence matched his strength. Mir Qasim is of Persian extraction, small, wiry and very bright. He has worked on re-building the army and reforming Bengal’s treasury. This combined triple alliance brings together an unusual bunch of warriors of different allegiances and religions — the Mughal, the Afghan Rohillas, Naga Sadhus and some French deserters in East India Company uniform.
And so begins the Battle of Buxar in 1764. Nearly 150,000 troops of this alliance face 19,000 British troops (most of whom are Indian mercenaries hired by the Company) under the command of Hector Munroe and John Carnac. Early wins on the Indian side are wiped out by superior artillery, a more disciplined army trained in European warfare and patience. European wars have led to major innovations in both military strategy and armaments — swivel guns and cannons. Besides the Patna bankers have financed the British — they are easier to deal with, and a Company understands lending and interest rates. It is merely business.
I would think that if Plassey marked the beginning of a tectonic shift in India’s geo-political landscape, Buxar was the definitive nail in the coffin. From here on, one by one through the end of the 18th and the beginning of early 19th century, every prominent Indian ruler — the Jats, the Marathas, Tipu Sultan in the South and finally the Sikh Empire after Ranjit Singh — comes under the fold of the East India Company. After Buxar, Mir Qasim flees, eventually settling near Delhi in 1774[8]. Shuja first flees, but then surrenders. And Shah Alam returns to the British fold.
This marks the beginning of the Robert Clive’s third stint which begins in May 1765; he sees the Bengal administration in complete chaos, and a vacuum in leadership between Delhi and Bengal. And ironically, he learns that Mir Jafar has died, leaving him personally £70,000 or £21 million in today’s money. First he decides to limit the Company’s commitments to Bengal and Bihar. He returns Awadh to Shuja-ud-Daulah to serve as a buffer state between Delhi and Bengal. But it is a heavy price for Shuja. The Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 leads to Kora and Allahabad districts going to the Company, a payment of 5 million rupees from Awadh, free trading rights and assistance in case of war with other powers. To pay for the protection of British forces and assistance in war, Awadh gives up first the fort of Chunar, then districts of Benaras and Ghazipur.
The Emperor’s power and glory is further reduced — for an annual tribute, the Emperor hands over the Dewanee or the revenue administration of Bengal to the East India Company. And so begins the involuntary privatization, as William Darlymple puts it, of India’s richest province. The Dewanee also marks a significant change in the business strategy for the Company. Until 1765, the Company makes profits by acquiring exclusive trading rights by kowtowing to local rulers and offering its army to support their battles with other rulers. They buy goods on the cheap in India and sell them in Britain at significant profit. Now they use taxes collected from Bengal’s peasants and its 1 million weavers and artisans to buy the same goods, thus reducing the need for gold and silver coming in from Britain. Now wealth and goods move in only one direction — outwards from India. Thus begins the asset stripping of the richest economy of the world. To make matters worse, the Company has Indian bankers providing Indian financing to its ventures, and Indian soldiers fighting the Company’s wars.
As far as the administration of the Dewanee is concerned, the Company appoints a Deputy Nawab. While police and magisterial powers are still exercised by the Nawab of Bengal as the Emperor’s deputy, he in turn nominates the Company’s deputy to act for him. This is Clive’s so-called Dual System, which makes the Company the virtual ruler of India’s two richest provinces. Clive also tries his hand at reforming the Company’s service by forbidding private trade and reducing large allowances for the army. But these are less successful. Clive finishes his third and final stint in 1767 but Bengal has suffered terribly under reckless plunder for 10 years. Clive’s actions have tremendous repercussions and while he is immensely successful in the Company’s eyes, he also makes many enemies among the aristocracy back home.
I promised to get to 1857 many editions ago but there are so many fascinating stories along the way. And it seems that they each lay the foundation for the Sepoy Mutiny! So in the coming editions, let me tell you about the Bengal famine, the Charter Laws and the influence of the Governor Generals who followed Clive.
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References:
[1] Please read edition 14 if you want to know more about the Battle of Plassey and other events in the run-up to the seminal events of 1757!
[2] Bengal province was the equivalent of present-day Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bangladesh
[3] I am taking the early 1700s as the start of East India Company dominance in India
[4] China was a very close second
[5] According to historical GDP estimates by economist Angus Maddison
[6] https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth#from-poverty-to-prosperity-the-uk-over-the-long-run
[7] Their son inherited Powis Castle on the death of Henrietta’s brother who had no heir
[8] As we saw in Edition 14, he dies in obscurity and abject poverty three years later. His two shawls, the only property left by him, are sold to pay for his funeral.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
